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

Rating:
Summary: Murder in Jacksonian New York
Review: On one level, Professor Cohen's thorough investigation into one of 19th Century New York's most shocking murder cases doesn't tell us much that we don't already know: the society was sexist, accommodating toward the privileged, and hypocritical in its attitude toward sexual behavior (...and nothing has changed much since then). Whenever Ms. Cohen hammers these points home, and she does pretty often, the effect isn't very... well... effective. And the flow of the book suffers a little from this. Two other things hurt the story: one is the long, distracting section on the histories of the Weston and Jewett/Dorcas families in Maine; and the other is the constant need on Ms. Cohen's part to track the lineage of each and every participant in the case. But for the most part, Professor Cohen's telling of the event is engaging, chilling, and compelling. The participants are brought back to life in a way that most historical writers should envy. To me, the most rewarding part of the book was realizing how much the Jacksonian era in New York and America represented a turning point from the colonial to the modern era. This was the dawn of modern journalism and mass media--the pivotal point where newspaper publishers realized that the public wanted more than just shipping and business reports: where publishers realized there was a public at all. And the media circus--a national media circus--which surrounded this case was the first in a long line that goes on to this day. It was also the first time in western history when people no longer lived in the same place they worked, and when the entire apprenticeship culture was being replaced by the more indifferent employer/employee system. All these important factors do figure into the crime. But the most admirable aspect of the book, for me, was that while all this socio/political analysis went on (sometimes at the expense of the pacing) Ms. Cohen never leaves sight of the young girl at the center of it all. Jewett/Dorcas was by no means a pathetic babe-in-the-woods, and the author is very careful to avoid this perception. But Ms. Cohen makes clear that Jewett, like any crime victim, didn't deserve the end she met. And like any other human being, Jewett was worthy of justice.

Rating:
Summary: Murder in Jacksonian New York
Review: The author tried to add depth to a shallow story by flooding it with distracting detail. I kept waiting for the story to develop, but it never did. You'll know as much about the crime, its characters and the relevant social matters after 50 pages than you will after finishing the book. To top it off, the author has a painfully awkward style of writing.

Rating:
Summary: Sensational Look at a Sensational Case
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Sensational Look at a Sensational Case
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Kept Waiting for Her to Get to It
Review: This book is 409 pages. It should be at least 259 pages shorter.

The author fills the pages with irrelevancies, speculation and thesis-like sociological postulations.

This book is ostensibly about the murder of a prostitute in the 1830's and the trial of the man accused. Why then must we be subjected to several pages on the following topic: the family history of the man who hired Helen Jewitt to work as a servant before she moved to Portland then to Boston then to NYC? If that were not enough in the irrelevant department, we also got some information on this man's grandfather's competitor in the general store business nearly a century before the events in the book. These irrelevant facts added nothing to the book.

Added to this frustration were page upon page of the auhor's speculation about events unknown and motives of people long gone. She gets more out of an undated letter than anyone I ever knew.

Lastly, are the author's often redundant postulations and theorizing about the socialogy of the age. Some would have been helpful, but by the fourth or fifth time the same theory was repeated it was decidedly tiresome.

It is a shame this book was not cut and cut again. The story is a good one and the points the author made were good. It was the presentation and the stretching as if she felt compelled to write 400 page book rather than a short concise one that ruined the experience. You could read the first chapter, then skip @150 pages to the account of the trial and hardly miss a beat.

Rating:
Summary: Don't judge a book by its cover
Review: This book is a dreadful example of the academic mind's pulling out all the stops in an attempt to be thorough and scholarly. What could have been a fascinating book (what material!) becomes a penance to plow through.

Rating:
Summary: Wordy but wonderful!
Review: This book makes you realize that violent crime is not a product of the 20th century. There are slow parts to the book, but the words that the author uses allows the reader to create pictures in thier minds of the setting and the people. This book gives Helen Jewett a place in history that is rightfully hers.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Window On Early 19th Cent. America, Women & Men
Review: 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.