Book review: The Beautiful Cigar Girl

Mary Rogers was a shopgirl in a cigar emporium in New York City who disappeared in 1841; her dead body was found in the Hudson a few days later, strangled and possibly raped. Public interest in the case was intense, fomented by an invective-filled newspaper war over duelling solutions. Poe wrote a fictionalized version of the case that presented his own solution. I've read Poe's "Mystery of Marie Roget", but didn't get all the subtext of it (footnotes explaining how the various characters and newspapers in the Parisian fiction maps to the original New York people didn't explain anything). Stashower describes the original Mary Rogers disappearance and the evolution of the case, and provides a fast-moving biography of Poe over his entire unfortunate life. Both threads are addictively compelling, and I read the whole book while recuperating in bed.

Poe's account turns out to gloss over several complexities and stack the deck in his solution's favor. I never noticed the implication that Rogers might have died from a botched abortion, but Stashower connects the Rogers case with the concurrent prosection of Madame Ann Restell, a society abortionist. (Judging by quotes from 1841 newspapers calling her a butcher and suggesting the public rise up and lynch Restell, anti-choice rhetoric sure hasn't changed much in 150 years.) In the book's final summation, it's impossible to choose a prime suspect. Rogers's fiancé Daniel Payne's guilty attitude and subsequent suicide are suspicious, but he seems to have a strong alibi, as does rejected suitor Crommelin. Her employer John Anderson, from subsequent statements, was probably involved in an earlier abortion, but there's no firm evidence there either, leaving the case an enigma.