Murder in the Name of Love: Alice & Freda Part 1
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Hey strangers, this episode originally aired on June 16th, 2022. Enjoy. How far would you go to be with the object of your affection? In a world where all the stars were aligned against you, when your family and even society said you weren't allowed to love or be loved the way you wanted to, what measures would you take? What would you do for love?

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I'm a writer and an actor and a proud queer non-binary femme who is so excited to be celebrating Pride this month with a queer love and death story of unparalleled dynamism. It's not a happy one, nothing rainbow about it really, and that's kind of why we're exploring it.

Crazy things can happen to all kinds of people in all kinds of relationships. But the way the world takes gay stories throughout history and spins them into fodder for bigotry is something to look more closely at. This week and next, I'll tell you a truly epic tale of love and murder that took the nation by storm.

A quick note before we begin. This episode highlights a pretty abusive relationship, so if that's a hard topic for you, please take care. On January 26, 1892, the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline, A Most Shocking Crime! Memphis Society Girl Cuts a Former Friend's Throat! Alice Mitchell, Daughter of a Wealthy Retired Merchant, Jumps from a Carriage, Sees His Freed Award, and Kills Her!

The story that unfurled from that sensational headline was something out of a late 19th century thriller. 19-year-old Alice Mitchell, riding in a carriage driven by her friend Lillian Johnson, spotted 17-year-old Frida Ward and jumped from the carriage. Alice approached Frida, slashed her throat, and jumped back into the carriage, exclaiming, Drive on, I've done it.

Frida died before authorities could get her to a doctor, and Alice was arrested later that day at her home. This horrific scene didn't take place on the mean streets of New York City, but rather in Memphis, Tennessee. It may seem odd that such a story would run on the front page of such a prestigious newspaper, but it wasn't just the New York Times. The story quickly grabbed the entire nation's attention and was covered heavily by all the major papers of note.

The Times article stated, "It is alleged that Ms. Ward had made remarks of an uncomplimentary nature regarding Ms. Mitchell, and this is supposed to have been the cause of the tragedy." Was this what everyone across the nation was so taken by? A schoolgirl squabble over some rude words?

Just two paragraphs after citing hurt feelings over an insult, the article went on, quote,

End quote.

Now, no offense to the editor at the Times in 1892, but any editor worth their salt should have read that piece and said, which was it? Hard feelings over insulting words? Or the death pact of two young lovers, who both happened to be women, one of whom was demented?

And here's the thing. This one article will serve as a template for how this story was framed and how Alice was portrayed in the media and in popular opinion. Despite her own confession and explanation, most people could not accept that what Alice said about herself and her own experience was true.

Either that, or they had to find a way to make her experience fit into their own worldview, insisting that the only thing that could justify one woman loving another so much it drove her to murder was that she was insane. But was it that Alice was actually insane, or was she driven to insanity by a culture that wouldn't let her be who she was? Let's rewind a bit and try to figure it out.

Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward were born two years apart in 1872 and 74 in Memphis, Tennessee. By all accounts, Alice was serious. She liked sports and preferred the company of other girls, while Freda was more carefree, flirting with boys and dreaming of one day becoming an actress. Both upper-middle-class girls, they met at the Higbee School for Girls and formed an extremely tight bond.

In a 1993 article for the Journal of the History of Sexuality, author Lisa J. Lindquist wrote that it was not uncommon for Victorian-era girls to, quote, sleep together and profess their love for each other in letters and diary entries. And TBH, at first I assumed she meant sleep together as in sleep in the same bed, not like sleep together, sleep together. But in the very next paragraph, she writes...

Side note, what does that say about women's love for men at the time?

So, uh, I guess it was just a common everyday thing that female friends would hook up and everyone was just like, huh, girls will be girls. In fact, there was even a term for it. Two young women carrying on like a pair of lovers were said to be chumming. Whatever makes you comfortable, Jim.

You can bet boys were not afforded the same freedom. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that female "friends" don't have lots of sex these days, too. We just no longer chalk it up to "rehearsal." At least those of us with half a brain don't. These kinds of friendships were so common that Frida's older sister Josie had a similar one with a girlfriend of hers as well.

It's worth noting that Frida went by the nickname Fred and Josie went by Jo. And you know if this were a Louisa May Alcott book, the two women named Jo and Fred would be the pants-wearing, baseball-playing, I-ain't-never-marrying-no-fella type of gals. You know what I mean? Of course, they would inevitably end up properly tamed by the right fella and make proper women of themselves.

Incidentally, I wonder if Alcott's first draft of Little Women didn't end up with Joe getting married. Hubbub, hubbub, hubbub, hubbub. Come now, I can't sell a book with a female character who chooses not to marry. I would have bought that book, I'll tell you what. As it is, Joe Marsh's marriage to What's-His-Face always felt like a betrayal. Anyway, back to the nonfiction girls who were definitely just friends who made out all over the place.

It does seem like anyone paying attention should have known that Alice and Frida weren't just rehearsing, but were about as hot for each other as two red-blooded teenagers can possibly be. By most accounts, they were sort of all over each other all the time.

And then, in 1890, when Frida was 16, she moved with her family to Gold Dust, Tennessee, about 80 miles up the river from Memphis. Alice was devastated by the move, but the two sent regular letters filled with declarations of their love and fidelity. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the letters between the girls have been lost to time, and the only ones that survived are from after the relationship began to deteriorate.

There is one, though, from Alice to Frida that ends this way. "I have a rose for you. If it is not withered by the next time I see you, I will give it to you. I have been trying to get one for a long time. It beats all other roses. Goodbye." Alice first visited the wards for three weeks the summer that they moved, once again apparently spending the entire time physically entwined with Frida.

In February of 1891, Alice, now 18 or 19, sent a letter to Frida asking her to marry her. Frida's answer was yes. Alice asked her two more times over two subsequent letters. Frida said yes to each proposal. Despite having her proposal accepted three whole times in the span of a couple months, in June of 1891, Alice wrote to say that she expected Frida to stick to her word and if she didn't, she would, wait for it, kill her.

And look, it's impossible to know how Frida truly felt. She was only 17 at this point, and sure, she and Alice had been special friends for a few years, but young people's minds change in the blink of an eye. And 80 miles is a long distance to sustain a young heart in love, especially without the benefit of phones or FaceTime. Indeed, Frida admitted to Alice that she was dating two other people, both men.

And this wasn't the first time Alice had threatened violence. In fact, once when Frida was visiting Alice in Memphis where they shared a bed, she woke up to find Alice holding a bottle of laudanum that she was trying to figure out how to get into Frida's system. Instead, the next day when they were saying goodbye, Alice declared, "'Marry whoever you want,' and she downed the bottle herself."

It's a safe bet that Frida probably felt pretty trapped by the woman who was clearly not going to let her go without a serious fight. In June of that same year, 1891, Alice visited Frida again, this time with an engagement ring, which Frida accepted. But, of course, it was nowhere near legal for two women to marry, so the plan was for Alice to assume a new identity as a man named Alvin J. Ward—

They would elope and then run away together. Alice would live as Alvin, Frida as her wife, Mrs. A.J. Ward. Alice offered to grow a mustache if Frida wanted her to. Apparently, she planned on doing this simply by shaving, thus encouraging the hair to grow. Hey, if it works on legs, why not the top lip? And I think if you ask any transmasculine folks, they'll break the news to you that that is, unfortunately, not how facial hair works.

Also, to be clear, no one really knows where on the spectrum Alice's identity fell. Anyway, the point is, Alice's love for Frida was so intense, she was willing to change her appearance and life in order to be with her. But, as we all know, just because a love is intense doesn't mean it's healthy. And the lengths Alice went would intensify into what can only be described as abuse.

At this juncture in our story, I think it's worth taking a little detour down the back alleys of Victorian-era gender and sexuality to get a better picture of the world these two women were living in and the expectations that sat squarely and heavily on their shoulders at all times.

It should go without saying that though LGBTQIA+ people and gender non-conforming and non-binary people have always existed throughout the entirety of humankind, these were concepts that were not just frowned upon but largely pathologized and illegal in Western culture for most of our illustrious history. One of the fantastic and not at all oppressive results of this thinking was a society that was extremely segmented by gender.

As author Lisa J. Lindquist put it, And if you think I just threw up a little in my mouth reading that, you're right.

Lindquist continues,

As exceptionally pious, virtuous, and moral creatures, women were uniquely suited to instill proper values in their children. But the ideology of separate spheres posited fundamental differences between men and women that went beyond moral values and sexual appetites. Men were rational. Women were emotional. Men were base. Women were pure. Men were violent. Women calmed the savage beast.

And can I just point out how incredibly nonsensical this line of thinking is? If men are the rational ones, then shouldn't they also be less prone to violence and base desires?

Violence, except in the case of self-defense, is almost never rational. But this backward thought experiment that polite society was subjected to for hundreds of years not only painted everyone into impossible boxes, but also asked people to believe in the oxymoron that women were emotional and also pure and calm. You know what I am when I get emotional? I'll tell you what I'm not. I'm not particularly pure or calm.

Under this umbrella of the acceptable roles of middle and upper class white women and men of the era, you can bet your sweet bippy that homosexuality was not regarded favorably. Indeed, the word was mostly unknown at that point.

People who engaged in any non-gender conforming behaviors, including clothing, hairstyle, or chosen profession, as well as, of course, actual sex with someone of the, quote, same gender, were considered sexual inverts. Being a sexual invert was considered a genetic mix-up, which is hilarious given how incredibly ignorant and mixed up people were about genetics back then, and still are today.

But as NYU professor of social and cultural analysis Lisa Duggins points out in a piece published in the University of Chicago Press called The Trials of Alice Mitchell, Sensationalism, Sexology, and the Lesbian Subject in Turn-of-the-Century America, attitudes toward gender and sexuality in popular opinion went through a cultural shift around 1880 to 1920.

Before that, it wasn't unheard of for two women to live as a married couple, with one of the women living under the guise of manhood, which of course afforded her more earning opportunities and, you know, general respect. It's hard to know for sure, but it's most likely many of these women living as men, who today might be considered trans, went unnoticed by the general population.

Now, at the time, most hetero people, men especially, could not begin to fathom the idea that a woman might want to have sex for any other reason than to make a baby. And this concept was what started to sway public opinion against lesbianism. Living together as man and wife in what most people assumed was a chaste relationship was one thing, but two women having sex for the pleasure of it? Not today, Bob.

I think it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway just in case you missed that day in queer studies. Once men decided that women having sex with each other was a threat to their manhood, that's when laws began to get passed making being a lesbian illegal. And it was in this environment that the heroines of our story, Alice and Frida, were trying to navigate matters of the heart. Not exactly the most nurturing and supportive place to try to make a healthy relationship flourish.

Added to the outward pressures of society, for Frida, there was also the matter of Alice's growing possessive behavior and jealousy. The very same month that Frida accepted Alice's ring, albeit under literal penalty of death, someone else had come knocking on Frida's door. Someone mainstream society would have considered the person Frida had spent all that time with Alice rehearsing for.

I couldn't find many details about Frida's new suitor, Ashley Roselle, and frankly, it doesn't really matter. The only thing we need to know about Ashley Roselle is that he was a man.

Apparently, Frida gave Ashley a picture of herself, and this was enough to send Alice over the edge. And I have to say, I sort of understand. I wouldn't be thrilled if I found out my betrothed was giving pics to other potential mates either. And while I'm sure the picture was just a sepia-toned tin type of Alice from the shoulders up, she might as well have DM'd him a nude. People didn't just airdrop pics willy-nilly back then.

You may be wondering how Alice even knew about what was going on between Frida and Ashley. It turns out Alice, as though reading from a book called How to Be an Abusive Partner, had recruited some of Frida's friends for information.

In her book, Alice and Frida Forever, A Murder in Memphis, author Alexis Coe claims that when Alice visited Frida in Goldust, she recruited as many of Frida's friends and neighbors as she could in order to get info on Frida. She writes, quote,

End quote. In other words, Alice was using Frida's community against her. A classic abuser's tactic.

Incidentally, Alice had also expressed her dislike of Frida's desire to be an actress, to which Frida replied, And if you don't recognize that as a pretty standard abusive relationship dynamic, congratulations. You clearly don't consume too much true crime stuff.

Anyway, Alice found out about Ashley through her network of informants, and she wrote to Frida to put the kibosh on that shit right quick, in a letter I can only assume was filled with threats of one kind or another. Interestingly, Frida responded not by apologizing, but basically by saying, what can I say? I'm a terrible flirt. She wrote, I am trying not to love others, and when I stop loving A and H, I will tell you.

I know that you are awfully jealous, sweet, but try not to be. Alvin, please be perfectly happy when you marry me, for I am true to you and always will be forever. Many other women are not happy when they love others besides their husbands, but I will be perfectly happy when I become Mrs. Alvin J. Ward."

Incidentally, H apparently meant yet another dude. This one named Henry that was also trying to woo Frida. And one has to sympathize with Alvin, aka Alice here. Telling the person who you're supposed to marry that you love two other people but don't worry I'll try to stop and even if I can't I'll still be happy with you just isn't the most reassuring sentiment in the universe.

It's important to remember that Alice and Frida were both still teenagers at this point, not the world's most cool-headed logical creatures, teenagers. It doesn't seem like Frida was taking her engagement to Alice tremendously seriously, unless she honestly thought polyamory was par for the course, which I can assure you in 1890s Tennessee, it most certainly was not. But Alice was hardly behaving in a respectful manner herself.

I think it's safe to say at this point this was the very definition of a toxic love affair. Frida made a vague promise to cut things off with Ashley, but when Alice found out Ashley and Frida had been at the same community picnic, she sent a long, embittered letter to Frida threatening to kill Ashley while simultaneously, preemptively blaming Frida for Ashley's murder. She wrote...

I love you, Fred, and would kill Ashley before I would see him take you from me. As long as you do me this way, I will keep it up. I don't mean to do Ashley harm, but if you will still make me jealous and deceive me, I will. I hate to do it, but you will be the cause of it. If you don't love me, you needn't, but I will love you forever. Do you remember what I said I would do if you would deceive me?

She told Frida that she went to buy a pistol, and the only reason she didn't buy it was because it was too big. She told her lover that she tried to buy a pistol after threatening to kill not only her but her suitor. She then went on for a while about how much she loved Frida and ended with this. "'I have done nothing to you as I know of to make you do me this way,'

Uh, I can think of one or two things you did to make her do you that way, buddy. In that one letter, alone.

And here's something weird. Alice sent that letter on the very day of their planned elopement. As Alexis Coe points out in her book, if everything went according to plan, Frida wouldn't even be home to receive the letter. Which, as far as I'm concerned, means Alice wrote it so that if Frida did back out of the elopement, she would shortly receive a letter letting her know that Ashley's life was in pretty serious danger.

As it turns out, Frida most likely didn't receive the letter, not because she and Alice had successfully eloped, but because her family had caught wind of the plot and were not pleased, to put it mildly. Before Frida had a chance to further stoke Alice's already hot temper one way or the other, her sister Ada, with whom Frida was living, happened upon a bunch of letters between Frida and Alice, some of which outlined their plot to elope.

Naturally, Ada was like, what in the actual fuck? And rather than talk to Frida herself, she went to her own husband, William Volkmer, to handle it. Because, you know, the patriarchy.

Ada was basically like, Frida and Alice are planning to run away together tonight and get married. And Mr. Volkmar was like, so what I'm hearing you tell me is that Frida is going to run away with a man tonight. And Ada was like, no, she's going to run away with Alice. And he was like, so a man. And Ada was like, no, bro, Alice. Frida is getting on a boat tonight to meet Alice. And he goes, no.

No man is going to take my sister-in-law away. And he waited by the front door with a rifle. Once again, a straight person could not compute the actual information being said to his face. And so he just rearranged it to fit a heteronormative narrative that made his head hurt less.

When the boat whistle blew and no man had come to kidnap his pure, chaste, definitely not gay sister-in-law, Ada's husband went to check on Frida, who was fully dressed, with her suitcase in hand, ready to leave to get on the waiting boat.

Once it got through his heterosexual head that Alice was the man at the other end of the plot, Mr. Volkmar put an end to the whole thing, and Ada sent a letter to Alice and her mother, letting them know she'd caught them planning their elopement and putting an end to it. She also sent back the engagement ring and told Alice, in no uncertain terms, to stay away. "'I thought you were a lady,' she wrote. "'I have found out to the contrary. Burn.'"

Of course, a strongly worded letter wasn't going to prevent Alice from Alice-ing. Less than a week after effectively being told to fuck off, Alice wrote another letter to Frida, despite knowing it would almost definitely get intercepted before Frida could see it. She wrote, "'Remember, Fred, there is no hard feeling toward you on my side. They have turned you against me, although I know you did not think as much of me as you said you did.'

You did it only to save your life. And to be clear, what she's saying here is, I know you only said you'd marry me because I literally told you I would kill you if you married anyone else. Charming. She went on to remind Frida that she'd given her lots of time to think about her answer when she proposed. I told you then to think about what we were risking, but you still said you would be mine. As though it was Frida's fault that her sister found the letters and ended the whole thing.

After that, I wouldn't let you break the engagement. I not merely begged you to marry me, but I forced you. I am sorry I got you in trouble, but I beg you to forgive me. Note, she's admitting to forcing Frida to say yes in her proposal, and she's not apologizing for that. She's apologizing that Frida got in trouble. The best kind of apology. I'm sorry you feel bad.

Alice spends the rest of the letter vaguely accusing Frida of not loving her enough and not being faithful. She ended with, I love you still and will forever. Will you forgive me? Please answer, and I won't write anymore or have anything else to do with you for your sake. Yours forever, Allie.

The message being, "The only way I'll leave you alone is if you engage with me again." Like, fuck off, dude. Frida didn't write back, most likely because she never got the letter.

But it's safe to assume that she may have been relieved to have an excuse to not continue things with Alice. And, of course, as promised, Alice wrote again only a couple weeks later, this time in a seriously unhinged letter in which she claimed that rumors had gone around that she had died.

Though author Alexis Coe believes that this was a thinly-veiled metaphor for their plan, which had been killed, and Alice's attempt to be like, hey, as far as I'm concerned, the rumors are wrong and our plan is still on. And she invited Frida to visit her in Memphis. Alice was most definitely deranged at this point, and getting worse by the day. Apparently, she spent her time looking at whatever reminders she had of Frida and either crying or laughing.

And, really bizarrely, in September of that year, she signed for the coal delivery to her house using Frida's name. It was around this time that Alice began carrying a straight-edge razor in her pocket, just in case she ran into Frida.

She also enlisted her friend and Frida's sister Jo's old chum, Lily, to write flattering, wooing letters to Ashley to try to shake him off Frida's scent. When that didn't work, she took to writing the letters herself.

That didn't work either. And then, when one of the letters she sent to Frida came back with Frida's own handwriting on the envelope that read, Alice took it not as Frida once again rejecting her, but somehow as a sign that she actually did want to see Alice again. I'm telling you, this woman was unraveled.

When Alice found out that Frida was visiting Memphis, she told herself the only reason Frida wasn't staying with her during the visit was because of Ada. Never mind that when Alice managed to track Frida down in town, Frida pointedly ignored her, even though Ada was nowhere to be seen. If Ada was the person keeping them apart and Ada wasn't around, what reason could there be for Frida to ignore Alice other than to again send the signal that she wasn't interested?

And when Frida's cold shoulder wasn't enough to get the message across, she wrote Alice one last letter. Dear Allie, I love you now and always will, but I have been forbidden to speak to you and I have to obey. You say I am as much to blame as you are. If I have done you any harm or caused you any trouble, I humbly beg your forgiveness. Please don't let anyone know I wrote this. We go to Gold Dust this evening. Frida."

But Alice knew there was no boat leaving for Goldust that evening and was basically like, oh, hell no, bitch, and wrote back to Frida saying she knew full well there was no boat and insinuated she knew exactly which boat Frida would be taking. And then she had the nerve to say this.

If you trouble me anymore, I will not only let anyone know, but I will send the letter to Mrs. W.H. Volkmar and something else. Excuse me, girl? Who's been troubling whom here? And something else? That's not creepy or cryptic at all. I don't know about you, but I'm immediately thinking undergarments, body part, dead animal, homemade bomb...

And so, knowing that Frida would be on the next day's boat, Alice, a pistolary harassment Mitchell, enlisted Lily's help in driving a carriage to the dock with murder on her mind and her trusty straight edge tucked safely in her pocket. And that is where, stranger, I leave you until next week, when Alice will run her razor over Frida's throat. And despite telling the world she did it for love, no one will be able to believe her.

Next time on Strange and Unexplained, Murder in the Name of Love, Alice and Frida, Part 2. This episode was originally produced by Becca DiGregorio and Natalie Grillo, with research by Jess McKillop, editing by Eve Kerrigan, and sound engineering by Jennifer Swatek. Our voice actors for this episode were Ryan Garcia, Lauren Hooper, and Andrea Jones Sojola.