An 1801 Whodunnit

Say you're on a jury in 1801 Massachusetts.

On trial is a young man accused of killing his sweetheart. Her family did not approve of their connection.

On the day in question, he had told two witnesses he passed on the road that he was on his way to her house to rape her (and thus force the family into letting him marry her).

Her body was found in the field beside her house with multiple stab wounds in the arm, side, breast, neck, and back. The accused stood nearby with blood on his clothing and holding a knife that was later matched to the wounds.

The accused said he was Not Guilty because ... the girl had done it to herself.

Her motive was shame over her ruined reputation - he had told her he bragged to several other men that he had been having sex with her, and in response she had committed suicide.

It was well known that the accused did not have the use of one of his arms, due to a frozen elbow joint since childhood.  How could he have stabbed her successfully all those times using only his other arm?

And two neighbor girls had been outside that day, and had heard shouting, but not such that they thought someone was being murdered.

Were they lying because they didn't want to admit they had heard such screams and done nothing?

But if the girl had done it to herself, how did she manage to stab herself in the back?

And if he loved her, what was he doing in that field in any case, since according to either explanation of events it meant physical or emotional harm to the girl?

Would you find him Guilty or Not Guilty?

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/mb6m

BBC Review

Finds Barrowman on the sort of form to guarantee a hit.

Adrian Edwards 2010-02-22

John Barrowman’s new album captures him on peak form. His strong vocal technique, intelligent choice of songs, sympathetically arranged, guarantees that this new album is going to be a hit.

The breezy opener When I Get My Name in Lights comes from The Boy from Oz, Australia’s first musical to hit Broadway. It featured a Tony Award-winning performance from actor Hugh Jackman in the role of singer-songwriter Peter Allen, a part that would seem tailor-made for the magnetic Barrowman.

One Night Only offers a showcase for this singer’s enviable ability to sustain a long note, float the voice into falsetto and empathise with the narrative of a song. When the tempo picks up, he’s joined by an all-girl backing group paying homage to the song’s source in Dreamgirls, the film based on the career of The Supremes. Copacabana comes up fresh as daisy through Barrowman’s sassy vocal, with piano and brass breaks emphasising the flashy nightclub setting. Thoughtful love song Unusual Way, from Nine, is marked by loving attention to detail, sustained by a seamless vocal line and an arrangement where one feels singer and orchestra are breathing as one. The warm string chart recalls the glory days of arranger Gordon  Jenkins’ collaborations with Nat King Cole.

Barrowman’s simple treatment of two unsophisticated songs, My Eyes Adored You and Don’t Cry Out Loud, fall easily on the ear, though he can’t rescue The Kid Inside (from the show Is There Life After High School?, which ran for just 14 performances on Broadway back in 1982). Jodie Prenger duets with Barrowman on So Close, a song from the Disney film Enchanted, though without making any lasting impression.

It’s in the very familiar repertoire that Barrowman works wonders. Singer and orchestra relish the second build up of You’ll Never Walk Alone, but the initial presentation of the refrain is simply beautifully sung and the ending shaded off exquisitely, as it’s written in the vocal score of Carousel. I Won’t Send Roses is another touching interpretation, with a well-paced climax and a dream of a long soft note held at the end. Memory sweeps along with marvellous phrasing, an intelligent reading of the words and an arrangement that adds colour to his fresh interpretation.

All through this collection we are aware of singer and arranger-conductor Matt Brind working as a team. They are to be congratulated for their work.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you choose to use this review on your site please link back to this page.

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The Trial of Margaret Douglass

From American State Trials:

"A Southern lady (Margaret Douglass) living with a daughter in Norfolk, Virginia sixty-six years ago (1853) and being greatly interested in the religious and moral instruction of colored children and finding that the Sunday school where they were allowed to attend was not sufficient, invited them to come to her house, where in a back room upstairs she and her daughter taught them to read and write.

She knew that it was against the law to teach slaves, and so she was careful to take none in her school but free colored children.

One day a couple of city constables entered with a warrant and marched the two teachers and the children to the Mayor's office, where she was charged with teaching them to read, contrary to law. She explained that none of the children were slaves and that she had no idea that a child could not be taught to read simply because it was black.

But the Mayor told her that this was the law, but as she had acted in good faith he would dismiss the case.

But the Grand Jury heard of it and indicted her.

At the next term of court she was tried for a violation of the Virginia code which provided that ... every assemblage of negroes for instruction in reading and writing ... was unlawful, and if a white person assembled with negroes to instruct them to read and write, he should be fined and imprisoned.

She refused the services of a lawyer and defended herself, and though she called several witnesses to show that the same thing had been done for years in the Sunday schools in the city, the jury convicted her, but placed the penalty at a fine of only one dollar.

But this was overruled by the judge:

"The Court is not called on to vindicate the policy of the law in question, for so long as it remains upon the statute book, and unrepealed, public and private justice and morality require that it should be respected and sustained.

There are persons, I believe, in our community, opposed to the policy of the law in question.

They profess to believe that universal intellectual culture is necessary to religious instruction and education, and that such culture is suitable to a state of slavery; and there can be no misapprehension as to your opinions on this subject, judging from the indiscreet freedom with which you spoke of your regard for the colored race in general.

Such opinions in the present state of our society I regard as manifestly mischievous.

... I exceedingly regret, that in being called on for the first time to act under the law in question, it becomes my duty to impose the required punishment upon a female, apparently of fair and respectable standing in the community.

The only mitigating circumstance in your case, if in truth there be any, according to my best reason and understanding of it, is that to which I have just referred, namely, you being a female.

Under the circumstances of this case, if you were of a different sex, I should regard the full punishment of six months' imprisonment as eminently just and proper.... As an example to all others in like cases disposed to offend, and in vindication of the policy and justness of our laws, which every individual should be taught to respect, the judgment of the Court is, in addition to the proper fine and costs, that you be imprisoned for the period of one month in the jail of this city.""

So there ya go, a trial with a side of sexism accompanying the main course of racism.