Mortimer and the Witches: A History of Nineteenth-Century Fortune Tellers

by Marie Carter

Overview

Under the pseudonym Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P. B., humor writer Mortimer Thomson went undercover to investigate and report on the fortune tellers of New York City's tenements and slums. When his articles were published in 1858, they catalyzed a series of arrests that scandalized and delighted the public. In Mortimer and the Witches, author Marie Carter examines the lives of these marginalized fortune tellers while detailing Mortimer Thomson's peculiar and complicated biography.

Nineteenth-century fortune tellers offered their clients answers to all questions in astrology, love, and law matters. Yet Doesticks saw them as the worst of the worst. His investigative reporting aimed to stop unsuspecting young women from seeking the corrupt soothsaying advice of these so-called clairvoyants and to expose the absurd predictions of these "witches."

Carter views these stories of working-class, immigrant women with more depth than Doesticks's mocking articles. She presents them as three-dimensional figures rather than the caricatures.

Mortimer and the Witches offers new insight into the neglected histories of working-class fortune tellers and the creative ways that they tried to make a living.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798874856892
Publisher:	Tantor
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marie Carter is a Scottish-born writer, tour guide, and tour guide developer who has been based in New York City for the last twenty-three years. Fascinated by New York City's macabre and little-known histories in her writing and life, she is a licensed tour guide, as well as researcher and developer with Boroughs of the Dead, a walking tour company that specializes in strange, macabre, and ghostly walking tours of New York City. Marie leads tours in Astoria, Roosevelt Island, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at QED Astoria. Her first book, based on her experiences in learning trapeze, The Trapeze Diaries, was published by Hanging Loose Press. Her novel Holly's Hurricane was published in 2018 and was a finalist for the 2019 Montaigne Medal. She was also the editor of Word Jig: New Fiction from Scotland (Hanging Loose Press). She has been a guest speaker on NPR's Ask Me Another, BBC Radio Lincolnshire, the Expat Chit Chat Show, and Talking Hart Island, and she has been written about or featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, QNS, Queens Gazette, and many other media outlets. She has made an appearance on PIX11. Her work has been published in The Best of Creative Nonfiction (Norton) and Nineteenth Century Magazine, a publication of the Victorian Society in America.

Table of Contents

Introduction | 1

1. Madame Morrow | 9

2. Madame Clifton | 24

3. Madame Prewster | 39

4. Madame Widger | 54

5. Mr. Grommer | 68

6. Mrs. Hayes | 82

7. The Gipsy Girl | 97

8. Mrs. Seymour | 112

Concluding Remarks | 125

Epilogue: Ethel Parton | 129

Acknowledgments | 139

Notes | 143

Bibliography | 153

Index | 157

Photographs follow page 86

Editorial Reviews

Mortimer and the Witches is an unflinching cultural history covering the social ills of nineteenth-century New York through the lives of women who were, at the time, memorialized in mocking print.

Foreword Reviews

Using a newspaper reporter's expose of fortune tellers/psychics, Marie Carter gives us a unique look at how sexism played out in the 19th century. While robber barons pillage the country (sound familiar?), the reporter Mortimer Thomson goes after women struggling to get by in a time when they had few options. These women are con artists—some worse than that—but are they criminals or the victims, or both? Carter manages to bring them to life, while also humanizing Mortimer. He's not some cartoon Snidely Whiplash bad guy. Mortimer and the Witches is a gripping mix of the history of discrimination, and our continued failure to focus on the true villains. It’s such a fascinating look at a relatively unexamined back-alley struggle for survival, I ate it up.—Stacy Horn, author of Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th-Century New York

Every turn of the page of Mortimer and the Witches brings on that same anticipation of revealing a tarot card and wondering what the storyteller will say. Not only does it fill a gap in our historical understanding of 19th-century sexism and classism, but it’s chock-full of facts I could never have predicted. I feel fortunate to have made the acquaintance of Mortimer and these hard-working women of Old New York.—Peggy Gavan, author of The Cat Men of Gotham: Tales of Feline Friendships of Old New York

Mortimer and the Witches explores, in fascinating detail, the magical, occasionally criminal, underworld that simmers beneath the surface of so many cities around the world. But Marie Carter's tale of 19th century New York is also an insightful, don't-miss examination of the prevailing suspicion and prejudice against women operating at the margins of society.—Deborah Blum, Pulitzer-prize winning author of Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death

Mining the sordid riches of 19th century New York City newspaper reportage and recounting them through a modern lens, Marie Carter tracks down a cadre of women involved in the antebellum clairvoyancy trade and regales her readers with the ways in which they managed to circumvent some of the societal strictures placed on women to gain financial independence at a time when they were truly second-class citizens. Brilliant marketers of themselves and their psychic skills, Carter adroitly describes how these women provided counsel and entertainment to New Yorkers of all stripes, all while crusading reporters and police attempted to shut them down.—Eddy Portnoy, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

From the Publisher