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The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York
In the summer of 1841, Mary Rogers disappeared without a trace from her New York City boarding house. Three days later, her body, badly bruised and waterlogged, was found floating in the shallow waters of the Hudson River just a few feet from the Jersey shore. Her story, parlayed into a long celebrated unsolved mystery, became grist for penny presses, social reformers, and politicians alike, and an impetus for popular literature, including Edgar Allan Poe's pioneering detective story "The Mystery of Marie Roget."
In The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, historian Amy Gilman Srebnick brilliantly recaptures the story of Mary Rogers, showing how Rogers represented an emerging class of women who took advantage of the greater economic and sexual opportunities available to them in urban America, and how her death became a touchstone for the voicing of mid-nineteenth century concerns over sexual license, the changing roles of women, law and order, and abortion. Rogers's death, first thought due to a murderous gang of rapists and later tacitly understood to be the result of an ill-performed abortion, quickly became a source of popular entertainment, a topic of political debate, and an inspiration to public policy. The incident and the city's response to it provides a fascinating window into the urban culture and consciousness of the mid-1800s. Indeed, in Rogers's name, and as a direct result of her death, two important pieces of legislation were passed in 1845: the New York City Police Reform Act which effectively modernized the city's system of policing, and the New York State law criminalizing abortion.
The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers tells a story of a death, but more importantly it also tells the story of a life--that of Mary Rogers--and of the complex urban social world of which she was a part. Like the city in which she lived, Mary Rogers was a source of wonder, mystery, and fear, provoking desire, and inspiring narrative.
In The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, historian Amy Gilman Srebnick brilliantly recaptures the story of Mary Rogers, showing how Rogers represented an emerging class of women who took advantage of the greater economic and sexual opportunities available to them in urban America, and how her death became a touchstone for the voicing of mid-nineteenth century concerns over sexual license, the changing roles of women, law and order, and abortion. Rogers's death, first thought due to a murderous gang of rapists and later tacitly understood to be the result of an ill-performed abortion, quickly became a source of popular entertainment, a topic of political debate, and an inspiration to public policy. The incident and the city's response to it provides a fascinating window into the urban culture and consciousness of the mid-1800s. Indeed, in Rogers's name, and as a direct result of her death, two important pieces of legislation were passed in 1845: the New York City Police Reform Act which effectively modernized the city's system of policing, and the New York State law criminalizing abortion.
The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers tells a story of a death, but more importantly it also tells the story of a life--that of Mary Rogers--and of the complex urban social world of which she was a part. Like the city in which she lived, Mary Rogers was a source of wonder, mystery, and fear, provoking desire, and inspiring narrative.
218 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 2, 2016
This book has some problems:
(1) Oxford University Press should be able to copy-edit better than this.
(2) Srebnick is not as good as she needs to be at distinguishing fact from theory from fiction and she's as bad as most historians are at analyzing literary texts.
(3) She does not organize her facts well (true crime is actually extremely hard to present clearly), and she's over-theorized--which I say not merely because I have very little patience with theory, particularly in the Foucauldian-Derridean vein, but because the theory is overshadowing the subject and making it hard to see.
And all of this is a great pity, because the subject of this book is potentially fascinating. Mary Rogers is the real person behind Poe's roman à clef, "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt." She was a "cigar girl" (a young woman employed behind a cigar counter--which, in the 1840s was borderline scandalous and attracted both custom and a certain amount of notoriety to the shop) who disappeared one Sunday in July 1841 and was found three days later floating in the Hudson River, raped, battered, and strangled. The crime was, and remains, unsolved, although there are a number of theories and plausible scenarios. Some months after Mary's death, an innkeeper in New Jersey, near where the body was found, made a confession that Mary died as the result of an abortion performed in the inn, and the biggest problem about The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers is that throughout the book, Srebnick treats this confession as if it were truthful--as if it could be treated as fact--despite she herself admitting it may have been self-serving lies and despite the contradiction with the published report of the coroner on Mary Rogers' body. And Srebnick never explains the contradictions.
I really wanted to like and be fascinated by this book, and I'm sad that neither happened.
(1) Oxford University Press should be able to copy-edit better than this.
(2) Srebnick is not as good as she needs to be at distinguishing fact from theory from fiction and she's as bad as most historians are at analyzing literary texts.
(3) She does not organize her facts well (true crime is actually extremely hard to present clearly), and she's over-theorized--which I say not merely because I have very little patience with theory, particularly in the Foucauldian-Derridean vein, but because the theory is overshadowing the subject and making it hard to see.
And all of this is a great pity, because the subject of this book is potentially fascinating. Mary Rogers is the real person behind Poe's roman à clef, "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt." She was a "cigar girl" (a young woman employed behind a cigar counter--which, in the 1840s was borderline scandalous and attracted both custom and a certain amount of notoriety to the shop) who disappeared one Sunday in July 1841 and was found three days later floating in the Hudson River, raped, battered, and strangled. The crime was, and remains, unsolved, although there are a number of theories and plausible scenarios. Some months after Mary's death, an innkeeper in New Jersey, near where the body was found, made a confession that Mary died as the result of an abortion performed in the inn, and the biggest problem about The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers is that throughout the book, Srebnick treats this confession as if it were truthful--as if it could be treated as fact--despite she herself admitting it may have been self-serving lies and despite the contradiction with the published report of the coroner on Mary Rogers' body. And Srebnick never explains the contradictions.
I really wanted to like and be fascinated by this book, and I'm sad that neither happened.
February 2, 2021
Interesting subject, if a little long-winded at times.
August 13, 2022
Lots of repetition and in some cases seemed like the author was trying VERY hard to make a point. I think the evidence is there for her argument but she felt like she had to make it over and over. It is obviously an early writing - potentially dissertation - but could have used some seasoning on the writing and argument structure.
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September 22, 2025Read for minor in History at Colorado Mesa University, fall 2025
March 28, 2024
I read this for my women’s history class and it was ok. She didn’t try and solve the murder and maybe that’s not what the book was about but that’s what I wanted it to be about.
April 21, 2016
Many heard the city’s siren call: freedom, freedom, freedom. In the wake of crumbling farm communities and great and small depressions, many American-born young women (and men) moved to the burgeoning city of New York for work and a fresh start, freed from a “patriarchal”, rural society in the second quarter of the 1800’s.
The void of fatherhood with its moral-ism and lack of privacy had to be filled. The city was the permissive mother, the blind eye to the youths’ experiments with freedom. Into this world stepped MARY ROGERS the beauty. From good New England stock (the Mathers and the Rogers of Connecticut) fallen on hard times she came with her mother(or grandmother) to the city and opened a boarding house for sailors, corkcutters and clerks.
Mary, freed from the moorings of the village and the old-fashioned notions about girls working in sales (you were always selling more of yourself than you knew) took a job selling cigars to the roughs and the Tammany politicians.
She disappeared once leaving a suicide note for mother and the news was big enough to make the papers, but she returned a few days later right as rain–it had all been a joke she said. In the city women had freedom but with freedom came danger. Men thrive on danger (so say the studies), but do women?
On one balmy Sunday Mary went out for a walk and never came back. Mother worried, as did her present boyfriend, the corkcutter, who was to meet her in the evening to go promenading on Broadway as everyone did. On Monday the corkcutter searched Manhattan. He searched the rural retreat of Hoboken (a paradise on Earth). He worried himself back to drinking.
And then Mary was found floating dead on the rocky shores of New Jersey. The beautiful cigar girl murdered! And not just murdered but violated in unspeakable ways!
The papers went mad for the story. The outraged public read in horror each gruesome detail of the autopsy (leaked to the papers a little each day). No newspaper man in his right mind would ignore the story that tapped into the fears middle class people had about the sexualized city. And look what had happened to this pretty girl with no protection!
A great manhunt began. Many men were wrongfully accused. The CORKCUTTER was soon found dead as well–alcohol and laudanum poisoning (most likely self-inflicted, but who really knew?).
Illustration from Poe's The Mystery of Marie Roget
Illustration from Poe’s The Mystery of Marie Roget
Even Edgar Allen Poe was mesmerized and wrote a mystery story:“THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET” . But all the men’s stories checked out. Why had Mary gone to Hoboken alone? On her deathbed a tavern owner in Hoboken confessed to helping an abortionist get rid of Mary’s body after a procedure gone awry. Seems the abortionist had connections to Madame Restell of New York, the notorious abortionist.
Despite its growing popularity in the city and lack of enforcement against it, abortion was reviled by most average citizens. As a thing done on the quiet no one really had to think about it. Ironically rural cultures had better infrastructure when it came to dealing with bastard children and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Until the procedure made headlines (and Madame Restell was all about making headlines) the city could uneasily look away, but no longer.
Huge crowds of protesters threatened the madame in her home until the cops fought them off. Mary remained at once a tragic figure and a morality tale. Alone, young and seduced by men Mary was left to fend for herself and murdered at the hands of a woman who flaunted her skills as a killer of babies (people thought it was murder after the first quickening when the mother could feel the baby move).
Mary’s death was retold in countless fictionalized novels and newspapers; her real story illustrated over and over again for a public bent on lapping up the most grotesque details. Public and private lines were forever blurred in the papers. Mary was one girl, a girl of mystery still, but beautiful. Everyone said so.
MADAME RESTELL committed suicide in 1878 by slitting her throat.
The void of fatherhood with its moral-ism and lack of privacy had to be filled. The city was the permissive mother, the blind eye to the youths’ experiments with freedom. Into this world stepped MARY ROGERS the beauty. From good New England stock (the Mathers and the Rogers of Connecticut) fallen on hard times she came with her mother(or grandmother) to the city and opened a boarding house for sailors, corkcutters and clerks.
Mary, freed from the moorings of the village and the old-fashioned notions about girls working in sales (you were always selling more of yourself than you knew) took a job selling cigars to the roughs and the Tammany politicians.
She disappeared once leaving a suicide note for mother and the news was big enough to make the papers, but she returned a few days later right as rain–it had all been a joke she said. In the city women had freedom but with freedom came danger. Men thrive on danger (so say the studies), but do women?
On one balmy Sunday Mary went out for a walk and never came back. Mother worried, as did her present boyfriend, the corkcutter, who was to meet her in the evening to go promenading on Broadway as everyone did. On Monday the corkcutter searched Manhattan. He searched the rural retreat of Hoboken (a paradise on Earth). He worried himself back to drinking.
And then Mary was found floating dead on the rocky shores of New Jersey. The beautiful cigar girl murdered! And not just murdered but violated in unspeakable ways!
The papers went mad for the story. The outraged public read in horror each gruesome detail of the autopsy (leaked to the papers a little each day). No newspaper man in his right mind would ignore the story that tapped into the fears middle class people had about the sexualized city. And look what had happened to this pretty girl with no protection!
A great manhunt began. Many men were wrongfully accused. The CORKCUTTER was soon found dead as well–alcohol and laudanum poisoning (most likely self-inflicted, but who really knew?).
Illustration from Poe's The Mystery of Marie Roget
Illustration from Poe’s The Mystery of Marie Roget
Even Edgar Allen Poe was mesmerized and wrote a mystery story:“THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET” . But all the men’s stories checked out. Why had Mary gone to Hoboken alone? On her deathbed a tavern owner in Hoboken confessed to helping an abortionist get rid of Mary’s body after a procedure gone awry. Seems the abortionist had connections to Madame Restell of New York, the notorious abortionist.
Despite its growing popularity in the city and lack of enforcement against it, abortion was reviled by most average citizens. As a thing done on the quiet no one really had to think about it. Ironically rural cultures had better infrastructure when it came to dealing with bastard children and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Until the procedure made headlines (and Madame Restell was all about making headlines) the city could uneasily look away, but no longer.
Huge crowds of protesters threatened the madame in her home until the cops fought them off. Mary remained at once a tragic figure and a morality tale. Alone, young and seduced by men Mary was left to fend for herself and murdered at the hands of a woman who flaunted her skills as a killer of babies (people thought it was murder after the first quickening when the mother could feel the baby move).
Mary’s death was retold in countless fictionalized novels and newspapers; her real story illustrated over and over again for a public bent on lapping up the most grotesque details. Public and private lines were forever blurred in the papers. Mary was one girl, a girl of mystery still, but beautiful. Everyone said so.
MADAME RESTELL committed suicide in 1878 by slitting her throat.
July 24, 2013
Read this for fun and found particularly interesting the links Srebnick draws between a very particular event--paradoxically one of few solid facts--and broader social movements, such as anti-abortion legislation and accelerating changes to the urban landscape. I enjoyed learning about the real-life source of Poe's story, found the family history elements fascinating, the literary history fairly enlightening, and the crime novel aspects toward the beginning riveting. Still, there's no getting around it: this reads like a dissertation book (hey, at least Srebnick has one). The author builds countless important links from event, context, social currents, literary and cultural changes, etc., but sometimes those points are repetitively summarized at the end of every paragraph, and occasionally Srebnick seems a bit reductive in her conclusions. Nevertheless, wonderful scholarship and an interesting read.
June 10, 2011
The author never purports to offer a definitive answer to the mystery; the focus of this book is on exploring the cultural effect of the Rogers case. That said, the literary analyses/deconstructions of media depictions were my favorite parts. The rest was your standard review of original sources, contextualization, etc., done in a way that seems accessible enough to non-History majors &c.
Would have given it four stars if it had gone a bit more in-depth wrt New York's sex/gender views of the time (for instance, giving the Bowery more than just a passing mention) but it does a pretty good job anyway within the space allotted, so. Not bad, and I learned a couple of things.
Would have given it four stars if it had gone a bit more in-depth wrt New York's sex/gender views of the time (for instance, giving the Bowery more than just a passing mention) but it does a pretty good job anyway within the space allotted, so. Not bad, and I learned a couple of things.
September 28, 2007
Mary Roger's death was one of THE classic murder mysteries of the 19th century; Poe's well-known "The Mystery of Marie Roget" is only one of the myriad stories, newspaper articles, songs and plays written about the death of this "beautiful cigar girl." This study looks at why and how the disappearance of one working-class woman became a cause celebre, and in doing so illuminates attitudes about sex, abortion, and prostitution in the 18th century.
August 8, 2008
Don't read this if you're expecting any fine detective work or if you'd like to know what happened to Mary Rogers. All of the data put towards "solving" the mystery is pulled from Victorian newspapers (my history degree just cringed). On the other hand, it is an interesting look into how newspapers have changed over the years as well as a brief insight into thoughts and beliefs of a particular segment of peoples.
February 19, 2013
I am writing a paper on the Mary Rogers Mystery Case and I found this book very helpful! I took pages and pages of notes. It just filled my head with a deeper knowledge of what happened back in 1841. I would recommend it to anyone looking deeper into the background story of her Murder!
September 26, 2007
This is one of those "crossover" academic books, meaning it is both well-written and well-researched. Good for people who are interested in crime, antebellum New York, and gender thisnthat.
September 25, 2012
Well, read 5 chapters, now need to translate that into 5 pages...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews