Acclaimed author Michael Wolraich will discuss the scandalous history of the Jefferson Market Library and read from his forthcoming narrative nonfiction book, The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age.
The charming, landmarked building that houses the Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village has a dark past. Originally constructed as a courthouse, it included a women’s criminal court in what is now the children’s reading room. The night hearings became a form of entertainment for members of the public, mostly men, who attended hearings to ogle the accused prostitutes.
In 1923, a housewife from Philadelphia named Benita Bischoff was convicted for prostitution on the word of a single vice officer. Though it was her first offence, the judge sentenced her to a reformatory upstate, and she lost custody of her beloved eight-year-old daughter. She told her parole officer that her estranged husband had conspired with the police to frame her.
Branded and embittered after her incarceration, she adopted an alias, Vivian Gordon, and took up a life of crime. During the Roaring Twenties, she consorted with gangsters and made a small fortune by seducing and blackmailing wealthy men. She also operated a call-girl service, perpetrated stock frauds, and financed burglaries. All the while, she nursed her grievances and plotted her revenge.
An opportunity finally emerged in 1931 when a state anticorruption commission, led by former judge Samuel Seabury, uncovered a police conspiracy to frame innocent women for prostitution at the Jefferson Market Courthouse. Vivian Gordon contacted the commission and told the investigators about the conviction that had destroyed her life. A few days later, her body was discovered in a gully in Van Cortlandt Park with a noose wrapped tightly around her neck.
The twists and turns of Vivian Gordon’s sensational homicide case gripped the city for months. As public outrage mounted, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the authority of the anticorruption commission. The relentless Samuel Seabury soon uncovered a trail of graft leading to the top of Gotham’s powerful political machine—the infamous Tammany Hall. In 1932, a final dramatic showdown between Seabury and Mayor Jimmy Walker in FDR’s office changed the course of New York City’s history.
Presented in the first floor Willa Cather Room. Free and open to the public.
