California, the night of May 30, 1907. Bertha Boronda and her husband Frank lay in their bed and, as they said in those days, "talked about this and that." Their married life was not particularly successful, so they chatted without much enthusiasm - Mr. Boronda was more interested in the upcoming elections and memories of the Mexican mistress who was waiting for him somewhere there, in the night San Jose.
It happened at midnight, so Frank did not understand how his wife ended up with a blade in her hands. Bertha cut off his cock in one fell swoop, like a hussar smashing a champagne cork with a saber, and then she left her husband, dressed in his clothes, and rode off into the night on a bicycle without even waving her hand in farewell.
Surprisingly, Frank Boronda survived and even managed to run across the road to the fire department, where he was the captain. There he was bandaged and, with all the haste that a squad of firefighters is capable of, was taken to the Red Cross hospital. The poor man remained alive and miraculously escaped death from pain shock and infection. But is this life?
Berta was detained just a couple of hours later - she was standing at the San Jose railway station in a man's suit, which, according to contemporaries, was little better than the castration of her own husband.
Terrible story, of course. Look at Bertha's face, though: she looks like she's just experienced the best adventure of her life and brought justice to the world.
What made Bertha so angry?
So what happened between Bertha and Frank? Why did she grab the blade? And this is the most interesting thing in this story. Because it's a real black comedy.
To begin with, Frank was no Frank. His real name is Mario Narcisso Boronda, and Frank was his name for simplicity. Because "Mario Narcisso" is somehow complicated and un-American.
Mario was Mexican, although his family had lived in California for generations. At the time of the attack, he was 43 years old, and his German betrothed, whose maiden name was Berta Zettle, was 31. On the face - a clear mismatch of cultures.
Mario wanted more than anything in his life to put out the fire of women's hearts, and with his respected position as captain of the fire brigade, this was not difficult to achieve. Berta most of all in her life wanted her husband, at least in his old age (in 1907, 43 - this is, consider, an old man) to stop behaving like a preoccupied dog.
Stories of Narcisso's adventures circulated throughout San Jose, where they had lived for the past seven years. Before Bertha, Frank-Mario was already married, but the marriage fell apart because his first wife tried to commit suicide several times because of his infidelities and, in general, a rather tyrannical nature. In general, the gentleman looms not very pleasant.
With the main vice of Mario, fornication, it is even surprising that this sin was not at all the true trigger for his castration. The fact is that Mr. Boronda used his position in order to commit fraud in the elections. And in those days it was in itself a separate and profitable business. There were even entire gangs specializing in juggling results.
Together with colleagues from the fire department, Mario forged ballots and rigged elections throughout the district, and in between this business he consoled unfortunate widows and wives whose husbands were away on business. It's amazing that with such a fire chief, the city of San Jose didn't burn to hell.
Shortly before the incident with the blade, Mario got burned somewhere, did not bribe someone, and as a result, the law began to follow in his footsteps. The police arrested one associate of Boronda after another. I had to leave urgently to visit relatives. Maybe until things settle down, maybe forever. Naturally, Berta had to stay in San Jose and sort out the political mess that Narcisso had stirred up. However, as we already know, she had her own plans.
Was Boronda really castrated?
Did Berta Boronda really cut off her husband's penis? Most of the contemporaries were sure that yes. Yes, and for the sharpness of history, it is much more interesting. Some newspapers in paint described how at the trial, as evidence, they carried out a jar of formaldehyde, in which Frank's severed dignity dangled. He himself, of course, could not help weeping at the sight of what had once been part of his being.
The story quickly acquired a mass of rumors and became part of folklore. So the contemporaries of Bertha and Frank were already wondering: how could a man survive after castration if he was obliged to bleed and inevitably get infected? The defenders of history offer to recall the eunuchs from the eastern harems, who quite experienced castration even in the deep Middle Ages.
How Frank and Berta lived after the incident
In any case, the end of this story also came out strange. Berta was sentenced to five years in prison for "grievous mutilation", but already in 1909 she was released early for good behavior.
Frank later married a woman named Josie Warburton, who was 33 years his junior (which, however, does not prove that he remained on his household). Bertha, after her release, worked as a maid at a hotel in San Francisco and as a waitress at the Camp Meeker recreation center in northern California. In 1921, she married a widower named Alexander Patterson, but this marriage did not work out and ended in divorce.
Frank lived to 77 and died in 1940. Berta died in 1950 at the age of 72. After the trial, they never crossed paths again. Berta Boronda has been considered a symbol of the fight against patriarchy since the days of the suffragettes, and collectors are buying up Mario's allegedly severed penis - there are already five of them from different collections.
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