The three week trial of Mary Harris for murder had been a national sensation. She had shot dead her former lover, A. Judson Burroughs, who had married another, as he left his work in the Treasury Department on January 30, 1865. Her defense had been one of temporary insanity, brought on by female hysteria and pre-menstrual syndrome. She was found "not guilty," the first recorded case for a woman so pleading, in remarkable scenes in a Washington, D.C. courtroom. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
"Miss Harris Acquitted: Extraordinary Close of a Remarkable Trial," New York Times, July 20, 1865, p.1.