Killed Strangely
The Death of Rebecca Cornell
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- USD 18.99
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- USD 18.99
Descripción editorial
Killed Strangely is an engaging read that will entrance and inform readers who are at once murder mystery and history buffs.— Cornelia Hughes Dayton ― Common-Place
"It was Rebecca's son, Thomas, who first realized the victim's identity. His eyes were drawn to the victim's head, and aided by the flickering light of a candle, he 'clapt his hands and cryed out, Oh Lord, it is my mother.' James Moills, a servant of Cornell... described Rebecca 'lying on the floore, with fire about Her, from her Lower parts neare to the Armepits.' He recognized her only 'by her shoes.'"—from Killed Strangely
On a winter's evening in 1673, tragedy descended on the respectable Rhode Island household of Thomas Cornell. His 73-year-old mother, Rebecca, was found close to her bedroom's large fireplace, dead and badly burned. The legal owner of the Cornells' hundred acres along Narragansett Bay, Rebecca shared her home with Thomas and his family, a servant, and a lodger. A coroner's panel initially declared her death "an Unhappie Accident," but before summer arrived, a dark web of events—rumors of domestic abuse, allusions to witchcraft, even the testimony of Rebecca's ghost through her brother—resulted in Thomas's trial for matricide.
Such were the ambiguities of the case that others would be tried for the murder as well. Rebecca is a direct ancestor of Cornell University's founder, Ezra Cornell. Elaine Forman Crane tells the compelling story of Rebecca's death and its aftermath, vividly depicting the world in which she lived. That world included a legal system where jurors were expected to be familiar with the defendant and case before the trial even began. Rebecca's strange death was an event of cataclysmic proportions, affecting not only her own community, but neighboring towns as well.
The documents from Thomas's trial provide a rare glimpse into seventeenth-century life. Crane writes, "Instead of the harmony and respect that sermon literature, laws, and a hierarchical/patriarchal society attempted to impose, evidence illustrates filial insolence, generational conflict, disrespect toward the elderly, power plays between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, [and] adult dependence on (and resentment of) aging parents who clung to purse strings." Yet even at a distance of more than three hundred years, Rebecca Cornell's story is poignantly familiar. Her complaints of domestic abuse, Crane says, went largely unheeded by friends and neighbors until, at last, their complacency was shattered by her terrible death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If this book consisted only of the first chapter, it would be a satisfying account of the mysterious death in 1673 of a 73-year-old Rhode Island matriarch (and ancestor of Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University), for which her son, Thomas Cornell, was hanged. Rebecca Cornell was at home with her family including 46-year-old Thomas, still dependent on mom's largesse but remained in her chamber at suppertime; while the others dined, she died and her body caught fire from the hearth. But the author, a Fordham University professor who's written several books on colonial history, doesn't stop there, and subsequent chapters about Rhode Island society of the time will be of most interest to scholars and local historians. Even those readers may question Crane's methods and intent as she resorts to anthropology, psychohistory and fashionable experimentation with "narratives" to try to fulfill a mission she never clearly articulates. In one bizarre aside, she turns to three 19th-century cases of violent death, each involving Cornell descendants (one, the infamous Lizzie Borden) to demonstrate... what? If Thomas's guilt were unassailable, arguing for violence as a family trait might be useful, but his guilt, despite his conviction, remains in doubt, with such evidence as the appearance of a ghost to the victim's brother and neighbors' gossip. Without clear answers to whodunit or why, perhaps the author's extensive research into "the society in which this grim episode played out" and her proven scholarly track record could have been put to better use.