Some truths about the rumors, gossip, hearsay, and innuendo surrounding the Freeport murder mystery of 1914

Abstract

This article examines how metropolitan newspapers reported the scandalous 1914 murder of a Long Island housewife who was shot by an unknown assailant as she was being examined by her physician. Headlines focused on the ‘insanely jealous’ doctor's wife upon the discovery of an eavesdropping device she had installed in her husband's examining room, but other information, always reported as rumor or camouflaged in innuendo, indicated an alternative story of a thriving abortion practice and a pregnant housewife seeking relief from her condition. Instead of exposing or condemning the illegal activities, newspapers kept the victim's ‘open secret,’ deferring to the ‘private morality’ that broadly supported abortion practices in the USA by disguising the information as rumor, thereby allowing its readers to decipher the likely truth within the uncertainties of hearsay and gossip.

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