The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America

by John Wood Sweet Narrated by Gabra Zackman

Overview

Renowned historian John Sweet offers a riveting Revolutionary Era drama of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermath, revealing how much has changed over two centuries-and how much has not.

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel-the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape.

Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah's and her assailant's lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. The ongoing conflict attracted the nation's top lawyers, including Alexander Hamilton, and shaped the development of American law. The crime and its consequences became a kind of parable about the power of seduction and the limits of justice. Eventually, Lanah Sawyer did succeed in holding her assailant accountable-but at a terrible cost to herself.

Based on rigorous historical detective work, this audiobook takes us from a chance encounter in the street into the sanctuaries of the city's elite, the shadows of its brothels, and the despair of its debtors' prison. The Sewing Girl's Tale shows that if our laws and our culture were changed by a persistent young woman and the power of words two hundred years ago, they can be changed again.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Co.

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Gabra Zackman narrates this meticulous account of the first rape trial in post-Revolutionary War (1793) New York City. Seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer is graced with manners, some education, and a dose of naïveté. Upon being raped, Lanah, with her stepfather’s support, brings suit against Harry Bedlow, a notorious rake and cheat, and member of the moneyed class. Zackman steadily recounts the minute, sometimes repetitive, details of every thread of evidence and iota of information uncovered, replete with historical background, while researching this case. Zackman’s flowing recitation pauses briefly before trial accounts, legal references, and historical documents. As the story is told in the third person, the minimal dialogue is clearly differentiated by Zackman’s tonal shift into a low, terse vocal register. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

04/04/2022

The story behind the 1793 rape trial of Harry Bedlow, the scion of two “prosperous, old Dutch families” in New York City, is untangled in this immersive chronicle. Sweet (Bodies Politic), history professor at the University of North Carolina, details how 26-year-old Bedlow, who had a reputation as a “very great rake,” lied about his identity to 17-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer before abducting and assaulting her in a “bawdy house.” Lanah struggled to convince her family about the truth of her ordeal, yet Bedlow was eventually charged with rape and brought to trial, where prosecutors cast him “as a symbol of the debauchery and luxury of an aristocratic order overthrown by the revolution, and Lanah Sawyer and her peers—hardworking, modest, and unpretentious—as the true representatives of republican virtue.” The jury acquitted Bedlow of the crime, and even though Lanah’s stepfather eventually won a “seduction lawsuit” against him, collecting the settlement proved difficult. Embellishing the thin historical record with lengthy discussions about Revolutionary era politics, contemporaneous romance novels, the development of Manhattan, Alexander Hamilton’s alleged affair with Maria Reynolds, and other matters, Sweet paints an evocative portrait of 18th-century New York. The result is a vivid addition to the history of sexual politics in America. (July)

From the Publisher

Fascinating. . . . An excellent and absorbing work of social and cultural history.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A vividly intimate portrait of American life as the nation was coming into being. Mr. Sweet has given us a masterpiece of splendidly readable social history.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“In 1793, in New York City, in a 15-hour rape trial followed by 15 minutes of jury deliberations, six powerful attorneys representing a man of privilege did all they could to turn 17-year-old Lanah Sawyer into someone who didn’t matter. In The Sewing Girl’s Tale, historian John Wood Sweet provides a masterful counter. In a brilliant reconstruction of one of the most telling criminal cases in American history, he brings to life not only Sawyer, but all the malevolent forces aligned against her, including one Alexander Hamilton. Lanah Sawyer and her story mattered—then, and now.”
—Ken Armstrong, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and coauthor of Unbelievable

“The Sewing Girl’s Tale is a masterful narrative history, featuring a remarkable combination of riveting drama and world-class scholarship. The Sewing Girl’s Tale is a mystery, a true crime tale, a courtroom drama, and a scathing analysis of a society stacked against young women. John Sweet has written a story of sex and power that is both vividly historic and ripped from the headlines.”
—Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Madam and The Most Famous Man in America

“In all good histories a heart lies beating, if the historian is patient and attuned enough to hear it. John Wood Sweet, in a dazzling investigative turn, has restored a bright corporeality to eighteenth-century New York, which here feels as alive as it did the day Lanah Sawyer asked the courts to believe a woman. Urgent and resonant, this book is a reminder that history persists in all our bodies.”
—Katy Simpson Smith, author of The Story of Land and Sea

“John Sweet’s dazzling book transforms a modest sewing-girl’s story of date rape by a rich libertine into a fully realized, near novel-like treatment of the sexual morals of the 1790s. Historians familiar with Lanah Sawyer’s rape case will be awed by his stunning research finds, while general readers will marvel at his astute psychological renderings of all his characters. By close analysis of Sawyer’s options, actions, and words, Sweet fleshes her out from a near-voiceless victim to a young woman intent on getting justice in a legal system stacked by class and gender.”
—Patricia Cline Cohen, author of The Murder of Helen Jewett

Library Journal

★ 06/01/2022

An engrossing, historical, true crime narrative that reconstructs the 1793 rape of Lanah Sawyer. The subsequent trial of Henry "Harry" Bedlow and the societal consequences of the crime are still relevant today. Sweet (Bodies Politic) provides an exhaustively researched and detailed reconstruction of a lesser known but extremely important case in American legal history. The book not only provides a masterful view of the criminal case, but it also places the narrative in the context of 18th century New York City, with a searing portrait of sexual politics and the limits of justice for women and those in low-income areas. The well-documented work includes a variety of primary sources including newspaper accounts, legal documents, and diaries. It also includes numerous illustrations, maps, an extensive bibliography, and an index. VERDICT An important and highly readable addition to the history of crime and sexual politics in America that will be of interest to historians, women-focused history researchers, sociologists, and fans of true crime. —Theresa Muraski

NOVEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Gabra Zackman narrates this meticulous account of the first rape trial in post-Revolutionary War (1793) New York City. Seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer is graced with manners, some education, and a dose of naïveté. Upon being raped, Lanah, with her stepfather’s support, brings suit against Harry Bedlow, a notorious rake and cheat, and member of the moneyed class. Zackman steadily recounts the minute, sometimes repetitive, details of every thread of evidence and iota of information uncovered, replete with historical background, while researching this case. Zackman’s flowing recitation pauses briefly before trial accounts, legal references, and historical documents. As the story is told in the third person, the minimal dialogue is clearly differentiated by Zackman’s tonal shift into a low, terse vocal register. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2022-06-08
A history professor examines a woman’s court fight to restore her violated sexual honor in 1790s America.

In 1793, a seamstress named Lanah Sawyer was raped by Harry Bedlow, “an elite sexual predator” who posed as a lawyer to gain her trust. In this incisive historical investigation, Sweet, a history professor at the University of North Carolina and former director of its program in sexuality studies, reconstructs a memorable story that reveals the virulent anti-feminism embedded in American democracy. Sawyer had the spotless reputation society required of all “decent” women; Sweet notes that any fall from grace would plunge her into “a world of scandal and shame from which she might never emerge.” Despite her lower status as a working-class woman, Sawyer sought legal reparations. “Even if others couldn’t see past her social station, her work as a sewing girl, Lanah Sawyer could,” writes Sweet. “She felt she had a right to a revolutionary dream of human equality. Other dreamers, too, were crushed in these years. Some of them, like her, had the courage to fight back.” In the contentious trial that followed, Bedlow was cast as the victim of Sawyer’s wiles. Newspapers debates begun by elite women emphasized the sexual double standard, but a male backlash against “disorderly women”—e.g., the owner of the bawdy house where Bedlow raped Sawyer—overwhelmed those voices. Ultimately, Sawyer’s stepfather successfully sued Bedlow for seduction—i.e., for breaching his right to give consent to intercourse with his daughter. “In seduction suits,” writes Sweet, “the question of consent was hardly mentioned, much less disputed. Jurors—and everyone else involved—generally took the woman’s father at his word.” This carefully researched book will appeal to historians, feminist scholars, and anyone with an interest in narratives that chronicle female erasure in a social system created by and for the benefit of (White) men.

A thoughtful and engaging history lesson.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176472691
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	07/19/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,024,594

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