January 30, 1926
Other stories convey the end of lives with even fewer words. On January 30, 1932, the Defender reported on Alice Morton, who drank Lysol to escape “domestic trouble.”
The same day the paper included a “Woman Kills Man” story from New Orleans that ran just over a dozen words: “Henry Jones was stabbed fatally Monday when he engaged in an altercation with Eloise Robertson.”
What did readers make of these stories? Some likely found these stories of murderous women intriguing, but I suspect that many readers, too many readers, could recognize the everyday acts of violence that preceded these news stories.