Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America
Kali Nicole Gross
Abstract
Shortly after the discovery of a headless, limbless torso on the bank of a pond just outside of Philadelphia, investigators homed in on two black suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs and George Wilson, a young man Tabbs implicates shortly after her arrest. The ensuing trial spanned several months, with court procceedings lasting from February to September—a record length of time for the late-nineteenth century. The crime and its adjudication took center stage in presses from New York to Missouri. The nature of the case allowed otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violenc ... More
Shortly after the discovery of a headless, limbless torso on the bank of a pond just outside of Philadelphia, investigators homed in on two black suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs and George Wilson, a young man Tabbs implicates shortly after her arrest. The ensuing trial spanned several months, with court procceedings lasting from February to September—a record length of time for the late-nineteenth century. The crime and its adjudication took center stage in presses from New York to Missouri. The nature of the case allowed otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the black community to become fodder for mainstream public discourses on race, gender, and crime. At the same time, the near-white complexion of the victim and one of his assailants further inflamed public anxieties about shifting notions of race and the prospect of miscegenation in the post-Reconstruction era. Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso gathers evidence from bills of indictment, trial testimony, coroner’s reports, and detective registers to explore intraracial and gender violence among black Philadelphians. Yet by mapping the crime and its investigation as events unfolded, this book also spotlights the chasm between African Americans and the legal system and shows how biased policing helped foment to urban crime.
Keywords:
Hannah Mary Tabbs,
black women’s history,
crime,
intraracial violence,
murder,
adultery,
true crime,
legal history,
urban policing
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190241216 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190241216.001.0001 |
