Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

History

Major Professor

Lynn Sacco

Abstract

In September of 1899 Julia "Morrison" James shot and killed Frank Leiden on the stage of the Chattanooga Opera House in Tennessee. The two were the leading actors in the play entitled "Mr. Plaster of Paris." The court charged Morrison with first-degree murder and held her in the city jail through the end of her trial in January of 1900. Public support was overwhelmingly behind the female murderer until the end of the trial. The jury found Morrison not guilty of the murder of Leiden on the grounds of temporary insanity. Immediately after the jury announced her acquittal Morrison began announcing plans to give a lecture entitled "The Other Side of Stage Life" and thanking all those who played a role in her just verdict. Chattanoogans and other southerners held Morrison up as a lady and representative of "ladyhood" from the moment she murdered Leiden through the delivery of the verdict. It was assumed that as a lady in the South she would be found not guilty. Southerners did not consider her behavior after the verdict appropriate for a lady, and public opinion began to turn against her, the verdict, and Chattanoogans. Morrison caused southerners as members of the "New South" to reevaluate what qualities constituted a lady, making her a liminal figure in the South's conceptualization of ladyhood. The change represented in Morrison's case is also found in comparing her case to that of two other murderesses in Tennessee in 1893 and 1913. The 1893 trial ended with a verdict of not guilty due to incurable insanity, and the 1913 trial ended with a guilty verdict. Together these three cases demonstrate the transition present in Morrison's case in the span of three decades at the turn of the twentieth century.

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