Strong Women: Criminals, Victims, and Students Oh My

     WC Blogpost by: Crimeluvr123

Image from Austin Neill via unsplash 

Dear Reader, 

This weekend I am taking some time to reflect on my last two weeks as my junior year at Washington University in St. Louis commenced. While beginnings cannot be predicted, they can certainly be anticipated, and I have been anticipating the class titled “Women and Crime in the Evolution of American History” since I read it in the course listings six months ago in March. My eagerness for this class began as I was enrolled in an English course on the topic of true crime last semester in the spring of my sophomore year. My unhealthy obsession with recent gruesome crimes committed and never solved was satisfied by that class. I enjoyed every conversation the ethics of the genre, and every tangent we took looking closely at the telling of the stories and thinking through the psychology behind the crimes. I loved the whole experience, however, it felt unfinished. I felt eager to continue to explore the roots of what about crime and death interested me so much. Thus, when I saw the next opportunity of a humanities-based crime class, I jumped on it. I must admit, when I walked in on the first day, I was unsure of what to expect. Yes, this class was going to be crime-focused as I’d always known, but I found myself having to shift from the analytical, literary lens I had looked from in the spring to a more historical lens. Admittedly, I have never been drawn to history, so not to say I was disappointed, but I was apprehensive. However, something about the first reading I touched “She Must Go Overboard & Shall Go Overboard: Diseased Bodies and the Spectacle of Murder at Sea” hooked me. 

In this article, Dr. Mustakeem details the story of an enslaved woman traveling across the Atlantic when she got sick with smallpox. Instead of trying to help her, the white folks in charge of the ship, led by Captain Jim D’Wolf, decide to throw her overboard to avoid infecting others on the ship. The woman was tied to a chair and thrown off the side of the ship while she was very much still alive. I was moved by this story for a multitude of reasons. First, I was disturbed because not only did the captain and his men commit a murder in the first degree, but also, Captain D’Wolf reportedly remarked feeling sorry that “he had lost so good a Chair” in the process (Mustakeem 310). The woman’s life was ignored, yet the chair was missed. I was sick to my stomach. In primary school, slavery is taught. Stories like these are never brought up. The slave trade is reduced to sentiments about how horrible of an environment the ships were and how bad things happened to the slaves. Emotion is almost completely missing from narratives and individual stories are never told! The horrors that people endured are rarely detailed. I was astonished this is probably the only story I’ve heard where I feel like a single death was acknowledged. This sentiment was only furthered by the discussion of the text that followed in class. One of my classmates brought up the fact that the deceased woman is never named. The white men aboard the ship are remembered by name, yet the woman is remembered as a “Negro Wench” (Mustakeem 302). In class, I found myself shaking my head that I had not caught that detail. I felt tied to the woman, so angry for her, and yet I didn’t know her name. Big names in history are often remembered, but SO MANY individuals are lost through the years. On day 3, I realized the individual stories, the lost stories, the ones that have never been told - this is the part of history that engages me. I love storytelling, but I don’t like the big picture. The women who have been forgotten, reduced to single stories, their stories I am desperate to dive into. I like retelling the overlooked, and in 2023 more than ever it is important we use history to guide us and remember the mistakes made so we do not make them again. That’s what I am excited to see more of in this course. 

 So maybe I do like history. Or at least I definitely like herstory☺.

On the 4th day of class, we were prompted to read about the stories of young, enslaved women who were murdered. We read “’Mad’ Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts” by Wilma King. This piece compared the aftermaths of the crimes that young black slave women committed. Specifically, we learned the stories of Celia and Nelly. Both were young black girls who were bought by their respective owners at very young ages. Celia was 19 when she killed her owner, Robert Newsom. Nelly was 14 when she killed her own infant. Both girls were reportedly sexually abused by their owners, and both girls couldn’t do anything about it. Nelly’s owner Henry Edwards was the reported father of the child she killed, and he is rumored to have owned Nelly to have a sexual partner (King 39). She was essentially his birth control. WHAT!? That blew my mind into a million pieces. I shudder at the idea of a human being used in such a dehumanizing manner. Celia was not in much different of a situation, she was also raped by her owner. When Celia is killed, she apparently warns Newsom that she would hurt him if he came to “forc[e] her” and he comes down anyway (King 47). She struck him, burned him, and killed him (King 48). Nelly’s case never made it to court. Her murder was likened to madness. Celia was found guilty of first-degree murder

This article made me equally enraged as a story about the woman who was thrown overboard but for a little bit of a different reason. In Celia and Nelly’s stories, courts and laws were heavily involved. In the woman who was thrown overboard, we know what the men who killed her did and we know they should’ve been convicted of murder. They weren’t, but they obviously should’ve been. In my other crime class that I mentioned earlier, we consumed a lot of media about the court’s involvement with true crime cases. We saw people get indicted, we heard about people who could never be convicted, etc. However, in these cases, the people committing the crime were the “bad guys.” They were the family killers, the rapists, the torturers. All I wanted was for them to be convicted for their wrongdoings. The same went for Jim D’Wolf and the other crew members who murdered the enslaved woman. However, in Nelly and Celia’s situations, reading about the courts' involvement made me upset. Yes, they had done something bad, and yes, they killed. However, I found myself rooting for them. Yes, rooting for the killers! As ridiculous as that statement alone sounds, I think anyone reading this article would agree (and if you don’t, I want to hear why)! But for me, it’s because these women have endured some of the worst that life can offer. They were treated as objects, and they were denied basic human decency in the form of protection by law. I found this too easily relatable to things I am seeing in 2023. Human beings denied basic protection by the law. How is it that we are repeating mistakes from some of the worst times in history? This theme of local law enforcement and the treatment of women criminals – especially enslaved women criminals – is something I am looking forward to learning more and more about. I want to understand the way women have been treated over the years. I want to contrast the disgusting past with the arguably equally disgusting now. 

Additionally, I was moved by the fact that both Celia and Nelly are from Missouri. Their cases were held on the very ground my little chair in Eads Hall sits on. As a midwestern woman, I very timidly admit that I know very little about the history of my home state of Ohio let alone any other state. I am eager to learn about the local history of Missouri. Dr. Mustakeem has already mentioned many local Missouri women who were the “firsts” of many things in class. The first woman executed in Missouri, the first woman in the state penitentiary, the first murder for hire, etc. Her excitement and vast knowledge of the local herstory have me looking forward to each text we engage with, the episode of Columbo we watched, and each class discussion we have. 

So, there you have it, reader; a glimpse into my first 2 weeks in my most highly anticipated class. I truly cannot wait to deepen my understanding of women criminals, women upon whom crimes were committed, victimized women, and victimizer women. My initial apprehension has dissipated, and I am ready to dust off my historical lenses. I am ready to hear and feel for individual women in history who have been forgotten. I am ready to learn the local Missouri stories. I am ready to dive into the crazy laws of the past and contrast with the future. I am ready to enhance my close reading skills, my writing skills, and my staying-engaged-in-classuntil-4pm skills. Who knows if the second class on my journey to unveil the reasoning behind my love for crime will satisfy me, but I can confidently say by December, I will be much closer to understanding my passion than I was in May. And, I will be much closer to having a richer understanding of overlooked herstories and the lessons they can teach us. I cannot wait for this class to continue, and I can’t wait to take you along with me for the ride.

Crimeluvr123