![]() O’Brien moved the story from Fall River to Lowell for her novel, “The Daring Ladies of Lowell,” but retained the names and the forensic detail. ![]() O’Brien was researching a novel about the mill girls of Lowell - writing under the pen name Kate Alcott - when she came upon the story of Cornell’s murder in “Fall River: An Authentic Narrative,” an 1834 account by Catherine Read Williams available via Google, and in Kasserman’s history. “That’s what happened with Sarah Cornell, and that got to me.” “The thing that blew me away when I was reading the testimony was, the defense of the person accused of murder depends on tearing apart the reputation of the woman murdered,” said writer Patricia O’Brien. Other issues raised by the trial remain vital to this day. “So the Methodists were as much threatened by the implication of the trial as the mill owners were” and rose to Avery’s defense. ![]() But they were criticized because they were fired by emotion,” Kasserman said. It seems weird to think of Methodists as radical, but they were in Presbyterian-centered New England. “On the other side, the Methodists were seen as a very radical form of religion. “ ‘Don’t send your daughter to the mill town - see what happens to them?’ ” As a result, mill owners were eager to see Avery convicted to show they were protecting their workers. ![]() Avery’s murder threatened “the social acceptability of the primary mechanism by which the cotton mills got their labor,” Kasserman said. ![]()
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