"I wanted to cut her because I knew I could not have her, and I did not want anyone else to have her. These were the words Alice Mitchell uttered on the stand during her 1892 murder trial, confessing to the murder of her lover Freda Ward in one of Memphis's most sensational cases."
"From childhood onward, Alice Mitchell was deeply uninterested in performing her gender. She was a tomboy who preferred the name "Alvin" to Alice, and she opted for games like baseball and football over the expected feminine occupations of needlework and housekeeping, essentially rejecting society's gender expectations entirely."
"What began as a passionate romance ended in tragedy, and a story that would shock a prudish, buttoned-up society loath to admit the existence of lesbians—not to mention the existence of a torrid, sexy lesbian affair happening under their own noses during the Victorian era."
Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward were two middle-class girls who developed a passionate romantic relationship while attending school together in Victorian-era Memphis. Their close friendship, known as "chumming," initially escaped scrutiny, but suspicion arose when Freda's sister questioned the nature of their relationship. Mitchell, who rejected feminine gender expectations from childhood and preferred masculine presentation, ultimately murdered Ward in a crime that scandalized society. Mitchell's trial lasted six days, resulting in a guilty verdict after just 20 minutes of jury deliberation. The case exposed the existence of lesbian relationships in a society that denied their possibility.
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