March 15

 

In honor of our March Madness Spirit Week, we will learn about “mad women” in American history.

 

Our first mad woman is Lizzie Borden.  Lizzie Andrew Borden was born in 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts.   She had a normal childhood and after her mother died, her father married a woman named Abby Durfee Gray.   After the marriage, Lizzie and her older sister had frequent arguments with their father and stepmother.  On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie’s stepmother and father were killed in their home.  Lizzie was arrested and tried for their murders.  The trial was well covered in the press and there were numerous issues with the search of the home and the collection of evidence.  After a half hour of deliberations, the jury acquitted Lizzie.  She lived out her life in Fall River but was ostracized by society.

 

There are numerous theories about how and who killed the Bordens.  There have been books and even a Broadway musical written about her.  It is still a mystery today.

 

Tomorrow we will learn about Nellie Bly.

 

March 16

 

Our famous mad woman today is Nellie Bly.

 

Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman and was the best-known “girl reporter” of her day.  She was famous for her colorful exploits.  She was largely self-educated and embarked on her reporting career in her early twenties.  To gain employment at the New York World in 1887, she finagled admission as a patient to Blackwell’s Island, a notorious mental institution.  After spending a few weeks there, she wrote about the inhumane conditions at mental institution which led to several million dollars’ worth of improvements.  Nellie is also known for her 1888-1889 solo around-the-world voyage in seventy-two days.  When she died, the Evening Journal eulogized her as having been “the best reporter in America.”

 

March 17

 

In honor of our March Madness Spirit Week, we are learning about mad women.  Today’s mad woman is Carry Nation.

 

Carry Nation – whose first husband was a hopeless drunk – came to believe she had been chosen by God to destroy saloons.  She was the co-founder of a local Texas branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the director of a campaign that eventually resulted in the closing of every saloon in Medicine Lodge, Texas.  She took direct action when she went to saloons.  She smashed bottles and beer kegs with her hatchet.  She had the support of many women, but not her second husband who divorced her.  She often found herself in jail for her antics and raised bail through speaking engagements and the sale of souvenir hatchets.

 

Tomorrow we will learn about Calamity Jane.

March 18

 

Today’s mad woman was Martha Jane Cannary, otherwise known as Calamity Jane.  She was born in Missouri and raised in Montana.  She grew up to become a sharpshooting, hard-riding gender nonconformist of the Old West whose colorful life has become part of its folklore.  Accounts of her life are sketchy.  She lost both parents at about the age of twelve and became a drifter.  She developed a fondness for liquor, a distaste for wearing women’s clothing and did all kinds of jobs to survive.  She probably got the nickname “Calamity Jane” from either the compassion she showed the unfortunate or from the warning she gave to men of what might befall them if they got on her wrong side.

 

Tomorrow we will learn about Dorothea Dix.

 

March 19

 

Today we are wrapping up our mad women week with a person devoted her life to caring for those with mental illness.  Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802.  Little is known about her childhood other than she had abusive and alcoholic parents.  Due to this, she went to live with her grandmother in Massachusetts and became a teacher when she was older.  Unfortunately, she was very sickly and had to stop teaching.  It was recommended that she go to Europe, so she did.  She met with groups of reformers and toured hospitals for the mentally ill.  She brought her findings back to the states and began pushing states to care for the unfortunate and established mental hospitals in three states.  She served as a nurse during the Civil War and when it was over, she went back to fighting for social reform.  Her work culminated in the restructuring of hospitals in America and abroad and changed the way the mentally ill were treated.