Doris Lane

Helen Jewett

Helen Jewett was famous in 1830s New York. Elegant and strikingly dressed, she was known to every pedestrian along Broadway. Young Richard P. Robinson, one of her regular clients at the brothel, became infamous by murdering her in bed and getting away with it.

by Doris Lane

The Courtesan

Helen Jewett was a great letter writer. She was a familiar figure in the mid-1830s as she strolled along Broadway to the post office at Wall Street, fashionably dressed in green silk. Among the many illustrations that appeared in the New York penny press and crime pamphlets in which she was featured dead, one with both breasts fully exposed, another with the blade about to fall on her neck, was one in which she appeared as in public life in her signature green silk dress and a veiled hat. She carried a parasol in one hand and a letter in the other.

In her room at 41 Thomas Street, one of a row of Federal townhouse brothels, Helen hung a picture of Lord Byron, who was her favorite poet. She had a small library of books by Byron, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Sir Walter Scott, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and a copy of Flowers of Loveliness, recently published by Lady Blessington. She had current subscriptions to literary journals, such as the Knickerbocker and the Albion. Theatrical sketches were pinned over her mantle. A worktable held pens and ink and good quality writing paper. Police found a trunk in the room holding almost 100 letters to and from Helen's admirers.

Big Harp Little Harp Sign

The first known serial killers in American history were the Harp boys. During the years of the Revolutionary War, the two cousins went on an indiscriminate killing rampage, killing anyone who got in their way. They killed infants, including their own, children, women and numerous men. They killed for the sake of killing.

by Doris Lane

Harp's Hill is near the Pond River in western Muhlenberg County, Ky., not far from Highway 62. There is a crossing in the road near Dixon named Harp's Head and one of the crossing roads is named Harp's Head Road. Some miles away, the precise location lost to time, there is a cave known as Harp's House. To tell how these places earned their names is to tell the story of Micajah (Big) and Wiley (Little) Harp, America's first known serial killers.

They passed for brothers, but were cousins, sons of brothers John and William Harpe, Scottish immigrants to Orange County, N.C. The boys were named William (Micajah/Big), son of John, and Joshua (Wiley/Little), son of William. Big Harp and Little Harp left home as young men in 1775, aiming to become overseers of slaves in Virginia. Career plans diverted by the American Revolution, the Harps instead became Tory outlaws in a gang that roved the North Carolina countryside, raping farmers' daughters, pillaging livestock and crops, and burning farmhouses. In the attempted kidnapping of one young girl by a Tory rape gang, Little Harp was shot and wounded by local Patriot Captain James Wood.

Ruth Brown

Ruth Brown was only 13 when she went to work as a telephone operator. She worked the night shift. During the day she studied shorthand and bookkeeping and dreamed of growing up and marrying her boss. Not the boss at the telephone company, but some ideal of a wealthy executive with whom she would live happily ever after. Not that Ruth would lack for marriage proposals. Later in life, while on trial for murdering her husband, she would receive a total of 164. 

by Doris Lane

Ruth was 20 in 1915 when she married her employer, the editor of Motor Boating magazine, Albert Snyder. Before marrying Ruth, Snyder had been engaged 10 years to Jessie Guishard and he hadn't exactly gotten over her. When Albert and Ruth set up housekeeping, one of the first pictures to hang on a wall of the family home was Jessie's. When Albert bought a boat he named it after Jessie. When Ruth objected, Albert declared that Jessie was "the finest woman I have ever met."

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton Duel

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the most star-crossed political foes in U.S. history, joined together in 1800 to defend a man accused – and all but convicted in the court of public opinion – of the murder of his fiancée.

 by Doris Lane

If you stood on Greene Street, off Spring Street in SoHo, looked around and imagined the past, you might be able to picture Lispenard's Meadow of 1799. Not flat, like now, but gently hilly: A rural pleasure ground for strolling New Yorkers in summer; a vast ice-skating arena when the meadows froze over in winter.

Broadway then was a narrow country lane used to herd cows north from the city to feed at the grassy salt meadow. Spring Street, today lined with art galleries and expensive shops, was a path to the Hudson River. From the corner of Broadway and Spring Street, in 1799, there would not be a cobble-stoned street in sight. If you looked through the trees you could see the white country mansion of Aaron Burr, the New York lawyer soon to be Vice President of the United States.