New York largely stayed out of the witch trial hysteria that plagued much of New England in the seventeenth century. But nearly two centuries later, New York City was engaged in a different kind of witch hunt: cracking down on the working-class women who earned their bread as fortune tellers on the Lower East Side. This movement was led in large part by the journalists who entertained their readers by seeking out these women’s services only to write mocking, derisive articles about their experience in the papers. In Mortimer and the Witches, a new nonfiction book that came out earlier this year, historian and NYC tour guide Marie Carter interweaves the biography of one such journalist with a study of the fortune tellers whose livelihoods he so reviled.
Mortimer and the Witches takes a unique approach to studying a niche area of New York City history. The book is partially a biography of a man named Mortimer Thomson, a relatively popular humor writer in his day who has since fallen into obscurity. In the late 1850s, Thomson published a series of articles in the New-York Tribune documenting and disparaging his visits to various fortune tellers and in 1858, under the ridiculously over-the-top pseudonym Q.K. Philander Doesticks, P.B., he published a book collecting these articles titled The Witches of New York. This profession was held almost entirely by poor, working-class women, often recent immigrants and/or mothers with many mouths to feed. As such, little was documented about the lives of these workers, and Doesticks’s treatise, biased though it is, provides a rare chance to peek behind the curtain at these fascinating figures in the city’s history.
In her introduction to the book, Marie Carter explains how she first stumbled upon this bit of history and became fascinated by the figure of Doesticks. She used the geographical details provided in his articles to create a walking tour for Boroughs of the Dead centered on the lives of these fortune tellers. (I have done this tour and highly recommend it if you’re in New York!) The questions Carter was asked by those attending her tours prompted her to delve more deeply into the subject and guided the direction of the book. Carter’s introduction is followed by eight chapters each named after an individual fortune teller and paired with a card from the Lenormand tarot deck that reflects some of the themes discussed therein. In her “Concluding Remarks,” Carter reflects on how we judge these fortune tellers and whether the accuracy of their predictions is really the most salient or interesting aspect. Finally, Marie ends the book with an epilogue about Mortimer Thomson’s daughter Ethel, a successful writer and suffragette, positioning her as both a foil to Thomson’s judgmental misogyny and to the limited opportunities faced by the women who turned to fortune telling as one of the few paths open to them.
One thing that surprised me most in Mortimer and the Witches is how expansive the role of fortune teller really was. The term “witch” as used in the title might be more accurate in encompassing the variety of talents and services offered by these women (and a handful of men). Sure, most of them practiced some form of divining the future through palmistry, tarot cards, or glimpses of one’s future spouse in some reflective surface. But many of them also would go into trances to contact the dead or look in on loved ones in another part of the country. A few provided matchmaking services, keeping photos of eligible singles and helping to make their own marriage predictions come true. It was also surprisingly common for these fortune tellers to edge into the medical field by claiming the ability to heal all diseases and ailments. In some cases this meant going into a trance and communing with the body in the same way one might commune with spirits or far off friends, but there is evidence to suggest that some of these women may have actually been providing abortions and assisting in matters of women’s health. These fortune tellers were an ecosystem unto themselves, offering to provide answers and solutions to a wide variety of problems, filling in whatever gaps could not be met by more legitimate businesses.
In each chapter, Marie Carter makes a point of juxtaposing the discussion of the fortune teller at hand with a portion of Thomson’s biography that highlights his hypocrisy or complicates his criticism. For example, Thomson frames his crusade against fortune tellers as moral outrage over how they fleeced their customers of hard-earned money but was criticized by his own family members for exploiting his second wife’s finances and wasting away her inheritance. He viciously mocked the fortune tellers for their poverty and signs of illness or drunkenness, but ultimately died a penniless alcoholic himself. Carter’s little barbs pointing out Thomson’s flaws at ironic moments add a bit of humor to what is otherwise all too often a tragic story. But though the book paints a mostly unpleasant portrait of this newspaperman, the conflict of Mortimer Thomson vs the witches is hardly black and white. The fortune tellers, too, have their flaws and Thomson has a few shining moments, particularly in his work as an abolitionist. Carter takes care to humanize each of her subjects and paint as complete a picture as she can from the limited sources of information available.
Whether you’re interested in New York City history, occult history, or just the largely untold stories of ordinary people living their lives in nineteenth-century New York, Mortimer and the Witches is a fascinating read that recontextualizes the way we think of witches and fortune tellers. You can find a copy on shelves now at your favorite local retailer or order one online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve already read it, or if you’ve been on Marie Carter’s tour with Boroughs of the Dead, let me know your thoughts in the comments!