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Reconstructing Rachel: A Case of Infanticide in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic and the Vagaries of Historical Research
| Rachel Francisco may have been a murderer. Like so many colonial women and men, Francisco's personal history is largely lost to us. She and her friends and neighbors are named, often obliquely, in only a handful of surviving documents, leaving us little evidence either of her daily trials and tribulations or of the trial that may have cost her her life. This essay is in many ways a tale of an archival adventure, an almost personal quest to learn more about Rachel Francisco, a woman of apparently modest means whose life intertwined rather unexpectedly with one of the eighteenth-century Delaware Valley's most prominent men—her defense attorney, John Dickinson. As we shall see, though the search for Francisco in the historical record met with several silences and dead ends, certain exploratory tangents also yielded unexpected fruit along the way. |
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Two undated documents in Dickinson's legal papers at The Historical Society of Pennsylvania relate the case of Dominus Rex v. Rachel Francisco, "Ind[ictmen]t for Murder of a Bastard Child."1 A four-page document includes the testimony of Elizabeth Cremaine (Rachel's mistress), Susannah Whitman (also called Granny Whitman, a local midwife), Ann Stanton (either a close neighbor or member of the Cremaine household), Dr. Charles Ridgely (who gave medical evidence), and James Wrench (the doctor's apprentice), as well as some of Dickinson's queries and notes indicating how he planned to argue for the defense. The second document, a single page, outlines the main points of Dickinson's defense of Francisco, as well as expected objections to his arguments and his strategies for answering them. Nothing else in Dickinson's papers appears to mention Rachel Francisco, and nothing in the two documents indicates the year, location, or results of the trial; they provide only the names of those involved and the date of February 27. It is unclear whether this was the night of the alleged crime or the date on which Dickinson took the witnesses' depositions. |
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Did she do it? Not even contemporary witnesses seemed willing to venture a definite opinion. As historian Mark Jackson has noted, "much of the initial detective work and much of the subsequent investigation into the circumstances surrounding a child's death was carried out unofficially by members of the local community, in particular by local women."2 Sure enough, months of neighborhood gossip and speculation preceded Francisco's arrest and trial. The female witnesses agreed that, since the previous August, "it was generally imagined by the neighbourhood that she was with child," but that Francisco almost uniformly denied it. She broke down only once; according to Elizabeth Cremaine's evidence, in October or November Francisco "Voluntarily confest that she believd she was with Child," although she "Afterw[ar]ds denied it & never again confest it and tho she app[eare]d swelled, said it was other Disorders."3 Granny Whitman, the midwife, questioned her persistently throughout the months preceding the birth, but Francisco shrugged off the inquiries. According to Whitman, "Some time in Aug[us]t on my charg[in]g her with being with child—she denied it. Awhile after that I chargd her with it again—& said are you not with Child now—She laughd & said if she was—she would send for me." In addition, Francisco "wanted [a] Diet Drink to remove some obstructions—Said she woud not ask it if she thought she was with Child." |
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