hahahaha this is so funny
Victorian Morality Claims a Victim
(full text if you read on)
Staunton’s last big news story of the 19th century might be good for a snicker nowadays, but it was anything but amusing to poor Joseph Todd, who got carried away with a young woman only to get carried off to jail soon afterward.
Though Todd did his best to skirt around the evidence, the truth was obvious enough: On Jan. 30, 1899, he invited Jessie Rodgers, an unchaperoned visitor from Highland County, up to his rented room in Gas House Alley. Todd was lonely — so lonely that he resorted to an act of effrontery so heinous that few men of his time would have dared to even think about it.
It wasn’t just the fact that he had invited her up to his room, or that in order to get her up there he told her that it was his sister’s room, and that his sister was sick and he needed Rodgers’ help in caring for her.
It was much worse than that. According to the testimony given during the scandalous, spectator-packed trial that took place two months later, Todd "on reaching [his] room … took off his hat and overcoat and asked [Rodgers] to take a seat and take off her wraps. Prisoner then said that this was not his sister’s house, but his own, and wanted witness to stay with him. Prisoner would give her money and board her at Porter House."
But this isn’t what got Joe Todd sentenced to three years in the penitentiary. It was what happened next. He walked over to the young woman, crouched down and sat in her lap.
The horrified girl burst into wracking sobs, begging him "to remember his own sisters" and to please let her go. Todd quickly consented and removed himself from her lap. Putting his hat and overcoat back on, he escorted her as far as Mary Baldwin Seminary before heading home again.
Rodgers reported the incident a day or so later, at which point a manhunt ensued. Todd went into hiding, but it wasn’t long before local authorities tracked him down and placed him under arrest.
Todd’s trial lasted two days and brought to the stand dozens of witnesses. None had a bad word to say about the defendant, but this didn’t matter to the jury. Joseph Todd had lured Rodgers up to his room, after all, and sat on her lap!
It didn’t take long for the men to reach their verdict. The three-year sentence was handed down, whereupon the convicted lap-sitter was allowed to repair to a local saloon to quaff a few last drinks before being carted off to jail to reflect upon his crime, and, perhaps, to scratch his head over the peculiar mores of his time.