In-State Rape Stories
Both of the 2 in-state stories from 1880 were local reports from the hometown of the paper, Wheeling, VA. The first is a lengthy discussion of the supposed guilt of a man arrested for criminally assaulting a young girl, while the other is a much shorter story about a local man charged with raping a woman with an “unsavory reputation.”
The decision to only report on 2 local cases of rape throughout the entire year of 1880 and focusing more on out-of-state rape cases is interesting as it suggests that either there were not a lot of in-state rape cases to report on or the out-of-state cases were believed to be significantly more interesting for readers.
With 11 stories about cases from West Virginia in 1900, compared to only the 2 cases in 1880, there was an obvious increase in coverage of more local rape cases. Interestingly, only 2 of the 11 in-state cases of 1900 specified that there was race involved, which suggests that racial tension was not as significant a factor in coverage of rape cases compared to the coverage of out-of-state rape cases, especially in states like Kentucky or Ohio.
The longest story words from either 1880 or 1900, at 1,925 words, was a 1900 case local to Wheeling about the guilt of a man with a bad reputation who was arrested for the supposed criminal assault of a young girl he had abducted. 6 of the 13 total in-state stories mentioned the reputation of either the alleged offender or victim, either good or bad reputation, which implies that more local coverage of rape was more concerned with the social standing of the people involved than in coverage of out-of-state cases.