Synopsis: In Cry of Murder on Broadway, Julie Miller shows how a woman's desperate attempt at murder came to momentarily embody the anger and anxiety felt by many people at a time of economic and social upheaval and expanding expectations for equal rights.
On the evening of November 1, 1843, a young household servant named Amelia Norman attacked Henry Ballard, a prosperous merchant, on the steps of the new and luxurious Astor House hotel. Agitated and distraught, Norman followed Ballard down Broadway before confronting him at the door to the Astor House. Taking out a folding knife, she stabbed him, just missing his heart.
Ballard survived the attack, and the trial that followed created a sensation. Newspapers in New York and beyond followed the case eagerly, and crowds filled the courtroom every day. Prominent author and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, championed Norman and later included her story in her fiction and her writing on women's rights.
The would-be murderer also attracted the support of politicians, journalists, and legal and moral reformers who saw her story as a vehicle to change the law as it related to "seduction," and advocate for the rights of workers. Cry of Murder on Broadway describes how New Yorkers, besotted with the drama of the courtroom and the lurid stories of the penny press, followed the trial for sensation. Throughout all this, Norman gained the sympathy of New Yorkers, in particular the jury, which acquitted her in less than ten minutes.
Miller deftly weaves together Norman's story to show how, in one violent moment, she expressed all the anger that the women of the emerging movement for women's rights would soon express in words.
I will preface this with my notes when at Page 38: "I am going to admit that I am struggling to find some connection with this story. It starts, goes back, moves forward; it is flooded with so much (unnecessary) information that my mind is failing to absorb it all and sift through what is relevant and what is not. I shall no doubt keep persevering ... for the time being."
I will continue by saying that I skimmed through the rest of the book - unimpressed. Quite a lot of the information could easily have been curated and inserted into the trial component of the story. I was not interested in the (vast) biographical information on a number of other players - again these could easily have been significantly shortened.
As the focus of this book seemed to be on Lydia Maria Child, author and reformer, one wonders whether of not this book should have been about her with the account of Amelia Norman being given as illustrative of her actions (with others) in bringing about reform for women.
Amelia's (and Lydia's) story ends just under the halfway mark - the rest is taken up by sources, notes and bibliography. Had I realised just how this would be structured, I would have passed.
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