Lizzie Borden - Forty Whacks

In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered by a psychopath with a hatchet.  Andrew was a fairly well to do man, worth $8 million in today's cash.  However, that didn't keep him from living his life rather frugally, living in a modes two story house, with no indoor plumbing, in a fairly average neighborhood.  Abby was Andrew's second wife, and with them lived Andrew's two spinster daughters from his first marriage, Emma age 41 and Lizzie age 32, plus a live in maid.  The Borden household was not a happy one.  Both Emma and Lizzie were convinced that Abby was a gold digging bitch who was just after their father's money, and Abby thought the two girls should go out and find husbands, or at the very least, do something besides sit around and wait for their father to die.  Of the two daughters, Lizzie was the most incensed over the whole thing, especially when Andrew started giving property to Abby's relatives, and then gave Abby some of this first wife's jewelry.  But perhaps what really threw her over the edge was when Andrew killed all the pigeons in the barn with a hatchet, pigeons Lizzie had been treating as pets.

The investigation was of course fucked up from the get go.  Lizzie claimed to have discovered the bodies, but upon the police arriving she changed her story several times until settling on she had been in the hayloft in the barn for over half an hour, despite the stifling heat, either searching for fishing line weights or eating pears.  The police did a cursory search of the house, uncovering a freshly cleaned hatchet with a broken off handle, but decided it probably wasn't that important.  They then, in an act of stupid gallantry, agreed to come back later since Lizzie was feeling unwell, leaving all of the evidence at the house.  The overly chivalrous police returned two days later to find a suspiciously calm and well poised Lizzie ready to answer all of their questions.  They also found a bucket of bloody rags in the basement, which none of them would get near because Lizzie claimed they were menstrual rags (tampons having not been invented yet), and a half burned dress in the stove, which Lizzie claimed she had burned because it got paint on it, as one does. The police, seeing nothing weird about any of this, went back on their merry way.  Who knows what finally convinced them Lizzie might be a suspect, perhaps it was the local druggist telling them that Lizzie had tried to buy poison a few days before the murder, but they finally arrested her a week after the deed was done.

The trial was one of the first sensational trials of the century, watched by the entire nation, which is unfortunate given it made Massachusetts look like a state full of idiots.  The judge, a stickler for obtuse rules, refused to let half of the evidence be seen; the police, under oath, admitted they were bungling idiots; and the prosecutor, aside from being a plain old nut, was a man prone to fits of rage and grandiose gestures.  It probably didn't help any that the judge had been appointed to his position by one of Lizzie's attorneys, who had formerly been the governor.  It definitely didn't help that the prosecutor thought it would a good idea to display Andrew and Abby's severed heads (the actual heads, not photographs), as evidence.  Lizzie fainting did little to help his case.  The jury, long on fancy mustaches and beards, but short on common sense, declared Lizzie not guilty after only 90 minutes of deliberation.

Most people acquitted of murder would leave town afterwards, especially if everyone in town thought they did it.  Not Lizzie.  She took her father's millions and bought a big house in the nicest part of town and then started throwing parties attended by famous actresses.  She also changed her named to Lizbeth, because when you’re rich you can call yourself whatever the hell you want.  The case to this day remains officially unsolved, though theories abound.  The two best ones are that the maid did it, because Andrew forced her to wash windows when she was feeling unwell, and that Lizzie did it because she was caught in a lesbian tryst with the maid.  This last one seems somewhat doubtful given that Lizzie, unable to remember the maid's name, just called her Maggie (her name was Brigid).  The Borden house is now a murder themed bed and breakfast, so I guess there's that.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lizzie_Borden_1890.jpg

Matthew Hensen - The Ice Man Cometh

In 1909 explorer Robert Peary, using nothing but his amazing mustache, became the first man to reach the North Pole, earning him numerous accolades and a permanent place in the history books.  Of course, it was all bullshit.  The one that should’ve been talked about was Matt.

Matt did not have good luck when it came to family.  Born to a family of sharecroppers at the end of the Civil War his mother died when he was two.  His father, seeking better opportunities, moved the family to Washington DC.  However, instead of finding opportunities, Matt's father also died.  Matt was then passed on to an uncle who paid for him to get some education, but of course the uncle soon died as well.  Out of living family members, Matt worked as a dishwasher until he was 11, at which point he decided dish washing was bullshit, walked his ass to Baltimore, and became a cabin boy on an ocean freighter.  The captain of the ship took a shine to young Matt, and took it upon himself to further educate him as they traveled around the world for the next seven years, at which point the captain died and Matt found himself out of work again.

Back in Washington DC, Matt found himself work at a hat shop.  It was at this point that he met Peary who, ordered to lead an expedition to Nicaragua to map a possible route for a canal, was in the market for a sun hat.  Peary, impressed with Matt's seamanship, offered him a job.  Matt, not really into the whole hat selling gig, accepted.  Peary found Matt to be most helpful in Nicaragua, leading him to look for the young man again in 1892 when he was planning an expedition to Greenland.  Peary offered Matt a place as his right hand man.  Matt, now a married man, apparently couldn't recognize Peary as a certifiable crazy person, and accepted without consulting his wife.  The two men left soon after for Greenland, but the expedition hit a bit of a snag when Peary broke his leg only a few days after arriving.  While Peary recuperated, Matt did some exploring, made friends with the Inuit, and learned their language.  Peary mostly sat on his ass and wrote wild claims of his discoveries in his journal.  After two years in the Arctic, Matt returned home to find an understandably upset wife who wanted a divorce.

The two men returned to Greenland in 1896 and 1898 where, thanks to Matt's work with the Inuit, they perfected their Arctic survival skills by basically doing whatever the Inuit did, an idea that had not been considered by previous explorers.  Peary, never one to worry about who deserves credit for what, called the techniques they developed the Peary System.  The Peary System mostly involved having Matt and their Inuit guides do all the work, laying supply caches for later use, and eating sled dogs.  With the "Peary System" perfected, Peary decided it was time to start pushing for the North Pole.  Despite funding from the U.S. government, which for some reason thought reaching the North Pole was a good use of tax dollars, expeditions in 1902 and 1905 both failed.  It was at this time that Peary and Matt, despite Peary being married and both being in their forties, married Inuit women, by which I mean fourteen year old girls, who pumped out a couple of children, which the two men then subsequently abandoned when they went home.

In 1909, Matt and Peary, in their final expedition, managed to reach the North Pole.  The prior sentence should actually read Matt and four Inuit guides managed to reach the North Pole, because at that point Peary had lost eight of his toes to frost bite and was unable to walk, making him pretty much luggage in the sled, something that he seemingly forgot to include in his journal.  It being the very racist early twentieth century, Peary returned home to a hero’s welcome, while Matt was rewarded with a nice dinner at a so-so restaurant.  The four Inuit guides meanwhile went back to their lives of desperately trying not to freeze to death.  Peary lived out the remainder of his life living on a generous government pension and defending himself against claims he had lied and never actually reached the North Pole.  Matt lived out the remainder of his life working a low level position at a Customs House until he died at the age of 89.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Henson#/media/File:Matthew_Henson_1910.jpg

Pearl Hart - Gangsta As Shit

Technically Pearl was born in Canada, but why let that little technicality get in the way of a good story?  At the age of 16, Pearl, a well educated and comely young woman, fell in love with a drunken gambler named Frank Hart and married him in secret.  Amazingly enough things did not turn out well given that the only thing Frank enjoyed more than gambling was beating his new wife.  Pearl left Frank for a time, but being stupid, as one often is at 16, she soon after went back to him.  This cycle perpetuated itself repeatedly for the next six years, during which time, Pearl had two children, both of which were sent to live with her mother.  Frank, being a violent alcoholic, often had trouble finding work, so the duo spent a lot of time on the road.  Things changed in 1893 when the couple went to the Chicago World's Fair, where Frank got a job as a midway barker.  Pearl went to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, became enamored with cowboys, and ran away with a piano player, appropriately named Dan Bandman.

Pearl and her new beau took a train to Colorado and then slowly worked their way south to Arizona.  This being the time before radios, it was not hard for a good piano player to find work.  Unfortunately, Bandman was not what one would consider a good piano player.  Pearl ended up trying to supplement their income, first by singing accompaniment to Bandman's patent abuse of the ivories, which did little to improve the overall quality of the music, then second by working as a cook, which might have worked out better if she actually knew how to cook.  Broke and desperate, Bandman, an entrepreneur, used the only asset he had on hand to make a living, Pearl's 22 year old body.  While some might call this prostitution, Bandman preferred to call Pearl a demimondaine, which is a fancy French term for prostitute.  This less than equitable arrangement went on for five years, during which for some reason Pearl developed a fondness for cigars, liquor, and morphine.  In 1898, Bandman left to fight in the Spanish-American War.  Pearl told him she hoped the Spanish killed him.  With no other skills to make a living, Pearl set up a tent brothel outside a local mine, which went okay until the mine closed.

In need of money, Pearl convinced one of her former customers, Joe Boot, to help her rob a stagecoach, an interesting move given that this was 1899, but let’s face it, none of Pearl's other decisions had been that great.  The robbery, which took place in the Arizona desert and involved Pearl dressed in men's clothing, was a great success, netting the pair what amounted to $12,000 in today's money.  Unfortunately, Pearl and Joe then got lost in the desert and were arrested not long after.  The news of a female stagecoach robber sparked a media frenzy and Pearl soon found herself a celebrity, conducting numerous interviews for local and national newspapers.  While Joe sat in a prison cell, Pearl was just locked in a normal room and even got to keep a bobcat cub as a pet.  Taking advantage of her captors’ sexist underestimation, Pearl escaped by simply kicking a hole in the wall, but was recaptured two weeks later.  During the trial, Pearl claimed she was only trying to raise money to get back to her sick mother.  The jury soon after declared her innocent.  A little pissed off at this turn of events, the authorities brought new charges of mail tampering against her, which the jury apparently took more seriously.  Pearl declared she would recognize no law that treated her like a second hand citizen.  The jury declared her guilty and sentenced her to five years in prison.  Joe got thirty.

Pearl served her sentence in Yuma, where she was the only woman in the prison, a fact she used to her advantage by trading certain favors with the guards and warden to improve her situation.  Pearl enjoyed an oversized cell with a good view and its own yard.  She was also allowed to entertain reporters and other guests and pose for photographs.  Even with all of these amenities Pearl did not enjoy prison.  She first tried to get early release by claiming she was needed to star in a play in Kansas City about her life.  When that didn't work, she changed her tune and claimed she was pregnant.  Wishing to avoid a scandal the governor pardoned Pearl in 1902 and provided her with a train ticket to Kansas City.  Pearl's life after her release faded into the unknown.  She did star in a short lived play about her life, using the proceeds to purchase a cigar store.  After that she just kind of disappeared, though many claim she lived into the 1950's.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PearlHart.jpg