The Law of Seduction

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.

I Am Murdered

This chapter refers to Joel Behrend, Amelia Norman's employer in his household who testified on her attempted murder case, claiming that her actions before the attempted murder made her seem crazy. It analyses how Amelia's case brought temptation and danger to all who strolled down Broadway during the Panic of 1837, a financial depression that lingered into the first half of the 1840s. It also mentions Samuel Floyd and William Crummie, who stopped Amelia when she attacked her former lover, Henry Ballard, at the hotel entrance of the Astor House steps. The chapter discusses the cab ride when William took Amelia to the police himself, in which she revealed her murder weapon and her regret that she did not use a larger knife. It recounts the sentiment Amelia expressed when she saw Henry bleeding but alive near the Astor House bar.

Harlot’s Fate

This chapter reviews the later years and final fates of many of the players in Amelia Norman's story, such as Mike Walsh, the Democratic politician and journalist who had championed Amelia. It mentions Amelia's celebrated jail mate, George Wilkes, who capitalized on his experience in the Tombs and produced his prison memoir, Mysteries of the Tombs. It also traces Frederick Tallmadge's reputation after he became the principal judge of the Court of Sessions and struggled in vain to persuade the jurors to ignore the context of Amelia's crime. The chapter points out how Amelia's story is still remembered in studies of abortion, prostitution, seduction in law and literature, the “unwritten law,” female murderers, and in studies and biographies of Lydia Maria Child. It includes Lydia's letter to a friend, indicating Amelia had come to a bad end.

Go and Get Your Living

The chapter recounts how Amelia Norman became part of a community during the six years that passed between the fall of 1834, when she arrived in New York as a girl of sixteen, and the spring of 1841, when she met Henry Ballard. It describes Leonard Street during the years Amelia lived there, which rose just one block to the east, while the Astor House, where Henry Ballard would live, went up a few blocks south and west. It also covers Amelia's stay with the Meriams for several years, during which, Eliza Meriam testified at her trial that Amelia impressed the family with her good conduct. The chapter discusses Amelia's employment in the household of a Mr. Ealer after she left the Meriams sometime in 1838 or 1839. It refers to William Callender, who would prove to be one of Amelia's most stalwart friends.

A Great Heart

This chapter discusses how Amelia Norman attracted new and influential friends during her time in the Tombs, which became more important to her than any of her fellow inmates proved to be. It recounts how Amelia's new friends read moral and political meanings into her ordeal that went well beyond the sensational interests of the press and even the boundaries of her own experience. It also refers to popular author and reformer Lydia Maria Child, who became Amelia's chief protector throughout her trial and afterward. The chapter describes Lydia as a committed reformer who by the early 1830s was deeply embroiled in abolition. It talks about how Lydia came to New York in May 1841 to edit the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a weekly newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society.

Verdict

This chapter looks at Recorder Frederick Augustus Tallmadge's opinion about how Henry Ballard's behavior toward Amelia Norman during the two years of their acquaintance could not be admitted as evidence. It mentions Amelia's defense, who worked to prove that her encounter with Henry Ballard had changed her from a virtuous, happy young woman to one who was in desperate trouble, miserable, and out of her mind. It also refers to defense witness John K. Liston, who described Amelia after stabbed Ballard, emphasizing how she appeared very pale and languid, and prostrate from some cause. The chapter talks about Madame Restell, the trial's celebrity witness, who caused excitement in the courtroom due to the notoriety she acquired as a target for opponents of abortion. It discusses American midwives that had long provided abortions or abortifacients to women without attention from the law.

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.

Defending Amelia Norman

This chapter introduces Amelia Norman, a twenty-five-year-old woman that was born in New Jersey and known as a servant, seamstress, and sometime prostitute. It recounts how Amelia failed to kill thirty-one-year-old Henry Ballard, a prosperous merchant and her lover in the spring of 1841 during the depression that followed the economic collapse known as the Panic of 1837. It also describes Amelia's trial, which attracted the excited attention of the penny press, particularly Bennett's Herald, which thrived on sensation. The chapter explores what attracted the attention of the press, the public, and coterie of influential supporters to the would-be murderess. It mentions the American Female Moral Reform Society as one of Amelia's supporters, which had been working since the 1830s to criminalize “seduction.”

The Trial Begins

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.

Jersey Maid and Damn Yankee

This chapter focuses on Amelia Norman, who was born around 1818 in a troubled household near the village of Sparta in Sussex County in New Jersey's mountainous northwest. It mentions two of Amelia's brothers, Oliver and Charles Norman, who within days of her attack on Henry Ballard, were raising hell at home in New Jersey. It also talks about how Norman and Charles robbed their neighbors of a few bee skeps, poultry animals, and several gallons of whiskey. The chapter cites how Oliver developed a full-fledged criminal career, engaging in assault, housebreaking, jailbreaking, attempted rape, and theft of more liquor and farm products. It elaborates how Amelia and her siblings could have been affected by the wave of religious fervor and the new ideas about education that pulsed through their village during their childhood.