Parricide! A murder close to home
In 1873, 19-year-old Frank Walworth shot his violent father Mansfield dead in a Manhattan hotel. This was no murder mystery: the youth claimed he had acted chivalrously to save his mother, Ellen, from his father's vicious, homicidal threats.
The Walworths of Saratoga Springs, New York, were a family more accustomed to setting moral standards than to facing moral judgment—they might have commanded respect in 19th century America, but they could do little to stem the interest of the press and the public in the domestic tragedy. The murder struck at fundamental social hierarchies. Were sons bound to respect their fathers, no matter how monstrous? Was violence the only effective means to protect women and children from abuse?
Domestic violence is a recently coined term that describes a problem with historic roots. Nineteenth century feminists petitioned successfully for women’s right to divorce, but legal remedies do not guarantee safe outcomes, as Ellen Walworth and her son—and Mansfield Walworth—discovered. This family drama was hidden, exposed, reburied, and reinterpreted as the cast of actors and interpreters changed over the past century. The Walworth murder reminds us that respectability is no safeguard against violence between intimates. And it also confirms that murder stories, once told, take on a life of their own.
Criminal justice historian Carolyn Strange traces how a 19th century story of male violence has transformed into today’s tale of remarkable female resilience.
- Image: Artist's sketch of the murder scene in the Sturtevant Hotel on Broadway Ave., Manhattan. (Anon, The Walworth Parricide! A full Account of the Astounding Murder of Mansfield T. Walworth, by his son, Frank H. Walworth, with the trial and conviction of The Parricide, and His Sentence for Life to the State Penitentiary at Sing Sing (Thomas Kane: New York, 1873))
- Image: Ellen Hardin Walworth (1832-1915), newly wed in 1852. (courtesy of the Walworth Memorial Museum, Saratoga)
- Image: Frank Hardin Walworth (1853-1886), c. 1873. He was studying law at the time of the murder. (courtesy of the Walworth Memorial Museum, Saratoga)
- Image: Transcription of a threatening letter, written by Mansfield Walworth to Ellen Walworth on 30 July 1871, shortly after their divorce. (State Archives of New York, A0597-78, Box 10, folder 35)
- Image: The case became front-page news in the nation's leading newspapers. 'The Walworth Murder', Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 21 June 1873
- Image: As the trial opened newspapers primed the public for the story behind the family 'tragedy'. (New York Evening Telegram, 25 June 1873)
- Image: Ellen Walworth, in widow's garb, testified about the abuse she had suffered and its effects on her son. ('The Walworth Murder', Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 21 June 1873 )
Even after receiving his life sentence for murder, Frank Walworth maintained a detached demeanour.
(Saratoga County Standard, 5 July 1873 )
- Image: Reporters earned extra money by writing pamphlets on high-profile murder cases. (Anon, The Walworth Parricide! A full Account of the Astounding Murder of Mansfield T. Walworth, by his son, Frank H. Walworth, with the trial and conviction of The Parricide, and His Sentence for Life to the State Penitentiary at Sing Sing (Thomas Kane: New York, 1873))
- Image: After Frank Walworth's imprisonment medical inspectors confirmed he suffered from epilepsy (then considered a form of insanity). (State Archives of New York, A0597-78, Box 10, folder 34))
- Image: Ellen Walworth petitioned three governors before Lucius Robinson agreed to pardon her son. (New York Tribune, 2 August 1877.)
- Image: Ellen Walworth, co-founder of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, c. 1895. (courtesy of the Walworth Memorial Museum, Saratoga)
The piano music selected for this program was composed by Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), who frequently made Saratoga his summer home. He performed at Walworth's homestead in 1853.
Research for this program was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC).
- Geoffrey O'Brien
- Editor-in-chief, Library of America
- Professor Emeritus Natalie Zemon Davis
- Princeton University
- Professor Charles E. Rosenberg
- The History of Science and Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences, Harvard University
- Professor Timothy Gilfoyle
- Department of History, Loyola University
- The Fall of the House of Walworth
- Geoffrey O'Brien
- Henry Holt, 2010
- The Unwritten Law of Executive Justice: Pardoning Patricide in Reconstruction-era New York
- Carolyn Strange
- Law and History Review, 28 4(November 2010): 891-930
- Domestic tyranny: The making of American social policy against family violence from colonial times to the present
- Elizabeth Pleck
- University of Illinois Press, 2004
- Governing the Hearth: Law and family in nineteenth-century America
- Michael Grossberg
- University of North Carolina Press, 1985
- Man and Wife in America: A History
- Hendrik Hartog
- Harvard University Press, 2000
- Murder in New York City
- Eric H. Monkkonen
- University of California Press, 2000
- Carolyn Strange
- Carolyn Strange
- Sound Engineer
- Phillip McKellar
- Supervising Producer
- Michelle Rayner