TY  - BOOK
AU  - Hortis,C.Alexander
TI  - The witch of New York: the trials of Polly Bodine and the cursed birth of tabloid justice 
SN  - 1639363912
PY  - 2024///
CY  - New York
PB  - Pegasus Crime
KW  - Bodine, Polly
KW  - Trials (Murder)
KW  - New York (State)
KW  - History
KW  - 19th century
KW  - Tabloid newspapers
KW  - New York
KW  - Murder
KW  - Infanticide
KW  - Trials (Arson)
KW  - True crime stories
KW  - lcgft
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index; Prologue: Christmas night 1843 -- A fallen woman. Islands in the stream ; Sex and the 1840s city ; Incendiaries ; Low-speed chase ; They would hang her without judge or jury ; Confessions of the sun ; The living jury of the nation ; Dream teams -- The Staten Island trial. Poe cracks the case ; The people v. Mary Bodine ; Ghosts of Granite Village ; Trial by water ; Breaking news ; Consciousness of guilt ; Playing the Jew card ; Sisters ; The man in the Spanish cloak ; The runaway juror ; Undue prejudice -- The Manhattan trial. Barnum's witch ; Eldridge Street jail ; Trial by fire ; Mayor Harper ; The weight of the baskets ; Gala night at the Park Theatre ; To conceal the circumstances of her pregnancy ; The opposite counsel ; Cruel and unbecoming curiosity ; Judge Edmond's charge ; April thunderstorms ; The hanging of Polly Bodine ; Witch trial interlude ; The appeal ; Six thousand jurors -- The Newburgh trial. National police gazette ; Whitman's sympathy ; George Washington camped here ; Fragment of the mother's dress ; Orange County House v. United States Hotel ; The gangs that infest New York ; Judgment night ; Polly Bodine in the popular imagination -- Epilogue: Another prison -- Afterword: Lawyers will not save us
N2  - "Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony--before even Lizzie Borden--there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in our nation's debut media circus. On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emeline Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned to death a mother and child in their home--and then covered up the crime with hellfire.  When an ambitious district attorney charges Polly Bodine (Emelin's sister-in-law) with a double homicide, the new "penny press" explodes. Polly is a perfect media villain: she's a separated wife who drinks gin, commits adultery, and has had multiple abortions. Between June 1844 and April 1846, the nation was enthralled by her three trials--in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Newburgh--for the "Christmas murders."  After Polly's legal dream team entered the fray, the press and the public debated not only her guilt, but her character and fate as a fallen woman in society. Public opinion split into different camps over her case. Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman covered her case as young newsmen. P. T. Barnum made a circus out of it. James Fenimore Cooper's last novel was inspired by her trials"--
ER  -