Today I give you a real-life Femslash Friday: The Toast’s very own Alexis Coe’s Alice + Freda Forever.

In 1892, America was obsessed with a teenaged murderess, but it wasn’t her crime that shocked the nation — it was her motivation. Nineteen-year-old Alice Mitchell had planned to pass as a man to marry her seventeen-year-old fiancée Freda Ward, but when their love letters were discovered, they were forbidden from ever speaking again. Heartbroken and desperate, Alice filched her father’s razor and, in broad daylight on a winter afternoon, slashed her ex-lover’s throat.

If that doesn’t fucking do it for you, then I don’t know what will. I’m going to be interviewing her on Wednesday, October 22nd at 7:30 at Booksmith, so if you’ve always dreamed of watching self and an archivist talk about lesbian murder, here’s your chance.