Rape in The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, 1880 & 1900

Rape at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century was a crime characterized by the age, race, and reputation of both offenders and their victims, as rape during this period was a culturally defined crime based on the credibility of the offender and the victim. In her article from 2011, “‘Crimes which startle and horrify’: Gender, Age, and the Racialization of Sexual Violence in White American Newspapers, 1870-1900,” Estelle Freedman discusses the role of newspapers in shaping rape narratives that reinforced the stereotypes concerning race and gender in America. She argues that “by the end of the nineteenth century, the press had popularized not only the archetype of the violent black male rapist but also that of the innocent child victim.”

So, newspapers during this period were supporting these racial stereotypes to maintain white supremacy, especially in the Southern states, and also supporting ideas of a gender hierarchy in which women were inherently dependent on men because of their supposed weakness. By encouraging these narratives, newspapers helped in reinforcing the notion that white men were superior, and therefore more credible than women and black Americans would remain dependent and secure the social hierarchy of the time.

The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer operated during the period that Freedman discusses, and therefore concerns stories of rape cases that deal with a similar legal definition of rape that Freedman lays out as the “carnal knowledge of a woman by force and against her will,” excluding marital rape. The legal definition of rape, included as a section combined with abduction and kidnapping, that would have been in effect in West Virginia in 1880 resembles Freedman’s definition:

• “If any person carnally know a female of the age of twelve years or more, against her will, by force, or carnally know a female child under that age, he shall be punished with death or by confinement in the penitentiary as follows: If the jury, upon the trial of an indictment under this section, return a verdict of guilty, merely, the accused shall be punished with death ; but if the jury add to such verdict that the accused be punished by confinement in the penitentiary, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than seven, nor more than twenty years” (Section 15 of Chapter 144 of The Amended Code of West Virginia, compiled by John Warth).
• “If any person take away or detain against her will a female, with intent to marry or defile her, or cause her to be married or defiled by another person, or take from any person having lawful charge of her, a female child under twelve years of age, for the purpose of prostitution or concubinage, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than three nor more than ten years” (Section 15 of Chapter 144 of The Amended Code of West Virginia, compiled by John Warth).

By 1900, West Virginia was still using this exact definition of rape, but also included the crime of rape in legal definitions of murder, in which if murder occurs in the attempt to rape it is considered murder in the first degree, and of burglary and housebreaking, in which if this occurs with the intent to rape it effects the sentence of the criminal (Sections 1, 15 & 16 of Chapter 144 and Sections 12 & 13 of Chapter 145 of the 4th edition of the Code of West Virginia compiled by John Warth).