The Trial Begins

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-111
Author(s):  
Julie Miller
Keyword(s):  
Lydia Maria Child

This chapter discusses Amelia Norman's attempt to hang herself in her cell on the morning of her trial on January 15, 1844 in the Court of Sessions in the Tombs. It cites Lydia Maria Child, who stated that the defection of Amelia's lawyer, Thomas Warner, had proved too much for a spirit that had so long been under the pressure of extreme despondency. It also talks about the three judges who made up the Court of Sessions and sat on the top tier of a high platform, dwarfing the lawyers who performed beneath them. The chapter highlights Frederick Augustus Tallmadge, who served as the presiding judge, and two aldermen, Elijah F. Purdy and David Vandervoort, the three city officials that formed the Court of Sessions during Amelia's trial. It reveals that Purdy was the acting mayor when Amelia had unsuccessfully appealed a seduction complaint against Henry Ballard after he had her arrested for prostitution.

Cry of Murder on Broadway

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Miller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The Law ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
New Yorkers ◽  
Desperate Attempt

This book 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 Astor House Hotel. Agitated and distraught, Norman had followed Ballard down Broadway before confronting him at the door to the hotel. Taking out a folding knife, she stabbed him. 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. The prominent author and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child championed Norman and later included her story in her fiction and her writing on women's rights. Norman 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 to advocate for the rights of workers. This book describes how New Yorkers followed the trial for entertainment. Throughout all this, Norman gained sympathys, in particular the jury, which acquitted her in less than ten minutes. The book 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.

MRS. LYDIA MARIA CHILD IN 1844 TELLS MOTHERS HOW TO DEVELOP THEIR CHILD'S CHARACTER

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-58
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Opinion ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Early Influences

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), a prolific writer and humanitarian reformer, wrote the most widely read early 19th century book to guide mothers in the correct management of their children. Here is her advice on how to develop good affections or character in a child: It is a common opinion that a spirit of revenge is natural to children. No doubt bad temper, as well as other evils, moral and physical, are often hereditary–and here is a fresh reason for being good ourselves, if we would have our children good. But allowing that evil propensities are hereditary, and therefore born with children, how are they excited, and called into action? First, by the influences of the nursery–those early influences, which, beginning as they do with life itself, are easily mistaken for the operations of nature; and in the second place, by the temptations of the world. Now, if a child has ever so bad propensities, if the influences of the nursery be pure and holy, his evils will never be excited, or roused into action, until his understanding is enlightened, and his principles formed, so that he has power to resist them. The temptations of the world will do him no harm; he will "overcome evil with good." But if, on the other hand, the influences of the nursery are bad, the weak passions of the child are strengthened before his understanding is made strong; he gets into habits of evil before he is capable of perceiving that they are evil. Consequently, when he comes out into the world, he brings no armor against its temptations.

The Law of Seduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
Julie Miller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Her Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
James Russell Lowell ◽  
Better Than

This chapter recounts how Lydia Maria Child had taken Amelia Norman to her home to live with her as an intimate of her family after she won the trial. It notes how Lydia kept track of Amelia during the months that she lived with her in the spring of 1844, getting to know her better than she had been able to when Amelia was a prisoner at the Tombs. It also mentions Lydia's belief that Amelia's strong deep feelings were what drove her to the verge of madness. The chapter refers to Maria Lowell, wife of poet and diplomat James Russell Lowell, to whom Lydia recommended Norman for a job as a personal maid. It highlights Lydia's publication of “Letter from New York No. V” while Amelia was living with her, which was a jeremiad against the failure of the law to protect women and the men who made the law.

The City Sketch

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-104
Author(s):  
John Evelev
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Margaret Fuller ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Urban Populations ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
City Life ◽  
The City

Although the picturesque sketch genre is primarily associated with rural subjects, it was also applied to city life during the mid-nineteenth century, when urban populations were undergoing unprecedented growth. Chapter 2 argues that the newly popular picturesque city sketch helped the emergent middle class to establish its identity as it attained a distinctive position between the wealthy and the working classes. Walking the streets, the middle-class picturesque city sketcher turned the class-divided city into picturesque tableaux that were far less antagonistic to city life than the sensationalist characterizations that were central to the dominant mode of city writing in midcentury. The chapter examines city sketches and fiction derived from the genre, written by Edgar Allan Poe, Lydia Maria Child, George “Gaslight” Foster, Margaret Fuller, Cornelius Mathews, and others. Although city sketchers helped articulate a middle-class identity, the picturesque at times tended to give way to a sublime mode in which the city crowd threatened to absorb the middle class into its undifferentiated mass.

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