4 Killing in the name of love
Alice Mitchell’s vicious attack on a childhood sweetheart challenged contemporary attitudes towards female same-sex relationships
In the eyes of most residents of 19thcentury Tennessee, female same-sex love was abnormal. Though some young, unmarried women had close, even openly affectionate friendships with female peers, hardly anyone thought for a second that there would be any kind of sexual element to these relationships. Such assumptions were dramatically challenged in early 1892 by two teenage girls: Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward.
Alice and Freda had become close friends after meeting at Higbee School for Young Ladies in Memphis. In 1891, when Freda moved to the town of Golddust on the Mississippi river to live with her older sister and widowed father, Alice and Freda were able to sustain their relationship through visits and letters. When they stayed together, they shared a bed, as expected. When apart, the girls declared their love for each other in writing. Alice even bought Freda an engagement ring and proposed marriage, declaring that she would live as a man, ‘Alvin J Ward’, to make their union possible.
Jealous rage
Freda, however, was keeping her options open. In Golddust, she began to entertain male suitors, in particular a man called Ashley Roselle. Alice was enraged. “I love you Fred, and would kill Ashley before I would see him take you from me,” she warned in one letter.
In August 1891, the girls devised a plan to elope, but it was discovered by Freda’s sister, who became determined to end the relationship.
Freda returned Alice’s engagement ring. Alice, however, could not accept that the relationship was over. When, in January 1892, Freda visited Memphis to stay with a friend, Alice tried writing to her once more. But her letters were returned unopened and, when they met in the street, Freda refused to acknowledge her. To explain her actions, Freda wrote Alice one final letter: “I love you now and always will but I have been forbidden to speak to you and I have to obey.”
Just days later, Alice stabbed Freda to death as she tried to board the steamer back to Golddust. In her confession, Alice explained that she “resolved to kill Freda because
I loved her so much that I wanted her to die loving me”.
A verdict of insanity ensured that Alice avoided the gallows, and society could continue to define female same-sex relationships as an aberration.