Badger State Banner: Anna Morris/Frank Blunt and Gertrude Field, January 18, 1894
Field "fell upon the neck of the prisoner and wept for half an hour"
by Jonathan Ned Katz. Copyright (c) by Jonathan Ned Katz. All rights protected.
- The Badger State Banner, published in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, carried the following news on January 18, 1894:
ANNA MORRIS GIVEN ONE YEAR
Anna Morris, alias Frank Blunt, the woman who has tried to be a man for the last fifteen years, was sentenced to the penitentiary for one year by Judge Gilson at Fond du Lac. She was arrested several months ago in Milwaukee charged with stealing $175 in Fond du Lac. It was then discovered that the prisoner was a woman, although she had worn masculine attire nearly all her life. A jury convicted her of larceny and a motion for a new trial was overruled. After the sentence had been passed Gertrude Field, a woman who claimed to have married the prisoner in Eau Claire, fell upon the neck of the prisoner and wept for half an hour. This woman has furnished all the money for Blunt's defense, and now proposes to carry the case to the Supreme Court.[1]
Editor's Note: The next part of this entry is Open. Research Request: It would be interesting to know if legal or other records provide evidence of what happened next in the lives of Anna Morris/Frank Blunt and Gertrude Field.
Bibliography:=
Primary Sources:
Secondary Sources
Katz, Jonathan Ned.
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References
- ↑ "Anna Morris Given One Year," Badger State Banner (Black River Falls, Wis.), Jan. 18, IB94, p. 3, col. 6. I wish to thank the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for a copy of this document. This document is quoted in part by Michael Lesy in Wisconsin Death Trip (N.Y.: Pantheon, 1973), no pagination.