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I was just watching on the YouTube “Brief Case” channel an account of the tragic Tennessee murder in 1892 of Freda Ward, just seventeen years old, by her one-time lesbian lover Alice Mitchell, who herself was only nineteen when she cut Freda’s throat in the street with her father’s razor. It was an infamous case at the time for obvious reasons.
It caught the attention of people back then because it was different, involving as it did two women in a same-sex relationship. This naturally raised a great many eyebrows in those days. However, what caught my attention was not that it was “different,” but quite the opposite: that it was the same as a number of murders back then.
Specifically, in Britain at least I recall looking through accounts of murders for which the perpetrators were hanged around the turn of the 20th century, and more than once the same type of murder seemed to crop up. A man was jilted by a woman (or possibly by a wife) and he cut her throat, sometimes in the street. The only thing different about Freda’s murder was that her obsessively jealous lover happened to be female.
I don’t know whether “cut-throat” murders of this kind were equally common in the United States back then. Anyway it does raise the matter of cultural differences in murder methods, which are a matter of place as well as of time. There do seem to be “fashions” in murder. For instance, we all know that guns have been more popular in the U.S. than in Britain, and gun murders have never been very common in Britain even in the days when there was no gun “control,” That’s a matter of “place.” As to matters of “time” and “fashion,” we don’t need reminding about the psycho nutjobs who have been increasingly responsible for mass shootings recently, a trend starting less than forty years ago and gathering speed since. (I exclude Charles Whitman in 1966, Howard Unruh in 1949 and so forth.) It’s a “fashion” we sure don’t need, and besides the loss of life, these wretched psychos are a threat to all of our rights to own and use guns responsibly.
However, the point I really want to make is about “trends” in murder. I’m only using gun murders as an example because there never used to be so many crazy mass shootings even when guns were more widespread and freely available. I recall for instance the shotgun rampage of Derrick Bird back in 2010--which interested me not least because I’ve driven that lovely road through Cumbria myself a couple of times, once with my wife, with one of the steepest hills in England on it--though Bird didn’t get that far before he stopped. Now any maniac with a shotgun could have done the same thing Bird did at any time in the last century or more. They just didn’t, that’s all. This deplorable “fashion” in mass murder seems to be a modern trend--with a certain amount of copycatting going on, and some nutjobs even seeking to outdo one another in body count.
Moving elsewhere, a friend of mine with a sister living in Trinidad told me that cutlasses were a popular weapon there! That takes us back to the age of “Pirates of the Caribbean”! Cultural differences again--whether or “place” or “time” is another question--but undoubtedly a cutlass is a deadly weapon.
However, going back to where I started, while “cut-throat” murders seemed to be commonplace a century and more ago, I just don’t seem to hear of any today. It’s as if throat-cutting went clean out of fashion. Are the days of Jack the Ripper really done? Not, I’m afraid, with those horrendous mutilations. I’m sure we’ll hear plenty more of those inflicted by future sickos. But as for throat-cutting as a method of murder, it seems to me to hve disappeared compared with a century and more ago.
It seems strange in a way, because throat-cutting has been such a standard method of murder down the ages, recalled in memories of brigands described as “cut-throats” and enshrined in phrases like “cut-throat competition.” But who cuts throats today? We hear of strangling, battering, shooting and stabbing, but seldom of cut throats.
A seemingly obvious reason might be the absence of the weapon to do the job with. Alice Mitchell borrowed her father’s razor to put a sad end to her girlfriend’s life, and I dare say what was called a “cut-throat razor” was an indispensable instrument in every male household a century and more ago. You can’t stab anyone with such a tool. You can only slice with it. Today by contrast, I don’t have such a thing in my house. It’s hard to kill anyone with a safety razor, no matter how many “Five-Trac” blades it has. As for an electric shaver, the worst we can do is beat someone over the head with it, which won’t do much more than leave them with a bad headache.
However, no-one needs a razor to cut anyone’s throat, when there are plenty of nasty sharp kitchen knives around to the job. So I’m reluctant to attribute the decline in cut-throat murders to changing trends in shaving equipment. My guess is something different. If we want a nice piece of steak or a pork pie today, most of us get it from the grocery store. We don’t do what many of our ancestors did back when a majority of us were occupied in agrarian activities: that is, slaughtering hogs and other animals in the farmyard. Most people no longer have the training in throat-cutting activities, any more than most of us know how to hitch a horse to a buggy. As a culture, we’ve “forgotten how to kill,” so to speak--by traditional methods at any rate.
If anyone has a better idea, I’ll be interested to hear it.
It caught the attention of people back then because it was different, involving as it did two women in a same-sex relationship. This naturally raised a great many eyebrows in those days. However, what caught my attention was not that it was “different,” but quite the opposite: that it was the same as a number of murders back then.
Specifically, in Britain at least I recall looking through accounts of murders for which the perpetrators were hanged around the turn of the 20th century, and more than once the same type of murder seemed to crop up. A man was jilted by a woman (or possibly by a wife) and he cut her throat, sometimes in the street. The only thing different about Freda’s murder was that her obsessively jealous lover happened to be female.
I don’t know whether “cut-throat” murders of this kind were equally common in the United States back then. Anyway it does raise the matter of cultural differences in murder methods, which are a matter of place as well as of time. There do seem to be “fashions” in murder. For instance, we all know that guns have been more popular in the U.S. than in Britain, and gun murders have never been very common in Britain even in the days when there was no gun “control,” That’s a matter of “place.” As to matters of “time” and “fashion,” we don’t need reminding about the psycho nutjobs who have been increasingly responsible for mass shootings recently, a trend starting less than forty years ago and gathering speed since. (I exclude Charles Whitman in 1966, Howard Unruh in 1949 and so forth.) It’s a “fashion” we sure don’t need, and besides the loss of life, these wretched psychos are a threat to all of our rights to own and use guns responsibly.
However, the point I really want to make is about “trends” in murder. I’m only using gun murders as an example because there never used to be so many crazy mass shootings even when guns were more widespread and freely available. I recall for instance the shotgun rampage of Derrick Bird back in 2010--which interested me not least because I’ve driven that lovely road through Cumbria myself a couple of times, once with my wife, with one of the steepest hills in England on it--though Bird didn’t get that far before he stopped. Now any maniac with a shotgun could have done the same thing Bird did at any time in the last century or more. They just didn’t, that’s all. This deplorable “fashion” in mass murder seems to be a modern trend--with a certain amount of copycatting going on, and some nutjobs even seeking to outdo one another in body count.
Moving elsewhere, a friend of mine with a sister living in Trinidad told me that cutlasses were a popular weapon there! That takes us back to the age of “Pirates of the Caribbean”! Cultural differences again--whether or “place” or “time” is another question--but undoubtedly a cutlass is a deadly weapon.
However, going back to where I started, while “cut-throat” murders seemed to be commonplace a century and more ago, I just don’t seem to hear of any today. It’s as if throat-cutting went clean out of fashion. Are the days of Jack the Ripper really done? Not, I’m afraid, with those horrendous mutilations. I’m sure we’ll hear plenty more of those inflicted by future sickos. But as for throat-cutting as a method of murder, it seems to me to hve disappeared compared with a century and more ago.
It seems strange in a way, because throat-cutting has been such a standard method of murder down the ages, recalled in memories of brigands described as “cut-throats” and enshrined in phrases like “cut-throat competition.” But who cuts throats today? We hear of strangling, battering, shooting and stabbing, but seldom of cut throats.
A seemingly obvious reason might be the absence of the weapon to do the job with. Alice Mitchell borrowed her father’s razor to put a sad end to her girlfriend’s life, and I dare say what was called a “cut-throat razor” was an indispensable instrument in every male household a century and more ago. You can’t stab anyone with such a tool. You can only slice with it. Today by contrast, I don’t have such a thing in my house. It’s hard to kill anyone with a safety razor, no matter how many “Five-Trac” blades it has. As for an electric shaver, the worst we can do is beat someone over the head with it, which won’t do much more than leave them with a bad headache.
However, no-one needs a razor to cut anyone’s throat, when there are plenty of nasty sharp kitchen knives around to the job. So I’m reluctant to attribute the decline in cut-throat murders to changing trends in shaving equipment. My guess is something different. If we want a nice piece of steak or a pork pie today, most of us get it from the grocery store. We don’t do what many of our ancestors did back when a majority of us were occupied in agrarian activities: that is, slaughtering hogs and other animals in the farmyard. Most people no longer have the training in throat-cutting activities, any more than most of us know how to hitch a horse to a buggy. As a culture, we’ve “forgotten how to kill,” so to speak--by traditional methods at any rate.
If anyone has a better idea, I’ll be interested to hear it.
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