"The Trials of Maria Barbella"

Another book I picked up by chance. The author is Idanna Pucci. The book resulted from a rather typical quest for family history.

The author's great grandmother, an American married to a wealthy Italian, was a woman of several 'causes', one of which was the case of illiterate Italian immigrant Maria Barbella, who murdered the man who failed to come through on his marriage promise, and who was convicted and sentenced to become the first woman ever to die in the newly invented electric chair. Encouraging publicity and good counsel, great-grandma enabled Maria to get a new trial, where her epilepsy was raised as a defense, and where a new jury found her not guilty, based on the judge's charge that the jury must find whether she was of 'unsound mind'.

Obviously, this is quite a story, and while the book itself is not literary masterpiece, it was worth reading.

Ms. Pucci, it seemed to me, did not really have enough material for a full length book, so there are very long excerpts from the trial transcripts, newspaper articles, etc. Not that this is bad, but it would probably have come out differently in the hands of a more experienced biographer.

The book tells a good sociological story of New York around the turn of the century. The interest in crime was certainly then what it is today. And the position of Italian immigrants presents a good lesson for all.

One of the most intriguing portions of the book, to me, was the epilogue. There, the author gives a short sentence or two to each participant in the story, and what their future life course would be. Certainly a lesson to be learned there.

Maria herself came back into the public eye when she saved a woman who had set herself on fire in a cooking accident, eventually married, but dropped out of public view. Whether she has any descendants, the author does not know.

The great-grandmother, when in her early 40s, went inexplicably insane and spent the next forty years in a mental institution.

The first judge was forced to leave the bench. The prosecutor flourished and eventually himself became a judge.

The chief defense attorney had a successful career, but forgot to mail a premium for his life insurance policy. He told his clerk to deliver it. His clerk asked why not just mail it. The attorney, Emanuel Friend, said: because I might drop dead tomorrow. And he did, at age 51.

The defense attorney who championed the introduction of psychiatric evidence himself became a champion - a chess champion.

The third defense lawyer became a municipal judge and tried 300,000 traffic cases in New York.

The editor of the New York World, Charles Chapin, who was antagonistic to Maria, himself was convicted of murder and died in Sing Sing.

Rebecca Foster, who was a protector to all women arrested in New York and known as the "Tombs Angel" died in a fire at the Park Avenue hotel, advertised as "the most fire-proof hotel in America".

And then there was, of course, Moshe Ha-Levi Ish Hurwitz, the "great Yiddish playwright", who attended the trial religiously and wrote a play based on Maria Barbella's story, which became a great hit in the Yiddish Theater. Wouldn't you know it?