ebooks A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence; Image; Voice and Text by Kama Maclean in History

Description

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887; investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs; a married; working-class; black woman; and George Wilson; a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged; both the crime and ensuing trial--which spanned several months--were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex; adultery; and domestic violence in the black community to public attention. At the same time; the mixed race of the victim and one of his assailants exacerbated anxieties over the purity of whiteness in the post-Reconstruction era. In Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso; historian Kali Nicole Gross uses detectives' notes; trial and prison records; local newspapers; and other archival documents to reconstruct this ghastly whodunit crime in all its scandalous detail. In doing so; she gives the crime context by analyzing it against broader evidence of police treatment of black suspects and violence within the black community. A fascinating work of historical recreation; Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso is sure to captivate anyone interested in true crime; adulterous love triangles gone wrong; and the racially volatile world of post-Reconstruction Philadelphia.