The New York Press & The Headless Torso Mystery

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2021

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New York journalism in 1897 was in a pretty technicolor space. Newspapers, so long the grey, stolid, medium of the merchants and businessman, were instead being filled with lurid stories of murder, scandal and drunken debauchery and the public were loving it. As papers fought for readers in the streets, sometimes quite literally, the stories that filled the pages and the methods utilised on order to write the stories grew more and more sensational by the day. It all came to something of a boiling point in the high temperatures of Summer, when a body washed up in the East River, carved up and lacking a head. The investigation that followed was carried out just as much by the journalists as it was the police, as the lines between who was who became increasingly blurred. SOURCES Collins, Paul (2011) Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars. Broadway Books, NY, USA. Reagan, L. J. (1995). Linking Midwives and Abortion in the Progressive Era. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 69(4), 569–598. John Hopkins University Press, USA The World (1897) Boys Ghastly Find. 27 June 1897, p1, NY, USA The World (1897) The Fragments of a Body Make a Mystery. 28 June 1897, p1, NY, USA The World (1897) World Men Find A Clue. 28 June 1897, p1, NY, USA The World (1897) The Murder Mystery is a Mystery Still. 01 July 1897, p1, NY, USA The World (1897) Murder Will Out. 03 July 1897, p1, NY, USA The World (1897) Mrs Nack’s Confession. 04 July 1897, p1, NY, USA The World (1897) Supposed Thorn is Captured. 07 July 1897, p1, NY, USA The World (1897) Thorn’s Friend Betrays Him. 08 July 1897, p3, NY, USA The World (1897) Mrs Nack Talk Freely to The World. 06 August 1897, p1, NY, USA The Journal (1897) Mrs Nack: Murderess! 01 July 1897, p1, NY, USA Buffalo Evening News (1897) Says He Bought Corpses. 14 January 1897, p1, NY, USA ---------- For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072 or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	New York Journalism, in 1897, was in a pretty typical color space.
0:05.3	Newspapers, so long the grey, solid medium of the merchants and businessmen, were instead
0:11.0	being filled with lurid stories of murder, scandal, and drunken debauchery, and the public
0:17.1	were loving it.
0:19.2	As papers fought for readers in the streets, sometimes quite literally, the stories that
0:24.3	filled the pages and the methods utilized in order to write the stories grew more and
0:28.9	more sensational by the day.
0:31.8	It all came to something of a boiling point in the higher temperatures of summer when
0:36.0	a body washed up in the east river carved up and lacking a head.
0:41.0	The investigation that followed was carried out just as much by the journalist as it was
0:44.9	the police, as the lines between who was who became increasingly blurred.
0:50.0	This is dark histories, where the facts are worse than fiction.
1:28.9	Hello and welcome to season 5, episode 18 of Dark History, I'm Ben, as always.
1:38.2	I hope this episode finds you well.
1:40.2	Now that we're plowing deep into November, I want to give a quick heads up.
1:46.1	I think in a funny sort of way I don't really need to do this, because I'll explain in
1:50.7	a moment, but we're moving rapidly towards the end of season 5, and as always, the season
1:57.2	is going to be capped off in December with the Christmas campfire episode, which is my
2:02.3	absolute favourite episode of the year, hands down.
2:06.2	So yeah, I thought I'd put a little shout out, a little call to arms.
2:10.6	If you want to have your story included in the Christmas campfire this year, now's the
2:16.0	time to start sending them in really, but any time between now and not, I'll kind of
	...

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