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THE MEDIA "FRENZY" cont. "She [Edna] was a San Francisco girl, less than twenty years of age, who…while here was known by the name of Edna Bruton and afterwards Edna Farnsworth. Shortly after her first public disgrace Edna Bruton took up her residence at 108 Geary Street [in a red light area of San Francisco] in a lodging house kept by a woman named Della Wentworth. She remained there until about one year ago when she plunged a most respectable family in disgrace and caused a sensation that was the talk of San Francisco for days." To make a long story short, Edna apparently got a sometime client, George Farnsworth, very inebriated and proceeded to marry him. The two went before a notary public and made the union legally binding. One week after the marriage, George "came to his senses" and "realized the shameful position he was in". It was after all expected that a man, married or no, dallied with prostitutes but to actually marry one was virtually unthinkable. Although poor George attempted to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that he had been "half stupid from drink", his now- wife refused. He then fled from the city. Mrs. Farnsworth remained in San Francisco but on hearing reports that her husband had gone up north she followed him first to Seattle and then to Victoria. "At Seattle she found Della Wentworth who had gone there a short time before, and she remained with her. When George Farnsworth discovered that Edna had followed him he fled again and once more she dogged him, proclaiming that she was his wife and declaring that she would see to it that he remained with her." In the book Upstarts and Outcasts: Victoria's Not-So-Proper
Past, local historian Valerie Green speculates that John Croft, the man
who left 14 Broughton Street a few minutes before Edna shot herself, and
George Farnsworth, Edna's supposed husband, were one and the same. Perhaps
Edna, upon being rejected once more by her husband, shot herself in a
fit of desperation. With its various elements of melodrama, one can understand
why people gravitated to the story of Edna Farnsworth. Click HERE to go to the basic facts of the Belle Adams case. |
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