Long before DealBreaker came along to supply your Wall Street gossip news, there was the so-called “flash press,” rag paper weeklies published for a few years in the 1840s specializing in suggestively lascivious subjects, Wall Street sex scandal, fallen women and descriptions of bare-knuckle boxing. The greatest of these, according to the New York Times Book Review, was “The Flash,” which was published by William J. Snelling (who would go on to become the publisher of the Boston Herald) George Wilkes (a nineteenth century socialite) and George Wooldridge (who ran the Elssler Saloon at 300 Broadway).
They got themselves in a bit of hot water, however, when they took on Myer Levy, a prominent Wall Street banker who was sometimes called the “Adonis of Wall Street.” Myer, the Flash claimed, was a “practical amalgamationist” because of his alleged affinity for sex with women of color.
As it turns out, fighting, whoring, Wall Street mischief and scandalizing tabloids are not recent inventions.
Here’s how the Times tells the tale:
In the same issue as [society girl turned prostitute] Amanda Green’s memoir — the details of which were furnished by “Sly” Wooldridge — was an attack written by Snelling on a Wall Street merchant named Myer Levy. Levy had an enemy, a stockbroker named Emanuel Hart, who fed Wooldridge some specifics of Levy’s past, which Wooldridge passed on to Snelling, who dashed off a long calumnious piece alleging that Levy had worked as a “fancy man” for a prostitute and asserting that he was, among other things, lascivious, sordid and crapulous.
Levy complained to the New York district attorney, who promptly charged the three proprietors of The Flash with criminal libel and, in a separate charge, with obscenity.
Sex and the City (Circa 1840) [New York Times]
Update: Just in case you were wondering (we sure were) crapulous means “sick from excessive indulgence in liquor” or just perhaps refers to gluttony in general.
crapulous?
and this has to do with…
If it wasn’t for rags like that I would never have learnt to write. It gives me the fantods just thinking about it.
~The Irritated Ghost of Mark Twain.
@ 8:53, historical perspective is good. Carney’s point was that things haven’t really changed much on Wall Street. Money, sex, and gossip.
The one factoid that I still remember from an undergraduate Roman Civilization course was an annecdote about a private tax-collection company that had bid for the right to collect taxes in some jerkwater province like Phonecia; there were unhappy with their haul, and successfully sued the senate to weasel out of the contract. Not a whole lot has changed in business two thousand years later.
Thanks 9:19. That’s exactly the point.
Also, we’re pretty obsessed with forgotten Wall Street history. Until this weekend, we had never heard of “the Adonis of Wall Street.” Certainly recovering that title from the dustbin of history is valuable in itself.
“The Adonis of Wall Street” is a sobriquet that certainly begs to be dusted off and re-used, even if Bess tags someone with it ironically.
@9:32 i think we all know who that is
Pretty sure Phoenicia was long gone by the time of the Roman Senate
“practical amalgamationist”… that should be a college major (or maybe it already is).
Carney, men aren’t socialites, they are gentlemen of leisure. You of all people should know this.
The Phoenicians were clobbered by Pompey The Great, an event that was commemorated in coins with his face on one side, and the prows of captured Phoenician warships on the reverse, so they would have been paying Roman taxes for quite some time after that.
And is a “practical amalgamationist” some kind of dental assistant?
Girl,
I agree that the term is a bit of a misnomer when applied to men. The historical term was something like “gentleman about town.” I was just trying to bring it up to date for those who learn about Society from the pages of Page Six.
where else would we learn about society?
@9:57 thank you for the wikipedia entry, except that the territory of phoenicia was already conquered by persians, syrians, etc. by that time and there was basically no phoenicia left, you might as well say phoenicians are currently paying taxes to syria, lebanon, and israel right now.
Wise choice, Carney.
I like “gentleman about town” by the way. Runs a close second to “dandy” which really needs to be resurrected.
@ big r: By leaving the confines of one’s desk and being part of it, i’d venture.
girl – you’re almost as active as carney this morning. what were you and 1-2 up to this weekend (out east in the ford eagle)?
Cluzo, just so I don’t have to dodge this question every Monday- the answer is/ will always be no :) I was in chicago.
girl only guilty people dodge questions. the innocent answer with a straighforward no. which is it?
this place can absolutely push the boundaries of despicable at times.