About this item

As 1872 opened, the New York Times headlined four stories that symptomized the decay in public morals that the editors so frequently decried: financier Jim Fisk was gunned down in a love triangle; suffragist and free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull was running for president; anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock battled smut dealers poisoning children’s minds; and abortionists were thriving. Throughout the year these stories intertwined in unimaginable ways, pulling in others, both famous and infamous—suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Brooklyn’s beloved preacher Henry Ward Beecher; the nation’s richest tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt; and William Howe, preeminent counsel to the criminal element.

From rigged elections, everyday shootings, and attacks on the press to sexual impropriety, reproductive rights, and the chasm between rich and poor, the issues of the day still resonate. Political parties split over a bitterly contested election; suffragist battled suffragist over bettering women’s place in society; and pious saints fought soulless sinners, until at year-end this jumble of conflicts exploded in the greatest sensation of the nineteenth century.



About the Author

Bill Greer

After finishing my doctorate in the 1980s, I took a Wall Street job studying the urban economy, moved into a gaslight era Brooklyn brownstone, and began exploring New York. The city is a walker's paradise and I rack up hundreds of miles on the streets each year.Two decades passed before I turned my love for New York to telling its stories. By then I had a second career as an Internet entrepreneur and travel writer, building the early web's leading community for outdoor adventure. My stories on places from Rocky Mountain wilderness to ancient cities of Southeast Asia brought notes from people like a student asking about archaeological careers, a hiker inspired to visit an old growth forest, a Nepali who just wanted to connect with a visitor to his country. As an expert in adventure travel, I got to connect with even more people through appearances on television and radio and at travel conferences from Alaska to Florida.My New York turn started in New Netherland and its trove of records. A teenage bride among the first settlers inspired my novel of New Amsterdam, The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan. I enmeshed myself further into that world at the New Netherland Institute, chairing its program to launch the New Netherland Research Center in Albany and speaking on New York's Dutch period throughout the Hudson Valley. I heard from people who read my novel, or found my web site BillsBrownstone, asking about their Dutch ancestors, proud of their connections to the richest merchant or the earliest streetwalker. Actually the dozen or so of the latter - her name was Griet Reyniers - seem the proudest.Now I have moved centuries forward to 1872 New York with a narrative of fascinating characters and a city beset with all the excitement and challenges transformation brings. I look forward to hearing from people with whom this story, A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, & Scandal in Gilded Age New York, strikes a chord.



Read Next Recommendation

Report incorrect product information.