years of age,” dressed “in a calico frock with purple fringes and muslin underclothes, but neither bonnet nor shoes,” was found floating in the Hudson River. Even as her body was being transported to the Dead House, the trial of eighteen-year-old William Phelps, “accused of murdering George Phelps during a robbery,” was getting under way in Brooklyn.
In Lower Manhattan, William Bolton—a twenty-year-old “soaplock” (slang for a dandyish youth who affected the style later called sideburns)—was arrested after attempting to rape “a stout, athletic Irish wench named Mary Farrell” as she entered her backyard to use the privy. Bolton, according to the
Herald
, “so far succeeded in his object that he seized her, laid her on the ground, and was preparing to have carnal knowledge of her when two other women extricated her from the clutches of the ravisher.”
From farther afield came reports of the hanging of sixty-five-year-old Samuel Watson of Williamston, North Carolina, who was executed for the murder of a neighbor, Mrs. Fanny Garrett. “There was a plum orchard between their residences,” reported the
Herald
, “and she was stooping, in the act of gathering plums, when he deliberately shot her dead, assigning as a cause that she was a witch and had conjured him.” Shortly before his death, the twice-married Watson also confessed that he had “caused the death of both his wives.”
That same week, another elderly Southerner, seventy-year-old John Davis, went on a rampage in a Greenville, South Carolina, boardinghouse when another lodger disturbed him from his sleep. Leaping from his bed, Davis “commenced an indiscriminate slaughter,” stabbing “six men with a knife, two of whom—T. J. Larder, Esq., and Mr. Samuel Brawley—were killed.”
Perhaps most shocking of all was a reported case of parricide in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where twenty-year-old Henry Gunn brained his elderly father with a hatchet, then absconded with “money and valuables worth about $40,000,” leaving the bloody weapon in a woodpile behind the house, its blade clotted with “tufts of hair from the head of the murdered man.” 1
None of these outrages, however, proved to be more than a passing diversion for readers of the sensational press. Once the Colt-Adams story broke on the morning of Monday, September 27, they were immediately forgotten.
Though multicolumn banner headlines didn’t exist in 1841, the city papers trumpeted the news as loudly as their small-print format permitted. 2 Each of the dailies ran a version of the same attention-grabbing headline: “Awful Murder” (
New York American)
, “Frightful Murder”
(Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer)
, “Terrible Murder”
(Tribune)
, “Another Shocking Murder”
(New-York Commercial Advertiser)
, “Horrible Murder of Mr. Adams”
(Sun)
, “Shocking Murder of Mr. Adams, the Printer”
(Herald)
. The accompanying stories offered detailed accounts of the killing and the discovery of the victim’s crated remains in the hold of the packet
Kalamazoo
. 3
The case was an instant sensation, the talk of the town—“the subject of conversation among all classes of the community,” as one newspaper put it. 4 By Monday afternoon, the site of the “awful murder” had already becomethe city’s hottest attraction. Two floors above Colt’s office, the Apollo Association’s fine arts gallery had drawn so few visitors in the first years of its existence that, at its third annual meeting, the membership talked of shutting it down. 5 Now the same public that couldn’t be lured to the Granite Building for its cultural offerings came flocking there in droves for a glimpse of the crime scene. Throughout the day, the northwest corner of Broadway and Chambers was so packed with curiosity seekers that pedestrians had to detour around the crowds. 6
Even as the gawkers blocked the foot traffic on Broadway, craning their necks for a better view of Colt’s
In Lower Manhattan, William Bolton—a twenty-year-old “soaplock” (slang for a dandyish youth who affected the style later called sideburns)—was arrested after attempting to rape “a stout, athletic Irish wench named Mary Farrell” as she entered her backyard to use the privy. Bolton, according to the
Herald
, “so far succeeded in his object that he seized her, laid her on the ground, and was preparing to have carnal knowledge of her when two other women extricated her from the clutches of the ravisher.”
From farther afield came reports of the hanging of sixty-five-year-old Samuel Watson of Williamston, North Carolina, who was executed for the murder of a neighbor, Mrs. Fanny Garrett. “There was a plum orchard between their residences,” reported the
Herald
, “and she was stooping, in the act of gathering plums, when he deliberately shot her dead, assigning as a cause that she was a witch and had conjured him.” Shortly before his death, the twice-married Watson also confessed that he had “caused the death of both his wives.”
That same week, another elderly Southerner, seventy-year-old John Davis, went on a rampage in a Greenville, South Carolina, boardinghouse when another lodger disturbed him from his sleep. Leaping from his bed, Davis “commenced an indiscriminate slaughter,” stabbing “six men with a knife, two of whom—T. J. Larder, Esq., and Mr. Samuel Brawley—were killed.”
Perhaps most shocking of all was a reported case of parricide in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where twenty-year-old Henry Gunn brained his elderly father with a hatchet, then absconded with “money and valuables worth about $40,000,” leaving the bloody weapon in a woodpile behind the house, its blade clotted with “tufts of hair from the head of the murdered man.” 1
None of these outrages, however, proved to be more than a passing diversion for readers of the sensational press. Once the Colt-Adams story broke on the morning of Monday, September 27, they were immediately forgotten.
Though multicolumn banner headlines didn’t exist in 1841, the city papers trumpeted the news as loudly as their small-print format permitted. 2 Each of the dailies ran a version of the same attention-grabbing headline: “Awful Murder” (
New York American)
, “Frightful Murder”
(Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer)
, “Terrible Murder”
(Tribune)
, “Another Shocking Murder”
(New-York Commercial Advertiser)
, “Horrible Murder of Mr. Adams”
(Sun)
, “Shocking Murder of Mr. Adams, the Printer”
(Herald)
. The accompanying stories offered detailed accounts of the killing and the discovery of the victim’s crated remains in the hold of the packet
Kalamazoo
. 3
The case was an instant sensation, the talk of the town—“the subject of conversation among all classes of the community,” as one newspaper put it. 4 By Monday afternoon, the site of the “awful murder” had already becomethe city’s hottest attraction. Two floors above Colt’s office, the Apollo Association’s fine arts gallery had drawn so few visitors in the first years of its existence that, at its third annual meeting, the membership talked of shutting it down. 5 Now the same public that couldn’t be lured to the Granite Building for its cultural offerings came flocking there in droves for a glimpse of the crime scene. Throughout the day, the northwest corner of Broadway and Chambers was so packed with curiosity seekers that pedestrians had to detour around the crowds. 6
Even as the gawkers blocked the foot traffic on Broadway, craning their necks for a better view of Colt’s
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