6. Describe the social wrongs that led to Norman's circumstances, according to Lydia Child. In November 1843, Amelia Norman of New Jersey was arrested for the attempted murder of successful merchant, Henry S. Ballard. The accused claimed to be the victim of seduction, which in the mid-nineteenth century was a crime punishable by a sentence of 5 to 20 years in prison (Murray 5) and defined as "the act of a male person having intercourse with a woman of chaste character with promise of marriage, or by the use of flattery or persuasion" (Humble 145-146). In February 1844, noted columnist, feminist, and abolitionist Lydia Child published "Letter from New York [The Trial of Amelia Norman]," detailing the extraordinary fanfare that surrounded Norman's trial, including the surprisingly loud (and favorable) of public sympathy. . Legally, Norman's case is rarely mentioned, except in reference to a particular period of American jurisprudence in which legislation (and its inevitable influence on social conscience) was remarkably parochial. In 1841, Amelia Norman was a 16-year-old girl who had lived a stable life employed as a servant to a wealthy New York family since the age of thirteen. That year, she was introduced to the successful (and significantly older) clothing merchant Henry Ballard, and they immediately began a relationship. Dispassionate and rigorously objective accounts of the nature of the relationship are scarce, and the available details do not lend themselves to sincere courtship. According to sources, Ballard went to great lengths to ensure that the relationship remained largely clandestine, financing the termination of two of Norman's pregnancies for which he was directly responsible (Jones 178). In 1843, Ame...... center of paper ......Belief in the "right dessert" is no longer politically correct and therefore enjoys substantially less front-page prominence in the largest circulation newspapers. Although Norman's tribulations would likely still have elicited sympathy from contemporary audiences, Ballard would not have simply been dismissed as a libertine with a contemptuous reputation. Rather, sympathy for his prolonged and violent psychiatric disorder would be overwhelming, with at least one mental health professional saying that Ballard was likely a victim of sexual misconduct himself, although he buried any memory of the event deep in his subconscious . Norman would still have been acquitted, but only because his team of highly compensated lawyers had successfully made a self-defense argument against an enraged madman. His virtue would have little (if any) importance in the trial proceedings.