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E-book
Author Halpern, Monda M., 1963- author.

Title Alice in Shandehland : scandal and scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz murder case / Monda Halpern
Published Montreal [Quebec] : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2015]
Ottawa, Ontario : Canadian Electronic Library, 2015
©2015

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Description 1 online resource (x, 276 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations
Series McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history. Series one ; 37
McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history. Series 1 ; 37
Contents Introduction -- 1 "This terrible drama of humanity": An Affair, a Shooting, a Death, an Arrest -- 2 "A prominent Ottawa jeweller" and "the jeweller's comely young wife": The Rise of the Edelsons -- 3 "Startling evidence ... of a sensational character": The Inquest, and Respectability Challenged -- 4 "Her life was pure impulse without control": Trial by Jewry, Community Anxiety, and the Spurning of Alice -- 5 "In a court of British justice, sympathy has no place": Trial by Jury, Respectability and Honour, and the Acquittal of Ben -- 6 "A sudden silence fell": The Legacy of the Case -- Conclusion
Summary By 1931, Ben and Alice Edelson had been married for two decades and had seven children, but for years Alice had been having an affair with the married Jack Horwitz. On the night of 24 November, Ben, Alice, and Jack met at Edelson Jewellers to settle the thing. Words flew, a brawl erupted, and Jack was shot and killed. The tragedy marked the start of a sensational legal case that captured Ottawa headlines, with the prominent jeweller facing the gallows. Through a detailed examination of newspaper coverage, interviews with family and community members, and evocative archival photographs, Monda Halpern's Alice in Shandehland reconstructs a long-silenced murder case in Depression-era Canada. Halpern contends that despite his crime, Ben Edelson was the object of far less contempt than his adulterous wife whose shandeh - Yiddish for shame or disgrace - seemed indefensible. While Alice endured the censure of both the Jewish community and the courtroom, Ben's middle-class respectability and the betrayal he suffered earned him favoured standing and, ultimately, legal exoneration. Revealing the tensions around ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class, Alice in Shandehland explores the divergent reputations of Ben and Alice Edelson within a growing but insular and tenuous Jewish community, and within a dominant culture that embraced male success and valour during the emasculating 1930s
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-268) and index
Subject Edelson, Ben -- Trials, litigation, etc
Horwitz, Jack, -1931 -- Death and burial
Edelson, Alice
SUBJECT Horwitz, Jack, -1931 fast
Subject Trials (Murder) -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies
Adultery -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies
Sex scandals -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies
Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies
Jews -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies
Jewelers -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Criminology.
Death and burial of a person
Adultery
Jewelers
Jews
Sex scandals
Trials (Murder)
Triangles (Interpersonal relations)
Ontario -- Ottawa
Genre/Form Case studies
Trials, litigation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780773583375
0773583378
077354559X
9780773545595