Respectability on Trial

Brian Donovan

Description

Providing a front row seat at critical courtroom battles over seduction, pimping, rape, and sodomy in early twentieth-century New York City, Brian Donovan uses verbatim trial transcripts to understand the city's history during the so-called "first sexual revolution." By tracing the revolutionary and repressive dimensions of this time period, Donovan reveals how conflicting ideas about sex and gender shaped the city's criminal justice system. He unearths stories of sexual violence and legal injustice that contradict the image of early twentieth-century America as a time of sexual revolution and progress. Police and courts often served the interests of the upper classes, men, and racial and ethnic majorities, but the trial transcripts included here reveal the considerable extent to which members of working-class and immigrant communities used the machinery of law enforcement for their own ends. Many previous books have fully documented and analyzed the sensational trials of turn-of-the-century New York City, but none have paid such close attention to the courtroom experiences of common city dwellers.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Trials of the First Sexual Revolution

2. Date Rape and the Crime of Seduction

3. Rape and the Double Bind of Progressive-Era Femininity

4. White Slaves and Ordinary Prostitutes

5. Sodomy, Manhood, and Consent

6. Conclusion: Rethinking Sexual Revolution

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• 20th century
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis
• Gender studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 21 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438461960
• Langue: English

Extrait

RESPECTABILITY
ON TRIAL
RESPECTABILITY
ON TRIAL
Sex Crimes in New York City, 1900–1918
Brian Donovan
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Donovan, Brian, 1971– author.
Title: Respectability on trial : sex crimes in New York City, 1900–1918 / Brian Donovan.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000438 (print) | LCCN 2016012982 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438461953 (hbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438461960 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Sex crimes—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC HQ72.U5 D66 2016 (print) | LCC HQ72.U5 (ebook) | DDC 364.15/3—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000438
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Natalie
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Trials of the First Sexual Revolution
2. Date Rape and the Crime of Seduction
3. Rape and the Double Bind of Progressive-Era Femininity
4. White Slaves and Ordinary Prostitutes
5. Sodomy, Manhood, and Consent
6. Conclusion: Rethinking Sexual Revolution
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Ellen Belcher from the Lloyd Sealy Library at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for helping me acquire material from the Trial Transcript Collection. This book would have been impossible to write without her help. I need to thank several colleagues for their helpful comments and encouragement, including Sherrie Tucker, Michael Baskett, Cathy Preston, Akiko Takeyama, and Marta Vicente. Lynn Davidman delivered critical feedback on the manuscript as well as timely support. William Staples and Joane Nagel gave me a needed kick in the pants to finish the project.
The Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas provided a wonderful space for me to present and discuss my research. I am especially thankful for Victor Bailey, Kathy Porsch, Ann Schofield, and Kim Warren. Others gave me generous help at different stages of the project. Tori Barnes-Brus proved to be an excellent collaborator, and her research help on chapter 4 was invaluable. Aislinn Addington conducted important research for chapter 3 . I am forever indebted to her friendship and support. Nicole Perry and Jane Webb are two young scholars whose research helped sharpened my own. I am appreciative of others who have given me support and inspiration, often without knowing it: Jason Barrett-Fox, Rebecca Barrett-Fox, Matt Burke, Kelly Chong, Christy Craig, Kerry Donovan, Mary Donovan, Robin Henry, Meredith Kleykamp, Randy McAvoy, Trudy McAvoy, Stephanie Russell, David Smith, Christian Watkins, and Janelle Williams. Substantially revised versions of chapters 2 and 4 were published in the journal Law and Social Inquiry . A research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities funded this project during a crucial stage of its development. Finally, I would like to thank my editor at State University of New York Press, Beth Bouloukos, and her assistant Rafael Chaiken for their efforts in bringing this project into existence. This book is dedicated to Natalie Donovan, my wife and best friend of fifteen years, for her unwavering love and companionship. I could not have done this without her.

A previous version of chapter 2 appeared as “Gender Inequality and Criminal Seduction: Prosecuting Sexual Coercion in the Early Twentieth Century,” Law and Social Inquiry 30 (2005): 61–88. A previous version of chapter 4 appeared, coauthored with Tori Barnes-Brus, as “Narratives of Sexual Consent and Sexual Coercion: Forced Prostitution Trials in Progressive-Era New York City,” Law and Social Inquiry 36, no. 3 (2011): 597–619. Both are used with permission of John Wiley Sons.
Introduction
In January 1906, a young woman named Margaret Peters testified in the New York City Court of General Sessions that a man named Julius Bloch raped her in the cigar factory where they both worked. Peters and Bloch were alone in the factory when the attack occurred. Bloch allegedly pushed Margaret Peters onto a wooden box and forced himself on her. Peters testified that the assault was so traumatic that she “lost her mind” and was rendered temporarily unconscious (an account that the defense attorney used against her later in the trial). 1 She returned home, told her family what had transpired, and was escorted to a police station where a charge of first degree rape was filed against Julius Bloch.
In the trial, Julius Bloch’s defense attorney attacked Margaret Peters’s sexual respectability. He insinuated that Margaret Peters told “smutty stories” at work. Although the judge snapped at the attorney for improperly discussing the “girl’s unchastity,” other witnesses testified that she was disreputable and, therefore, fabricating her account of sexual assault. 2 Peter’s coworker, Frida Gail, testified for the defense, and she affirmed that Peters “talked very smutty” and said inappropriate things “about men’s privates, and about ladies [ sic ] privates.” 3 When the defense attorney asked her to elaborate, she demurred, fearing that her own reputation would be sullied by repeating the vulgar details. The judge reassured her that her testimony “is not anything against you.” Next, Julius Bloch sat in the witness stand and described how he and Peters developed a flirtatious relationship at work. He told jurors that he did not assault her but, rather, their sexual encounter was consensual and that Margaret Peters allegedly “made a bed” with the wooden box. Finally, Jennifer Bloch, Julius’s wife, took to the witness stand and testified that he always came home on time from work and always brought home his full salary. She told the jurors that she forgave him for his transgressions. 4 The jury deliberated for thirty minutes before acquitting Bloch for the crime of first degree rape.
The trial of Julius Bloch encapsulates the tensions and contradictions in early twentieth-century notions of sexual respectability. New York women like Margaret Peters were increasingly working outside of the home, exploring romance on their own terms, and engaging in frank sexual talk that was once deemed the exclusive domain of men. By the 1920s, the “New Woman” and the “flapper”—images of a confident and assertive womanhood—would become staples of popular culture and accepted by wide swaths of American society. In the years leading up to World War I, however, the criterions of respectable womanhood were in flux, and women were often held to standards of behavior we associate with the stereotypes of Victorianism: women were expected to be chaste, modest, and pure. Their sexuality was supposedly signified by their lack of sexual passion and their focus on the hearth and home.
As a theater of respectability, the criminal courtroom throws into bold relief the contested nature of gender and sexuality in early urban America. In People v. Bloch , the trial participants engaged in various performances of proper manhood and womanhood. The defense attorney and several witnesses claimed that Margaret Peters was sexually assertive and inappropriate. Frida Gail did not want to tarnish her reputation by uttering the supposedly vulgar comments made by her coworker. Julius and Jennifer Bloch testified that Julius met hegemonic standards of masculinity with his paycheck and attention to home life. The fact that he had developed an attraction to, and possibly raped, his coworker did not damage his respectability in the eyes of the all-male jury, but his alleged victim was consider dishonorable and unwomanly because she engaged in bawdy workplace banter.
This book examines sex crime trials in New York City that occurred during the so-called “first sexual revolution” (approximately 1900–1920). The opening decades of the twentieth century were a volatile period in US sexual history. New forms of leisure, romance, and marriage challenged sexual Victorianism, especially in major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. Although “flappers”—sexually assertive young women from the Jazz Age—symbolize, to some extent, the first sexual revolution, they actually embody its end stages. Elizabeth Clement notes, “By the late 1890s, conditions were ripe for revolution in working-class understandings of the appropriate sexual behavior of women.” 5 Betsy Israel observes, “Much of the Jazz Age imagery we associate with the 1920s—driving, incessant dancing, loose-fitting clothes—actually took shape around 1913.” 6 Historians have described these changes with contrasting images of revolution and repression. Historian James McGovern said the years leading up to World War I “represented such visible departures from the past and are so commonly practiced as to warr