In the summer of 1841, Mary Rogers disappeared without a trace from her New York City boarding house. Three days later, her body, badly bruised and waterlogged, was found floating in the shallow waters of the Hudson River just a few feet from the Jersey shore. Her story, parlayed into a long celebrated unsolved mystery, became grist for penny presses, social reformers, and politicians alike, and an impetus for popular literature, including Edgar Allen Poe's pioneering detective story "The Mystery of Marie Roger".

In The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, historian Amy Gilman Srebnick brilliantly recaptures the story of Mary Rogers, showing how Rogers represented an emerging class of women who took advantage of the greater economic and sexual opportunities available to them in urban America, and how her death became a touchstone for the voicing of mid-nineteenth century concerns over sexual license, the changing roles of women, law and order, and abortion. Rogers' death, first thought due to a murderous gang of rapists and later tacitly understood to be the result of an ill-performed abortion, quickly became a source of popular entertainment, a topic of political debate, and an inspiration to public policy. The incident and the city's response to it provides a fascinating window into the urban culture and consciousness of the mid-1800s. Indeed, inRogers' name, and as a direct result of her death, two important pieces of legislation were passed in 1845: the New York City Police Reform Act which effectively modernized the city's system of policing, and the New York State law criminalizing abortion.

The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers tells a story of a death, but more importantly it also tells the story of a life -- that of Mary Rogers -- and of the complex urban social world of which she was a part. Like the city in which she lived, Mary Rogers was a source of wonder, mystery, and fear, provoking desire, and inspiring narrative.

"Everyone loves a good mystery. And the mysteries abound in Amy Gilman Srebnick's absorbing new work .... With this book, the mysterious death of Mary Rogers should take its place beside other crimes that have shocked Americans into action, or at least into deep reflection about our society -- Kitty Genovese and Nicole Brown Simpson are only the tip of the iceberg". -- New York Law Journal

"With its combination of romance, sex, and violence, Rogers's story captured the allure and danger of urban life and, Srebnick argues, introduced previously unspeakable acts into public discourse". -- Time Out New York

"In a mesmerizing, superb study, intriguingly illustrated with period engravings and woodcuts .... Srebnick uses the Rogers saga to throw a floodlight on sexuality in antebellum America, women's history, urban mass culture, the rise of the popular press, and the birth of detective fiction". -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A wonderfully astute and complex investigation of gender, class, and cultural representation in the urban world of antebellum America". -- Eric Sundquist, Department ofEnglish, UCLA

"The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers is immensely readable, fluently written, well-paced, and intrinsically of great value. It is vivid and highly evocative of the urban culture -- persons, events, buildings and streets, print culture, complex moral codes, etc. -- it treats; and it is particularly effective in its linkage of the mysteries of the city with the mysteries of female sexuality in this period". -- Karen Halttunen, Professor of History, University of California, Davis