September 25, 1998

'The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York'

By NINA C. AYOUB

Recalling the murder scene, the editor of the New York Herald ignored the gore and waxed poetic. "The body looked as white -- as full -- as polished as the pure Parian marble," wrote James Gordon Bennett, "surpassing in every respect the Venus de Medicis."

Helen Jewett, eroticized in death, sought-after in life, lay still on her bed on a cold April morning in 1836. Three gashes from a hatchet marred the

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