According to Timeline, medical students exhumed Helen Jewett’s remains just a few days after she was buried in St. John’s cemetery. They then dissected Jewett’s body and turned her into what the New York Herald deemed an “elegant and classic skeleton.”
Tales of Jewett’s beauty, her violent death, and the trial that followed were churned out by cheap penny presses for years afterward (via NWSA Journal). Charles Sutton, warden of the New York Tombs, colorfully recalled Jewett in his 1874 memoir, “The New York Tombs.” Many decades after the real woman walked through the streets of Manhattan, Sutton recalled her in inflated terms. She was “radiant,” the “queen of the demimonde,” who moved amongst the dull people around her as if she were a “silken meteor.” Of course, like so many people of the era, Sutton had to wrap it all up in a moral bow, proclaiming that it was tragic that such a beautiful woman was so morally corrupt.
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Many small chapbooks purported to tell her tale, though a significant number took liberties with the story, as the NWSA Journal attests. So, too, did a florid dime novel and three 20th century novels, including one that at least had the decency to present itself as fiction. Even now, though people’s morals may have shifted, they are still captivated by the dark story and the media frenzy that grew around Jewett’s murder.
