New York City has
seen its share of murders over the years; this post will describe two of them
that have some aspect that makes them of interest.
Helen Jewett, 1836
Called the Girl in Green because of
the clothes she wore, in the 1830s Helen Jewett was the city’s most famous
prostitute. Born in Maine to a
working-class family, at the age of about twelve she went to work as a servant
girl in the home of a judge, but at the age of eighteen, perhaps because of a
seduction, she left there and moved to Portland, where she became a prostitute
under an assumed name. After that, still
using fake names, she moved to Boston and finally to that magnet of hustlers
and achievers, New York. There she
flourished in a fashionable brothel at 41 Thomas Street, where her beauty
attracted numerous clients, including lawyers, merchants, and politicians.
About 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 10, 1836, one of the girls in the house heard a loud noise from
Helen’s room, then a moan, and saw a tall figure hurrying away down the
hall. Two hours later Rosina Townsend,
the madam, noticed that the door to Helen’s room was partly open. Entering, she encountered billowing black
smoke from a fire near the bed.
Immediately she roused the other girls, opened a window, and cried
“Fire!” Several night watchmen came
quickly to put out the fire, though not before several male clients had managed
to slip out, some of them half clothed at best.
Only then, as the smoke cleared, did they find Helen Jewett’s body in
the bed, her nightclothes burned, her body on one side charred, and her
bloodied head caved in from wounds by an ax.
The murderer had
fled through a back door, left his cloak and a bloodied ax outside, and climbed
over a whitewashed fence to escape. Based
on the testimony of the other inmates of the house, the police went to the home
of 19-year-old Richard Robinson, a clerk in a dry goods store, and arrested him
on suspicion of murder. From a
respectable family in Connecticut, Robinson was a “fast” young man and one of
Helen’s regular customers; he had visited her that night. He protested his innocence, insisting that he
had been asleep in his bed at the time of the murder, but on his pants were
stains of whitewash. When shown the still-warm corpse, he displayed no trace of
emotion. A hastily assembled coroner’s
jury heard the testimony of various witnesses and concluded that he had killed
her with a hatchet and should be held for trial.
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| How the press imagined the scene of the murder. The real scene was bloodier. |
Helen Jewett’s
murder became big news in the press. Up
till then American newspapers were devoted mostly to the dry statistics of
business and the speeches of politicians.
Doing historical research, I have consulted them and found only masses
of fine print devoid of bold headlines, interviews, gossip, cartoons, charts,
maps, or other illustrations – nothing, in fact, to entice the eye or entertain
the mind. James Gordon Bennett, founder
and editor of the New York Herald, was
determined to change this and attract a wider readership.
When news of
Helen Jewett’s murder first broke, Bennett assumed that Robinson was guilty and
managed to be admitted to Helen’s room, where he viewed the body -- “the most
remarkable sight I ever beheld” – whose sensual contours, now stiffened by
rigor mortis, he described at length in his paper, likening them to sculpted
marble. Bennett then surmised that
Robinson had been in love with Helen; jealous of her association with other
men, he had decided to break with her, went to her room to extract from her
some letters of his and other items that she refused to give up, whereupon he
produced a hatchet from beneath his cloak and murdered her, set a fire to cover
traces of the crime, and fled. When
Bennett printed all this in lurid detail, the public gobbled it up, the Herald’s circulation soared, its overworked
presses broke down several times, and the newspaper had to move to larger
quarters. So began the reign of yellow
journalism in this country, a reign that continues to this day.
Bennett
interviewed Rosina Townsend as well and began to suspect the madam herself and
the other girls in the house, while reversing his opinion of Robinson’s
guilt. He was soon entangled in a
spirited controversy with the Sun and
other papers convinced of the young man’s guilt. (The Times
and Tribune were not involved, as
they had yet to be launched.) Meanwhile
business fell off sharply at the brothel, the girls started leaving, and Mrs.
Townsend was forced to sell some of her furnishings, including the murder bed,
which, once sold, was smashed into pieces that were carried off by many as
souvenirs. Before the trial began, young
men were rallying to support Robinson, viewing prostitutes as social leeches
who, while necessary to satisfy male needs, were themselves of little worth. But some women came forth in sympathy with
the victim; while not defending her life style, they insisted that her killer
should be held to account. The case now
was front page news in other cities, and the citizens of New York could talk of
nothing else.
The trial began
on June 2, 1836, less than two months after the murder. (Things moved faster in those days.) The courtroom was packed, and – unusual for
the time -- representatives of out-of-town newspapers were present. Defending Robinson was no less a legal
luminary than Ogden Hoffman, the son of a New York State attorney general and
himself a former district attorney. Many
witnesses testified, including Rosina Townsend and a number of
prostitutes. Powerful circumstantial
evidence was skillfully countered by
Hoffman: yes, Robinson was known to have a cloak similar to the one found outside the brothel, but so did many other citizens; etc. When the judge gave the jury its
instructions, he ordered them to ignore the testimony of prostitutes, thus demolishing much of the prosecution's case. In less than half an hour the jury returned
with its verdict: not guilty. Robinson
wept, his supporters cheered, and Helen Jewett’s supporters were stunned. The Herald
was satisfied; the Sun insisted
that Robinson had used the money and influence of wealthy relatives and his
employer to buy an acquittal.
After the trial
some pages from Robinson’s diary were made public, showing him to be callous in
his treatment of women. Public opinion,
including even some of his supporters, turned against him, being convinced now
of his guilt. In time he decided to
transfer his talents to the Republic of Texas, where he is said to have become
a respected citizen of the frontier.
Whether this meant fighting Comanches and Mexicans or just behaving
himself, isn’t clear, though he seems to have opened a dry-goods store and
other businesses.
No one else was
ever tried for the murder of Helen Jewett, who continued to be viewed as either
a victim of society or a scheming seductress who, like all of her profession,
took advantage of male vulnerability and its proneness to sexual error. Nor was Helen’s memory left in peace. Rumors circulated that resurrectionists
exhumed her, stripped her bones, and used her skeleton as a medical
exhibit. What happened for certain was
that her wax likeness became part of an East Coast traveling show warning young
men and women of the fatal consequences of depraved behavior.
What is one to
make of all this today? First, the
hypocrisy of the double standard: a man who frequents prostitutes is simply
yielding to base instincts aroused by female wiles; the prostitutes are far
more guilty than he. This attitude was
even pushed so far by some as to declare, “No man should hang for the murder of
a whore.”
Second, the
newfound role of sensationalist journalism in publicizing crime, sex, and
scandal, even to the point of tainting the proceedings of justice, since
potential jurors could not but be aware of the conflicting opinions about a
case that would soon be tried. It’s
worth noting, too, that the burgeoning yellow press of the day – Bennett’s Herald and other publications that
followed his lead – addressed a primarily male audience, since no respectable
lady should read such stuff. What, then,
were respectable nineteenth-century ladies supposed to read? Godey’s
Ladies Book, with its tinted plates showing current female fashions, and The Ladies’ Repository, a Methodist-sponsored
monthly whose articles, poetry, fiction, and expositions of sound Methodist
doctrine could be safely read by the gentler sex. Foxy
Lady lay a long time in the future.
Today, opinion
inclines strongly to a belief in Robinson’s guilt. Which makes me wonder why some of us, when
provoked, commit crimes of violence, while most of us do not. Criminologists will have the final say on the
matter, but I’ll toss my modest two cents in, for whatever it is worth. My inmate pen pal in North Carolina – who
will soon be released, by the way – once wrote a vignette of prison life
entitled “Murderers I Have Known.” In it
he explains that one never asks another prisoner what he is in for, since to do
so is to court trouble. But some
inmates, upon getting to know you, will volunteer their stories, and he relates
several. The common denominator, I
concluded, was an inability to control anger, and a tendency to yield to
impulse without considering the consequences.
The most striking
account told how a young man, when he failed to get the promised Christmas gift
of a motorcycle from his parents, was so angry that he got a gun and killed
them both. Then, panicking, he rushed to
the garage to escape -- to where he didn’t know -- in the family car. And there in the garage he discovered a shiny
new motorcycle that his parents intended as a surprise. Try as I may, I can’t understand the young
man’s deed. I can imagine him raging and
ranting against his parents, threatening to run away or doing it, or breaking
some object cherished by them. But I
can’t conceive of getting a gun and murdering them. Are some of us wired differently so that, if
provocation arises, we do unlooked-for acts of violence? I’ll let criminologists explain the
matter. But the very thought of it is
scary.
Finally, I can’t
help but wonder who Helen Jewett was.
She was portrayed by contemporaries either as an unfortunate young woman
seduced and led astray, or as a wanton seductress taking advantage of her male
clientele, but both these views are stereotypes. Who was she really? There are those today who see her as a bold
sexual adventurer and independent woman – a feminist before her time – but this
strikes me as a projection of current attitudes unsupported by the facts of the
case. Who she really was we don’t know
and never will.
The Helen Jewett
murder has taken up so much space, and led in so many directions, that I’ll add
only one more murder here. So now we’ll
zip forward into the early twentieth century, when the vigorous muscular frame
of Teddy Roosevelt, the hero of San Juan Hill, bustled its weight in the White
House, and America, the victor in the Spanish American War, was becoming a
recognized world power. But we’ll linger
far from the centers of national power, settling down for a moment in
Chinatown, New York, where different powers held forth and a different war was
raging.
Ah Hoon, 1909
Ah Hoon was a Chinese
American comedian performing in the Chinese Theater on Doyers Street, where
Chinese spectators mixed with English-speaking visitors whose interest in
exotic Chinatown was not diminished by the occasional whiz of a bullet or the aroma
of gunpowder often in the air. The bullets and gunpowder were the result of a tong war between the dominant On Leongs on the
one hand, and the rival Hip Sings, led by a young upstart named Mock Duck, and their
ally, the Four Brothers association; at stake was control of the illegal but
very lucrative gambling and drug activities in Chinatown. (The tongs of the time were mutual aid
societies that had evolved into murderous gangs.) Mock Duck was a formidable figure, strutting around Pell
Street covered with diamonds, his sinister image enhanced by long, lethal
fingernails indicating that he left the dirty work to his lowly associates. Knowing his life in danger, he wore a
chain-mail vest and, if attacked, was said to squat down in the street, shut both eyes, and fire
two handguns at his assailants. Rough on passers-by, but it must have worked since he survived.
 |
| Mock Duck, with neither vest nor diamonds nor weapons visible. |
This sinister
figure was not one to trifle with, but Ah Hoon did just that. Being associated with the On Leongs, during his
performances in April 1909 he began making fun of Mock Duck and the Hip Sings
and Four Brothers, and in the months that followed, his gibes got fiercer. Mock Duck and the Hip Sings were not amused;
in fact, their appreciation of Ah Hoon’s humor was in such scant supply that
they finally sent an emissary to the comedian to inform him he would die on
December 30, 1909.
This notice must
have caused Ah Hoon some anxiety, but the On Leongs rallied to his
support. On December 29 a police
sergeant and two patrolmen were assigned to guard Ah Hoon during his
performance in a sold-out theater jammed with spectators eager to see a public
execution. After the performance the
three policemen escorted Ah Hoon through a tunnel back to his Chatham Square
boardinghouse. There the comedian went
upstairs and retired to his room, whose only window faced the wall of the
building next door, while a squad of heavily armed On Leongs stood guard
outside his locked door, and dozens more kept watch in the street below. Feeling safe, Ah Hoon went to bed. The next morning he was found dead with a
bullet in his heart.
In celebration of
their victory, the Hip Sings paraded through the streets of Chinatown with the
requisite fireworks, music, and dancing dragons. The police were baffled; how had the Hip
Sings managed it? In time, another
police investigation figured it out. The
Hip Sings had entered a nearby tenement and mounted to the roof, then jumped
across three roofs to the roof of the building next door to Ah Hoon’s, and
before midnight lowered a hit man in a chair by rope; the hit man had then stealthily
entered the room through the window, approached the bed, and shot the sleeping
comedian with a silencer-equipped gun, after which he regained the chair and
was hoisted back up to the roof. Ah Hoon
probably never knew what happened, nor was a suspect ever arrested. Meanwhile
the tong war continued.
Mock Duck, who
must have ordered the murder, won the war against the On Leongs, but was
arrested several times in the following years; finally convicted for operating
a policy game (an illegal lottery), he served two years in Sing Sing. In 1932 he helped arrange peace among the
Chinatown tongs and retired to Brooklyn, where he died in 1941.
Ah Hoon’s murder
does not prompt me to the many reflections that Helen Jewett’s does, for it was
simply a gangland murder, Chinatown style.
Who was Ah Hoon? Did he have a
family? Why did he risk his life by
making fun of a rival tong? It was like
a comedian in Chicago in the 1920s making fun of Al Capone. The sources say nothing of all this; they
simply record the basic facts of an ingenious murder.
Me and Teddy
Roosevelt: Ah Hoon's murder, like that of Stanford White (post #107), occurred when Teddy Roosevelt was President, which prompts a personal reflection. Teddy Roosevelt is the
only President from before my time whom I have related to personally. Back in my tender years my father, a great
sportsman and lover of the outdoors, often told his younger son, a bookworm
with no aptitude for sports, how Teddy Roosevelt had been a puny little
pantywaist, easily bullied by other boys, until he went out West, toughened up,
and became a muscular, two-fisted specimen whom no bully would mess with: he
became a man. As a result, all through my grade school
and junior high school years I nourished an intense desire to mount a picture
of T.R. on my bedroom wall, so I could use it as a dartboard and implant a
barrage of sharp objects in his beefy, toothy grin. Intensifying this urge was the fact that
T.R.’s favorite exclamation was “Bully!” – which can be interpreted
variously.
Alas, I never
obtained the picture or the dartboard, and in time myself and my views ripened. Today I have to acknowledge the following:
·
T.R., albeit a racist and imperialist, was also that rarity of
today, a progressive Republican.
·
He established the National Park system.
·
He busted trusts. (Ah Teddy, in this era of too-big-to-fail
banks, where are you when we need you?)
·
I myself have been known to say, ”Bully!” Albeit a bit facetiously.
·
I once took an obligatory boxing class in
college and survived. Once, I even
merited praise from the instructor, a professional boxer with an impressive
build. But I saw boxing as a game, almost a
dance, nothing more.
·
Still, I am not a hunter, and think it both
ridiculous and repellent that those who are have traditionally mounted on their
walls the heads of creatures they have slain.
I have often fantasized seeing the head of the hunter himself mounted
there beside them: a delicious thought.
 |
| Big man kills big elephant: big deal. |
Me and hunting: To talk about Teddy Roosevelt is to talk about hunting. Yes, in this regard I've just tried to have a laugh at his expense, but as a child of the Midwest and son of a hunter I know that it's not that simple. As my father explained to me long ago, hunting is an instinct, stronger in some than in others. In him it was strong; in me, practically nonexistent. I came in time to inherit his love of the outdoors, but had no interest in his fishing poles and shotguns, his most cherished possessions. But urban liberals usually fail to grasp how important hunting is to many people in other parts of the country, how it's in their blood. My own feelings are mixed. Hunting to obtain a truly necessary supply of food I have no quarrel with, nor hunting to thin out an overabundance of wildlife, since that will actually benefit the wildlife. As for hunting as a sport -- the kind of hunting most Americans do -- I have no personal interest in it, but wouldn't want to interfere with those who do. It needs to be regulated, obviously, for the sake of all concerned. If, as Tennessee Williams's character in The Glass Menagerie insists, man was meant to be a lover, a warrior, and a hunter, maybe being a hunter is the easiest to achieve. The trouble is, too often there are far more hunters than game; the hunting instinct persists, but the wilderness that accommodates it is much diminished. Do I believe in gun control? You bet! But in control of handguns and automatic weapons, which have nothing to do with hunting. Leave it to the NRA to try to muddle the issue, so as to enlist hunters against even moderate gun control -- a fight that continues, and that so far the NRA is winning.
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| My father loved them, I did not. Gurpreetsihota |
Coming soon: New York and the Slave Trade. And a sequel: The Slave Trade: How Did They Get Away with It, and How Did It End? Also: New York and the China Trade. (Titles tentative.)
© 2014 Clifford Browder
© 2014 Clifford Browder
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