ALICE + FREDA FOREVER

The story of a Gilded Age–era homicide that stunned a nation with its sheer violence and tabooed origins.

Haunted for years about the case, media columnist and historian Coe chronicles a 19th-century, Memphis, Tennessee–based ordeal of coldblooded murder and the jilted lesbian love that inspired it. As teenagers who fell in love in 1892, Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward threw caution to the wind, exchanged rings and anticipated marital bliss. Coe recounts their illicit affair through love letters, graphic artwork and entrancing detail as Alice, the more enamored partner when compared to the flirtatious, fickle Freda, became enraged when she learned of her fiancee’s heterosexual infidelities. After a failed poisoning and an attempt to dress as a man to legally consummate their nuptials, their missives were intercepted and the relationship exposed. Forbidden from contact, the women drifted apart, yet Alice, angered and despondent, watched and waited for the perfect opportunity to approach Freda and slash her throat in public. Being the Victorian era, this type of savage crime of passion provoked sensationalistic front-page “creative reporting,” especially as same-sex attraction was just beginning to be recognized as psychologically sound and not classified as perverse “erotomania.” An insanity plea fueled a frenzied courtroom staffed by an all-white, male jury and a lunacy inquisition, which sentenced Alice to be institutionalized. In revisiting such a fascinating and nearly forgotten true-crime event, Coe argues that the societal, gender and cultural restraints of the era limited the options and civic compassion that could’ve been visited upon Alice, a woman the author presents as both a psychotic murderer and a scorned lesbian—yet it remains a mystery which personality trait took such drastic vengeance on that fateful day.

A historically resonant reminder of how far societal tolerance has come and that it still remains a work in progress.