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

Evoking the frenetic city life and sexual mores of early nineteenth-century America, a historian reconstructs the life of a servant girl from Maine who became a highly paid courtesan, and celebrated murder victim, in New York in 1836. 10,000 first printing.

murder of a young prostitute made headlines in New York City and around the country, inaugurating a sex-and-death sensationalism in news reporting that haunts us today. Patricia Cline Cohen goes behind these first lurid accounts to reconstruct the story of the mysterious victim, Helen Jewett.

From her beginnings as a servant girl in Maine, Helen Jewett refashioned herself, using four successive aliases, into a highly paid courtesan. She invented life stories for herself that helped her build a sympathetic clientele among New York City's elite, and she further captivated her customers through her seductive letters, which mixed elements of traditional feminine demureness with sexual boldness.

But she was to meet her match--and her nemesis--in a youth called Richard Robinson. He was one of an unprecedented number of young men who flooded into America's burgeoning cities in the 1830s to satisfy the new business society's seemingly infinite need for clerks. The son of an establi