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Book Review
| Jim Phillips and Rosemary Gartner, Murdering Holiness: The Trials of Franz Creffield and George Mitchell, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 348. $29.95 (ISBN 0-7748-0906-X).
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| Chronicled in Murdering Holiness is a lurid account of sex, adultery, insanity, murder, suicide and cultism, a narrative found far more frequently in crime and mystery novels than in legal history texts. But, as Phillips and Gartner can attest, sometimes "truth is stranger than fiction" (236). In other words, Murdering Holiness is no imaginary tale. It is instead a thorough investigation, founded upon court record and archival research, detailing the influence of Franz Creffield, leader of the "Holy Roller" religious sect, upon several communities in Oregon and Washington during the early twentieth century and the legal and extra-legal resources employed by these communities in response to Creffield's presence. |
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By way of background, Franz Creffield came to Corvallis, Oregon in 1902, only to induce almost every member of the local Salvation Army to leave the "Army" and follow him and his teachings. Members were taught to burn material possessions, "wear old clothes, no shoes and stockings ... eat only one thing at a meal ... sleep on the floor ... " (26). They were also taught to reject any relationships outside the group, forsaking all others, including their families, in order to devote themselves exclusively to the sect. Over time, Creffield's teachings became more extreme and he was later accused of having sexual relations with a married member of the sect. In the immediate aftermath of this accusation, many members of Creffield's sect were involuntarily committed to insane asylums in an attempt to frustrate their leader's evasion of the law and effect his capture by the police. Creffield was eventually arrested and found guilty of adultery. He spent the whole of 1905 in the Oregon State Penitentiary whilst his sect members were released from the asylums. |
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One might think this would be the end of the sect and the story, but such is not the case. When Creffield got out of prison, he contacted his former members and the "Holy Rollers" became even stronger in their faith, now believing that Creffield was in fact the second Messiah. The group took off to the wilderness, but they were now being followed by vigilante family members of those involved in the sect, husbands and brothers bent on killing Creffield. One such brother, that of two female "Holy Roller" members—the woman with whom Creffield committed adultery and her younger sister, Esther—eventually caught up with Creffield and shot him dead on a Seattle street in May 1906. |
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Phillips and Gartner proceed to detail the strong public opinion surrounding Creffield's death and the trial of George Mitchell, the man who pulled the trigger. Discussed in depth is the argument advanced implicitly in Mitchell's trial regarding his having simply followed a higher, "unwritten law," a "law" in which violence and even murder may be justified when the protection of family (particularly female family) is at stake. Mitchell, it may not be surprising, was acquitted and deemed a "hero" for saving his sisters from ruination by Creffield and his "evil" ways. What may be surprising, however, is that, soon after the trial ended, Mitchell was himself murdered, this time in revenge for Creffield's death, by none other than his sister, Esther. Esther, along with Creffield's wife (said to be her accomplice), were both pronounced insane and unfit to stand trial. They would later take their own lives, one in the asylum, the other upon release. Thus, in the end, Creffield's so-called "Holy" or Christian message simply precipitated adultery, murder and suicide by his members, "all highly 'un-Christian' acts" (30). |
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Whilst there are many reasons for reading Murdering Holiness, one of the most compelling is the attention Phillips and Gartner pay to "the individual lives of the women of the Creffield sect, and society's expectations of them and other women" (4). The book details "what women could and could not do, and about what they tried to do despite strictures on their behaviour" (4). Throughout their historical investigation, Phillips and Gartner challenge the constructions, advanced in the popular press and courtrooms of the time, of the female sect members being "weak-minded" (30), "victims of Creffield's lust" (68) and "insane" (77). The authors suggest that it was exactly the women members' "failure to conform to established gender roles," "to challenge the institution of marriage more generally, [and] the fundamental division of labour and social roles between men and women" which "surely contributed to the judgment that Creffield's followers were insane" (89). |
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As one final note, Phillips and Gartner advance their book as a enquiry into the lives of "ordinary people" (2), people who, "[h]ad Creffield not appeared, would not have been written ... about ... " (243). However, it is vital to point out that, in addition to being vilified in the courtroom and popular press, run from their homes and communities, and locked up in insane asylums, the "Holy Roller" sect members were people (mainly women) who rejected materialism, who challenged the institution of marriage and who defied contemporary notions of sexuality and morality. These "ordinary" people, as Phillips and Gartner call them, were not actually so ordinary. And that perhaps is the importance of this study. |
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| Sara Ramshaw
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Birkbeck School of Law
University of London, England |
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