Charity Lamb

Rumors, and information presented by the prosecution at trial, implicated involvement with a paramour, by Charity and possibly her teenage daughter, herself acquitted of the murder two months prior.

[2] She married Nathaniel Lamb, a farmer, in 1837, and their oldest child Mary Ann was born around ten months later.

[2] On May 13, 1854, while the Lamb family was seated around the table for dinner in their cabin, Charity struck her husband Nathaniel twice with an axe to the back of his head.

"[5] She was branded "a monster" by the local newspapers, which praised Nathaniel as "an industrious and quiet citizen, and had a good claim, which he had improved considerably with his own hands.

[7] Rumor began to circulate that Charity and her 17-year-old daughter Mary Ann had been seduced by a drifter named Collins, with whom they were to escape to California, and that it was in pursuit of this end that the murder had been committed.

The prosecution argued that the nature of the murder, attacking from behind while the victim was seated, indicated it was planned, and that Charity, disaffected and isolated on the frontier, had shown no remorse after the fact.

[6] The week prior to his murder, Lamb's husband claimed that he had plans to kill her, abandon the family, and head to California.

[6] It was reported during the trial, that while travelling on the Oregon Trail, Charity carried Nathaniel's gun at the head of the train, to prevent him from using it against her after he threatened to kill her.

[7]Their child Abram testified that the week before the murder had seen renewed threats from Nathaniel over finding the letter to Collins.

"[7] At the dinner table on the same day as the murder, Charity had expressed her fear that Nathaniel had made plans to take the boys and move to California, that he had sold his mare and was preparing.

[7] Judge Olney stressed the consideration of self-defense, instructing the jury that Charity should be found innocent if she had "acted out of a genuine belief in self-preservation".

[4][5] Despite this, the jury found Charity guilty of second-degree murder, as they determined that while she might have been justified in interpreting her husband's threats as inevitable, they were not imminent and her anxiety did not rise to the level of legal insanity.

[6][7] Standing at sentencing, Charity told the court, "I knew he was going to kill me," to which the judge replied, "The jury thinks you ought to have gone away."

Her duties as part of her "hard labor" included laundering the warden's clothes, and though other prisoners were said to "'elope' or escape at will from the facility", Charity did not.

[8][f] More than five years after her conviction, Quaker missionaries recorded visiting the prison and talking to their lone female resident.

[2] The asylum, founded by James C. Hawthorne, was run so that the residents were comparatively well cared for, in a way that was "in direct opposition to earlier concepts of cruelty, punishment and imprisonment.

"[2] The only surviving record of Charity's life at the asylum is the report of facility inspectors from 1865: She sat knitting as the visiting party went through the hall, face imperturbably fixed in half smiling contentment apparently as satisfied with her lot as the happiest of sane people with theirs.