A question for you on victorian propriety

[Grace]

Many of you are so knowledgeable on the victorian era, I thought I'd pose this question to you. It is something that I have wondered about since first reading the various testimonies. Lizzie seemed to roam around Fall River on her own quite a bit, and the night before the murders she was over to Alice Russell's house on her own and coming home rather late for what I would think of as proper curfew for a single lady living downtown in a city where there were surely dock workers and mill workers and all sorts of folk hanging about that were to be considered beneath her station and perhaps even dangerous. I would think that the ladies of 'The Hill' would not have been seen sauntering about those streets alone and what must they have thought of Lizzie doing so? If she did indeed make a habit of it before the murders, I imagine she continued to do so after the trial ended!

[DJ]

As long as Lizzie kept to her neighborhood and her "kind," I don't think anyone would have been too disapproving of her nighttime calls (as long as they were kept to reasonable hours of the evening-- she was home on the Third around nine-thirty, and even Bridget was back around eleven).

Lizzie and Alice-- spinster acquaintances. Socially acceptable.

Mix up the sexes, and you start having problems.

Lizzie seems to have garnered the greatest social disapproval for her DAYTIME assignation with Dr. Bowen. To church, no less.

I've wondered about this, about there possibly having been whispers about the pair, and their accompanying one another somehow justifying the gossip, in the minds of the gossips.

Or, maybe, it was just what it was.

Personally, I can't fathom the brouhaha, but apparently it was quite the social faux pas, given police witness statements.

[BedfordCord]

If I remember correctly, Lizzie and Alice weren't too far a part, home-wise. If she came home at 'all hours' with Uncle John sitting up with abby and Andrew in the parlor, I don't think anyone would have minded (except when she came home that night and didnt say hello to anyone!). Since she probably made the walk on a regular basis, the neighbors would not have thought anything of it - and the street she lived on, if research serves me correctly, was consistently busy (business-wise) so she would have gone undetected for the most part at any time of the day, I think.

[DJ]

I am going off memory here, as I gave my copy of the book to a high-school student working on a history report, some years past, but in David Kent's "Forty Whacks" (1992), I recall the author making a big deal out of how socially unacceptable it would have been for Lizzie to enter Eli Bence's pharmacy, which wasn't all that far from No. 92.

For that reason, Kent tended to dismiss Bence's testimony.

There may be something to the impropriety of the place for someone of Lizzie's social standing, as she obviously was not a regular patron. Indeed, the quest for prussic acid may have led her to enter the store for the first time.

However, if her social peers would have doubted her going there, that THEY would tended to have dismissed Bence's testimony and believed Lizzie's, then all the more reason for Lizzie to drop in the establishment.

For whatever reason, one thing's clear (whether you believe Bence or Lizzie): Lizzie was not a regular customer, if a customer at all (until the p.a. incident, and I have no problem believing Bence's determination to establish Lizzie's indentity).

[snokkums]

Many of you are so knowledgeable on the victorian era, I thought I'd pose this question to you. It is something that I have wondered about since first reading the various testimonies. Lizzie seemed to roam around Fall River on her own quite a bit, and the night before the murders she was over to Alice Russell's house on her own and coming home rather late for what I would think of as proper curfew for a single lady living downtown in a city where there were surely dock workers and mill workers and all sorts of folk hanging about that were to be considered beneath her station and perhaps even dangerous. I would think that the ladies of 'The Hill' would not have been seen sauntering about those streets alone and what must they have thought of Lizzie doing so? If she did indeed make a habit of it before the murders, I imagine she continued to do so after the trial ended!

I see what you are saying. I t would not be proper for a young lady of her stature to be out late. But Lizzie did have friends, as the one that you have mentioned, and she was invovled in the church and the temperanced movement, so maybe it wouldn't have been so odd for to be "out". She was doing church things and temperance movement things. Just my gueuss. And, before the murders, she did have may friends.

[kssunflower]

Sauntering about those streets with her theater friends would not have sat well with the folks on The Hill.