The Interpretation Of Murder
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Mayor George B. McClellan's attempt to wrest control of the city government from Tammany Hall is well known. Indeed, it is even possible that McClellan would have personally supervised an important homicide investigation in September 1909, because he had at that time practically put the entire police department under mayoral control. On the other hand, McClellan's interest in securing a nomination for another term is pure speculation. Publicly, he insisted he was not running.
Charles Loomis Dana, Bernard Sachs, and M. Allen Starr are historical figures. They were in fact known as the Triumvirate; all were bitter enemies of Freud and psychoanalysis. I want to emphasize, however, that the villainous acts implicitly imputed to them here are completely fictitious. There was no plot to derail Freud's lectures at Clark. I have also, for dramatic purposes, exaggerated Dana's wealth and his blood relationship to the more prominent family bearing the same last name. Although Charles L. Dana apparently descended from the same illustrious ancestor as the more prominent Danas, he was born in Vermont and may not even have known his exact relationship to Charles A. Dana, the other New York Danas, or the Boston Danas. Smith Ely Jelliffe is another historical figure whom I have embellished. Jelliffe was not, for example, rich; nor is there any reason to think he was a womanizer. Incidentally, while the Players Club is real, the suggestion that prostitution went on there is pure speculation. It is the case, however, that Jelliffe was both a chief psychiatric expert for the murderer Harry Thaw and the publisher of Freud's first book in English - the Selected Papers on Hysteria, translated by Abraham Brill. It is also the case that Jelliffe attended meetings of the Charaka Club, the exclusive (but not secret) society that Dana and Sachs cofounded.
The accounts of Thaw's sadistic attacks on his wife and other young women are taken almost verbatim from documentary sources. For the record, Mrs Merrill's astonishing testimony was given not at Thaw's murder trial in 1907, but at one of Thaw's subsequent sanity hearings. Moreover, it is only an urban legend (although reported as fact countless times) that Thaw was tried at the Jefferson Market courthouse; he was arraigned there, but both his murder trials took place in the criminal courts building on Centre
Street, next to the Tombs. There is no evidence that Thaw ever visited Mrs Merrill's establishment during the period of his confinement in the Matteawan asylum. Given the ease with which he escaped, however, such an absence without leave would not have been inconceivable.
The body of Miss Elsie Sigel, granddaughter of General Franz Sigel, was indeed discovered in the summer of 1909 in a trunk in an Eighth Avenue apartment belonging to one Leon Ling. The character called Chong Sing in my book is a combination of the real-life Chong Sing and another individual also involved in the case. Miss Sigel's body, however, was found about two and a half months before Freud arrived in New York, and, needless to say, the discovery was not made by Detective Jimmy Littlemore, who is an entirely imaginary character.
Equally imaginary is Dr Stratham Younger, as is Younger s love affair with Nora.
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks to my brilliant wife, Amy Chua, whose idea this book was, and to my beloved daughters, Sophia and Louisa, who saw mistakes no one else did, starting on the very first page. I owe a great debt to Suzanne Gluck and John Sterling for believing in this novel, and to Jennifer Barth and George Hodgman for making it better. I want to thank my parents, brother, and sister for their deep insight and affection. Debby Rubenfeld, Jordan Smoller, Alexis Contant, Anne Dailey, Marina Santilli, Susan Birke Fiedler, Lisa Gray, Anne Tofflemire, and James Bundy were kind enough to provide early, invaluable critical readings. Heather Halberstadt was a tremendous fact-checker, and I am grateful to Kenn Russell for his meticulous eye.
About The Author
Jed Rubenfeld attended Princeton University, the Juilliard School of Drama, and Harvard Law School. Currently the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale University, Rubenfeld is the author of the recently published Revolution by Judiciary: The Structure of American Constitutional Law (Harvard University Press, 2005) and the acclaimed Freedom in Time: A Theory of Constitutional Self-Government (Yale University Press, 2001).
Table of Contents
Part 1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part 2
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part 3
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part 4
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part 5
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six