Oregon's Bloody Trail

The case of Charity Lamb was the first of its kind in the Oregon territory. She made history not only for the brutal way in which she murdered her husband, but it is the earliest recorded case of domestic abuse being used as a defense. Insanity was later added to the defense, reminding everyone involved that no sane person could have been so vicious to another.

What new Oregon City resident, Charity Lamb, did that thirteenth day in May 1854, would be repeated many times throughout history and still continues to this day in various forms. As her husband, Nathaniel, settled into his chair at the dinner table in their tiny cabin to eat with five of their six children, Charity walked up behind him, raised an ax as high as she could, and dropped it onto the back of her husband's head, leaving a gash five inches long and reaching the soft tissue of the brain. Just for good measure, she did it once more, landing a blow lower on the back of Nathaniel's head before running out of the house and to the nearest neighbor, a half-mile away. Three of her children gathered around their father, who had fallen out of his chair and onto the floor. Two of them, seventeen-year-old Mary Ann and fifteen-year-old Abram followed her to the neighbor's house.

It was at the neighbor's house that the Oregon City constable found Charity, calmly smoking a pipe. When asked why she attempted to kill him, Charity calmly removed the pipe from her lips and responded that she didn't mean to kill the "critter", that she had only intended to stun him. It was she who was stunned when the constable informed her that Nathaniel was still alive.

It took a full week before Nathaniel would succumb to his injuries. It didn't take investigators long to find a motive for the murder. A love triangle had developed between a young traveler that introduced himself as Collins, Charity, and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Mary Ann. Apparently, Collins was quite the lady's man, leaving a long trail of broken hearts and breaking up at least one other marriage in the Willamette Valley. The week of Nathaniel's murder, a love letter written to Collins was found. In response, Nathaniel threatened to take his boys and move to California. Nathaniel had, in fact, sold his mare just the day prior to meeting his end. The letter Nathaniel found indicated the desire to go with Collins to California, though it is unclear if Mary Ann or Charity wrote the letter. Two months after the murder of her husband, July 10, 1854, warrants for the arrests of both Charity and Mary Ann were issued in the death of Nathaniel Lamb.

Both women were brought before the court at once, and the trial of Mary Ann Lamb began the following day. In a trial before US District Court before Judge Cyrus Olney, Mary Ann was quickly acquitted of the murder of her father. Just days later, on the thirteenth day of July, Charity Lamb stood before the same judge and with the same court-appointed attorney, charged with the same crime that her daughter had been acquitted of. Charity had lost an extreme amount of weight and appeared to be little more than skin and bones. While Charity stood before Judge Cyrus Olney, she rocked a small baby in her arms.

The facts of the case were undeniable. Nathaniel Lamb had been killed, and Charity Lamb delivered the blow that killed him. The defense attorney called to the stand the children of Nathaniel and Charity Lamb, who each testified to the abuse heaped on their mother by their father. The children testified that Nathaniel had forced his wife from her sickbed on several occasions and made her work. He had punched, kicked, and even used a hammer to beat his wife for her transgressions. Charity herself testified to Nathaniel pointing a gun in her direction while he threatened her and that he had attempted to poison her. In the few days prior to his death, Charity testified, he had threatened to leave with his boys, abandon his girls and murder her before setting out for California. He further threatened that if she left him, he would find her and "settle her when she didn't know it." Though the lawyer would argue an insanity defense, the jury ultimately decided that though his threats seemed to be inevitable, she had failed to convince them that the threats were imminent.

The jury found Charity Lamb guilty of murder in the second degree. They reasoned that anxiety did not equal insanity, and as such Charity should be held accountable for the grizzly murder of Nathaniel Lamb. Charity was sentenced to life in prison, with Judge Cyrus Olney showing what little favor he could to Charity in light of the jury's decision. Her children were taken from her, and the church at which her husband's autopsy took place took custody. After spending two years at the local jail, Charity was shipped off to the Oregon State Penitentiary for a life of hard labor. Her time was spent cleaning and doing laundry for the warden. For eight long years, Charity existed alone as the only female in the prison. In what was surely a humanitarian gesture, Charity was moved to Hawthorne Insane Asylum in 1862. Though the hospital allowed visitors, there was no record kept of who, if anyone, visited her.

Charity spent the next seventeen years as a model prisoner with a regular smile on her face and knitting needles in her hands. A suspected stroke took the life of Charity in September of 1879. She was laid to rest at Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. In 1930, the area in which Charity was buried was paved over, to prepare for the industrial boom that was sure to come. In 1955 a building was placed on the asphalt, under which Charity still lies.

Along with Charity are one hundred and thirty-two other patients of the Hawthrone Insane Asylum, long forgotten. It is in the memory of Charity Lamb and those unknown patients that I dedicate this piece.