The Beautiful Cigar Girl

by Daniel Stashower

  There is no evidence that anyone took this letter seriously, as the Planet operated on the lowest tier of the penny press, but the story it purported to tell was fairly typical of the wild rumors and surmises that came into play in the wake of the Joseph Morse episode. Having reached a misplaced consensus on Morse’s guilt, the newspapers now once again parted company and resumed their earlier postures, seeking to fill the vacuum created by the departure of the “devious engraver.” The names of earlier suspects now returned to prominence, including those of Daniel Payne, Mary’s fiancé, and Alfred Crommelin, her would-be suitor. Crommelin was now rumored to have abandoned the city, and Payne was said to be imprisoned in the Tombs. Both men were also accused of having written the notorious warning letter to Joseph Morse in Worcester, advising him to alter his appearance and flee. None of these stories was true. “This affair seems to furnish a great deal of twaddle to the penny papers,” wrote James Gordon Bennett, who had lately raised the price of the Herald to two cents and considered himself to have ascended to a more rarified plane.

  Amid the swirling rumors and hearsay, city and state officials stepped up their efforts once again. New York’s board of aldermen weighed the possibility of adding another five hundred dollars to the reward money, while Governor Seward let it be known that he would issue a pardon to any accomplice to the crime who came forward with details. The New York police, meanwhile, had learned from the example of Joseph Morse and were playing their cards closer to the vest. As a result, the arrest of Archibald Padley on August 27, three days after the official release of the engraver, was conducted under conditions of near total secrecy.

  Padley, Alfred Crommelin’s loyal friend, appears to have been a suspect of last resort. As a former resident of the Rogers boardinghouse he had known Mary Rogers reasonably well, having described her at Gilbert Merritt’s Hoboken inquest as a “worthy girl of the very highest character.” Following Crommelin’s falling out with Payne, the steadfast Padley had left Nassau Street with his friend, and he had been with Crommelin at Hoboken when Mary’s body was discovered. It is not known what evidence, if any, came to light to connect Padley to the crime. What is clear is that he was taken to the Tombs in the dead of night and subjected to a three-day interrogation by a justice named Milne Parker. During this period Padley was refused the services of a lawyer, and denied all information concerning the charges against him or the identity of his accuser. Apparently these tactics were not unusual for Justice Parker, who was already under indictment for a similar breach of ethics.

  After three days the situation came to the attention of Justice Taylor, who was known to have exercised better judgment in his interrogation of Joseph Morse. In the absence of any compelling evidence against Padley, Taylor issued a release order on the morning of August 31, only to learn that Padley had been set free a few hours earlier—without the knowledge of George Hyde, the keeper of the prison. Both Hyde and Taylor were outraged, and made angry statements to the press. Padley, they said, had been arrested and interrogated “without respect to procedure” and “without the shadow of evidence” linking him to the crime. “The liberty of the citizen cannot thus be outrageously violated,” Taylor insisted. Not surprisingly, Bennett’s Herald was quick to seize on this latest example of judicial malfeasance. “Everything in relation to this lamentable affair seems to be clothed not merely with some impenetrable mystery, but to be conducted by the authorities with a greater degree of secrecy, and consequently of injustice, than most other judicial investigations,” Bennett wrote. “It may be law, but it is not justice.”

  If Padley’s interrogation had been shrouded in secrecy, the police were even more circumspect in their questioning of John Anderson, the owner of the cigar store. It was natural enough that the police should have taken an interest in Anderson, who at the very least would have been able to provide information about the background of his former employee. As with all wealthy and prominent citizens of the time, however, the police would have had to show extraordinary discretion, under the threat of possible legal recriminations. This would have been especially true in the case of Anderson, who had powerful allies at City Hall. It is all the more remarkable, then, that shortly after the Morse affair Anderson was taken into police custody, though perhaps not officially placed under arrest, and subjected to close questioning by the authorities. The information did not appear in any of the newspapers, suggesting that Anderson was able to use his influence to suppress it, and it is not known whether there were any legitimate grounds for suspicion. Even so, the episode placed the young businessman in an exceedingly delicate position. Anderson knew that the mere fact of his interrogation would foster a suspicion of his complicity, whether warranted or not. For a man with political ambitions, this might well prove ruinous. Anderson’s fears were justified. In spite of his efforts to hold back the information, it later emerged that the story of Anderson’s interrogation at police headquarters had circulated among the city’s leading citizens, creating an impression of the tobacconist as a man with a skeleton in his closet. Although he had taken an active role in stimulating the murder investigation, even pledging fifty dollars at the Committee of Safety meeting, Anderson would find himself shadowed by association with the crime for many years to come.

  Alfred Crommelin, meanwhile, found himself under attack in Benjamin Day’s Tattler. Though the editor had high praise for Crommelin’s “self-denying perseverance” in the days following Mary Rogers’s disappearance, he insisted that Crommelin’s identification of the dead woman’s body was entirely without merit. From the beginning, Day had been an advocate of the theory that Mary Rogers was still alive. Although he attempted to distance himself from the Planet and other “crackpots and gossipists,” Day claimed to have a “myriad of provoking reasons” to believe that the body pulled from the Hudson had not been that of the cigar girl. Over the course of several days he and the Tattler staff elaborated on these reasons, often in stomach-churning detail. It was well known, Day claimed, that a corpse submerged in water remained below the surface for some while. After a period of six to ten days, as the body decomposed and natural gases were produced, the body would eventually rise to the surface. Since Mary Rogers had been missing only three days, the Tattler insisted, her body would not have had sufficient time to rise from the bottom of the river.

  Furthermore, the Tattler claimed, since the process of decomposition was known to be greatly slowed by immersion in water, it did not seem likely the victim’s features would be unrecognizable. Yet Crommelin had stated that the face was “entirely ruined,” which it should not have been after only three days in the river. Adding to the confusion, the state of the victim’s features had obliged Crommelin to resort to other means of making his identification. These alternate forms of recognition, the Tattler claimed, were entirely baseless. Crommelin had torn open the young woman’s sleeve and claimed to make out “distinctive markings” on the bare arm. When pressed, however, he admitted that these markings were simply a pattern of hair, which could hardly be counted as an ironclad means of identification. Similarly, Crommelin had laid a particular emphasis on the “delicate shape” of the victim’s feet, a characteristic which, in the cold light of day, could not be counted as unique or even noteworthy.

  In the opinion of the Tattler, the true flaw in Crommelin’s testimony lay in his fixed idea of what he would find in Hoboken. He had gone there in search of Mary Rogers, so when he happened upon the recovery of an unidentified corpse, he examined it “not for appearances to show who the drowned person was, but for facts to strengthen his own preconceived opinion that he had found the murdered body of Mary C. Rogers.” Crommelin’s identification, therefore, amounted “to nothing at all.”

  Crommelin, at least, was said to have been well-intentioned in his efforts. By contrast, Dr. Richard Cook, the New Jersey coroner, was dismissed in the pages of the Tattler as “the subject of contemptuous sneers by nearly all the physicians in the city.” Chief among his blunders, the paper d
eclared, was his willingness to accept Crommelin’s statement as gospel instead of waiting for a proper identification by a member of the family. Moreover, the paper continued, Cook had conducted the postmortem examination with unforgivable haste, committing so many errors that if his evidence were to be published, its very “absurdity would make him a byword at once.”

  Several other points troubled the Tattler. Because of Mary Rogers’s fame as the “beautiful seegar girl,” she could scarcely have gone to Hoboken or even “passed the length of three blocks in Broadway” without being recognized by a host of witnesses. Then there was the odd fact that both Phoebe Rogers and Daniel Payne had appeared strangely apathetic when told of the body found at Elysian Fields. The two had seemed so unperturbed by this report that it appeared to H. G. Luther, who delivered the unhappy tidings, that “the news was not unexpected.” Perhaps this reaction could be better understood if, as the Tattler assumed, Payne and Mrs. Rogers were certain that Mary was still alive. What Luther had mistaken for apathy might instead have been confusion over an appropriate response.

  All of these facts, and many more besides, brought the Tattler to the “inescapable certitude” that Mary Rogers was not the unfortunate girl found dead in Hoboken. How else to explain the fact that Payne and Mrs. Rogers had allowed the city to arrange for the burial, which neither of them had troubled to attend, at the Varick Street church rather than in the Rogers family plot?

  The Tattler’s theories, though provocative, overlooked a great deal of contradictory information. Benjamin Day’s rivals were quick to seize upon his omissions. “Many people now begin to believe that Mary has not been murdered after all,” the Herald noted. “Still, it [does] seem incredible that the clothes of Mary should be found on the body of a stranger.”

  Other flaws soon emerged. Setting aside the uncertain merits of the Tattler’s conclusions concerning “natural gases,” there was one obvious defect. Day had repeatedly stated that a three-day immersion in the river would have slowed the body’s decomposition, rendering it probable that Crommelin would have been able to recognize the dead woman’s features. Since he did not, the reasoning went, the body had probably been submerged for a longer period, and therefore could not have been Mary Rogers. In all likelihood, however, the face was already horribly disfigured when the body went into the water. An eyewitness at Hoboken spoke of a face that was “butchered to a mummy” when the body came out of the water, and Dr. Cook testified to heavy bruising and swollen tissues. Added to this is the uncertainty as to when Crommelin arrived on the scene. It is possible that the corpse had been lying on the bank for some time before Crommelin saw it, suffering further ravages from the 90-degree heat. In these circumstances, it is unlikely that the face would have been easily recognized.

  Similarly, the Tattler had claimed that Mary Rogers would have been recognized if she had been out in public on the day in question, but in fact there had been numerous sightings to place her on Broadway and at Hoboken at various times on that Sunday. Although many of these reports, like the one that led to the arrest of Joseph Morse, were of dubious merit, it was not accurate to say that Mary Rogers had passed unnoticed through the Sunday crowds.

  As to the charge of indifference on the part of Phoebe Rogers and Daniel Payne, the Rogers family itself raised a strenuous objection. On August 25, a cousin of Mary’s by the name of Edward B. Hayes (the son of Mrs. Hayes, Phoebe’s sister), appeared at the editorial offices of the Tattler to complain about the paper’s portrayal of his relations. As soon as he got word of the tragedy, Hayes claimed, he had gone to Hoboken himself with the intention of viewing the body, although his fragile nerves prevented him from actually doing so. With respect to the actions of Payne and Phoebe Rogers, they had allowed themselves to be guided—“perhaps ill-advisedly”—by the counsel of Alfred Crommelin. According to Hayes, Crommelin had come to him after the New Jersey inquest and stated in blunt terms that Payne must be prevented from going to Hoboken at all costs. Payne, in Crommelin’s view, was “a madman” whose interference would only derail the investigation. Accordingly, Hayes said, he went to Payne’s brother, John, and convinced him to take the cork cutter out of the city for a few days, presumably to recover from the shock of his fiancée’s death. At the same time, Crommelin advised Mrs. Rogers and the other members of the family to remain at home and keep quiet about the murder, so as not to distract from “the detection of the perpetrators of the deed.” According to Hayes, Crommelin even went so far as to advise them not to speak with the police, insisting that he himself would serve as the family’s liaison.

  Mr. Hayes professed a particular irritation at the suggestion that no member of the family had troubled over Mary’s funeral arrangements. He insisted that Mr. Downing, one of the cousins Mary was supposed to have been visiting on the fatal Sunday, had not only arranged for the funeral but also paid the expenses. Furthermore, Downing had been present along with Payne as Mary was laid to rest in the family plot—not in the Varick Street church, as several newspapers had reported.

  Having delivered himself of these complaints, Hayes withdrew from the offices of the Tattler demanding that a formal apology be published. This was not done, but the substance of his remarks was reported at great length, including the detail of Mary’s burial in the family plot, which was rather at odds with the paper’s fierce insistence that the young woman was, in fact, still alive. The Tattler also printed a letter from Payne that arrived shortly afterward, declaring that the story Hayes had told was “strictly true in every particular.”

  By this time Alfred Crommelin had grown accustomed to seeing his actions and his testimony attacked in print. One paper had dismissed him as a “meddler” and another as a “fretful busybody,” prompting him to complain to Justice Gilbert Merritt about the manner in which “the lower order of the press” had seen fit to “heap odium” upon him. Merritt, who himself had recently been characterized as “a model of judicial incompetence,” advised Crommelin to ignore the barbs. “Admitting all this, what of it?” he asked. Instead, he urged Crommelin to “enjoy the proud satisfaction of having performed your duty, as you have faithfully and diligently done so far, day and night, in endeavoring to ferret out, and bring to justice, the concealed though wretched murderer of Miss Rogers.”

  In the wake of this latest attack in the Tattler, however, Crommelin could no longer stay quiet. While he might have held his tongue out of respect for Edward Hayes, the letter of affirmation from Daniel Payne, his old rival, struck him at his most sensitive point. Indignant and spoiling for a fight, Crommelin went to the offices of the Courier and Enquirer to present his side of the story. Buttonholing a reporter, he spent the better part of an hour giving a loud and blustering justification of his actions. He said that he resented “most earnestly” the suggestion that his identification of Mary’s body had been in error. For verification, one needed only to recall that Phoebe Rogers herself had confirmed Crommelin’s statement based on the clothing found on the body, even down to the detail of “some particular repairs done on the Saturday evening previous to her leaving home.” Surely, Crommelin insisted, the matter of the clothing was decisive?

  The following day, the substance of Crommelin’s remarks crossed Benjamin Day’s desk at the Tattler. Even now, the editor refused to yield. He printed a forceful reaffirmation of his earlier position that Mary Rogers was alive, conveniently glossing over the family’s claims to have buried her. He went on to point out that Crommelin had not seen Mary in some time, having declined to answer the overtures she made in the days prior to her disappearance. His identification of the girl’s clothing, then, could not be counted as reliable. The fact that Phoebe Rogers and at least two other relatives had also recognized the clothing went unmentioned.

  This was a shrewd gambit on Day’s part. Although the Tattler once again offered backhanded praise for Crommelin’s “selfless efforts” in the matter, the article served as a reminder that he had ignored a plea for help from Mary Rogers at the mome
nt of her greatest need, reinforcing the notion of him as a man attempting to ease a guilty conscience. The testimony of such a man, Day implied, could hardly be accepted uncritically.

  Outraged, Crommelin bypassed the Courier and Enquirer and sent a blistering letter directly to Day’s Tattler. Although several friends and city officials had advised him to hold his tongue, he resolved that he could not allow “a certain class of the penny press to go on from day to day to calumniate me.” It was a matter of public record, he declared, that Mary Rogers had been buried by the city at a cost of $29.50, and that both Mr. Callender, the clerk of police, and Mr. McCadden, the undertaker, were prepared to affirm this fact under oath. As to the other charges against his truthfulness, Crommelin called for “an open investigation of all and every part of my conduct in relation to the inquiries respecting the murder of Miss Rogers,” as opposed to the “secret inquisitorial proceedings” to which his friend Archibald Padley had been subjected. He went on to insist that the same rigorous standard be applied to the other principal figures of the investigation, including Phoebe Rogers, Daniel Payne, Edward Hayes, and several of the journalists and police officers who had besmirched his good name. “I fear no questions,” Crommelin declared, “and wear no mask.”

  By this time Crommelin had become a figure of fun in most of the city’s newspapers. His demand wasn’t taken seriously, although a public inquiry of the sort he suggested, however unorthodox or contentious, might have helped to burn away some of the fabrications and half-truths. Five weeks had now passed since the murder, and in that time much had been said and written—some of it true, some of it false, and quite a bit falling somewhere in between. Each day brought some dramatic but unproven assertion that swept through the city’s saloons and oyster houses, only to be supplanted the following day by something even more sensational. One rumor claimed that Mary had been spotted boarding a ship bound for France, on the arm of a mysterious older gentleman. Another story, printed in the Herald, told readers that “old Mrs. Rogers burned up a bundle of letters belonging to Mary on the day of the inquest. This ought to be explained.” Crommelin would have been particularly interested in clarifying a widely circulated claim as to the reason for Mary’s visit to his office in the days before the murder. It was said that Phoebe Rogers had sent her daughter to try to sell a due bill in the amount of fifty-two dollars (an I.O.U. from a former tenant) so that Mary would have the use of the money while Crommelin took on the job of collecting the debt. If true, this would have confirmed that Mary had something more than a simple family visit in mind when she left Nassau Street that morning. In the climate of journalistic one-upmanship that persisted in the weeks following the murder, however, it is difficult to separate truth from rumor. “There is yet a mystery in this business,” wrote Bennett at the end of August, “which time alone can unravel.”