"I Loved Joe, but I Had to Shoot Him": Homicide by Women in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago

Abstract

gender roles has produced "an increase in male-like criminality." 6 Charting a "rising tide of female assertiveness," one criminologist has described a "'masculinization' of female behavior," specifically with regard to criminality. 7 As gender roles have changed, this argument posits, differences in men's and women's criminal behavior have narrowed. Cultural and social conventions about women's "proper" roles were in flux during Maclay Hoyne's lifetime. 8 As Chicago became a major urban and industrial center, economic opportunities for women burgeoned: hundreds of thousands of women entered the city's factories and shops, tens of thousands entered the growing clerical sector of the local economy, and a small but enormously influential group of Chicago women entered the professions. 9 Both locally and nationally, women enjoyed unprecedented social, economic, and cultural influence, helping to challenge long-standing assumptions about patriarchy and "natural" spheres. For example, women gained greater property rights, greater power to dissolve marriages, and greater claims to maintain custody of their children during this period.

Filicide–Suicide in Chicago, 1870-1930

“…Shackelford et al (2005) investigated the contexts and circumstances of filicide-suicide in Chicago for homicides committed during the years 1965-1994. With very few exceptions, the current research generated qualitatively similar findings for Chicago filicides committed nearly a century earlier (see also Adler, 2003, for a brief, qualitative discussion of several cases of maternal filicides in turn-of-the-century Chicago). Although separated in time by two World Wars, the advent of television, and substantial legal, social, and economic reforms, Chicago filicide-suicides occur today in some of the same contexts and circumstances as they did in the late 1800s and early 1900s.…”

“…Where possible, we distinguish between the findings for filicide-suicide by genetic parents and filicide-suicide by stepparents, given the key relevance of genetic relatedness to filicides documented by many researchers, notably Daly and Wilson (e.g., Daly & Wilson, 1988, 1998. Adler (2003; see also Daly & Wilson, 1988) offered an additional motive for maternal filicide-suicide: Mothers who are committed to killing themselves might kill their children because they feel it is cruel to leave their children motherless. This is an intriguing speculation that we are not able to empirically assess using the archival data that are the focus of the current research.…”

Wife Murder in Chicago: 1910-1930

“…First, this appears to be a male phenomenon; women rarely kill themselves after killing a spouse.202 Indeed, as Jeffrey Adler's article in this symposium suggests, women are likely to have killed to defend themselves after a long history of abuse and frequently express relief rather than remorse after the killing. 203 Adler attributes the high rate of murdersuicides among male German spouse-killers in late-nineteenth century Chicago to a combination of economic circumstances, cultural backgrounds, and family circumstances particular to that immigrant group in the changing Chicago economy and society of that period.204 But this theory cannot explain the similarly high rates of murder-suicide in the much more diverse group of husbands in our database, which took place decades later, or in the other, more recent studies discussed above. Many of the husbands who committed suicide after a wife murder in our database had Polish, Southern or Eastern European surnames.205 Italian and Irish husbands are also well represented in this group.…”

The Representation of Females in Criminological Research

“…Knowledge also has been enhanced by a growing literature focused specifically on female offenders and female victimization (e.g., ChesneyLind, 1997;Ritchie, 1996;Sommers, 1995), as well as on the behavior and treatment of women and girls who enter the criminal justice system (e.g., Dodge, 2002;Ptacek, 1999; see Belknap, 2001;Clear & Cole, 2003). Although much of this work appears in full-length manuscripts and in such specialty journals as Violence Against Women and Women & Criminal Justice, studies on and about females are beginning to appear with some regularity in mainstream criminology and sociology journals (e.g., Adler, 2002;Benson, Fox, DeMaris, & Van Wyk, 2003;Gaardner & Belknap, 2002;Kruttschnitt, Gartner, & Miller, 2000;Maxwell & Maxwell, 2000;Siegel & Williams, 2003;Koons-Witt & Schram, 2003), as are more comparative studies (e.g., Bottcher, 2001;KempfLeonard & Sample, 2000;Marvell & Moody, 1999;St. Cyr & Decker, 2003;Steffensmeier & Haynie, 2000;D'Unger, Land, & McCall, 2002).…”