Research Catalog

Title

The hanging of Ephraim Wheeler : a story of rape, incest, and justice in early America / Irene Quenzler Brown, Richard D. Brown.

Author

Brown, Irene Quenzler.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Brown, Richard D.

Description

388 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., map, ports.; 23 cm.

Summary

"In 1806 an anxious crowd of thousands descended upon Lenox, Massachusetts, for the public hanging of Ephraim Wheeler, condemned for the rape of his thirteen-year-old daughter, Betsy. Not all witnesses believed justice had triumphed. The death penalty had become controversial; no one had been executed for rape in Massachusetts in more than a quarter century. Wheeler maintained his innocence. Over one hundred local citizens petitioned for his pardon--including, most remarkably, Betsy and her mother. Impoverished, illiterate, a failed farmer who married into a mixed-race family and clashed routinely with his wife, Wheeler existed on the margins of society. Using the trial report to reconstruct the tragic crime and drawing on Wheeler's jailhouse autobiography to unravel his troubled family history, Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown illuminate a rarely seen slice of early America. They imaginatively and sensitively explore issues of family violence, poverty, gender, race and class, religion, and capital punishment, revealing similarities between death penalty politics in America today and two hundred years ago."--Cover.

Subject

• Berkshire County (Mass.) > Social conditions > 18th century
• Berkshire County (Mass.) > Social conditions > 19th century
• Capital punishment > Berkshire County > History > 19th century > Case studies
• Dysfunctional families > Berkshire County > History > 19th century > Case studies
• Hanging > Lenox > History > 19th century > Case studies
• Incest > Berkshire County > History > 19th century > Case studies
• Interracial marriage > Berkshire County > History > 19th century > Case studies
• Rape > Berkshire County > History > 19th century > Case studies
• Wheeler, Ephraim

Genre/Form

• Case studies.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-365) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The ride to the gallows -- The setting -- The trial -- The daughter -- The wife and mother -- The condemned man -- The final judgment -- The execution.

ISBN

0674010205 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2002038266

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library