Month: July 2018

The Suffrage Army Marches in Salem

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE — I have been studying social late 19th and early 20th-century progressive movements in some of South Jersey’s rural counties, the fieldwork concentrating on temperance, prohibition, prison reform, crime control, and voting rights.

As it concerns women’s suffrage New Jersey has a complicated history since the State’s 1776 Constitution had enfranchised men and women who were worth at least fifty pounds.  But this brief period of inclusivity came to an end in 1807 when the Assembly passed a law limiting suffrage to white male taxpayers.  After the Civil War, activistism in the State grew in harmony with the national movement, and lawmakers in Trenton were pressured to restore the franchise for women.  Across the nation suffragists in nine states had won battles, converting indecivisive politicians by 1913.  In New Jersey, the suffragists managed to get a statewide referendum on the ballot, putting the decision in the hands of men at a special statewide election on Oct. 19, 1915.

New Jersey’s voters decided not to grant women the right to vote by a big majority, so women in the Garden State had to wait for the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

For the Salem County Historical Society’s quarterly newsletter, I wrote an article examining this movement and the campaign in the state’s most rural county.  See the Quarterly Newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society, Summer 2018, for the full article.

 

The suffrage army marches in Salem.
The Suffrage Army marches in Salem

Researching Cold Cases For a Lecture on the 19th Century Criminal Justice System

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The County Gallows at the Franklin County Historical Society.

I have been traveling throughout the Mid-Atlantic researching the dark underside of history, shocking murders from long ago that once stunned communities and filled newspapers with sensational headlines.  From the mountains of Western Pennsylvania and Maryland to the Atlantic Coast, these terrible crimes, many lingering as unsolved cold cases, provide a stark look at the slowly evolving criminal justice system of the 19th and the early 20th century and the nature of crime in the past.

As one generation gave way to another, memory faded and communities eventually forgot the dreadful events, except in dusty old pages of newspapers or an occasional diary.  But if one deeply searches archives, libraries, courthouses, and historical societies, long unexamined coroner’s inquests, court proceedings –  death warrants, pleas, motions, and trial transcripts – and police blotters fill in the details, allowing for some reasonable reconstruction of the circumstances.

I use these tragic cases to examine the early workings of the criminal justice system and consider what law enforcement did or could have done to solve them and bring about justice.  The period of consideration spans the centuries, from when forensic science was unheard of and witnesses and “smoking guns” were about all the police had to rely on to bring killers to justice until scientific breakthroughs in the first half of the 20th century brought investigations into the modern age, allowing the police to crack once unsolvable crime cases.

This fieldwork is for a series of lectures this autumn in libraries across the state for the One Maryland One Book 2018 theme, justice.  The Maryland Humanities sponsors this annual reading program, and many county library systems are offering this lecture to support this year’s book, “Bloodsworth:  The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA Evidence.

19th century, criminal investigation, csi, criminal justice system
CSI – The Historical Edition, a lecture the examines 19th and early 20th century murders to understand how investigations were conducted before the modern age.

Here’s a link to the program at the Frederick County Library on Sep. 28, 2018

For additional photos related to this fieldwork click this link