Teresa Bagioli Sickles

Common card · No. 436581

Teresa Bagioli Sickles (1836 – February 5, 1867) was the wife of Democratic New York State Assemblyman, U.S. Representative, and later U.S. Army Major General Daniel E. Sickles. She gained notoriety in 1859, when her husband murdered her lover, Philip Barton Key II, son of Francis Scott Key. In the historic murder trial, Sickles successfully employed a temporary insanity defense for the first time in United States jurisprudence, and was acquitted. Teresa was publicly shamed following her infidelity. She died of tuberculosis at 31, with one daughter.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Harper's Weekly, Public domain