MARCH 16th - The Old Blood Flood Defense


(I just didn't feel like listening to Britney tonight).

On this day in 1881, eighteen-year old Lastania Abarta shot and killed Chico Forster in downtown Los Angeles for being a womanizer, womanizer, oh womanizer oh. Forster was forty years old, but was the son of a wealthy land developer, and therefore a hot commodity on the singles market despite the fact that he was a womanizer, womanizer. Forster met our young, impressionable lady while she was singing in her parent’s pool hall. Forster used his womanizing charms, his silver tongue, and a promise of marriage to trick the young lass into his bed. It seems that old Chico had no intent on marrying young Lastania as he ran off and did not produce a ring or further promise. So Lastania found his ass and shot him. In the eye. And then things got really interesting. America was mired in a craze of “female hysteria,” and Lastania’s lawyer’s used this as defense. You see Lastania Abarta had been of purest virtue before the lying Chico weaseled his way past her chastity. Her lawyers produced sheets stained and with blood and multiple experts testified she was clearly not in her right mind, her brain being “congested with blood.” The old blood flood defense. One Dr. Joseph Kurtz went so far as to say, “Any virtuous woman, when deprived of her virtue would go mad, undoubtedly.” Lastania was acquitted in 20 minutes. Now, I will not for a second feign understanding of a female’s mind, but it’s good to know I currently have more knowledge than doctors had in the 1880’s. Losing her virginity makes a woman go insane? Women were hospitalized because of this “condition,” instead of looking into a variety of mental disorders that could have been the cause of “hysteria.” Bit of a stretch there, Doc. Gives a little bit of insight into why the female persuasion don’t take kindly to being called “crazy” at the littlest show of emotion. Yet in this one case, I’m betting Lastania was fairly okay with being tagged as ‘that crazy girl.’ You know, because she shot a guy in the eye, and then didn’t go to jail.

This day has been Marked.

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