Take every opportunity

I’ve been living and breathing this thesis 24/7, but yesterday I found myself in the UW Law Library waiting for Dave to do some research. The Gallagher Library is brand new, not smacking of history at all in its hi-tech computer stations and movable stacks.

On the way to the drinking fountain, I pass some ancient books, the leather bindings crumbling, and it occurs to me: I’m sitting on a history gold mine. What better way to learn how things were in a different century than to explore what their arguments were?

“Do you have any books of published cases that occurred in Cleveland, Ohio in the mid-nineteenth century?”

My question staggers the front desk guy (the ask-for-help desk doesn’t open for fifteen minutes) but we quickly find the Western Law Journal. Western? Well, yeah, in the mid-nineteenth century Ohio was west, the Great West, the Western Reserve.

Right away I get all kinds of good stuff. For example, from a self-defense murder plea in Cincinnati in 1843:
“The English doctrine, that a party assailed must flee as he can, before resisting, is not the law in this country.”

It seems two guys wanted the same turkey at a market stall. The 45-year-old drunk McCann got incensed when the vendor said the 20-year-old bar-keep Noble had first dibs on the turkey (McCann had seen it first, then left it to look at other stalls). McCann threw the turkey in the dirt, and then threw Noble in the gutter and pounded and kicked on him until Noble cried “Enough!” several times. McCann finally desisted, but as he was leaving, Noble picked up himself, and a rock, from the gutter, which rock Noble threw at the retreating McCann. McCann was hit in the head, his skull was fractured, and he was dead within minutes.

The cases read like stories, with authentic dialogue and turns of phrase. So if you’re writing historical fiction, don’t forget the law library.

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