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But by the time he returned from his hunting trip, having bagged a bear, she appears to have been utterly convinced that he did — and she (and, probably, Mary Ann) had formulated a desperate plan to ensure her survival: Murder. And so, when the family was gathered around the table for dinner and Nathaniel was happily talking about the hunt, Charity excused herself and stepped away from the table, as if to see to something on the fire. Then she returned with an ax — and let him have it. She hit him twice with it. Even then, Nathaniel was still alive, on the floor, screaming, covered with blood. Her ax head had gone two inches into his brain, but the wound hadn’t been immediately fatal. Charity promptly fled the house, closely followed by Mary Ann. She made her way to a neighbor’s house a half mile away, and they let her spend the night; meanwhile, Dr. Presley Welch came to do what he could for Nathaniel. Nathaniel died a week later, probably of an infection. During that time, he gave some fairly damning testimony against Charity, and denied all claims of spousal abuse. In the wake of the act, the community was shocked and outraged, and prosecutors threw the book at both Charity and Mary Ann, the eldest daughter. Once the Lamb children started testifying about Nathaniel’s cruelty, though, that attitude softened from cold righteousness to a kind of miserable sympathy. Mary Ann’s trial was first, and she was quickly acquitted of all charges, but Charity proved a tough one for judge and jury alike. What she had done did not qualify under any then-existing legal defense. It was sort of self-defense, but not really; he’d been sitting at the dinner table when she did it. It was kind of like insanity, but that didn’t fit either; she was clearly not a lunatic. Her defense attorneys made things worse by trying, ridiculously, to claim she’d intended only to stun Nathaniel with the ax rather than kill him. In the end, the verdict was for second-degree murder, a charge which carried a sentence of life in prison. The prosecution had been hoping for first-degree murder, which would have meant the gallows. Sobbing and clutching the baby who would shortly be taken away from her, Charity Lamb was remanded to the primitive territorial prison, where she was for many years the only female inmate. Eventually she was sent to the insane asylum on what today is Hawthorne Street in Portland, where occasional visitors found her quietly knitting, apparently contented with her life there. She died in 1879 at the age of about 65. It would be many years before spousal cruelty became a recognized legal defense in murder cases. But the extreme discomfort with which the judge and officers of the court looked on as Charity’s case was unfurled before them showed clearly that such a thing was needed, and may have had something to do with some other high-profile murder cases in Oregon — possibly including that of Mary Leonard, who went on after her acquittal to become the first licensed female attorney in both Washington and Oregon.
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