Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions
Page 32
A handful of newspaper clippings show that Fleurette was auditioning for singing competitions. Although her connection with May Ward is entirely fictional, the final scene, in which Constance was sent to New York to arrest Mrs. Ward after Freeman Bernstein claimed she’d been kidnapped, really did happen a little later in 1916. I simply fictionalized the events leading up to that moment. Most of the details about Mrs. Ward’s act, and her husband’s history, are true. I do portray May Ward as something of a drunk, and that is entirely fictional.
The other female inmates of the Hackensack jail are all based on real women who did commit the crimes described, but not necessarily at that time or in Hackensack. Providencia Monafo really did shoot her tenant, and Josephine Knobloch was arrested during a labor strike and refused to pay her fine. Both women would have been inmates at the Hackensack jail at around this time.
p. 19: “Girl Sheriff, a Real Lecoq” ran in many newspapers around the country, including the Evening Telegram on March 5, 1916. The passage on p. 21 about prison reform actually comes from another lengthy profile about Constance that appeared in the Passaic Journal on March 19, 1916, under the headline “Bergen County Has New Jersey’s Only Woman Under-Sheriff.”
p. 95: The text of Edna Heustis’s war recruitment pamphlet was adapted from a few lines in Helen Fraser’s 1918 book Women and War Work. Mrs. Roberts’s speech on p. 193 was inspired by this book and several similar speeches recounted in newspapers from 1916 to 1918.
p. 105: “There’s a Little Bit of Bad in Every Good Little Girl” was written by Grante Clark and Fred Fischer, and recorded by Billy Murray in 1916.
p. 107: “She Pushed Me into the Parlour” was written and composed by Alf Ellerton and Will Mayne in 1912.
p. 148: The letter from lawyer Edwin Bagott proposing marriage appeared in a slightly different form (and to a different woman) in the Galveston Daily News on August 23, 1904.
p. 157: The incident on the trolley actually happened to pioneering Los Angeles policewoman Alice Stebbins Wells and was described in Policing Women by Janis Appier.
p. 158: John Courter’s speech includes well-circulated lines from popular speeches and writings of the day. The bit about the ice cream parlor can be found in Ernest Albert Bell’s 1910 book Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls and was a frequent refrain of United States Attorney Edwin Sims, who was instrumental in the creation of the Mann Act. Other lines from Courter’s speech come from Jane Addams’s A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1914). In those days, ideas were circulated not by Twitter, but by pamphlets, books, and speeches reprinted in newspapers. It was not at all uncommon for speakers to repeat lines they’d read in such sources; think of it as the retweeting of the day. This was very much part of how the hysteria over so-called “white slavery” spread. For more on this subject, I recommend David J. Langum’s Crossing Over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act and Jessica R. Pliley’s Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI.
p. 168: Many of the descriptions of the State Home for Girls in Trenton came from the 1936 book I Knew Them in Prison by Mary B. Harris, including the fact that “colored girls,” to use the language of the era, had to carry their chairs to dinner because the state hadn’t allocated enough chairs. Miss Pittman’s chilly line “We weren’t prepared to receive colored girls” was precisely the language used at that time to describe segregation and the exclusion of African American girls from social service organizations. The description of the house meant to look like George Washington’s headquarters at Morristown, the chipped plaster in the punishment rooms, and the cage in the attic with the rats crowding around all come from Harris’s book.
p. 179: The speech Nurse Porter gave to Minnie comes from Sex Knowledge for Women and Girls: What Every Woman and Girl Should Know by William Josephus Robinson, published in 1917.
p. 222: Esther’s description of how girls are defined as “feeble-minded,” “idiot,” “imbecile,” or “lunatic” can be found in many mental health publications of the era. I drew particularly on a 1914 University of Texas bulletin, Care of the Feeble-Minded and Insane in Texas.
p. 225: “Girl Sheriff’s Gold Badge” appeared in the New York Times on February 14, 1916. I replaced County Detective Louis Nestel’s name with that of John Courter.
pp. 231 and 275: The Hotel Jermyn in Scranton and the Hotel Columbus in Harrisburg were popular hotels in their day, and I tried to render their details faithfully.
p. 256: Belle Headison’s rousing speech on how difficult it is for girls to preserve their honor “behind the footlights” comes in part from the 1914 book The White Slave Traffic Versus the American Home by Mabel Madeline Southard.
p. 260: Thanks to Barbara Gooding’sImages of America: Hackensack for the bit about Terhune’s Harley-Davidson showroom.
p. 267: The account of Freeman Bernstein’s failed Midway Park can be found in the New York Times on June 25, 1908, “Two Caught in Ruins as Building Falls,” and June 24, 1908, “Court Urged to Close Midway Park at Once.”
p. 271: Callot Soeurs was a Parisian design house run by four sisters. The gold dress May Ward wore was one of their designs (although it was fictional that May Ward wore it).
p. 277: The entertainment on offer in Harrisburg, including Mr. Howe’s Travel Festival and the controversial film Birth of a Nation, all come from February 1916 theater listings in the Harrisburg Telegraph.
p. 287: “The Bird on Nellie’s Hat” was written by Arthur J. Lamb and published in 1906 with May Ward’s image on the cover of the sheet music. It would be worthwhile to search online for videos of this song being performed—particularly the version sung by Miss Piggy.
p. 341: The building where May Ward was arrested was, in real life, the Equitable Building, at 120 Broadway, which really did cast such a shadow that people complained. The situation brought about new zoning requirements designed to let more light into city streets.
p. 350: Several newspapers gave conflicting accounts of May Ward’s alleged kidnapping, but they all agree that her husband, Freeman Bernstein, made the allegations and that Constance was sent to rescue her, make arrests, or otherwise sort out the mess. These events actually took place in September 1916. “The Lady Sheriff Right on the Job” ran in many newspapers, including, on September 30, 1916, in the Wichita Beacon.
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www.amystewart.com
About the Author
AMY STEWART is the award-winning author of nine books, including the first two Kopp Sisters novels, Girl Waits with Gun and Lady Cop Makes Trouble, and the nonfiction bestsellers The Drunken Botanist and Wicked Plants. She and her husband live in Eureka, California, where they own a bookstore called Eureka Books.
For book club resources, Skype chats, and more, visit www.amystewart.com/bookclubs
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