The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Ninetenth-Century New York

If you're going to complain that this gave too much context around the murder, move along. If you're looking for the Whole Story and then some, this is fascinating and very thorough.

The Murder of Helen Jewett by Patricia Cline Cohen is an interesting look at a sensational case that touches on many aspects of life in Victorian era New York City. Helen Jewett is the centre of the story and the author gives as much information as she can so that Jewett becomes a living character in history rather than as the symbol she became at the time of her murder. This book is much more than a sensational murder and trial as it becomes a thoroughly researched and wonderfully readable look into the growing pains of a big city. This story is about men and women, clerks and prostitues, legal codes and tabloid journalism, politics and capitilism. Ms. Cohen does a superb job of taking all of these pieces and truly bringing the 1830's Manhattan alive for the reader. A true find and a great pleasure.

This is a fascinating and truly extraordinary work of history, a window on all sorts of early 19th century Americana: the complex social and economic fabric of small but burgeoning New York City; respectable (and hardscrabble) society in Maine; prostitution; the news media; the legal system; the postal system -- virtually every aspect of then-contemporary American institutions and manners up to and including nose-tweaking. In many respects, the world Professor Cohen describes is utterly unlike our own (for example, prostitution in NYC was more than merely tolerated, men did not run the business, and at least until the Jewett case, the prostitutes felt comfortable invoking the protections of police and courts). The book is naturally provocative as well as informative as an account of relations among early 19th century men and women generally, yet always balanced and never strident or didactic (which is rather surprising, considering the subject and the circumstances). It is also a satisfying detective story -- you will be eager to know whodunnit -- and includes a murder trial with some uncanny parallels to that of O.J. Simpson. Finally, though, in bringing so fully to life across a gap of so many years both Helen Jewett and her client/lover, the young Mr. Robinson, Professor Cohen has introduced us to two characters who, once discovered, simply refuse to go away and be forgotten. (These two were contemporaries of Andrew Jackson and Davey Crockett, for example, but this book makes them seem much fresher and more readily accessible.) The book is filled with detail, which may not be for everyone. But for those who find details satisfying, this book is very likely to surprise and delight you.

This book is an ideal mixture of scholarly inquiry and popular history. Too often books are one, or the other. Popular history, so popular in recent years in the realm of the Pulitzers and National Book Award, has little scholarly merit. It is usually tendentious and shallow. While purely scholarly work is impossible to get through. This book is a star of the historian's art. The reader gets to understand what it was like to live in 1830s America -- in Maine upper class & NY underclass, along with tastes of Connecticut middle-brow and the life of clerks in the early industrial revolution in US cities. Cline Cohen lets the reader see the seams of the historian's method, which is interesting in & of itself & also gives the reader greater confidence that she isn't just making all this up.

This is an excellent book which never failed to hold my interest. Cohen has done a tremendous job in researching her subject, and her presentation of the information is never dry or boring. She manages to breath life into both the victim, the murderer and the other characters in an incident which took place over 160 years ago -- a truly laudable accomplishment. Cohen DOES make a few conclusions which the facts do not necessarily support, e.g., it is a fact that the prominent and wealthy John Livingston owned the building in which the brothel where Jewett worked and was murdered was located, and he no doubt knew that his building was being used as a bordello; however, Cohen's suggestion that Livingston took a direct and personal interest in decorating the place (as regards a certain piece of artwork) is a little over the top, especially when Cohen herself admits that there is no proof that Livingston ever even owned or possessed this piece of art. But these sort of "over-reaching" conclusions are few and do not mar an overall fine, well-written and exceedingly interesting work. I hope she follows up (and soon) with another book in a similar vein -- I will definitely read it!

This is a terrific book, a previously obscure but fascinating incident brought to light and examined in appropriate detail. The author's style is smooth and transparent, and this book really is a great pleasure to read and most enlightening about many aspects of 1830's life in New York City and America. The author does have an irritating habit of attributing everything to feminist theory, often without any justification in fact other than her pet theories. For example, at one point a gang breaks into a brothel, breaks some glasses, lights some fires, insults the madam and the prostitutes. The author insists "They were not robbers...they were contemptuous vandals, there to remind the women of the ultimate power men have over them by sheer physical force and intimidation." Well, perhaps. But it seems equally likely that they were sent as revenge by an angry customer, to intimidate by a rival brothel keeper, to frighten the madam into paying a debt...or a dozen other reasons. I don't know. Neither does the author of this book. But she leaps to this conclusion and allows of no other possibility, as she does in perhaps a dozen other places in this book. "To the man with a new hammer, everything looks like a nail" runs the old proverb, and one sees it at work here in these dogmatic assertions based on nothing but the author's late 20th century feminist theories. Fortunately these passages are few and far between in this fine book. Just ignore them when they pop up, and you will enjoy this excellent work of history written in a refreshingly jargon-free style.