Marital disputes are common grounds for stories about human intrigue. The longer two people are together, and the closer they stay, the more eruptive the drama between them can become.
And that’s always interesting to look at from the outside. Spats can range from mundane to comical to rough and gruesome.
But some marital disputes tread that careful line between being upsettingly grotesque and just a little bit goofy.
Everything from the reason for the conflict to the resolution of it comes off like a bad joke.
Bertha Boronda was one of those bad jokes. She was a woman who had a shaky marriage with a dangerous man and then shook a little too hard for both of them to handle
All it took was one night to change a silent but respectful home into the sight of a San Francisco surprise and led to a turn of the century case that would make most modern feminists go wild before feminism, as a movement, even existed.
10 /10 Bertha Zettle
Bertha was born Bertha Zettle to two German immigrants in Minnesota, and that’s all that’s known about her before she moved out west.
She was born in 1877, worked as a washer in Seattle, then moved down south to San Francisco right at the turn of the 20th century, which is when she met the man of her future.
9 /10 Fireman Frank
Frank Boronda, also known by Mario Narcisso Boronda, was a local fire chief and somewhat of a legacy family member to the area. His great great grandfather was one of San Fran’s first teachers in the 1700s.
He was also a bit of a lout, having gone through a shaky marriage before and wasn’t known for his exact honesty.
He was a hard-working man but also a hard-living man. But Bertha liked him, and they married. Maybe he thought she would last, but they were both proved wrong soon after.