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How Idealized Womanhood Saved Annie Bradley from the Gallows
Newspapers across the nation reported on the Bradley affair, often emphasizing Annie Bradley’s physical beauty and her motherhood. This front-page spread from the Pittsburgh Press included the headline, “Gloomy Jail Sounds with Merry Laughter of Youngsters Who Are Permitted to Share Cell with Mother—Loves Memory of Man She Slew.” Pittsburgh Press, November 10, 1907, 1.
How Idealized Womanhood Saved Annie Bradley from the Gallows
BY ALLISON EDWARDS
On December 8, 1906, the sixty-three-year-old lawyer and former United States senator from Utah, Arthur Brown, was shot by his thirty-fouryear-old mistress, Annie Bradley, in his Washington, D.C. hotel room. 1 Bradley had followed Brown to D.C., where he was to argue a case before the Supreme Court; she planned to confront Brown and demand that he marry her, as he had promised throughout their nearly seven-year-long affair. Even though Bradley was divorced and Brown was a widower, he still refused to marry her and legitimize their two sons. The wound she inflicted led to Brown’s death several days later. Subsequently, Bradley was indicted and tried for first-degree murder in Washington, D.C. Her defense was that she was not of a sound mind when she shot Brown, and she ultimately was acquitted on the grounds of insanity. 2 However, the events leading up to, during, and after the trial suggest Bradley’s mental state was not what led to the jury’s decision to acquit her.
Because the trial of Annie Bradley occurred during the early Progressive Era, when issues surrounding gender roles dominated much public discussion, an analysis of it must consider that the defendant was a woman. Before and during the trial, newspapers across the country, as well as Bradley’s lawyers, frequently described her as a weak, emotional, and innocent woman who was ruined by the lustful and cruel Brown. They also emphasized that she was a single mother of four children, two of whom were allegedly Brown’s sons. Bradley’s lawyers portrayed her as an exemplary mother who would do anything for her children, such as traveling from Utah to D.C. to beg Brown to marry her so she could “give a name to [her] babies.” 3 Contemporary attitudes about gender, in combination with the portrayal of Bradley by the media and her attorneys, make it evident that the jury acquitted her because she was a woman.
Annie Bradley’s trial for the murder of Arthur Brown thoroughly illustrates the gender norms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, historians use the phrase cult of domesticity to describe the nineteenth-century fixation on the idea of “true womanhood.” 4 Specifically, the cult of domesticity refers to the standards set for middle and upper-class women by women’s magazines, housekeeping manuals, religious books, and other literature. These standards arose after the Industrial Revolution had created a new middle class and as men increasingly left their homes for work. Consequently, middleand upper-class women stayed at home, where they would work to achieve the “true womanhood” prescribed by literature of the day. 5 The cult of domesticity defined a true woman as one marked by domesticity, religious piety, sexual purity, and submissiveness to men. 6 These characteristics stemmed from the belief that women should be the center of the home, where their husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers would be “influenced by [the women’s] Christian piety, moral resolve, and such sentimental values as sincerity, candor, and faithfulness.” 7
The virtue of submissiveness, for instance, entailed that a woman was obedient, knew her place in society, and depended on her husband. In his lecture On the Sphere and Duties of Woman, the minister George Burnap stated: “She is in a measure dependent. She asks for wisdom, constancy, firmness, perseverance, and she is willing to repay it all by the surrender of the full treasure of her affections. Woman despises in man everything like herself except a tender heart. It is enough that she is effeminate and weak; she does not want another like herself.” 8 He made decisions for their entire household, and she was expected to respect and submit to them unequivocally.
While the cult of domesticity focused primarily on feminine attributes, it also illustrated nineteenth-century views of middle-class masculinity. As men increasingly worked outside of their homes, they were characterized as “competitive and aggressive providers—traits appropriate to a public world of expanding commercial capitalism and to their responsibilities as breadwinners.” 9 The expectation of men to be the breadwinners was not only a societal one but also a legal one by 1915, because “every state in the union [had] enacted new laws that made a husband’s desertion or failure to support his wife or children a crime.” 10
These expectations for men and women arose, in part, from their supposed physical and mental differences. For instance, women were believed to fall short intellectually because of the prominence of their emotions, which some believed came from the female reproductive system. Some nineteenth-century thinkers also believed that a woman’s menstrual cycle made her unfit for any significant mental or physical tasks. Because of the belief that women’s emotions made them helpless, it was considered men’s duty to provide for and protect them. On the other hand, because men were physically larger than women, they were responsible for protecting women. Additionally, without a uterus or ovaries, it was believed that men could think reasonably and possessed overall intellectually superiority. 11
The reality of day-to-day life, especially across social classes, was much messier: men and women participated in activities both public and private, and sexual behavior was never as straightforward as the magazine and lecture writers hoped for. 12 The Bradley-Brown relationship surely attests to this. Yet the trial and acquittal of Bradley also demonstrate the power of the ideal—how the plight of a woman portrayed as beautiful, family-centered, and fragile could sway the hearts of a jury. Arthur Brown failed to provide for and protect the mother of his children, so the jury sympathized with Bradley, who was perceived as a woman in need of protection. However, it was not just the jury who pitied Bradley; she received an overwhelming amount of public support, as early as just a couple of days after the shooting, that continued throughout her trial.
Annie Cartwright Maddison was born January 7, 1872, in Kansas City, Missouri, and was the oldest of four girls and one boy. She went to school in Denver, Colorado, and moved in 1890 to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she lived most of her adult life. In 1893 and at age twenty-one, she married Clarence A. Bradley, whom she claimed to have stopped living with in 1898 but did not officially divorce until 1905. Clarence and Annie had two children, Matthew Maddison Bradley and Martha Claire Bradley. During this time, Annie was very active in her community, which eventually led to her meeting Senator Brown. She belonged to the Salt Lake City Women’s Club, the Utah Woman’s Press Club, the Poets’ Roundtable, and the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City. In addition, she worked as an editor of the Utah State Federation of Women’s Clubs’ publication, a secretary for the fifth ward Republican Committee, and as a secretary for the State Republican Committee. It was through community involvement that Bradley also came to know Isabel Cameron Brown. 13
Arthur Brown was born on March 8, 1843, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He went on to earn a law degree, open his own practice, and become politically active. Brown married his first wife, Lydia Coon, in 1872, and two years later they had their first and only child, Alice. While married to Coon, Brown had an affair with Isabel Cameron, who would become his second wife. When Coon found out about their affair, she confronted Brown in his law office and shot at him but missed. Following this brouhaha, Brown and Cameron moved to Salt Lake City and married each other after Brown finalized his divorce with Coon. In 1882, Isabel and Arthur had one son, Max. Brown continued his law career in Salt Lake and became one of the best lawyers in Utah. He was elected to the U.S. Senate and served a short term, from January 1896 to March 1897. When his term ended, Brown continued his law career in Salt Lake City. 14
Bradley shot Brown on December 8, 1906, and by the morning of December 9, multiple newspapers had already caught wind of the previous night’s incident and published articles about it. Even though the shooting had occurred in Washington, D.C., stories appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Salt Lake Tribune, and the Salt Lake Herald-Republican. All of the articles told essentially the same tale: while Arthur Brown was married to Isabel Cameron Brown and Annie Bradley was married to Clarence Bradley, Arthur and Annie had carried on an affair that lasted for several years and resulted in two children. Bradley claimed that Brown frequently promised he would do right by her and marry her, even though they were both married. When Isabel died in 1905, he told Bradley to divorce her husband so they could get married, and she did. However, for over a year, Brown would evade marrying her. For this reason, Bradley traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1906, where she intended to finally convince Brown to marry her. However, upon arriving at his hotel, Bradley found letters from a woman named Annie Adams that stated that Adams and Brown were engaged. That evening, Bradley confronted Brown and shot him. 15
In addition, multiple newspapers published articles about Brown’s past indiscretions with women. The New York Times recounted how Brown’s first wife, Lydia Coon, had attempted to shoot him but missed. The report stated that his first wife confronted him about his inappropriate relationship with the niece of Don Cameron, a former Pennsylvania senator, and shot him. Brown’s paramour, in this instance, was Isabel Cameron, who would become his second wife. While the Salt Lake Herald-Republican and the Washington Post both included the story of Brown’s first wife, they also told of the rather public issues Brown had with his second wife, which resulted from his relationship with Bradley. Notably, the Salt Lake Herald-Republican explicitly stated, “the shooting of Arthur Brown by Mrs. Bradley is the not unexpected sequel to a series of events that have constituted a public scandal in Utah for several years.” 16
Arthur Brown was a prominent lawyer and, from 1896 to 1897, a senator from Utah. Utah State Historical Society, photograph no. 26615.
The public scandal referred to in the Herald-Republican began in 1902 when Arthur Brown filed for divorce from Isabel Cameron Brown. As soon as Isabel learned that her husband had begun these proceedings, she retaliated by filing adultery charges against him and Bradley. According to the Utah Penal Code, if convicted, the lovers could face up to three years in state prison. However, Isabel ultimately dropped these charges when Arthur agreed to drop the divorce proceedings. However, in January 1903, Isabel had the couple charged with adultery again and took it to court. Before their trials, in April 1903, Arthur and Bradley ran off to Idaho, and there a violent altercation occurred between Bradley and Isabel. The Browns left Idaho together; when Bradley returned to Salt Lake City in June 1903, she was three months pregnant, and the Browns had apparently reconciled. Meanwhile, Arthur also denied being the father of Bradley’s son, Arthur Brown Bradley. Bradley insisted that she would plead guilty to the adultery charges unless he publicly acknowledged their son. Arthur refused to do so, and Bradley pleaded guilty but was never sentenced. Subsequently, Brown pleaded not guilty and was acquitted in court. 17
While Annie Bradley had not been formally charged when these articles appeared, the publicity made it nearly impossible for there to be an impartial jury when the time came. Even though Arthur Brown was the victim, these stories made it seem as though he deserved to be shot, which was not a difficult argument to make at this point. What the public knew was that Brown had fathered two of Bradley’s sons and refused to fulfill his manly obligations to provide for his children. In addition, Brown did not appear to be a moral man or a good husband due to his multiple instances of infidelity. On the other hand, newspapers portrayed Bradley as a young, pathetic, and lovestruck woman who was only trying to take care of her children. During a time when many believed that men should be the breadwinners because women were too irrational and emotional, the details of Brown’s behavior would have raised a few eyebrows. 18
As mentioned above, by 1915, nearly every state and territory had made it a crime for men to fail to provide for their wives and children. 19 However, because Bradley was not Brown’s lawful wife, he did not have an obligation to her or their sons. Regardless of this, according to some accounts, public sympathy shifted to Bradley’s favor when the newspapers noted that Brown was financially able to provide for his sons but refused to do so. 20
Immediately following Brown’s death on December 14, 1906, the Salt Lake Herald featured a statement from Brown’s fiancé, the stage actress Annie Adams. She stated that she knew about the relationship between Brown and Bradley and even went on to claim, “When the senator first proposed marriage to me I plainly told him it was his duty to marry Mrs. Bradley.” 21 Later that same month, the Salt Lake Tribune published a portion of Brown’s will in which he denied paternity of Bradley’s sons and said they would not receive any form of inheritance. This article also claimed that Brown frequently changed his will, especially toward the end of his life when he would have also been involved with Bradley. 22 Both articles brought Brown’s character into question and heightened public sympathy for Bradley.
Bradley was officially indicted for first-degree murder in February 1907. Following this, the story of Bradley and Brown became even more of a national spectacle. Newspapers began to publish letters that the couple had exchanged that expressed the intensity of their relationship. Most of the newspapers that printed the letters called those written by Bradley some variation of “womanly and pathetic.” However, the most crucial piece of evidence found in these letters was Brown’s acknowledgment that Bradley’s sons were his and that he had a duty to her. 23 As one could imagine, these letters were a rather interesting development, considering that Brown’s will had been publicized just a few months earlier with the denial that he fathered the boys. The public sympathy for Bradley grew accordingly.
An article from the Salt Lake Tribune not only addressed Brown’s acknowledgment of their sons and his duty to her but also described Bradley as a fragile woman who only wanted to support her children. The article stated:
The language of this article perfectly illustrates the growing sympathy for Bradley. Phrases like “her efforts to return to the proper path,” “her part was frustrated by him,” and “he forced her to make herself a part of his life” portray Brown as overbearing and manipulative during a time when Bradley was trying to restore some of what contemporaries would have called her womanly virtue. 25
Meanwhile, it became official that Bradley would plead insanity. In early April 1907, newspapers reported that Bradley’s lawyers had submitted an affidavit stating that the defense would argue she was not responsible for her actions the night she shot Brown because she was not of a sound mind. They claimed the years of suffering she endured at the hands of Brown put her mind in “such a state of disease that she was unable to distinguish right from wrong.” The affidavit listed the witnesses the defense wanted to summon, claiming that the witnesses’ testimonies would tell of the events that drove Bradley to shoot Brown, therefore providing material evidence. Some reports stated that because of her financial situation, Bradley’s lawyers requested that the witnesses be summoned at the expense of the government. 26
Newspapers across the country frequently published articles leading up to Bradley’s trial, and nearly all of them were sympathetic to her. The New York Journal published a “life story of Annie Bradley,” written by a reporter named Ada Patterson, who claimed to know Bradley socially; the Salt Lake Tribune republished Patterson, who stated, “Her creed is composed of two words, ‘I believe.’ Such is the most confiding of women, the most trustful. Senator Brown told her he loved her. She believed. He promised that some day he would marry her and legitimatize the children she had borne him. Again, she believed.” Patterson’s depiction of Bradley as emotional and trusting fit the true woman mold exactly. Critically, Patterson described Bradley as “a woman of the old type from which the modern woman is swinging far away” and “not of the school of calm-faced, cold-eyed, serene-pulsed women . . . [declared as] the new women.” 27 The “new women”—who included suffragists and feminists—were both gaining prominence during this period and facing a lot of opposition, especially from men who wanted to maintain an older style of womanhood. Patterson, in contrast, depicted Bradley as the kind of woman men wanted. 28
Even just days before Bradley’s trial, the Buffalo Enquirer published an article that said, “The shooting of the eminent lawyer brought to light a story of a double life on the part of the man and a sad romance in the career of the young woman.” 29 Again this article painted a picture of a lovesick woman who was overpowered and manipulated by a man. As her trial began, a Washington, D.C. newspaper reported that because of Bradley’s poor financial situation her lawyers did not expect to be paid and claimed that a sympathetic Michigan woman had sent twenty-five dollars to the courthouse, hoping it would be the first of many monetary donations that would go to Bradley if she were acquitted. 30
From the time she announced her plea until just days before her trial, with a few exceptions, Annie Bradley kept to herself while in jail. Her story resurfaced in the newspapers in early November, as her trial date was set for the thirteenth of the month. Newspapers across the country printed a statement made by Bradley in the days right before her trial. In this, she claimed that she felt her actions were justified because she had given Arthur Brown everything, including her honor, and he still had mistreated her. In addition, one article specifically stated, “the defense will be emotional insanity brought on by suffering of the heart and brain.” Bradley’s statement, as recounted in the newspapers, claimed that the suffering she had endured at the hands of Brown did so much damage to her mind that she could not be held responsible for how she had acted. 31
The suggestion that Brown’s treatment of Bradley caused her mental problems was significant: at the end of the nineteenth century, the definitions of marital cruelty had just been expanded to include actions that caused emotional damage, even when no physical violence was present. This new definition came from the belief that because women were frail and emotional, attacking a woman verbally could inflict as much or even more damage than physical abuse. On top of redefining cruelty, this definition also became grounds for a woman to divorce her husband. 32
As the trial began in Washington, D.C., a major issue arose. Bradley was being tried for murder in the first degree, which D.C. law defined as the unlawful taking of another’s life by someone who is of sound memory and discretion, who did so purposefully and either of deliberate and premeditated malice or by means of poison. The statute further stated that the punishment for first-degree murder was to be death by hanging. 33 So Bradley’s case was, in fact, a capital punishment case.
A capital case with a female defendant meant the jury selection process would be tricky, and the chances of Bradley’s conviction were extremely unlikely. As one study shows, from the colonial era through 2002, only 3 percent of the 20,000 Americans who were executed were women; since 1900, only 0.6 percent of the 8,000 people who were sentenced to death were women. In addition, a 1996 study conducted in Florida attributed the low number of women executed to the demonstration of “appropriate behavior,” which made women appear to be “devoted wives driven to violence and deserving of clemency.” Despite the ninety years separating Annie Bradley’s experience from the 1996 study, obvious parallels exist between them. 34
In the same way, Amanda Umble provides an example of a woman who eluded execution. In Missouri in 1891, Umble was convicted of murdering a woman who was carrying on with her boyfriend, and Umble was sentenced to death. Because she was African American, this sentence outraged the black community. However, with all of the racial tensions present during this time, those fighting to save Umble knew their best chance came with her womanhood, because then they could gain support from white women’s organizations. With the focus on Umble’s gender rather than her race, newspapers began advocating for her and calling the execution of a woman, even if she was guilty, “barbarous and a blot upon civilization.” After such an uproar, the governor commuted Amanda Umble’s sentence to life in prison. In the cases of both Amanda Umble and Annie Bradley, even though they committed the crimes, they were not executed because they were women. 35
Nevertheless, Bradley’s trial continued, and over sixty men were examined before the selection of the final men who would fill the jury box. While some were excused for other reasons, a majority of them were excused because they refused to hang a woman, guilty or not. Regardless, eleven men finally joined the jury. Even though the jurors claimed to have no objections to the death penalty for women, during this time it is likely that they at least slightly opposed it. 36 A study of gender and capital punishment in this era argues that two possible reasons existed why men would not execute a woman. The first stemmed from the belief that women depended completely on men; that they were irrational, irresponsible, and childlike. Because of this, women did not fit the criteria to be a criminal: independent, rational, and capable of taking responsibility for their actions. The other possible reason came from assumptions that women possessed a particular kind of morality that made them “natural” mothers, which made killing them highly controversial, especially by a man. Race and class only added to the calculation: a woman’s status as white and “well-bred,” combined with an insanity plea, could be quite persuasive in helping her escape punishment. 37
Once the jury was finally chosen, the prosecution began to present its case. A majority of their witnesses certainly proved that it was Bradley who shot Brown. However, they really could not present a strong case for her conviction and execution because the defense was not disputing that Bradley did it. At this point the jury could no longer read newspaper stories about the trial, but it is important to recognize that much of the coverage focused on Bradley’s appearance, often noting that she looked near collapse. The Washington Post even reported that when Bradley’s indictment was read, she put her head down and the jury appeared to take pity on her. 38
After the prosecution rested its case, the defense team—which consisted of the prominent Salt Lake City attorney Orlando W. Powers and George Hoover, of Washington, D.C.—outlined their argument. 39 The focus was to prove that Brown had not only manipulated Bradley but also that, in Hoover’s words, he “had performed more than one criminal act upon her with his own hands.” 40 In other words, Brown had performed abortions on her. This bombshell statement indicated that the defense would focus on how Brown had treated Bradley and the emotional damage he had caused.
The defense began with the witnesses, who included newspapermen, doctors, and Bradley’s mother. The testimony of Mary Elizabeth Maddison, the defendant’s mother, was intended to evoke sympathy from the jury. A majority of her statement focused on a childhood injury Bradley had sustained, which she believed left permanent brain damage. In addition, she also testified that Bradley had said to her after the killing, “I came here to get him to give a name to my babies.” Maddison helped to paint a picture for the jury of Bradley as a loving mother who just wanted to get her boys what they deserved. A number of reporters who had spoken to Bradley immediately after the shooting took the stand, describing Bradley’s mental state that night. 41
Lastly, doctors E. W. Whittney and H. L. E. Johnson testified. Whittney stated that he had treated Bradley more than once for premature miscarriages. He believed that because of these, Bradley suffered from blood poisoning that would affect her brain. Johnson also stated that the multiple miscarriages and abortions Bradley experienced could have affected her mental state on the night she shot Brown. 42 These testimonies by the physicians aligned with the nineteenth-century belief that a woman’s uterus could make her hysterical and incapable of reasoning. 43 In her own testimony, Bradley also addressed these abortions. She stated that Brown had performed at least three abortions on her himself; she had felt it was wrong, but she also did not feel that she could tell Brown no. 44 Speaking before an all-male jury, Bradley described a course of action that fit with the expectation that women should submit to a man’s wishes. However, under the new definition of marital cruelty, a husband could only make reasonable demands and because the procedure performed by Brown on Bradley could impair her health, it would not have been considered reasonable. 45
While on the stand, Bradley described her relationship with Brown at length. She claimed that she and Brown became acquainted in 1892 through the work they did for the Republican Party. After maintaining a friendship for several years, their relationship became intimate in 1899. In her testimony Bradley claimed, “He said, ‘darling, we are going through life together, you and I. I want us to go through life together with a son of our own.’ I did not want to, but I yielded to him at last.” 46 (Accordingly, it is evident that Brown most likely fathered the son who Bradley gave birth to in 1900.) She went on to recount how the affair continued for a number of years and became increasingly serious, with Brown frequently promising that they would get married.
During her testimony, Bradley shed light on a number of things about Brown that did that could be seen as cruel, such as the abortions. However, her displays of emotion seemed to play the most in her favor, as evidenced by the multiple newspaper reports of the jury and audience being brought to tears during her time on the stand. 47 Surely Bradley’s and Brown’s relationship was full of ups and downs, but that would have mattered less in the trial’s outcome had Bradley not delivered her statements in the manner she did. Her emotional testimony allowed the jury to sympathize with Bradley and see her as fragile and completely dependent on Brown, who refused to provide any kind of support. Bradley was certainly a victim of cruelty, and the pathos she exhibited showed the toll their relationship had exacted on her, even as it reminded the jury that she was weak and feminine.
The next witness to take the stand only added to the picture painted by the defense of Brown’s bad behavior. Colonel Maurice M. Kaighn, a lawyer from Salt Lake City, testified that years earlier, Bradley had brought him a written acknowledgment by Brown that Bradley’s two sons were his. 48 This provided actual proof that Brown knew and acknowledged Bradley’s sons as his offspring. However, despite the potential legal ramifications, Brown still refused to take care of them. It is also worth considering that based on Brown’s constant promises to Bradley of marriage—combined with the length, intensity, and publicity of their affair—a court could have possibly been convinced to consider Bradley as Brown’s wife, making him financially obligated to her. These options, however, only made sense if Bradley was truly as desperate as she and her sister were to claim.
Bradley’s sister, Louise Maddison Garnett, described Bradley’s financial struggles for the court. Garnett remarked that in order to support herself and her four children, Bradley decided to open her own stationery store in Goldfield, Nevada. However, since she was completely destitute, Bradley had to ask Brown to buy her first set of stock, which he agreed to do. As time went on, however, Brown appeared to go back on his agreement, telling Bradley to wait to open her store. To all this, Garnett stated during her testimony, “Mr. Brown did not show any willingness whatever to take care of her, or to better her condition, and she did not know what she was going to do.” 49
Finally, Soren Christensen, a lawyer from Utah, provided a testimony that showed the messiness of Arthur Brown’s personal life and offered more evidence that Brown had fathered Bradley’s boys. Christensen told of a violent altercation between Bradley and Isabel Brown at a hotel in Pocatello, Idaho, in 1903, when they were both looking for Arthur. He stated that Isabel became violent with Bradley and said she intended to kill her. Meanwhile, Arthur remained in his hotel room until Bradley called for him to open the door. Isabel, Bradley, and Christensen entered the room, and they discussed the affair for over six hours. According to Christensen, Arthur claimed he was the father of Bradley’s son but not of Isabel’s son, Max. It was this dispute that led Arthur to give Bradley a revolver for her protection: the same one she used to shoot him. 50
Bradley’s team had thus built a case for Brown’s cruelty toward her and his financial disregard for his children. The other key element of their defense was Bradley’s mental distress. An argument can be made that, based on the knowledge of mental illness at this time, the jury did believe Bradley was insane. This is because men believed a woman’s menstrual cycle affected her brain and made her “suffer under a languor and depression which disqualify [her] for thought or action and render it extremely doubtful how far [she] can be considered responsible beings while the crisis lasts.” 51 In addition, the defense had provided expert witnesses, the physicians, who testified that Bradley was insane. Dr. Wilfred M. Barton of Georgetown University, for instance, claimed that the multiple abortions performed on her were “continued assaults upon her nervous system,” which caused her to suffer from “puerperal” (or postpartum) insanity. Bradley’s attorneys also provided proof that mental illness ran in Bradley’s family through a testimony by her uncle that her aunt developed homicidal mania. As their final evidence of Bradley’s unsound mind, the defense pointed to scraps of paper found in Bradley’s room that she had written that night right before the shooting. The letters, Powers argued, supposedly proved that she had actually intended to take her own life (an indication of her disturbed state) and belonged to a clutch of evidence suggesting that Brown was shot accidentally in his struggle to stop Bradley from shooting herself. 52 However, even any belief that Bradley was insane would have resulted, in part, from the contemporary beliefs about women’s mental capacity and reproductive system.
Throughout the trial the defense presented evidence that proved Brown had an obligation to Bradley to provide financial support for at least their sons, if not her as well. They also showed that Bradley could be considered a victim of cruelty because of Brown’s overbearing control of her. The claim that Bradley was not of a sound mind when she shot the senator allowed for evidence of how Brown treated her to be relevant to the trial. In addition, it allowed her emotions to be taken into consideration, which had a significant impact on the jury. 53 The jurors might have taken Bradley’s emotional state throughout the trial as an example of a general inability on her part to control her emotions and think reasonably—and if that were the case, she could hardly be held responsible for her actions, much less executed for them. Meanwhile, Bradley’s team played models of womanhood to the hilt. “This woman cannot be convicted,” Powers orated, “until every man of the jury is convinced that this gentle, timid, shrinking mother of children is a malicious murderess, and that she should be hustled to the gallows and strangled until she is dead.” 54
With all things considered, on December 3, 1907, the jury acquitted Bradley. The newspapers reported on the excitement that filled the courtroom as soon as the jury read its verdict, with men and women cheering and congratulating Bradley. 55 Among these articles was an interview with the jury foreman, James Feeney, which neatly summarized how Bradley’s lawyers and much of the media had depicted her throughout the trial. Feeney insisted that the jurors “were men of deep sympathies” who could appreciate the “trials and suffering that Mrs. Bradley went through.” Although the jury could not condone Bradley’s affair with Brown, Feeney remarked, “she was a woman, dominated and controlled by a stronger mind than her own. . . . The people of Utah had trusted Senator Brown with the highest office in their gift, and why should she not, a weak, frail woman, trust him with her love and affection and thoroughly rely on the many promises he gave her”? Feeney’s explanation of the jury’s verdict only continued to play on nineteenth-century ideals of strong men and homebound women:
A headline and illustration that typify how many newspapers depicted Annie Bradley: as frail, respectable, and lovely. Washington (D.C.) Times, December 3, 1907, 1.
The trial and acquittal of Annie Bradley relied on the constructs of masculinity and femininity associated with the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity—particularly the prescription that women should be submissive and men should be strong, responsible providers. The jurors viewed Bradley as a feminine, emotional woman who had been betrayed, manipulated, and neglected by the former senator from Utah, Arthur Brown: a failure as a man, who, as her longtime lover and the father of two of her children, had certain husbandly obligations that he did not meet. To compound matters, the defense presented evidence that illustrated that for Brown, this was a pattern of behavior, as he acted in a similar manner with his two wives. Ultimately, the gender attitudes of the early Progressive Era had a major part in Bradley’s acquittal; the all-male jury exonerated Bradley because she exemplified true womanhood, not because they believed she was insane. This was not uncommon during this time because men not only struggled to see woman as being capable of such heinous acts but also because in many cases, if a woman were found guilty of committing murder, she would be sentenced to death and men generally could not bring themselves to kill a woman.
Notes
1. I am very grateful to the professors of the History Department at Valdosta State University for their constant support and encouragement. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Mary Block, who was instrumental in my research for this work. Linda Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist’: Arthur Brown, Ex-Senator from Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 52, no. 3 (1984): 231–45, provides an excellent and detailed account of the events leading up to, during, and immediately following the trial of Annie Bradley for the murder of Arthur Brown. I take the story a step further and analyze how the contemporary attitudes and ideas surrounding gender affected this trial.
2. “Ex-Senator Brown Shot by a Woman at Capital,” New York Times, December 9, 1906, 1; Kim Long, The Almanac of Political Corruption, Scandals and Dirty Politics (New York: Bantam Dell, 2007), 132; Shelley Ross, Fall from Grace: Sex, Scandal, and Corruption in American Politics from 1702 to the Present (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 143–46; “Mrs. Bradley Free,” Washington Post, December 4, 1907.
3. Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist,’” 238. Excerpt from the testimony of Mrs. M. D. Maddison quoted in “Only a Name for Her Boys,” Evening Star (Independence, KS), November 19, 1907. A few of the many newspaper articles that describe Annie Bradley as frail, weak, or emotional include “Quails at Charge,” Washington Post, November 15, 1907; “They Relate Story of Annie Bradley,” Anaconda (MT) Standard, November 19, 1907; William Hoster, “Strong Hearts Wrung by Simple Recital of a Woman’s Wrongs,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, November 20, 1907.
4. Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820– 1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 151–74.
5. Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” 151–52; Lucinda MacKethan, “The Cult of Domesticity,” America in Class, accessed November 3, 2020, americainclass .org/the-cult-of-domesticity; Thomas Winter, “Cult of Domesticity,” in American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Bret E. Carroll (United Kingdom: SAGE Publications, 2003), 120.
6. Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” 152–58.
7. Winter, “Cult of Domesticity,” 120.
8. George Burnap, Lectures On the Sphere and Duties of Woman, and Other Subjects (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1841), 47.
9. Winter, “Cult of Domesticity,” 120.
10. Michael Willrich, “Home Slackers: Men, the State, and Welfare in Modern America,” Journal of American History 87, no. 2 (2000): 460.
11. J. McGrigor Allan, “On the Real Differences in the Minds of Men and Women,” Journal of the Anthropological Society of London 7 (1869): cxcv–ccxix; Francis Parkman, “The Woman Question,” North American Review 129, no. 275 (1879): 303–321; M. A. Hardaker, “The Ethics of Sex,” North American Review 131, no. 284 (1880): 62–74; Kimberley A. Reilly, “Wronged in Her Dearest Rights: Plaintiff Wives and the Transformation of Marital Consortium, 1870–1920,” Law and History Review 31, no. 1 (2013): 61–99; Marion Harland, Burton Harrison, Elizabeth Bisland, and Constance Cary Harrison, “A Study in Husbands,” North American Review 162, no. 470 (1896): 118; Willrich, “Home Slackers,” 460–67; Franklin G. Fessenden, “Nullity of Marriage,” Harvard Law Review 13 (1899): 110–111; Kate Gannett, “Why More Men Do Not Marry,” North American Review 165, no. 488 (1897): 123–24; Max O’Rell and Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, “A Study in Wives,” North American Review 161, no. 467 (1895): 427–37; Eyal Rabinovitch, “Gender and the Public Sphere: Alternative Forms of Integration in Nineteenth-Century America,” Sociological Theory 9, no. 3 (2001): 353–54.
12. Deborah L. Rotman, “Separate Spheres?: Beyond the Dichotomies of Domesticity,” Current Anthropology 47, no. 4 (2006): 666–74; Catherine Cocks, “Rethinking Sexuality in the Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5, no. 2 (2006): 93–118.
13. 1880 United States Federal Census, Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri, roll 639, enumeration district 12, page 346B, digital image, Annie Maddison; 1900 United States Federal Census, Salt Lake City Ward 2, Salt Lake, Utah, enumeration district 23, digital image, Annie M. Bradley, both accessed November 3, 2020, ancestry. com. The 1900 census shows that four workingmen boarded in the Bradley household and that Clarence Bradley was a railroad clerk. For full background on Annie Bradley, see Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist,’” 233–34; “First Wife Shot at Brown,” New York Times, December 9, 1906, 2.
14. 1860 United States Federal Census, Yellow Springs, Greene, Ohio, page 244, digital image, Arthur Brown; Michigan, Marriage Records, 1867–1952, January 25, 1872, s.v. “Arthur Brown”; Michigan, Births and Christenings Index, 1867–1911, February 22, 1874, s.v. “Alice Brown”; Nebraska, U.S., Select County Marriage Records, 1855–1908, February 2, 1881, s.v. “Arthur Brown”; 1900 United States Federal Census, Salt Lake City Ward 4, Salt Lake, Utah, enumeration district 39, page 8, digital image, Arthur Brown, all accessed November 4, 2020, ancestry.com; see also, Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist,’” 232–33.
15. “Ex-Senator Brown Shot by a Woman at Capital,” and “First Wife,” New York Times, December 9, 1906, 1, 2; “Former U.S. Senator Brown Fatally Shot,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 9, 1906, 1–2; “Shot by a Woman,” and “Brown False to All,” Washington Post, December 9, 1906, 1, 12; “Mrs. Annie M. Bradley Shoots Arthur Brown,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 9, 1906, 1, 10; Utah, Death and Military Death Certificates, 1904–1961, s.v. “Isabel Cameron Brown,” death certificate, August 22, 1905, accessed November 4, 2020, ancestry.com. Annie Adams Kiskadden was an actress and the mother of the celebrated Maude Adams.
16. “Mrs. Annie M. Bradley Shoots,” 10 (qtn.); see also, “First Wife,” 2; “Former U.S.,” 2; “Brown False,” 12.
17. Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist,’” 235–37; “Utah Ex-Senator Sues for Divorce,” New York Times, September 29, 1902, 1; State ex rel. Brown v. Third Judicial Dist. Court, 27 Utah 336, Utah Supreme Court (February 25, 1904), United States Nexis Uni 1545; James T. Hammond and Grant H. Smith, The Compiled Laws of the State of Utah, 1907 (Salt Lake City: Skeleton Publishing, 1908), 1343–44.
18. “New Light Upon Brown Tragedy,” Salt Lake Herald, December 14, 1906, 1; “Arthur Brown Denies Mrs. Bradley’s Children,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 22, 1906, 1; “Frenzied by Mysterious Power Brown’s Spell Held Annie Bradley Fast,” Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK), November 15, 1907, 13, 23; “Only a Name for Her Boys,” Evening Star (Independence, KS), November 19, 1907, 1; “Was Irresponsible,” News (Frederick, MA), November 19, 1907, 1; Willrich, “Home Slackers.”
19. Willrich, “Home Slackers,” 472.
20. Twila Van Leer, “Revelations of Sordid Private Life Swung Sympathy against Senator,” Deseret News, April 9, 1996; “New Light,” 1; “Arthur Brown Denies,” 1.
21. “New Light,” 1.
22. “Arthur Brown Denies,” 1.
23. Associated Press, “Woman Indicted for Murder,” News Journal (Wilmington, DE), February 15, 1907, 5; “Brown’s Loving Notes,” Washington Post, April 2, 1907, 2.
24. “Fervid Letters of Bradley and Brown,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 3, 1907, 3
25. “Fervid Letters,” 3.
26. “Was Not Responsible,” Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), April 3, 1907, 3; “Mrs. Bradley’s Defense,” Valentine (NE) Democrat, April 11, 1907, 2.
27. “Life Story of Annie Bradley Is Told,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 3, 1907, 10.
28. “Life Story,” 2; Debra Maccomb, “Inscribing Masculine Domestic Space: Twain’s Cave Men,” Mark Twain Annual no. 10 (2012): 35–37.
29. “Nothing to Do But Kill the Senator,” Buffalo (NY) Enquirer, November 4, 1907, 1.
30. “For the Defendant,” Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), November 23, 1907, 2.
31. “Nothing to Do,” 1 (qtn.); “Claims Justification,” Boston Globe, November 8, 1907, 7.
32. Robert L. Griswold, “Harrisburg Telegraph in Victorian America, 1840–1900,” American Quarterly 38, no. 5 (1986): 721–45.
33. “An Act to Establish a Code of Law for the District of Columbia,” Pub. L. No. 854, 31 Stat. 1321, § 798 (March 3, 1901).
34. Theodore H. Tiller, “Trial of Mrs. Bradley Today,” Raleigh (NC) Times, November 14, 1907, 1; “Insanity Will Be Plea of Defense,” Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, OH), November 14, 1907, 6; Victor L. Streib, “Gendering the Death Penalty: Countering Sex Bias in a Masculine Sanctuary,” Ohio State Law Journal 63, no. 433 (2002): 1, 6; Vivien Miller, “Wife-Killers and Evil Temptresses: Gender, Pardons and Respectability in Florida, 1889–1914,” Florida Historical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (1996): 53.
35. Sowande’ Mustakeem, “‘Armed with a Knife in Her Bosom’: Gender, Violence, and the Carceral Consequences of Rage in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African American History 100, no. 3 (2015): 398–401. 36. “Her Life at Stake,” and “Eleven in Jury Box,” Washington Post, November 14, 1907, 1, 2.
37. Annulla Linders and Alana Van Gundy, “Gall, Gallantry, and the Gallows: Capital Punishment and the Social Construction of Gender, 1840–1920,” Gender and Society 22, no. 3 (2008): 335.
38. “Quails at Charge,” Washington Post, November 15, 1907, 1–2; “Tell of Killing of Brown,” Herald-Press (Saint Joseph, MI), November 15, 1907, 2.
39. Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist,’” 243.
40. “Frenzied,” 13, 23.
41. “Only a Name for Her Boys,” Evening Star (Independence, KS), November 19, 1907, 1; “Was Irresponsible,” News (Frederick, MA), November 19, 1907, 1. For the names of Bradley’s parents, see Utah, U.S., Death and Military Death Certificates, 1904–1961, s.v. “Anne M. Bradley,” death certificate, November 11, 1950, digital image, accessed November 11, 2020, ancestry.com.
42. “They Relate Story of Annie Bradley,” 1–2.
43. Allan, “On the Real Differences,” cxcvi, claims that a woman’s menstrual cycle makes her “unfit for any great mental or physical labour.” Parkman, “The Woman Question,” 303–321, and Hardaker, “The Ethics of Sex,” 62–74, provide specific examples of what men believed made them superior pertaining to politics.
44. “Mrs. Bradley Tells Tragic Life-Story,” Harrisburg (PA) Telegraph, November 19, 1907, 7.
45. Griswold, “Law, Sex, Cruelty, Divorce,” 229–35.
46. William Hoster, “Strong Hearts Wrung by Simple Recital of a Woman’s Wrongs,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, November 20, 1907, 1–2.
47. “Jury Weeps at Tale,” Indiana (PA) Gazette, November 20, 1907, 23; Hoster, “Strong Hearts,” 1–2; “Annie Bradley Sobs Her Story,” Washington Post, November 20, 1907, 20.
48. “Brown Admitted Children Were His,” Post-Crescent (Appleton, WI), November 22, 1907, 2; “Love Letters to Mrs. Bradley Impress Jury,” San Francisco Call, November 22, 1907, 1.
49. Louise Maddison Garnett quoted in Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist,’” 238–39.
50. “Turned Witness for the Defense,” Salt Lake Herald, November 28, 1907, 2; Thatcher, “The ‘Gentile Polygamist,’” 236.
51. Allan, “On the Real Differences,” cxcviii.
52. “Bradley Trial,” Bismarck (ND) Tribune, November 24, 1907, 9 (qtn.). Barton testified that Bradley’s interest in politics also marked her as an abnormal woman. “They Relate Story of Annie Bradley,” 1–2; “Eleven in Jury Box,” 2; “May Know Fate Soon,” Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), December 2, 1907, 2.
53. “Was Irresponsible,” News (Frederick, MA), November 19, 1907, 1. “Jury Weeps at Tale,” 23, provides an account of how emotionally invested the jury was in the trial.
54. “May Know Fate Soon,” 2.
55. “Mrs. Annie M. Bradley Not Guilty for Shooting down Arthur Brown, Loudly Shouts the Jury in Chorus,” Washington (D.C.) Times, December 3, 1907; “The Jury Acquits,” Semi-Weekly Messenger (Wilmington, NC), December 6, 1907; “Lone Juror Yields, Mrs. Bradley Freed,” New York Times, December 4, 1907, 3.
56. “How Jury Deliberated to Free Mrs. Bradley from Murder Charge,” Washington (D.C.) Times, December 3, 1907, 2.
