Second Printing
For Belding Book

Barre author, Patricia Belding, whose book about a high-profile murder that took place in Barre just after the end of World War I, has announced that "One Less Woman: A Vermont Murder 1919" has gone into its second printing. A retired librarian who has lived in Barre since 1963, Belding has written one book about all the town and city libraries in Vermont, plus three others that deal with Barre history.

On May 4, 1919, a woman’s naked body was found strangled in a garden just of North Main Street. Lucina Broadwell, a 29-year-old mother of three young children, had been associated with a "house of ill repute" on South Main Street. The murder shocked Barre and the whole state, and the trial, held in October in the Washington County Courthouse in Montpelier, was closely followed by Vermonters. This three-week legal battle attracted several reporters from other parts of New England, mainly from Boston.

Belding used material from the Barre Daily Times (forerunner of the Times Argus) for most of the text. In 1919, the newspaper coverge of murders and the trials that followed was very complete, much more so than today. Beld-ing also used information from the archives of the Harvard Law School Library, researching the files of James R. Wood, a Boston-based detective hired by the prosecution. His description of the brothel activities helps to round out the story of one of Vermont’s most sensational crimes.

The 200-page paperback includes over 40 illustrations. It is available at the Aldrich Library, Exile on Main Street, the Vermont Historical Society, the East Barre Antique Mall, and at some local bookstores.

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