Today, I have for you 41-year-old Francisco Sanches, who was picked up on a charge of seduction in June of 1914 in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Courtesy Fall River Historical Society

In the legal sense, a charge of seduction means an act by which a person entices another to have unlawful sexual intercourse with them by means of persuasions, promises, flattery or bribes without using any physical force or violence. That doesn’t give us a very clear idea of what happened in this case but it is a very Victorian kind of charge. It earned him a two-year stay at the New Bedford Jail and House of Correction in New Bedford, Massachusetts, plus a $1500 fine.

A little personal detail about today’s subject: Mr. Sanches hailed from St. George, on the island of Grenada in the Caribbean. He listed his occupation as a “slasher tender” which meant he worked in the mills to ensure textiles achieved a certain level of consistency. Slasher tender is classified as a low-skill or unskilled job and, much to my surprise,  it’s one that is still in use today. I even found a current job posting.

As a side note, this post required a lot more research than I guessed it would! First, I had no idea where St. George was, then I realized I didn’t know what seduction meant as a legal charge, and I had no idea what a slasher tender was. As Albert Einstein once said, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”