628 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

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Here is the translated text as follows:

596 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

She was with a black man in a bad house, and he worried her out and had a connection with her. Very good. Shortly afterwards, she scuffled, or fought, as she termed it, with a white man, and knocked off his hat, but he afterwards came to bed with his hat, and had a connection with her. Did you cry out? No, sir. What then did you do? I bade him be quiet! Well! Where is the difference, except in this, that the white man had no hat upon his head? Will it be contended, now, on the authority of any treatise upon generation, that a man cannot get a child without a hat upon his head? Here I might say, without indiscretion, your Honors have experience to the contrary. No well-bred man would think of going to bed to a lady with a hat on; if he did, she would do well to knock it off. If he was so much afraid of catching cold, he might have put on his nightcap. To be sure, if he be of the Society of Friends, it alters the case, because then it might be an inconvenience; but could not be considered an incivility—but there is no evidence of that.

Besides this, the evidence of Alderman Barker and Mr. O'Blenis shows that she has contradicted herself upon oath, for, before them, she swore she had no connection with a white man. Here, before this Court, she admits, when upon oath, that she had. She admitted, it is true, before those magistrates, after her depositions were given in, that she had a scuffle with the white man, and that he tore her petticoat; but that does not reconcile the contradiction upon oath. Tearing a petticoat is not having a connection; nor is it to be supposed that all the passions with which that white man was influenced were to be allayed by the small satisfaction of tearing her petticoat. Where there are Helens, there will be wars; but the most quarrelsome will not fly to arms for the sake of tearing petticoats. I defy all the annals of pathology to show a case of a man affected with such an antipathy to petticoats. But it may be said one of those scuffles was more platonic than the other. I do not believe that. The one worried, and the other fought. Platonic love does not carry pistols, nor jump into bed with its hat on. Such scuffles may differ.