Dorcas Doyen (1813-1836) aka Helen or Ellen Jewett
Our 4th cousin, 4 times removed
I have not written any stories lately as I have been working on a genealogical compilation of the first five generations of all the descendants of George Abbott of Andover. I have about 260 pages so far and should have the basics of it completed in the next couple of months. Anyway, while doing that I ran across this fourth cousin. She was Dorcas Doyen who transformed herself into Helen Jewett. She was the victim of a sensationalized murder in New York City in 1836.
Dorcas was born 18 October 1813 in Temple, Maine. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother died when Dorcas was very young. Dorcas’s grandfather, Jacob Doyen, served through some gruesome duty in the Revolutionary War and was wounded. He also seems to have married a second wife without bothering to divorce the first one. This branch of the family has some sketchy behavior for a few generations.
Dorcas’s family was poor, and when she was about 12 she was sent out to work as a servant in the house of Chief Justice Nathan Weston of the Maine Judicial Supreme Court. About age 18, she left her servant job, went to Portland, and took up prostitution using an alias. She was later in Boston and then went to New York.
Dorcas, now Helen, worked in a brothel in New York. It was there that her body was found 10 April 1836. She had been struck on the head with a hatchet and an attempt was made to set the body on fire, but the body was discovered when it was charred on just one side.
A young man, Richard Robinson, was arrested and tried but found not guilty. There was little actual evidence against him and the judge ordered the jury to disregard the testimony of the witnesses as they were prostitutes. The murder and its trial were highly sensationalized in the press as can be seen by the pictured pamphlet that was published in Boston recounting the crime.
Reference:
Cohen, P. C. (1993). The Mystery of Helen Jewett: Romantic Fiction and the Eroticization of Violence. Legal Stud. F., 17, 133.