Category: New York

Two Anecdotes of Helen Jewett, a Girl of the Town

Helen Jewett was a girl of the town (which is to say a prostitute) who was murdered with a hatchet in New York in 1836. The case made a sensation in the newspapers of the time, and a nameless printer (nameless to avoid arrest on obscenity charges, since merely mentioning prostitution could get an author and printer in a heap of trouble) came out with a little book to capitalize on the widespread interest:

An Authentic Biography of the Late Helen Jewett. a girl of the town, who was murdered on the 10th of April, 1836: together with a full and accurate account of the circumstances connected with that event. By a gentleman fully acquainted with her history. New York: 1836.

Aside from the gruesome details of the murder, what seems to have given the case such interest was the character of the victim. She was remarkable for her quick wit; more recent readers may be reminded of Mae West. Here are two stories from that little book that illustrate the kind of woman Helen Jewett was.

Upon one occasion, at a house in this city where she was boarding, she had a quarrel with a foolish fellow who frequented the house. He got exceedingly angry, and drawing a pistol, presented it to her breast. Without being in the least agitated, she instantly struck the pistol from his hand, and with her bright eyes flashing fire, in tones calm and clear, indicative of the strongest contempt, she said to him, “You poor contemptible libel upon manhood! You have done what would disgrace the meanest coward that walks the street. You must see, therefore, the necessity of making an immediate apology for such brutal conduct.” Her opponent declared he would do no such thing. “Then,” said Helen, “you must see the necessity I am under of pulling your nose.” Suiting the action to the word, she took the gentleman’s proboscis in her fingers, and tweaked it in no gentle style. (Page 9.)

She was once up before one of our Courts as a witness in a case in which the woman with whom she boarded was a party. The counsel, Mr. F. J., who cross-examined her, asked her a number of impertinent and irrelevant questions, and among the rest, whether there were not many gentlemen in the habit of visiting the house.

“Yes.”

“Well, what did they visit the house for?”

“To see the girls.”

“But what did they want of the girls?”

“I believe there is no one better qualified than yourself to answer that question, as I have observed you frequently among our visitors: will you be so kind as to save me the trouble of answering the question, and communicate to the Court your own experience upon the subject.”—The learned counsel concluded he had caught a Tartar, and backed out of the scrape, though with rather a bad grace. (Page 10.)

First of May in New York

Illustrated magazines are treasuries of forgotten facts of everyday life. From Gleason’s Pictorial in 1851 we learn that May 1 was traditionally moving day in New York City, and it was a day when the most intrepid visitor might fear to set foot in the street. [Addendum: The state legislature had set May 1 as the expiration date for all housing contracts, according to the Historical Dilletante.] The cartoonish engraving shows us a suitably chaotic scene, revealing along the way the rather crude sense of visual humor Gleason’s expected from its audience. Ha ha! The colored fellow got hit in the head with a wagon wheel! That’ll make ’em fall off their chairs laughing. (Black men getting hurt was a never-ending source of mirth in American humorous drawings.) In the background, the American Anti-Gambling Society has moved, to be replaced by a gambling den. Subtle!

The details of the picture, however, also give us some real information about city life that would be useful to historical novelists or anyone else interested in recreating the American city of the middle 1800s. Notice, for example, the prevalence of livestock—and not just draft animals. When people move in New York City, they take their pigs with them. Men losing hats are also here and there throughout the picture, the cheap visual gag reminding us that losing one’s hat was a catastrophe a man had to worry about constantly.

The good people of Gotham seem to possess an irresistible desire to change their residences on the first of May annually, and the ludicrous scenes produced by everybody, and everybody’s furniture, being in the street at the same time, has been the subject of many a humorous poem and laughable prose sketch. Our artist has taken his cue from life, and the mad scene he has given us below is no exaggeration upon the actual truth. Porters, draymen, men, women and children, horses and carts, dogs and pigs, all seem licensed on this day to ran wild and unrestrained; but, to appreciate the picture, one must have been in New York on the first of May, and run the risk of his life, by being run over and trampled upon by the motley crowd of men and animals. In New England now, the first of May is a sort of rural holiday, when people go into the country for a breath of fragrant and pure air, and to join each other in the festivities often of dancing about the May pole as they used to do in olden times, and as we illustrated in our last number. The first of May in the city of New York is a very different occasion.

——Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, July 12, 1851.