The Ellensburg Rape Case Dismissed
A sensational legal case involving a landlady’s accusations concludes with a discharge, highlighting the era's narrow legal definitions of victimhood.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Neatelle-Jennings rape case has been brought to a close at Ellensburg, and the defendant discharged. It will be remembered that Jennings was arrested in New York charged with having committed rape at Ellensburg on the person of Mrs. Neatelle, his landlady. The Register at the time proclaimed it a case of blackmail and was sued for libel. Now both cases have been dismissed. The law in the case of rape is that the woman must resist with all her power and make an outcry. The evidence of Mrs. Neatelle was to the effect that when she went into Jennings' room to make his bed he assaulted her. She made no outcry and when she went into the kitchen, immediately afterwards, she said nothing of the matter to the two women there. The evidence developed that she continued to harbor the defendant in her house, although he had afflicted her with a loathsome disease, made his bed as usual, accompanied him to church and in horseback riding and invited him to dinner after the return of her husband from San Francisco. Nothing was said about the rape until seventeen days after Jennings had left, when Neatelle accused his wife of imparting disease to him. The jury was not long in bringing in a verdict of not guilty.
“The law in the case of rape is that the woman must resist with all her power and make an outcry.”
This case underscores the brutal and archaic evidentiary standards of the 19th-century courtroom, where victims were often held to impossible standards of conduct. It reflects the deep-seated biases of the era's legal system, which frequently dismissed allegations based on the woman's subsequent behavior rather than the act itself.
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