Book Review — "Cry of Murder on Broadway" by Julie Miller
If you believe that Carrie White was in the right when she slaughtered nearly her entire graduating class of assholes at the prom, then you will in all likelihood side with Amelia Norman. Norman is the centralizing figure in Julie Miller’s chronicle of how one woman’s public attempt at murder on a bustling New York City street in 1843 changed the tide in the fight for women’s equity.
Seriously, when I discovered that there was a true crime book about a house servant named Amelia Norman who had chosen to seek revenge upon her former lover, who’d disrespected and abandoned her and their bastard child, by plunging a blade into his chest in broad daylight in plain view of several onlookers and then managed to get essentially every New Yorker on her side despite her obvious guilt, I knew I had to devour it. On the whole, Julie Miller’s Cry of Murder on Broadway: A Woman’s Ruin and Revenge in Old New York offers valuable insight into just how little autonomy women had in the nineteenth century, and the incremental progress that has been made in the decades since—with the assistance of some bloodshed.
Sounds lurid, right? Well, yes and no…
Miller writes with an academic neutralism. This lends her a moderately journalistic reliability, as a narrator. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole endeavor started out as an article or dissertation of some sort that then grew out of that, which would be cool. But, sadly, the story never really jumps off the page, because the whole account reads too much like a term paper. On the one hand, I admire how fact-based Miller’s prose is—and how she offers credence to her own hypotheses when a primary source does not exist—but… to use a dreaded word, the book repeatedly becomes dull. And given how inherently dramatic this story is, I find that disappointing and unfortunately ironic.
This tale is full of big personalities, so it’d be nice if the writing reflected it. Miller asserts that, in the period, true crime penny papers and the courtrooms in which the hottest cases were tried were often forms of theatre; one of the trial lawyers was even a former playwright. Today, we continually bemoan the media and the justice system for sensationalizing criminal offenses in order make a buck or a name for one’s self. Well, turns out, that’s always been the nature of the beast. In addition to the courtroom personalities, Miller rounds out the supporting cast with noteworthy politicians, feminist writers, and abolitionist thinkers of the era—people who sought to utilize or capitalize upon the Norman case. It’s too bad Miller’s lack of storytelling prowess does not quite live up to the fierce historical figures who make up this ensemble.
Then again, perhaps juicy histrionics was never Miller’s intent in telling Cry of Murder on Broadway. And that’s okay, I suppose. Because it presents a neat, um, counterbalance to what’s going on textually, I guess. Which is a valid choice, made at the risk of boring one’s readers.
The bones are there, though. If a crackerjack team of dramatists were to assemble, the case of Amelia Norman and the lives of those adjacent to it could make for marvelous television. I could see this story playing out under the American Crime Story banner, actually. Norman might not have the same name recognition as O.J. Simpson or Gianni Versace, but audiences love getting enveloped by a fresh scandal from history—especially if it involves a scorned woman stabbing a man who had it coming on a public stage. Knives and layered costumes. The gays and the Emmys would eat that shit up, guaranteed.
