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A review by simlish
Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America by Kali Nicole Gross
3.0
Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso is a historical true crime story about the discovery of torso in a pond near Philadelphia in 1887 and the way that race and sex were peculiarly visible around it. The torso was of indistinguishable race, which caused the case to hit headlines in a way it wouldn't have, if the victim had been visibly black from the start. Hannah Mary Tabbs, the main suspect, accused her lover, the light skinned and white-passing George Wilson of the murder.
Kali Nicole Gross did a wonderful job of walking the reader through the crime, deliberately presenting evidence in the order that it was discovered. She occasionally widened her scope to the way that the crime and prosecution reflected the interactions of race and sex in 1887 Philadelphia. The most interesting of those wider looks was the response of the police to finding visibly black body parts during the trial period. There were multiple! Including a head! And none of them got the response that the torso garnered, with no follow up whatsoever on the part of the police. That really made Gross's point very strongly.
It was a little dry and very well footnoted -- more than 60 citations in most chapters! be still my beating heart! -- and not at all as tawdry or tabloid-y as one might expect from the title. The one thing I found a little perplexing was that Gross talked regularly about Hannah Mary Tabbs using violence to control people in a wide way, but all of her examples were of family/lovers, which is obviously still bad, but was also less wide ranging than Gross led me to expect?
The trial was by far the most interesting part of the book to me, and I think it was the most interesting part to Gross, as well. During the trial, George Wilson was viewed with great suspicion because of his ability to pass for white. He had much less evidence against him than Tabbs did, and yet he was the main target of the prosecution, and ended up sentenced to 14 years, as opposed to Tabbs' one. Tabbs managed to act in ways that Gross points out as generally reserved for white women.
I would have enjoyed it if it was longer, and had yet more cultural stuff in there -- it was a fairly narrowly focused book.
Kali Nicole Gross did a wonderful job of walking the reader through the crime, deliberately presenting evidence in the order that it was discovered. She occasionally widened her scope to the way that the crime and prosecution reflected the interactions of race and sex in 1887 Philadelphia. The most interesting of those wider looks was the response of the police to finding visibly black body parts during the trial period. There were multiple! Including a head! And none of them got the response that the torso garnered, with no follow up whatsoever on the part of the police. That really made Gross's point very strongly.
It was a little dry and very well footnoted -- more than 60 citations in most chapters! be still my beating heart! -- and not at all as tawdry or tabloid-y as one might expect from the title. The one thing I found a little perplexing was that Gross talked regularly about Hannah Mary Tabbs using violence to control people in a wide way, but all of her examples were of family/lovers, which is obviously still bad, but was also less wide ranging than Gross led me to expect?
The trial was by far the most interesting part of the book to me, and I think it was the most interesting part to Gross, as well. During the trial, George Wilson was viewed with great suspicion because of his ability to pass for white. He had much less evidence against him than Tabbs did, and yet he was the main target of the prosecution, and ended up sentenced to 14 years, as opposed to Tabbs' one. Tabbs managed to act in ways that Gross points out as generally reserved for white women.
I would have enjoyed it if it was longer, and had yet more cultural stuff in there -- it was a fairly narrowly focused book.