Rape in The Caucasian, 1895-1915

In this graph, you can see the length of the articles reporting on rape/criminal assault that were included in this dataset. The majority of the articles in question were relatively short, comprising local news features on the third page of the paper. Cases involving prominent people or particularly gruesome details were given more in-depth write-ups. The longest case represented on this graph was that of Mrs. W. W. Leigh, a white woman who beat a black man over the head with a piece of firewood after he attacked her in her home when she was alone. The case went into great detail about how she escaped his advances and how he was caught and placed in jail. Her article contained 344 words. The case that received the shortest write-up was that of Henry Reynolds, who was pardoned after getting sentenced to eight years on the roads for criminal assault. His article contained only 25 words.