ASTONISHING. - MADAME MORROW, seventh daughter, beats the world in telling magic likenesses, tells your thoughts on entering her room. For 50 cents. Gents not admitted. 184, Ludlow Street, near Houston. - Newspaper ad, quoted in Greville John Chester's
Transatlantic Sketches (1869)
Madame Morrow was one of the most famous fortune tellers in America in the mid-19th century; she is mentioned in several travel books, and was a familiar character in New York City (and elsewhere). She was active from at least the early 1850s through the mid-1870s. Morrow was especially noted for her promise to show clients the image of their future husbands. This was achieved by looking into a "Magic Box" at a picture, easily changed, attached to one end - rather like a large, Victorian Viewmaster.
Morrow had many pseudonyms: Madame Willis, Madame Wright, Madame Caprol, Madame Levante, and Mrs. Black. But she was best known as Madame Morrow. She worked in various American cities including New York, Baltimore, Chicago and "the Southern cities." According to one
New York Times article, she had been born Elizabeth Westby in Philadelphia and was married to Isaac Morris. A search of the census from 1850-1900 shows that there was a family in Philadelphia named Wesby, to whom Elizabeth may have been related.
The earliest reference to Morrow that I found was in the
New York Times in June 1854. In that month, Morris was arrested at her residence, 78 Broome Street.* She was charged with defrauding Ann Crowley of 254 Marshall Street, selling her a false fortune for $1. She had told Ann that Ann would be married in ten weeks and showed her a picture of the lucky man. Ann said later that she disliked the look of him and she also, ironically, disliked having to wait the ten weeks. Morrow was held for $300 bail and later released.
A
New York Times journalist,
Fitz-James O'Brien, went to visit several fortune tellers in the fall of 1855. He did not visit Morrow, but asked a Mrs. Hayes what she thought of Morrow, who was supposed to "know everything." Hayes replied:
I've heerd of her. For my part I shouldn't like to know as much. I shouldn't feel kind of comfortable if I know'd as much. (This was delivered in a tone of awful sarcasm. Madame Morrow is now a rival in the profession, and shows a husband, which Mrs. Hayes does not do.) For my part I only profess to do what I can do. I'm honest, at any rate.Morrow was away from New York for a few years in the mid 1850s, but arrived back in October 1858. Within a week of her moving into 46 Norfolk Street, someone sent a letter of complaint (enclosing one of Morrow's circulars) to the mayor. She was arrested "in the act of deluding a lady, while three others were waiting to be deluded in the other room." Morrow's mother put up her $500 bail and she was allowed to go after promising not to tell any more fortunes. Morrow broke her promise almost immediately. She was making a fortune telling fortunes: $50-75 a day, which was a fabulous amount of money in the 1850s.
The journalist Mortimer Thomson, who, like Morrow, used a pseudonym - Q.K. Philander Doesticks - devoted an entire chapter to her in his wonderful book
The Witches of New York (1859). He describes the visit of a man called Johannes (probably Thomson himself) who visited Morrow in drag, since she did not accept gentlemen clients. That was, Thomson wrote, because "she imagines her sex to be the more credulous."
Johannes dressed up with the help of two male friends (married friends, Thomson adds) and ends up "looking like his landlady." He struggled downtown, getting his crinoline and veil stuck on hooks and barely managing to keep from tumbling over in the street. Morrow lived in a "low three story brick house" in a filthy "nest of crime" called the Hook. This was
Corlears Hook, an area on the Lower East Side. In the 1850s it was notorious for its bars and brothels, as was nearby Five Points. In fact, some sources say that the slang word "hooker" came from the association of the Hook with prostitution. Thomson notes that most of Morrow's customers were "girls of the town." He adds that Morrow's own style "of dress, manner and conversation...[suggests] that her younger and more attractive days were not passed in a nunnery."
At Morrow's house, Johannes received a red cardboard ticket for a dollar. He then waited an hour and a half to see her. Although the downstairs waiting area is shabby, her upstairs parlor was full of fancy furniture and mirrors. Morrow herself was well-dressed and sporting expensive cameo jewelry. She told Johannes that he would have good luck (although some of his friends
would die) and be married within 6 to 9 months - either to a dark man or a blond man. Then he was shown the Magic Box,"about the size of a candle box" with a telescope device at one end, covered with a small black curtain.
Johannes peeked in and was startled by a bloated "thief-like face" with black hair and a large mustache. One would be more likely to be robbed on Broome Street by him than to marry him, Thomson noted.
By 1859, the year
The Witches of New York was published, Morrow was in Pittsburgh. She was arrested there in June, as Madame Willis. She was wealthy enough to have a three-story house all to herself, at 73 Second Street. The neighbors told police that crowds of people came to see her. She had been reported to the mayor by a young man who was the friend of two girls, clients of Morrow's. Morrow told the girls that friends of theirs would die and other "terrible things" which terrified them. Then they told the young man.
When the police raided 73 Second Street they found "piles of all sorts of things" including posters and handbills for Madame Willis, fortune-telling books and "others of a more questionable character even." They also found the famous prospective-husband viewing box. In addition, the police found $300 cash and a "double handful" of fancy jewellery. These, they thought, had been stolen by "serving maids" to pay Morrow for her services. Morrow was brought before the Mayor and admitted that she made up everything she told the girls. She was fined $25 and told to leave Pittsburgh within 24 hours.
After this arrest, I lost track of Morrow; she was probably working under other names in other cities. But in the fall of 1876 Morrow appeared for a limited time in Brooklyn, advertising herself as an "Independent Clairvoyant." She advertised that her stay would be extended by two weeks "by request of her friends" and that she "will tell of past, present and future, describe absent friends, lost property, and treats diseases of every nature." And her fee was still $1, as it had been in the 1850s.
Later in the century, a Tarot or fortune-telling deck was produced under the name Madame Morrow's Fortune Telling cards (image above),
see here. I would like to find out more about this deck (and about Madame Morrow's life) - and if I do, I will let you know.
* Morrow's New York addresses were all on the Lower East Side, in the general neighborhood of Corlears Hook.Sources:Advertisements in the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle: Sept. 23, 1876, p. 4; Sept. 25, 1876, p. 1; Sept. 26, 1876, p. 4; Sept 29, 1876, p. 1; Oct. 19, 1876, p. 1.
"Arrest of A Fortune Teller," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jun. 13, 1854, p. 2.
"A Raid Among the Soothsayers,"
New York Times, Nov. 23, 1855, p. 1.
"City Items,"
New York Times, Oct. 22, 1858, p. 4.
"Fortune Tellers In Trouble In Pittsburgh,"
New York Times, June 21,1859, p. 2. [gives name Elizabeth Westby Morris]
Allen, Irving Lewis.
The City In Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech (Oxford UP, 1995), p. 185.
Chester, Greville John.
Transatlantic Sketches in the West Indies, South America Canada and the United States (1869), p. 400.
Doesticks, Q.K. Philander [Mortimer Thomson].
The Witches of New York (New York, 1859). I am grateful to Bill Nelson for directing me towards this wonderful book.
Gilfoyle, Timothy J.
City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex (Loyola UP, 1994), pp 36, 50.
O'Brien, Fitz-James, and Wayne R. Kime.
Selected Literary Journalism 1852-1860 (2003), p. 65.
Reformed Church in the United States, "Fortune-Telling,"
The Guardian, vols. 10-11 (1859) [chapter on Madame Willis]
Images:The tea leaf ladies photograph is from the
Library of Congress.
The card of the lady looking into the mirror is from the
NYPL Digital Gallery.
The dilapidated three-story house at Worth Street, New York (1870) is also from
NYPL Digital Gallery - not in Morrow's neighborhood, but gives an idea of what her typical house might have looked like.
The Madame Morrow cards image is from the
Tarot Collectors' Forum.
Friday's mystery object is in fact an English sovereign holder, which dates from about 1900. It is from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Thank you and well done to all who played this week!
There are some good pictures of sovereign holders - and chip holders for poker chips - over here. Most of the examples I saw online date from the 1890-1910 period. The sovereign holder was kept on a chain, in a man's pocket (this must have been a bit confusing, though, if he also had a watch). They also came in other shapes: this sovereign holder is shaped like a little book. The sovereign is a British gold coin equivalent to one pound or twenty shillings. It was first produced in 1489 and they are still being made. The image of the 1842 sovereigns is from Wikimedia.
I also want to thank 
A little intermission goes here, while I finish the Madame Morrow post (it is nearly done, but not quite). Here is a Victorian riddle for you, from a cigarette card dating probably from the 1890s, from the 
And now - all shall be revealed! Alison, you were closest when you guessed something medicinal - because it is supposed to promote good health. This is in fact an Exercise Chair, dating from the 1840s - you were supposed to bounce up and down on it and strengthen your muscles, somehow. The chair is exhibited at the Museum of Science in London, England. And the image is from the 
I'm about to start working on a piece about a notorious fortune teller in mid-19th century New York - she was quite a character, and I'm looking forward to devoting some time to this.
The name (or motto) of the saloon does not, of course, apply to the oysters. What it was meant to refer to was the cheapness of the oysters, as is revealed in an 1860 court case over the phrase "Live and Let Live."
The
Poor Julius. Look how thrilled he is about being raised on Mellin's Food!
When I think of the word "Nemo" I tend to think of the Disney character, and of Esther Summerson's father, Captain Hawdon, in Dickens' 
What could possibly be the connection between riding a bicycle and a hair preparation?
The Museum is going to be on summer hours for the next week, which is to say - three posts scattered through the week, pretty much as we have been going along lately. However! Entrecard dropping will not be occurring, nor responding to your charming and delightful comments - as the Museum staff will be away from the virtual premises (i.e. computer and desk).
Mme Du Vall of 655 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, was the greatest medium in the city in the late 1890s. Of course, so were all of her competitors, but no matter.
This postcard was sent in April 1915 by an anonymous patient,"here for two weeks' rest" at Clifton Springs Sanitarium in Clifton Springs, New York. The car was sent to a Mr. W.A. Snaith in Toronto, Canada.
I finally found the two 
