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Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside
Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects:
Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class, black woman, and
George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her
arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the
crime and ensuing trial-which spanned several months-were featured
in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects
such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the black
community to public attention. At the same time, the mixed race of
the victim and one of his assailants exacerbated anxieties over the
purity of whiteness in the post-Reconstruction era. In Hannah Mary
Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso, historian Kali Nicole Gross uses
detectives' notes, trial and prison records, local newspapers, and
other archival documents to reconstruct this ghastly whodunit crime
in all its scandalous detail. In doing so, she gives the crime
context by analyzing it against broader evidence of police
treatment of black suspects and violence within the black
community. A fascinating work of historical recreation, Hannah Mary
Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso is sure to captivate anyone
interested in true crime, adulterous love triangles gone wrong, and
the racially volatile world of post-Reconstruction Philadelphia.
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