An Awful Place

This chapter highlights the city jail, where William Crummie took Amelia Norman on the night she attacked Henry Ballard. It describes the city jail as a massive, gloomy, stone structure known popularly as “the Tombs,” which had been encroached upon by city streets and gradually ruined by the waste emitted by tanneries, slaughterhouses, and breweries. It also talks about novelist Ned Buntline, who described the effect that the the Tombs' solemn stone assemblage of steps, columns, palm leaves, and winged, snake-surrounded sphere had on one of his characters. The chapter looks at the Dickensian rhetoric, which was part of the melodramatic nineteenth-century literary and journalistic style that celebrated the titillating horrors of the slum. It cites the Tombs's multiple official names that expressed its various functions, such as City Prison, Halls of Justice, and House of Detention.

The Lynching and Rebirth of Ned Buntline: Rogue Authorship during the American Literary Renaissance

Though largely unknown today, “Ned Buntline” (Edward Zane Carroll Judson) was one of the most influential authors of 19th-century America. He published over 170 novels, edited multiple popular and political publications, and helped pioneer the seafaring adventure, city mystery and Western genres. It was his pirate tales that Tom Sawyer constantly reenacted, his “Bowery B’hoys” that came to define the distinctive slang and swagger of urban American characters, and his novels and plays that turned an unknown scout into Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men. But before “Ned Buntline” became a mainstay of the popular press, he had been on his way to becoming one of the nation’s highbrow literary elites. He was praised by the leading critics, edited an important literary journal, and his stories appeared in the era’s most prestigious publications. This study examines how and why “Ned Buntline” moved from prestigious to popular authorship and argues that the transformation was precipitated by one very specific event: in 1846, Edward Z. C. Judson was lynched. A close examination of Judson’s life, writing, and the coverage of him in the newspapers of the day (including the remarkable story of how he survived a lynching) demonstrates that the same issues that led to his lynching also led to his rebirth as a new kind of American author.

The Case Against Ned Buntline: The “Words, Signs, and Gestures” of Popular Authorship

Today few people read the works of E. Z. C. Judson, better known as “Ned Buntline”; at least one might have made that claim with confidence before the recent reprinting of his Adventures of Buffalo Bill (1870). He is now remembered as an early practitioner of Western scouting tales, the first promoter of “Buffalo Bill,” before William Cody jettisoned him as a liability, and as the inventor of long-barrelled six-guns, the “Buntline Specials.”

The Case Against Ned Buntline: The “Words, Signs, and Gestures” of Popular Authorship

Today few people read the works of E. Z. C. Judson, better known as “Ned Buntline”; at least one might have made that claim with confidence before the recent reprinting of his Adventures of Buffalo Bill (1870). He is now remembered as an early practitioner of Western scouting tales, the first promoter of “Buffalo Bill,” before William Cody jettisoned him as a liability, and as the inventor of long-barrelled six-guns, the “Buntline Specials.”