1 case tagged “antebellum crime”
Convicted: Lavinia Fisher
Her last words were an invitation: 'If you have a message you want to send to hell, give it to me. I'll carry it.' Then, according to those who witnessed it, Lavinia Fisher jumped from the scaffold herself rather than wait for the hangman's hand. The year was 1820. The crowd numbered roughly 2,000. And the woman swinging from the gallows outside Charleston's Old City Jail had never been convicted of murder. Not a single count of it. History remembers Lavinia Fisher as America's first female serial killer, a poisoner and innkeeper who disposed of hundreds of travelers in the South Carolina backcountry. The problem is that almost none of that is true. What is true is stranger, in some ways more troubling, and far more human: a charismatic, defiant woman who terrorized a government watchman, possibly ran with an organized outlaw gang, and went to her death cursing the city that condemned her. The legend swallowed the real story whole. It's long past time to dig it back out.
