The Battered Wife and Her Five Little Kids All Dressed In White: A True Story

by George Garrigues

It was pitch dark outside a stately New Jersey mansion in 1916. Inside, a man’s body lay on the floor. Margaret Clair Beutinger gripped a smoking gun. Two little girls crept from their bed and clung to her. She arose with the revolver carefully pointed away from them, and then, in fright, threw it down. She sank back and wept. The six-year-old ran to soak a towel in water from the sink and returned to bathe her mother’s face. The servants came.

Was it murder or self-defense? It was up to two dozen men to decide.

And that drunken politician brought up on a charge of touching her when she lay abed in jail. Would he beat the rap?

You follow this story as almost everybody did it at that time — through printed newspaper reports, day after day as the tale unfolded. It is a unique way to look at this gripping narrative of a century ago.

This new edition brings her story up to date. The time she was named correspondent in a divorce suit. Whom she finally married. The astonishing claim that she had been a British agent. Her long (and eventually quiet) life.

And what became of her five little kids all dressed in white.

Genres: True Crime

162 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 21, 2016

Reviews

[Debra Balke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes you back in time as if you were there.

A wonderful historical read, as if I was living through it. Well researched, laid out, and an enjoyable length. Author's expertise in journalism is clear and is what makes the book work so well. Can't wait to check out more of his books!

[OMalleycat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This true crime account is interesting because of the use of newspaper accounts of the time (1916) but the contemporary author, Garrigues, inserts commentary that adds nothing and is oddly colloquial and facetious considering it’s an account of a tragic crime—a very young, badly battered wife kills her husband and is tried twice.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is an interesting read

[Deanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a Life!

This woman had quite the life! The story is great! It takes the reader all the way to her death in 1981.

[Bettye McKee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The woman who heeded bad advice

This story is very tragic and quite commonplace during the time period. Mrs. Margaret Claire Beutinger suffered years of physical abuse at the hands of her cruel brute of a husband. Many times he had threatened to kill her. When she told him she had endured enough and had decided to divorce him, he began to assault her and she shot him dead. Of course she was charged with murder. Her first trial ended with a hung jury, but she was tried a second time.

The story is told through the accounts of various newspapers of the time. Women were not supposed to harm men. The law said she should have run away! What, and wait until the next time, then run away again? What about her five children? If she was expected to submit to being murdered, didn't she have a right to protect her children?