Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Record:   Prev Next
Resources
More Information
Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Halpern, Monda M., 1963- author.

Title Alice in Shandehland : scandal and scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz murder case / Monda Halpern.

Publication Info. Montreal [Quebec] : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2015]
©2015
Ottawa, Ontario : Canadian Electronic Library, 2015.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (x, 276 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations.
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history. Series one ; 37
McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history. Series 1 ; 37.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-268) and index.
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.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Edelson, Ben -- Trials, litigation, etc.
Horwitz, Jack, -1931 -- Death and burial.
Horwitz, Jack, -1931.
Edelson, Alice.
Edelson, Ben -- Procès, instances, etc.
Horwitz, Jack, -1931 -- Mort et sépulture.
Edelson, Alice.
Trials (Murder) -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies.
Trials (Murder)
Ontario -- Ottawa.
Genre/Form Case studies.
Subject Adultery -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies.
Adultery.
Sex scandals -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies.
Sex scandals.
Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies.
Triangles (Interpersonal relations)
Jews -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies.
Jews.
Jewelers -- Ontario -- Ottawa -- Case studies.
Jewelers.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Subject Sex scandals.
Love triangles.
Genre/Form Case studies.
Other Form: Print version: Alice in Shandehland. McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history. Series two McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history. Series two ; (CaOONL)2015901543X
ISBN 9780773583375 electronic book
0773583378 electronic book
0773583378
9780773583405
0773583408
9780773545595