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Josie Kensler: Murder and Survival in Southern Idaho
Josie Kensler, who entered the Idaho State Penitentiary in 1897. She was only twenty-five years old in 1897 but had already seen much of life, including marriage at age fourteen and the birth of two children. Kensler delivered her third child—reportedly the first baby born in the prison—only months after her incarceration began. Idaho State Historical Society, no. 565.
Josie Kensler: Murder and Survival in Southern Idaho
BY PAULA HUFF BRYANT
Josephine “Josie” Kensler was a beautiful woman, with dark hazel eyes and curly brown locks, and she lived a sensational life. Kensler exploded into the limelight in the fall of 1896, when her husband of ten years mysteriously disappeared and a ranch hand was suddenly sharing her bed. 11 The sordid domestic affair, which took place in southwestern Idaho, captured headlines throughout the United States, but it was not the only moment of drama in Kensler’s life. Married at fourteen, incarcerated in a system made for men, and forced into an unsafe abortion: misfortune punctuated her youth and middle age, and much of that tragedy dealt with sex. And dramatic though it was, Kensler’s experience resembled that of other contemporary women who got in trouble with the law.
Josie Kensler’s family history followed the westward expansion of the United States. Her father, Miles Caldwell Lawrence, wandered from his birthplace of New York to Ohio to Iowa before pausing long enough to meet Lydia Josephine Shirts, who hailed from Boone, Indiana. They married on November 16, 1862. 2 She was fifteen. He was twenty-two. Sometime between 1865 and 1871, Lydia and Miles joined a wagon train and crossed the plains to arrive in Uintah, Utah, located at the mouth of Weber Canyon. Two children were in tow, Eva and Frank. Miles’s aging mother Clariman made the trip, too. 3 The growing family had front-row seats for a changing era: the arrival of the first transcontinental railroad. On March 2, 1869, the Union Pacific whistle first echoed across the valley. Two months later a ceremonial spike was driven into a railroad tie at Promontory Point, joining the western Central Pacific and eastern Union Pacific lines.
Like many railroad towns, Uintah’s population rapidly jumped from about 1,000 to 5,000 souls. To support the new residents, almost one hundred other businesses formed from 1869 to 1872, selling dry goods, meat, laundry services, tobacco, and candy. Barbers, billiard halls, restaurants, and hotels also opened their doors. 4 Two years after the railroad’s arrival, Josie was born, on October 8, 1871. As railroad workers and the host of businesses trailing them moved on, the Lawrence family nurtured their roots in Uintah. 5 Three more children—Henrietta, Belle, and Correl—joined the family and, at the age of fifteen, Josie’s older sister, Eva, married in Weber, Utah. 6 Between the 1880 and 1900 censuses, the Lawrence family moved to Idaho. A little girl, Claraman, was born in Shoshone, Idaho, in 1888. 7
In the railroad town of Shoshone, at the tender age of fourteen, Josie married John Kensler on July 22, 1886. 8 He was thirty-nine years old, the same age as Josie’s mother. Josie’s father Miles arranged the marriage, hoping this would provide his daughter with a secure life. 9 It was not inconceivable for Josie to marry at age fourteen. Her mother, Lydia, and older sister, Eva, had both tied the wedding knot at fifteen. However, all three took matrimonial vows significantly earlier than contemporary women in the United States. The average age of matrimony for a woman in 1890 was 22. In 1900, the average was 21.9. Men married at older ages: 26.1 years old in 1890 and 25.9 in the 1900s. 10
John must have looked like blue skies on the horizon to Miles Lawrence. Born in Ohio, he was the seventh of nine children for John Kensler and Louisa M. Fleming Litton Kensler. 11 In August 1862, at age eighteen, he enlisted as a Union solider in the Civil War for Company A, Iowa 39th Infantry Regiment. As a private he fought in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and Kentucky. John’s record shows he was a prisoner of war. 12 After the war he drifted west, settling in Elmore County, Idaho, and possibly operating the King Hill stagecoach station, beginning in the 1870s. 13 On April 10, 1886, John received 160 acres in Elmore County through the Homestead Act.
John married Josie three months after receiving the land. One year later their first daughter, Myrtle Estella, was born on July 19, 1887, in Weston, Idaho. Four years later, their son Albert Kensler was born in Glenns Ferry, Idaho. Other than notice of these births, public records of the Kensler family are skimpy until 1896. Their ranch and farm grew on the banks of the Snake River, six miles east of Glenns Ferry. In this pastoral setting, which still maintains a sleepy, calm quality to this day, trouble was brewing.
Just one-and-a-half years after the marriage— baby Myrtle being only six months old—sixteen-year-old Josie began having extramarital affairs. The press would come to doggedly portray her as a wife and mother living outside social norms. First, Josie “eloped” with Bill Cavanaugh, a hired hand at the Kensler ranch and a known horse thief. After being arrested in Huntington, Oregon, they were returned to Idaho. Cavanaugh was charged with abduction, and a technicality resulted in the case being dropped. Reporting some years later, the Anaconda Standard wrote, “After some minor episodes her next play was becoming infatuated with a negro gambler, prizefighter and allaround sport named Henry Underwood, and her home again was deserted by her. Underwood going back to Georgia, Mrs. Kensler, after knocking about, returned home, but again she appeared on the scene of notoriety by taking up with a gambler named Pat Doherty.” 14 The Standard, then, described Josie as a woman who left home to consort with men whom contemporaries would have considered very risky. The last time she left home, Josie traveled to the Wood River Valley in Idaho and returned wearing men’s clothes with her hair cut short— an indication, perhaps, of her willingness to flout cultural expectations as she made her way through the world. 15
Perhaps all of this turmoil foreshadowed Josie’s next move. Just seven years after her marriage had begun—and at barely twenty years old—Josie sought legal advice for a divorce in Glenns Ferry. John drank. When drunk, he was cross. 16 Then along came Alfred Rosencrans Freel, a Glenns Ferry resident and teamster. Josie threatened to leave John if Freel wasn’t hired as a ranch hand. 17 John agreed, eventually calling Freel a faithful worker. The two men became friends, taking regular trips to Glenns Ferry and the mountains. But a neighbor, Seth Canfield, saw trouble fermenting during the summer of 1896, ten years after John and Josie had married each other. He observed Freel and Josie sitting together near a road. Later he found pieces of a torn handkerchief at the site and showed them to Freel, who said within six months he would be the “owner of the ranch and the woman. . . . She loves me.” Later, Freel asked Canfield not to tell for fear John would kill him. 18 Others in town saw Josie and Freel together, and Freel was known to boastfully tell the same story. 19
Alfred Rosencrans Freel. Upon his 1897 entrance to the Idaho State Penitentiary, Freel was twenty-six years old, with his mother and sisters still living in Glenns Ferry, Idaho. Idaho State Historical Society, no. AR42-1367.
On October 17, 1896, John and Freel hoisted themselves into the family wagon and trotted toward Glenns Ferry. John planned to close a deal on selling the ranch to James Rosevere. After settling on a price, John and Freel celebrated with gulps of whiskey. Inebriated, John fell from the wagon on the ride home, and Freel considered killing him then. 20 Meantime, Josie supped at home with her parents, sister, and children. When returning to Glenns Ferry, the dinner guests passed John and Alfred, noting their drunken state. 21 As the pair pulled into the yard, Josie walked in front of the team with a bucket of fresh milk in her hand. “Boys, when you get the horses put away, come into the house. Supper is ready.” A drunken John “rolled” out of the wagon. He could barely walk. John instructed Freel to keep the horses hitched, since he planned to return to Glenns Ferry that night. Before sitting for supper, he commented to Josie that Alfred must have doped the whiskey. 2223
At supper John talked of selling the ranch. Josie became defensive, stating she would not sign any such agreement. Tempers flared. John slapped Josie across the facing, knocking her against the wall and calling her a name. Josie retorted, “John, you will be sorry for that. That is the last time you will ever strike me.” After eating, John and Freel danced and sang in the kitchen. They talked of fighting, but Freel suggested they fight in the future with guns. 24
Here Josie and Freel’s stories diverge. Josie stuck with one story: Alfred Freel had murdered John in his own bed. Freel’s first story painted a picture of Josie bringing in a man with a blackened face to kill John and forcing Freel at gun point to help hide the body. In the second story, Freel described leaving the Kensler house for his haystack bed the night of October 17, 1896. After drinking two-thirds of a pint of whiskey to nerve himself up, he returned to the home with his gun. Josie tried to intervene, but Freel walked to the bed where John had fallen asleep, put the gun to John’s head, and pulled the trigger. The report of the gun blew out the lantern. Freel began giving orders, and Josie resisted until she and the children were threatened with bullets to the head. Freel grabbed John by his hair and dragged him onto a canvas. With Josie’s help, they hauled the body to the irrigation ditch close to the front door. Water still filled the canal, and Josie walked to the head gate. Turning the weir, she moved water from the Kensler canal into their neighbor Canfield’s ditch. In the depth of night, the two dug a five-foot-deep grave for John in the water-soaked soil. Into the damp grave they threw John’s body. Returning to the bedroom, they cleaned away splattered blood and brains. Josie buried the canvas used to clean the room next to a nearby creek, then drove the team of horses and wagon away from the ranch and abandoned them. 25
In the morning, Canfield ranch hands found water mysteriously running into their fields. With the growing season over, they had stopped irrigating weeks earlier. Then Freel showed up talking excitedly about John missing. John’s horses were found with their reins tangled in an irrigation hub, wagon parts strewn across the field. A search party formed, focusing on a possible drowning in the Snake River. To raise the body, lighted dynamite was thrown into the river. 26
Weeks passed. An indignation meeting held at the Glenns Ferry opera house in the fall of 1896 attracted the whole town. Josie’s history of leaving John with the children for months, engaging in extramarital affairs, and living with Freel since the disappearance of John caused the townspeople to suspect foul play. This was significant: because “Mrs. Kensler had a bad reputation” (as one writer put it decades later), a reputation for sexual laxity, her neighbors believed that she might also be involved in her husband’s murder—although the one did not equal the other. People donated money to organize a committee of five. When a citizen remembered Freel purchasing a large quantity of strychnine a few days prior to John’s disappearance, District Attorney John C. Rogers and Attorney A. M. Sinnott arrested the pair, charging them with murder by poisoning. A five-hundred-dollar bail bond was placed on each. Josie posted bail. Freel did not. 27
Deep snow in mid-November sent the search parties home. But the mystery did not grow dim in the minds of constables John Smith of Glenns Ferry and Sigel Morell of Soldier, Idaho. They kept jawing over water being turned into the Canfield irrigation ditch, then back into the Kensler ditch the day after John’s disappearance. With a new theory, the two rustled up a six-foot steel rod with a barbed point. They intended to probe the entire bottom of the Kensler irrigation ditch.
Heading to the Kensler ranch on a late December day in 1896, Smith and Morell started at the head gate, pushing the entire length of the steel rod into the ditch bottom every few feet. Within about sixty feet of the Kensler front door, they found a section of unusually soft dirt. They pushed the rod in about five feet, and the point hit something that was different from all other probes. When they pulled up the rod, a shred of cloth was caught in a barb.
The next morning, December 23, 1896, acting coroner James Mullany rode to the Kensler ranch with a group of men and shovels. Josie’s father was among the party. The men began digging in the soft dirt Smith and Morell had found. John’s body was soon uncovered.
Wrapped in a quilt, he wore only an undershirt and drawers. Under John were his hat, vest, shoes, overalls, hose, several pocket items, and his gun. Above his right ear was a small hole. Almost the entire left side of his skull was either gone or crushed. The only intact bone was the left jaw. His head also showed evidence of hard blows by a heavy, blunt instrument. The search for more evidence began. A few days later the search party unearthed the canvas sheet, thickly coated with blood and brain matter. In the Kensler home, a bullet hole was discovered in the wall between the headboard and the adjacent room. This had been covered with wallpaper. To disguise a bullet hole, it was also noted that the headboard of the couple’s bed had been removed, whittled, and put back in place again. 28
A coroner’s jury dropped the charge of murder by poisoning. Murder of John Kensler by shooting was the new charge against Josie Kensler and Alfred Freel. Both were arrested, and Judge Sinnott ordered the two jailed with no bail. 29
At ten o’clock on April 29, 1897, in Mountain Home, Idaho, Kensler and Freel pleaded not guilty to the murder of John Kensler before a courtroom packed with the curious. There were two spotlights. First, Kensler’s nine-yearold daughter Myrtle, who had been living with her Aunt Eva in Ogden, testified about the murder of her father. She recalled hearing a gun go off in the house, then smelling the burned powder. As Josie and Freel scurried around the house and yard, Myrtle followed them to the ditch, until her mother instructed her to return to bed. 30 The second spotlight shone on Kensler herself, who was noted to be “in a delicate situation and . . . in a short time to again become a mother.” 31
After a one-week trial for each defendant, Freel was deemed guilty of first-degree murder. He would hang. 32 Kensler was found guilty of murder in the second degree, and sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison. 33 Finding jurors for Kensler had proved challenging. One opposed the death penalty for women because he was a “respecter of sex in such matters.” Another stated he did not believe in the death penalty. In closing remarks, prosecuting attorneys for the state implored the jury to not take gender into consider. 34 A few days after the trial, a technicality surfaced. Court documents never identified the county or state in which the murder had occurred. After a second trial, both were found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to prison for life. 35
The initial newspaper headlines and articles portrayed Kensler fairly, merely stating facts, although they did mention her extramarital affairs. Otherwise, the reporting was objective. But true sentiments boiled to the surface in a Salt Lake Tribune editorial. “It is true Mrs. Kensler was a woman, and she was pregnant at her trial—these two facts constituted the only difference between her case and Freel’s,” opined the editorial writer.
The editorial writer was apparently arguing that Kensler was a crafty, conniving woman had stepped outside societal expectations and beguiled Freel into doing the dirty work of killing her abusive husband. Although the facts of the case seem prove otherwise, the Tribune suggested that Kensler had manipulated Freel, making her just as guilty of the murder. 37
Kensler’s place in contemporary conversation can be gathered from an advertisement in a regional newspaper. Her name became associated with Dr. McLaughlin’s Belt sold in Butte, Montana. A six-by-four-inch advertisement stated, “God Bless the Inventor! So writes Mrs. Josie Kensler, of Boise, Idaho.” Dr. M. A. Mc- Laughlin touted his “new method of applying electricity is especially suited to women’s pains. . . . My new method absolutely cures those nervous and painful ailments so incident to the female system.” 38 The McLaughlin’s Belt advertisement tells us at least two things. First, Kensler had become a public woman, whose name was recognized and whose reputation was sufficiently sullied to be connected to feminine hygiene. Second, grasping for reasons a woman would murder her husband, the advertisement insinuated that Kensler’s monthly menstrual cycle had provoked the deed. Here was an idea with a long pedigree: that women, influenced by the supposed instability of their bodies, might let their emotions spill over into so-called hysteria.
Alfred Freel and Josie Kensler, who entered the Idaho State Penitentiary on May 29, 1897, facing life sentences. Idaho State Historical Society, no. 565.
While Kensler’s trial appeared reasonably fair, and newspapers avoided painting a picture of the gentle sex gone bad, that changed as Kensler walked through the gray stone archway at Boise’s Idaho State Penitentiary. Because infrastructure and expectations existed for male convicts, Freel could enter the penitentiary world simply by having lunch with the other prisoners. Kensler, on the other hand, was the first woman to enter the penitentiary in two years. She ate her midday meal with the warden’s family. No cells were designated for women convicts, so the officers’ barbershop was repurposed with a new bed, mattress, and pillows. A matron would be hired to provide for her care. Kensler offered to cook and claimed to be an excellent washer. The warden was “favorably impressed” with Kensler, stating she would not be troublesome and would “submit to the penalty for her misdeeds with fairly good grace.” 39 Three months later—and nine months after John Kensler had been murdered—Josie Kensler gave birth to Gladys, the first baby born at the Idaho State Penitentiary.
Kensler’s entrance into the penitentiary, and her incarceration altogether, matched broad patterns in nineteenth-century America. Prison officials did not know how to deal with female prisoners and, in fact, considered them a problem. What’s more, the difficulties of her life generally matched those of other incarcerated women. Kensler’s time in the witness chair suggested that her husband abused her. However, women with violent partners had little social support, and economics and children kept them strapped to a brutal home life. Women in prison who had killed a man had usually murdered their intimate partner. In Denver between 1881 and 1917, thirty-nine women were charged with murder. Twenty-seven of them had killed their husband or male companion. The remainder had killed a neighbor, son-in-law, brothel client, or a client seeking an abortion. 40
Nevertheless, women in prison bewildered Americans in the nineteenth century. Females, some believed, could not be held responsible for murder because they didn’t have the intellectual capacity to plot such a crime. Rather than be tried for murder, women were often called crazy rather than manipulative. 41 Rigid expectations of conduct for women (if not their actual experience) relegated them to motherhood and domestic chores. Phrases like “fair sex,” “sweet angel,” and “gentle tamers” reinforced these ideals. These ideas of normal versus criminal females were widespread during Kensler’s years. Cesare Lombroso—the influential, if now discredited, Italian criminologist— described noncriminal women as “neutralized by piety, maternity, want of passion, sexual coldness, weakness, and an undeveloped intelligence.” In comparison, he characterized women criminals as overgrown children, with countless evil tendencies. 42 In Lombroso’s view, a female criminal was doubly exceptional—first a women, then a criminal—and that double exception made her a “monster.” 43 These ideas permeated the criminal system for fifty years, making women seem like an unimportant, even dangerous, segment of the prison population that was unworthy of limited funds.
Some social activists asked for reforms, such as censuses to determine the number of women incarcerated with men in county jails. Prison authorities pushed back, arguing that women criminals were deranged violators of ideal womanhood and their fate was of no concern to society. 44 Women were rarely noted in annual prison counts. Some institutions resolved the burden of women prisoners by shipping them to neighboring states and territories.
Prison managers in the nineteenth century agreed that idle hands would become the devil’s workshop. Work was the solution. To reform inmates, each learned or honed a trade. In Idaho, male prisoners labored at the three Table Rock quarries east of the penitentiary, which provided the building materials for the prison and beyond. Many prominent homes and buildings, including the Boise Soldier’s Home, were built from blocks quarried near the prison by prisoners. 45 Male prisoners in Idaho also raised vegetables, fruit, and livestock feed; they dug canals and improved springs. In the blacksmith and carpenter shops, inmates made furniture and even built their own cells. 46
Finding work for Kensler proved more challenging. During the years she served time, twelve other women entered and left the prison. Women prisoners performed domestic duties for the warden and his family. A garden tended by female inmates provided food for the warden’s table. While in prison, Kensler became known throughout the Boise area for her expert handiwork. Since women prisoners “were not obliged to engage in any manual labor, [Kensler] spent most of her time doing fine needlework.” 47 Women’s handiwork at the prison in the early twentieth century included clothing, quilts, embroidered curtains, baby and children’s clothes, braided rugs, towels, leather and snakeskin belts, bags, dolls, doll clothes, stuffed animals, toys, pillowcases, bookmarks, and knitted or crocheted goods. 48
Female prisoners throughout the United States had similar work experiences. A combination of low numbers and the difficulty controlling sexual activity—whether consensual or forced—prevented incarcerated women from learning skills, earning wages, or advancing in education. Besides handiwork and chores at the warden’s home, Kensler was noted to have two other pastimes: keeping pets and flirting with inmates. Kensler was confined with more than one hundred men, and the warden and guards found it difficult to control talk between the genders. She would stand at the window of her second-floor cell and chat up male prisoners in the yard below. As punishment, shades were installed that covered her cell window. On another occasion, prison officials took Kensler’s pets away because of her flirtations. 49
Similar interactions were noted at a New Mexico prison during the early twentieth century. Inmates went to the dark cell for delivering illicit mail to and from women. Waving and making faces at women prisoners earned men confinement to their cells. Laughing and making motions toward females during chapel service resulted in being chained to a cell door for five days. Women cut holes in screens to pass out locks of their hair, and in return accepted tobacco, paper, and pencils. Idleness, which intensified the sexual atmosphere, and the fact that many female inmates were incarcerated for prostitution, combined to create a situation in which many wardens and contractors allowed the physical gratification of men to become the defining work of women prisoners. 50 Possibly, this explains the next chapter in Josie Kensler’s life.
Kensler served her time relatively quietly until June 1902, when Boise Attorney H. W. Dunton began preparing her pardon application. Dunton expected the usual formalities. Standing before the Board of Pardons—composed of Idaho Governor Frank W. Hunt, Secretary of State C. J. Bassett, and Attorney General Frank Martin—Dunton was prepared to describe Kensler’s conduct in prison over the past five years, introduce any new evidence from her murder conviction, and then wait for the board to determine her fate, hopefully an early release.
So it stunned Dunton when Kensler announced she was three months pregnant. Dunton contacted prison physician Dr. Jessie K. Dubois on or about July 1, 1902, to request a physical examination of Kensler. He wanted to know if she was telling the truth. For more than a month, Dunton harangued Dubois and the board of pardon members to conduct a physical exam on Kensler to determine if she was pregnant. Governor Hunt made the final call: an examination was not necessary. The matter should be allowed to rest. On July 15, 1902, Kensler appeared before the board. On the back of the envelope containing the papers in her case there was one word: “Refused.” This decision meant Kensler could no longer appeal her case until a new governor was elected and a new board of commissioners appointed. 51
Three or four days after the pardon board shot down Kensler’s application, Martin saw Dubois on the street. He asked the doctor’s opinion of Kensler’s claim. The two talked about a physical examination, with Dubois stating he thought she would agree. Then Martin left town for a couple weeks, traveling to the northern part of Idaho on business. Upon returning to Boise, work kept him occupied, and he didn’t think of Kensler until he heard she was sick. 52
Governor Frank W. Hunt of Idaho who, in 1902, decided that the matter of Josie Kensler’s pregnancy should be allowed to rest. Idaho State Historical Society, no. 449.
On August 28, Martin bumped into Dunton on the street. Conversation shifted to Kensler and her mysterious illness. Both agreed to meet at the Idaho State Penitentiary for an interview. It was then Kensler told of prison officials forcing her into an abortion, an illegal procedure in most of the United States around the turn of the century. She agreed to sign an affidavit stating such. 53 Josie Kensler wrote:
Up to 1840 in England and the United States, abortion was permitted prior to quickening, the moment in pregnancy when a woman starts to feel or perceive fetal movement. The common belief was that a fetus did not have a soul prior to quickening. From 1860 to 1900, states passed more than forty anti-abortion laws. When Idaho became a territory in 1864, abortion was considered a crime for both the provider and the woman seeking the abortion. The Comstock Law of 1873, passed by the United States Congress, reinforced the idea that contraception and abortion services were obscene and illicit. Violators faced a maximum of five years in prison, a $2,000 fine or both. 55
Jesse K. Dubois, physician at the Idaho State Penitentiary. Dubois came from a prominent political family and was the brother of Senator Fred T. Dubois. Idaho State Historical Society, no. 1148-11.
While birth control laws were rigid, enforcement was lax. This held true for abortion laws as well. In 1887, the Idaho Territorial Legislature passed a law classifying abortion as a felony with prison sentences up to five years. 56 With few changes, this was Idaho’s abortion law until the 1973 United States Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision. Nevertheless, a number of homemade and commercial methods of birth control existed throughout the nineteenth century. As for abortion, by the early twentieth century, the preferred method was by instrumental means—knitting needles, crochet hooks, hairpins, scissors, button hooks, a bone stay out of a corset, a chicken feather. Poisons were less common because they could more easily kill the pregnant woman; still, women used them. Pharmacists of the time offered products such as Chichester’s Diamond Brand Pills, pennyroyal pills, and tansy and pennyroyal compound pills. 57
The irony of Josie’s forced abortion is that she served time with Dr. R. J. Alcorn, who was convicted of manslaughter in 1899 after a pregnant woman died when he performed an abortion on her. He was a prisoner at the Idaho State Penitentiary when Kensler’s abortion was performed, and some prison officials spread rumors that Alcorn had actually performed the illegal act. This proved to be mere gossip. 58
Some speculated that Kensler might have encouraged a pregnancy as a possible path to freedom. Pregnancy got Pearl Heart released from the Yuma, Arizona, penitentiary in 1902. When she forcefully announced her intention to implicate prison personal, she suddenly found herself walking out the penitentiary doors. 59 Instead of being shown the door, Kensler found herself on the witness stand again in September 1902 for a preliminary examination regarding pregnancy and abortion that involved Warden Charles Arney and Jesse Dubois. The “morbidly curious” filled the courtroom, wrote the Salt Lake Herald correspondent. Kensler walked into the courtroom with a guard and “was given a good seat,” the correspondent continued. “She met the gaze of the men in the audience unflinchingly.” 60
Prison turnkey Charles Chinn took the stand first. He recalled a conversation with Arney about prisoner Alfred Roberts possibly being responsible for Kensler’s pregnancy. Roberts, a piano teacher who was convicted of passing a fictitious check, served as waiter and steward at the warden’s home. Kensler also worked at the warden’s house, although she was often with the warden’s wife. Chinn then outlined events around July 17, recalling a small pasteboard box he took to Kensler’s cell. Five days later Dubois was summoned to the prison. Kensler had experienced a miscarriage, and a three- to four-month-old female fetus was lying on her bed. The doctor examined Kensler, claimed everything was fine, and talked of her being pardoned by the autumn. 61
When Kensler answered questions on the witness stand, the story suddenly changed. Dunton and Martin had forced her to sign the first affidavit about the pregnancy and miscarriage, she claimed. A second affidavit she made with Arney revealed the truth. There was no pregnancy. There was no abortion, she vehemently stated. Arney and Dubois were eventually exonerated. Yet time would prove that the first affidavit was actually the truth and that Kensler had been encouraged to write the second affidavit to earn her release from prison. 62 It wasn’t until John T. Morrison became governor in January 1903 that the real story emerged.
Morrison had barely heated the governor’s seat when he ordered an Idaho legislative committee to reopen the Kensler abortion investigation. On the witness stand, a reporter described Kensler as a sad-faced woman who was a “shadow of her former self.” 63 Kensler recalled that around July 17, 1902, she had told Arney about the pregnancy. He asked about her intent. She was unsure. Soon afterward, Dubois visited her cell and told her to get rid of the child. He gave her medicine, which she took. On July 22, being five months pregnant, she had an abortion. The day before the preliminary hearing, Arney called her into his office. He handed her an affidavit stating there was no pregnancy or abortion. Sign it, or you will be buried at the prison, Arney essentially told her. If she signed it, however, by November she would be free— and so Kensler signed the affidavit. 64
Kensler told the committee that a prison official was responsible for her pregnancy. Although refusing to divulge his name, she said that for two-and-a-half years the official pestered her for sexual favors. Once she gave in, he visited her cell often. She wept over the fact that he had never been charged and all others involved in the scandal remained free, while she remained in prison. 65
The committee’s investigation did not free Kensler from prison. Nor did it result in the conviction of Arney or Dubois. But it did create change. The Idaho State Penitentiary needed a women’s ward immediately. In 1905, Kensler and other female prisoners walked into the state’s first women’s ward. “Experiences of past administrations had shown that it was absolutely necessary to isolate the female prisoners,” wrote Warden E. L. Whitney. Outside the hulking penitentiary, a new wall now surrounded the warden’s former home, which became the female inmates’ kitchen, dining room, and bathroom. Prisoners erected an attached stone building with cells. Women prisoners washed their own laundry, cooked, and made shirts for their male counterparts in their first prison home. 66
Four years later, on December 1, 1909, Kensler walked out of the prison gates. She stayed in Boise, living with her daughters Myrtle and Gladys and working as a seamstress. 67 Kensler married Andrew Renwick Ketchum in March 1912, but the relationship was short and contentious. 68 After divorcing Ketchum, she married her prison sweetheart, William Howard Thomas, a Welsh miner who had served time for manslaughter, intent to commit murder, and a prison escape. 69 At the age of forty-two, Kensler gave birth to their son, William Edward Thomas. In 1918, her husband died in the great influenza pandemic. Josie lived until the age of sixty-six, when she died from a stroke. She is buried in the Bozeman, Montana, Sunset Hills Cemetery. 70
Kensler’s life was sensational, complex, and titillating, yet heartrending at the same time. The tale forces us to look at gender inequality, especially in light of the current #MeToo movement, and question if much has changed. Her history encourages us to cheer for women’s prisons and the more humane treatment of the incarcerated. But there is so much more progress to be made. All women need a safe home, free from violence. All women need a society where they are recognized as equal and important. Kensler’s life was a barometer—it gives us a glimpse into the past and should cause us reflect on the work that is still necessary around the world for women’s rights.
William Howard Thomas (left), a Welsh miner who served two times in the Idaho State Penitentiary. Josie Kensler (right), upon her release from prison in 1909. The couple married in the 1910s and had one child together. Idaho State Historical Society, nos. AR42-1367 and 77-2-38.
Notes
1. Josie Kensler convict file, inmate no. 565, box 1002.2-2, Accession no. 20072420, Collection AR 42, Idaho State Archives, Boise, Idaho (hereafter ISA).
2. 1850 United States Federal Census, North Bloomfield, Morrow, Ohio, roll 716, page 409A, digital image, Miles C. Lawrence; Iowa, State Census Collection, 1836–1925, s.v. “Miles C. Lawrence”; Iowa, Select Marriages Index, 1758–1996, s.v. “Lydia Shirts,” all accessed September 3, 2020, ancestry.com.
3. 1870 United States Federal Census, East Weber, Weber, Utah Territory, roll M593_1613, page 419B, digital image, Miles Lawrence, accessed September 3, 2020, ancestry.com.
4. Richard C. Roberts and Richard W. Sadler, A History of Weber County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Weber County Commission, 1997), 111.
5. 1880 United States Federal Census, Uintah, Weber, Utah, roll 1339, page 540D, enumeration district 104, digital image, Miles Lawrence, accessed September 8, 2020, ancestry.com.
6. 1880 United States Federal Census, Miles Lawrence; Western States Marriage Index, 1809–2016, s.v. “Eva Lawrence,” marriage ID 197874, both accessed September 8, 2020, ancestry.com.
7. Idaho, Birth Index, 1861–1918, Stillbirth Index, 1905– 1968, s.v. “Claraman Lydia Lawrence,” July 16, 1888, birth certificate no. 00426109, accessed September 11, 2020, ancestry.com.
8. Idaho, Marriage Records, 1863–1968, s.v. “John Kenzler,” accessed August 12, 2020, ancestry.com.
9. Rosemary L. Wimberly, “‘She Should Be Made an Example Of’: Gender, Politics, and Criminal Abortion in Idaho, 1864–1973” (master’s thesis, Boise State University, 1996).
10. See U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Social and Economic Supplement: 2003 Current Population Survey, Current Population Reports, Series P20-553, “America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2003,” as well as earlier reports.
11. 1850 United States Federal Census, Rochester, Fulton, Indiana, roll 146, page 424a, digital image, John L. Kensler, accessed December 15, 2020, ancestry.com.
12. U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861–1865, s.v. “John Kensler,” accessed August 12, 2020, ancestry .com.
13. Wimberly, “Gender, Politics, and Criminal Abortion”; Olive de Ette Jenson Groefsema, Elmore County: Its Historical Gleanings, a Collection of Pioneer Narratives, Treasured Family Pictures, and Early Clippings about the Settling of Elmore County, Idaho (Mountain Home, ID: Caxton, 1949), 379. Kay Schooler, a relative of the Kensler family who lived in Ogden, Utah, said John Kensler was one of the early ranchers along King Hill Creek, Idaho. After moving there in 1865, he managed the stage station. Evan Filby, an Idaho Falls, Idaho, historian who has assembled a massive index of stagecoach stations and managers, states he has no record of a John Kensler operating the King Hill Creek station. Wimberly, “Gender, Politics, and Criminal Abortion.”
14. “They’re Up for Life,” Anaconda (MT) Standard, June 4, 1897, 7.
15. “They’re Up for Life,” 7.
16. “Kensler Evidence All In,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 6, 1897, 7.
17. “Alfred Freel on Trial Again,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 21, 1897, 7.
18. “Kensler Evidence All In,” 7.
19. “The Josie Kensler Trial,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 10, 1897, 7.
20. “Confession by Freel,” (Boise) Idaho Statesman, June 6, 1897, 4.
21. “Alfred Freel on Trial Again,” 7.
22. “Kensler Evidence All In,” 7.
23. “Confession by Freel,” 4; “Alfred Freel Confesses,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 7, 1897, 5.
24. “To Decide Freel’s Fate,” (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, May 6, 1897, 1.
25. “Confession by Freel,” 4; George M. Payne, “Payne’s History of Elmore County,” Mountain Home (ID) Republican, July 23, 1921, 4.
26. Payne, “Payne’s History of Elmore County,” 4.
27. Payne, “Payne’s History of Elmore County,” 4.
28. “Evidence against Freel,” (Boise) Idaho Statesman, May 3, 1897, 4.
29. Olive Groefsema, Elmore County Its Historical Gleanings (Caxton Printers, 1949) 60.
30. “To Decide Freel’s Fate,” 1.
31. “The Murder of John Kensler,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 1, 1897, 7.
32. “Albert Freel Convicted,” (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, May 7, 1897, 1.
33. “The Josie Kensler Trial,” 7.
34. “The Trial of Josie Kensler,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 8, 1897, 7.
35. “Freel Will Not Hang,” (Boise) Idaho Statesman, May 24, 1897, 1; Idaho, U.S., Old Penitentiary Prison Records, 1882–1961, s.v. “Alfred Rosencrans” and “Mrs. Josie Kensler,” digital images, accessed December 14, 2020, ancestry.com.
36. “Idaho Criminal Trials,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 17, 1897, 7.
37. The editorialist was correct that Kensler had enjoyed more education than Freel—but not much. He apparently had not attended any school and was illiterate, while she had attended school for five years and could both read and write. Idaho, U.S., Old Penitentiary Prison Records, 1882–1961, s.v. “Alfred Rosencrans” and “Mrs. Josie Kensler.”
38. “God Bless the Inventor,” Anaconda (MT) Standard, November 28, 1899, advertisement.
39. “Installed in the Pen,” (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, May 30, 1897, 1.
40. Anne M. Butler, Gendered Justice in the American West: Women Prisoners in Men’s Penitentiaries (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 127; L. Mara Dodge, “‘One Female Prisoner Is of More Trouble than Twenty Males’: Women Convicts in Illinois Prisons, 1835–1896,” Journal of Social History 32, no. 4 (1999): 907–930.
41. Amy Vecchione, “Notable and Notorious Idaho Women: An Annotated Bibliography,” Idaho Librarian, May 17, 2013, accessed July 7, 2020, theidaholibrarian .wordpress.com.
42. Butler, Gendered Justice, 28.
43. Cesare Lombroso and William Ferrero, The Female Offender (1900; repr. New York: Philosophical Library, 1958), 112, 147.
44. Butler, Gendered Justice, 32.
45. Ada County Centennial Committee, Table Rock Quarries placard, Boise River Greenbelt Historical Education Project, 1990, Boise, Idaho.
46. Amber Beierle, Ashley Phillips, and Hanako Wakatsuki, Old Idaho Penitentiary (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014); John Hailey, Report of Warden of the Idaho State Penitentiary for the Fiscal Year Ending November 30, 1900 (Boise, ID: Capital Printing Office).
47. “Liberate from Prison,” (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, December 2, 1909, 1.
48. Rosemary Wimberly, “Secrecy, Silence and Shame: Sex, Adultery and Abortion Crimes of Idaho Women Prisoners, 1900 to 1960” (slide presentation, “Doin’ Time: Women in Prison Past and Present,” Boise State University symposium, Boise, Idaho, March 1994).
49. Wimberly, “Secrecy, Silence and Shame”; Beierle, et al., Old Idaho Penitentiary.
50. Butler, Gendered Justice, 216, 182.
51. “State Board of Pardons Closes July Meet Up,” (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, July 19, 1902; for background on Dubois, see “Dr. Jesse K. Dubois Dies at Boise, Ida.” Herald and Review (Decatur, IL), November 1, 1908, 1.
52. “Sensation at the Penitentiary,” (Boise) Idaho Statesman, September 3, 1902, 1.
53. “Sensation at the Penitentiary,” 1.
54. “Hearing in Penitentiary Case,” (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, September 12, 1902, 5. The affidavit was signed by Josie Kensler and H. W. Dunton.
55. Wimberly, “‘She Should Be Made an Example Of.’”
56. Wimberly, “‘She Should Be Made an Example Of’”; see also, Penal Code of State of Idaho, 1901 (Boise: Capital News Printing, 1901), 64, 70, 316.
57. Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Amanda Hendrix-Komoto “The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Utah,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 53, no. 1 (2020): 33–45.
58. Wimberly, “‘She Should Be Made an Example Of.’”
59. Butler, Gendered Justice, 212.
60. “Hearing in Penitentiary Case,” 5.
61. “Hearing in Penitentiary Case,” 5.
62. (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, September 12, 13, 23, November 23, 1902.
63. “Democratic Discrepancy,” Teton Peak-Chronicle (St. Anthony, ID), March 12, 1903, 2.
64. “Mrs. Kensler Tells Her Story to Committee,” (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, February 25, 1903.
65. “Mrs. Kensler Tells Her Story to Committee”; “Democratic Discrepancy,” 2.
66. E. L. Whitney, Biennial Report of the Idaho State Penitentiary for the Fiscal Years 1905 and 1906 ([Boise]: Warden, Idaho State Penitentiary, 1906).
67. “Idaho State News,” Montpelier (ID) Examiner, December 24, 1909, 6; 1910 United States Federal Census, Boise, Ada, Idaho, roll T624_221, page 4B, enumeration district 0007, digital image, Joan Kensler, accessed December 15, 2020, ancestry.com.
68. (Boise) Idaho Daily Statesman, July 13, 17, October 19, 24, November 23, 1913.
69. William I. Thomas, convict file, inmate no. 1367, box 1007.5-5, Accession no. 20072414, Collection AR 42, ISA; 1900 United States Federal Census, Boise Ward 1, Ada, Idaho, page 14, enumeration district 0001, digital image, William H. Thomas, accessed December 15, 2020, ancestry.com.
70. California, U.S., Death Index, 1940–1997, s.v. “William Edward Thomas,” birth date August 1, 1914; 1930 United States Federal Census, Lost Creek, Garden, Nebraska, page 11A, enumeration district 0008, digital image, Joanne Thomas; Montana, U.S., State Deaths, 1907–2016, s.v. “Joan Thomas,” death certificate, August 17, 1938; U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s–Current, s.v. “Joan J. Thomas,” death date August 17, 1938, all accessed December 15, 2020, ancestry.com.
