Rape Trial of Lanah Sawyer. Lanah Sawyer was a 17-year-old seamstress who, in 1793, claimed to have been raped by prominent New York socialite, Harry Bedlow. Sawyer took Bedlow to trial but he was acquitted by an all male jury after only fifteen minutes of deliberation. Protests following the trial incited debate about upper-class privilege and gender bias in the American court system. The trial is cited by many authors as evidence of the sexual double standard that existed in colonial America.
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Rape and Trial
Lanah Sawyer claimed that while on a walk with Harry Bedlow, the wealthy New Yorker, who she had thought to be a gentleman, forced her into a brothel and made sexual advances despite her protests. Sawyer took Bedlow to trial, but after only fifteen minutes of deliberation, Bedlow was acquitted of the crime by an all male jury. Bedlow’s defense argued that Sawyer’s agreement to go for a walk with Bedlow was implied consent. This belief stemmed from a change in the perception of female sexuality, which had developed over the course of the 1700s. Gone was the Puritan perception of women as reserved, non-sexual beings. In its place surfaced a stereotype of a female temptress, developed from the abundance of literature, both poems and novels, published during the 18th century, which featured female characters actively pursuing men with a permissive attitude towards sex. This new perception of women spawned a new attitude towards rape as well. In the 1600s women who made claims of rape were more often than not automatically believed since it was thought that a woman would not be so bold as to falsely accuse a man or dare to actively pursue sexual activity on her own, therefore she must have been raped. By the late 1700s however, this new perception of women as sexually uncontrollable made the claim of rape less believable, making trials like Lanah Sawyer’s, in which rapists got off uncharged, much more common.
This dismissal of female claims was made worse by the fact that women were also not considered full citizens at the time of Lanah Sawyer’s rape. In her trial, Sawyer’s female neighbor testified in defense of Lanah’s character, corroborating the opinion that Sawyer would not willingly go to bed with a man prior to marriage, however the neighbors testament was ignored due to the fact that she was a woman too, and could therefore not be trusted to have a sound legal opinion. It was argued that putting the life of a citizen in the hands of a woman was not proper, a statement that resonated with the male jury, allowing ultimately for Bedlow’s acquittal.
Significance and Aftermath
Bedlow’s acquittal sparked a series of protests including riots at the brothel in which the rape supposedly occurred, however these riots were not on behalf of the victim, but were instead a critique of the upper class. The crowd that made up these riots was primarily working class and Negroes who felt as though Bedlow was acquitted not because of his innocence but because of his high-class status, which was in opposition to Lanah’s position as a seamstress, and her father’s position in the fishing industry.
There was however one anonymous letter written to the newspaper under the pseudonym “Justitia”, which featured a searing criticism of the outcome of the trial, as well as condemnation of the entire institution of brothels and their male patrons. The points brought up in the letter were thoroughly ignored by the public however, which attacked the author of the letter with questions of her own moral character and honor.
The rape trial of Lanah Sawyer and the backlash that followed bring to light the injustice faced by women, particularly lower class women, in the colonial period.