Homicide in a ninteenth‐century rural community: The Talbott/bell case of 1879∗

Abstract

Most criminal justice histories have focused on crime in the context of relatively large cities undergoing the effects of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. Many of those studies on urban crime and its processing have been done on an aggregate basis. We know relatively little about the nature of crime in rural areas. This study explores the most famous nineteenth‐century murder case in a rural Illinois county. The case involves the effects of the Civil War on post‐war crime patterns, issues of self‐defense and the carrying of concealed weapons, and the escalation of disputes from civil into criminal courts. The case eventually involved some of the most prestigious legal talent in the state who displayed a legal sophistication beyond that which many historians have outlined. And three change of venue trials led to a newspaper war that stretched across county Unes and showed the social and moral context of serious violent crime in the rural, nineteenth‐century Midwest.