William Breckinridge Breach of Promise Trial: 1894

The trial began on March 8, 1894, and it lasted 28 days. Circuit Judge Andrew Bradley, a member of the church that Breckinridge attended in Washington, presided over the trial as a jury of 12 men heard the testimony and considered the evidence. (In 1894, women were not allowed on juries.) Jeremiah Wilson, a former Indiana congressman and state judge who now practiced law in the District of Columbia, led Pollard's legal team. Breckinridge's defense lawyers were under the command of Benjamin Butterworth, a former Republican representative from Ohio, and included Breckinridge's son, Desha, Breckinridge's law partner, John Shelby, and former congressman Philip Thompson, Jr.

For over one month, the country enjoyed the scandalous headlines that came from the courtroom. Upholding the morals of the time, Judge Bradley once refused to allow women in the audience lest they hear some lurid testimony. At one point, a fist fight broke out among the lawyers and Breckinridge's attorneys had to swear to Bradley that they did not bring concealed weapons into the courtroom.

Dressed in black and accompanied by a nun, Madeline Pollard made an impressive witness; the defense was unable to crack her story, and she even fainted when she testified about the death of her second child. Breckinridge's attorneys hoped to attack Pollard's reputation to show that she was someone an influential congressman would not associate with, but much of their evidence was inadmissible hearsay and, in the words of Judge Bradley, "too filthy and obscene" to hear anyway. Furthermore, their tactics only earned Pollard more sympathy. Halfway through the trial, Breckinridge and his lawyers changed their strategy and started to depict Pollard as a wanton woman who pursued the congressman as much as he pursued her.

"I was a man of passion. She was a woman of passion," Breckinridge testified. "There was no seduction, no seduction on either side. It was simply a case of human passion."