The Trials of Maria Barbella: The True Story of a 19th-Century Crime of Passion [Paperback]

Idanna Pucci (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1997

Chronicles the life of Italian seamstress Maria Barbella, who, in 1895, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die for the murder of her former lover, a man who had raped and abandoned her, and the campaign to save her from the newly invented electric chair. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This story about a headline-making case in Victorian-era New York City is especially engaging because the author, Idanna Pucci, is the great-granddaughter of Cora Slocomb, the American-born Italian aristocrat whose money and passionate advocacy saved the life of poor Italian immigrant Maria Barbella. Pucci, who has previously written about Balinese mythology, was attracted to the case when she found a privately printed booklet about it in an antique family chest. This book not only tells a suspenseful tale of murder and its aftermath, but skillfully illuminates several topics of historical interest: the culture clash between Italian immigrants and turn-of-the-century American society, the history of public opinion on the death penalty, old New York penal institutions such as "The Tombs" and Sing-Sing, the activist role of the early feminist elite such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the class of educated women for whom social justice was a sacred vocation.

From Publishers Weekly

In 1895, Maria Barbella, a 22-year-old Italian immigrant who worked in a New York City sweatshop, was convicted of killing her abusive lover, Domenico Cataldo, because he refused to marry her, and thereby she became the first woman sentenced to die in the newly invented electric chair. Drawing on primary research in Italy and the U.S., Pucci, an Italian filmmaker and writer, has skillfully crafted Barbella's suspenseful story and, in addition, documented late-19th-century prejudice against Italian Americans and women, as well as the inhumane treatment of prisoners. Barbella was saved from death when Cora Slocomb, a U.S. citizen married to an Italian count (Pucci's great-grandmother), became convinced that Barbella had not intended to kill Cataldo, and she hired an attorney who managed to get his client retried and acquitted. Slocomb, at the same time, launched the first national campaign against the death penalty. Gripping social history. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 316 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 11, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679776044
• ISBN-13: 978-0679776048
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,132,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Raising the bar of the True Crime genre, May 18, 2000

By 

Amanda Smith - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Trials of Maria Barbella: The True Story of a 19th-Century Crime of Passion (Paperback)

An impressive mixture of immigrant culture, Italian society, women's roles and the US legal system in the late 1800s. Well researched and intelligently presented.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A little cloying..., March 16, 2004

By 

Lisa Witkowski - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Trials of Maria Barbella: The True Story of a 19th-Century Crime of Passion (Hardcover)

The readability of the book is purely thanks to the humanity of the events themselves.
The author seems mostly to be writing a tribute to her great grandmother, who, in the book, nearly single-handedly saves Maria Barbella from death. To be perfectly clear, I have no reason to doubt the facts presented, but they are relatively few. The author dedicates a significant portion of the book to describing her great grandmother's beauty, noble bearing, and many attributes of character, literally to the extent that her account of the events and circumstances of Maria Barbella's case suffers. I tried to see this as resulting from the relevance of her part in the case, but when Susan B. Anthony only gets a paragraph... I'm presumably reading the book because the proposed subject of the book interests me. Not because I want to know what hotel Cora Slocomb stayed at, where her lace or dresses were made, or whether the author feels everyone was made weak-kneed by her tremendous beauty. For the record, look at the picture of her on page 36 (the only actual photograph in the book other than the one of her husband) and note her one eyebrow.

The account also suffers because the author *extensively* tries to narrate actual dialogue between people and sometimes even their thoughts, which is hardly anything but conjecture when you're describing something that happened that long ago, and which there is no record of. Maria has no real voice or presence in the book, much as she was ignored in her own defense process, so I can't help myself - I doubt the author knows whether Maria actually thought "Who is this beautiful lady?" when said author's great grandmother appeared. But that little bit of info is fairly typical of the content of the book.

So, from one ordinary reader to another, here's my advice:

1. Buy this book if you want. You'll get a rough idea of the story, and you'll get a chuckle from the soft-focus lense treatment I described above. You might even be tempted to find out more about the trial elsewhere.
2. Check out a much more interesting and well-written true story of love gone wrong, called Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White by Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone.

(...)It appears that there is, in fact, a third photograph in the book, aside from that of Cora and that of her husband. You guessed it, a photograph of their house. Rather tenuously related to the stated topic of the book, don't you think?

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Puts a human face on a death penalty statistic, February 28, 2006

By 

Rose Keefe "author" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Trials of Maria Barbella: The True Story of a 19th-Century Crime of Passion (Hardcover)

If you want to look at dry, impersonal statistics, Maria Barbella was the first woman to be sentenced to death in New York after the electric chair replaced hanging as the state's execution method of choice. If you want the bigger story behind her crime, trial, sentence, and rescue, Idanna Pucci's book provides it, courtesy of records left behind by the author's great-grandmother, who was instrumental in Maria's retrial and acquittal.

In April 1895 Italian immigrant Maria Barbella killed Domenico Cataldo for making her his mistress and then refusing to restore her honor by marrying her. An act of vengeance that would have been condoned or even encouraged in Italy saw Maria tried in New York before a hostile judge and all-male jury. Her subsequent death sentence aroused the wrath of feminists everywhere, namely American-born Italian countess Cora Slocombe, who exerted her power and influence to obtain for Maria a retrial and freedom.

Previous reviewers have criticized Pucci's poetic, imaginative writing style, but she packs the entire manuscript with enough verifiable facts to excuse any sporadically injected whimsy. "The Trials of Maria Barbella" is a fascinating examination of an event that brought the feminist, immigrant, and death penalty controversies to the fore.