She Devil in the City of Angels ─ Gender, Violence, and the Hattie Woolsteen Murder Case in Victorian Era Los Angeles

In October 1887, Hattie Woolsteen was accused of murdering her married lover, Los Angeles dentist Charles Harlan, and labeled a fiend and a “she-devil.” The author describes the trial, Woolsteen's acquittal, and 19th-century attitudes about working-class women who lived apart from their families and who did not fit gender roles. These women were viewed as being easily drawn into the sexual service sector, and middle-class women tried to form gender solidarity among all women to create a more humane, maternal social order, possibly saving Woolsteen. She details the crime and trial; popular ideas of women and the public's view that a woman could not be a cold-blooded killer, therefore fabricating a male perpetrator; the public's discomfort with the image of Woolsteen as a murderer; the role of rapid urbanization in its response to the case, and issues of class, gender, and identity; the difference in the public response to Woolsteen and the conviction of Ella Amadon as an accomplice to the murder of her husband; the role of the press; and the verdict. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Cara Anzilotti, PhD, is associate professor of history at Loyola Marymount University.