indictment, and we fix her punish—”
The rest of the word was drowned out by Kitty’s scream. She clutched her arms and fell in on herself, as if she’d taken a blow to the stomach. McCarthy steadied her. The clerk, who’d looked up at the sound, returned to the piece of paper. “Fix her punishment at imprisonment in the penitentiary for the term of her natural life.”
“Expressions of surprise were heard all over the courtroom,” wrote the Post. It had finally happened: a conviction. Kitty screamed again, deeper, angry. She shook her head violently. When McCarthy and the bailiffs tried to calm her, she threw them off: “Keep away! I don’t want to see anybody.” The circuitry in her brain suddenly snapped. She dropped in a dead faint, hitting the floor as if she’d jumped from a third-floor window. Spectators in the crowded courtroom pushed forward, oblivious to Judge Steffen banging his gavel. Kitty lay rigid, lost in blackness. Despite repeated efforts, lawyers and guards couldn’t revive her. “While the confusion was at the height, deputy sheriffs lifted the woman from the floor and put her on a chair,” Forbes wrote. “Then they carried chair and all to the prisoner’s elevator and down to the ‘bridge’ of the jail.” They hefted her across the street. She woke in her cell, confused, trying to sort out what had happened.
“My God! What did they do?” she asked.
That was a good question. All of the women on Murderess’ Row had to be wondering exactly what that jury had done. Was everything different now because of Katherine Malm? Were juries now willing to convict women of murder, after years of refusing to do so? The state’s attorney’s office said yes: Murderous women would now—at last—pay the penalty in Cook County just as men did.
For prosecutors, however, building on this single verdict surely would be problematic. Yes, Kitty was a young white woman and she’d been convicted, but she wasn’t like so many of the women who’d been set free in recent years, especially the high-profile ones. Cora Orthwein had been a St. Louis society lady before divorce and booze caused her to “fall” from respectability and ultimately to shoot down her low-life boyfriend. Then there was Anna McGinnis, who’d been acquitted of knocking off her husband the previous summer. She was young and beautiful and had perfect manners. Times may have been changing, but the Victorian feminine ideal still loomed large in the typical juryman’s psyche. He couldn’t help but be disposed toward demure ladies with pretty figures and good pedigrees. Poor, uneducated girls like Kitty Malm, on the other hand, were a grave social danger. They were “physically and mentally contaminated,” insisted one of the first scholarly reports on female criminality, The Cause and Cure of Crime. The social activist Belle Moskowitz declared that “the girl whose temperament and disposition crave unnatural forms of excitement is nearly beyond the bounds of salvation. . . . She may affect the well being of others.”
That was Kitty in one pithy statement, and the newspapers knew it. For weeks she had stared at reporters through the jail’s bars, defiant, seemingly without comprehension. Her hair was amateurishly hacked short, arcing across the left side of her forehead like a scythe. When the reporters arrived each day for interviews, she approached the front of her cell slowly, indirectly, like a wary animal—every time the same way. To male reporters in particular, there was no denying that Kitty Malm was a lewd, diseased girl. She’d stare right into a man’s eyes, her face scrunched up as if she were working on a tough math problem. Her attitude and language were vulgar. Men looked at Kitty Malm and thought of the whores who walked North Clark Street after dark.
So had anything really changed? Two weeks after convicting Kitty, Assistant State’s Attorney Pritzker announced that Belva Gaertner was “as guilty as
The rest of the word was drowned out by Kitty’s scream. She clutched her arms and fell in on herself, as if she’d taken a blow to the stomach. McCarthy steadied her. The clerk, who’d looked up at the sound, returned to the piece of paper. “Fix her punishment at imprisonment in the penitentiary for the term of her natural life.”
“Expressions of surprise were heard all over the courtroom,” wrote the Post. It had finally happened: a conviction. Kitty screamed again, deeper, angry. She shook her head violently. When McCarthy and the bailiffs tried to calm her, she threw them off: “Keep away! I don’t want to see anybody.” The circuitry in her brain suddenly snapped. She dropped in a dead faint, hitting the floor as if she’d jumped from a third-floor window. Spectators in the crowded courtroom pushed forward, oblivious to Judge Steffen banging his gavel. Kitty lay rigid, lost in blackness. Despite repeated efforts, lawyers and guards couldn’t revive her. “While the confusion was at the height, deputy sheriffs lifted the woman from the floor and put her on a chair,” Forbes wrote. “Then they carried chair and all to the prisoner’s elevator and down to the ‘bridge’ of the jail.” They hefted her across the street. She woke in her cell, confused, trying to sort out what had happened.
“My God! What did they do?” she asked.
That was a good question. All of the women on Murderess’ Row had to be wondering exactly what that jury had done. Was everything different now because of Katherine Malm? Were juries now willing to convict women of murder, after years of refusing to do so? The state’s attorney’s office said yes: Murderous women would now—at last—pay the penalty in Cook County just as men did.
For prosecutors, however, building on this single verdict surely would be problematic. Yes, Kitty was a young white woman and she’d been convicted, but she wasn’t like so many of the women who’d been set free in recent years, especially the high-profile ones. Cora Orthwein had been a St. Louis society lady before divorce and booze caused her to “fall” from respectability and ultimately to shoot down her low-life boyfriend. Then there was Anna McGinnis, who’d been acquitted of knocking off her husband the previous summer. She was young and beautiful and had perfect manners. Times may have been changing, but the Victorian feminine ideal still loomed large in the typical juryman’s psyche. He couldn’t help but be disposed toward demure ladies with pretty figures and good pedigrees. Poor, uneducated girls like Kitty Malm, on the other hand, were a grave social danger. They were “physically and mentally contaminated,” insisted one of the first scholarly reports on female criminality, The Cause and Cure of Crime. The social activist Belle Moskowitz declared that “the girl whose temperament and disposition crave unnatural forms of excitement is nearly beyond the bounds of salvation. . . . She may affect the well being of others.”
That was Kitty in one pithy statement, and the newspapers knew it. For weeks she had stared at reporters through the jail’s bars, defiant, seemingly without comprehension. Her hair was amateurishly hacked short, arcing across the left side of her forehead like a scythe. When the reporters arrived each day for interviews, she approached the front of her cell slowly, indirectly, like a wary animal—every time the same way. To male reporters in particular, there was no denying that Kitty Malm was a lewd, diseased girl. She’d stare right into a man’s eyes, her face scrunched up as if she were working on a tough math problem. Her attitude and language were vulgar. Men looked at Kitty Malm and thought of the whores who walked North Clark Street after dark.
So had anything really changed? Two weeks after convicting Kitty, Assistant State’s Attorney Pritzker announced that Belva Gaertner was “as guilty as
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