![]() ![]() He became Helen Jewett’s lover in a tempestuous affair and ten months later was arrested for her murder. The son of an established Connecticut family, he was intense, arrogant, and given to posturing. 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. 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.īut she was to meet her match–and her nemesis–in a youth called Richard Robinson. Patricia Cline Cohen goes behind these first lurid accounts to reconstruct the story of the mysterious victim, Helen Jewett.įrom her beginnings as a servant girl in Maine, Helen Jewett refashioned herself, using four successive aliases, into a highly paid courtesan. In 1836, the 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. By Patricia Cline Cohen (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) ![]()
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