DETECTION & DESIRE
Jennie Cramer’s Case
Portrait of Jennie Cramer (ca. 1875–1881)
Compare this reprinted distorted image of Jennie Cramer to her portrait on the right. (ca. 1881-1882)
Jennie Cramer was a New Havener, the daughter of a cigarmaker. In 1881, at the age of twenty-one, she went missing. Several days later, a fisherman found her body in the water near Savin Rock, West Haven. At first, people assumed that she had drowned. An autopsy, however, revealed that she had been raped, and that there was arsenic in her body.
Cramer’s murder trial sparked a media frenzy of sensational coverage that went on for two years. Newspapers across the country reprinted Cramer’s portrait, distorting her image in the name of detection and desire.
But below all the layers of media coverage, Jennie Cramer was a real person. She was a New Havener. This is a local case.
“Exhibits from the Toxical Examination”
“Summary of Results on the Toxical Examination of the Body of Jennie Cramer” (ca. 1881–1882)
Jennie Cramer’s death coincided with the birth of forensic science. A new kind of objectivity was being developed. Scientific pamphlets quantified the exact levels of arsenic in each of Cramer’s organs. Forensic science, though, comes with forensic showmanship.
The display below was brought to courtrooms as evidence. These vials contained fluid samples that displayed the arsenic in each of Cramer’s organs – stomach, esophagus, heart, lung, spleen, liver, intestines, and kidney. It is a display designed to shock and horrify the audience’s sensibilities, sensationalism masquerading as medical fact.
This display of vials containing fluid samples, “Exhibits from Toxical Examination of the Body of Jennie Cramer”, was brought to courtrooms to shock and horrify audiences. (August 1881)
“One Step Nearer”
Clipping ca. 1881-1882
What is the role of scientific evidence in a courtroom, or in a newspaper? Newspapers doled out facts about the Cramer case, stringing readers along in a serial sequence of titillating new revelations.
Some newspapers, such as the clipping at left, used shocking details of Cramer’s autopsy to frighten and discipline their female audiences.
Reprinted map of the coast where Cramer’s body was found (ca. 1881-1882)
“It is awful to think of the way that child was cut up, boiled, and fried, and fricasseed, and roasted, and sifted through a cullender to find traces of poison.”
The bottom cartoon shows a “scientist” pouring a black tar of steaming scientific fact through beakers jammed into the bandaged heads of the jurymen. The cartoon lampoons the treatment of scientific testimony as “immediate” fact, poured straight into the brain.
Scientific fact claims to touch our minds, not our bodies. But scientific testimony is always mediated, always motivated. How is the presentation of information designed to affect our bodies?
“Scientific Testimony—Showing How it Acts On the Average Juryman” (Puck: Dec. 3, 1879)
“Containing a Full & Complete Account”
“Every father and brother in Connecticut should make it their own cause to hunt the criminals to the death—be the criminals either tramps or millionaires. Don’t let this be another Mary Rogers…case.”
Depiction from “Beautiful Victim of the Elm City” of a fisherman finding Cramer’s body on the beach (1881)
“Murdered by Lust, or, the Mystery of Savin Rock” (1882)
The forensic investigation in Cramer’s case was a real-life detective plot. Sensational pamphlets, such as Beautiful Victim of the Elm City above, remarked on the fictional feeling of the true facts. Are these pamphlets exploiting Cramer? Or are they seeking justice? These pamphlets argue for their own reporting as seeking justice. At the same time, though, they insist on Cramer’s beauty and linger on the sordid, shocking, scandal of the case. How can we distinguish between the ethical and the exploitative?
“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1899)
One pamphlet concludes with a call to action, imploring readers not to let this be another Mary Rogers case. This places Cramer in a legacy of murder mystery stories, dating back to the 1840s, when Edgar Allan Poe claimed to use fiction to solve a real murder case. The real woman was Mary Rogers; Poe’s fictionalized version was Marie Rogêt. It is likely that the Cramer pamphlet is referring to both.
“Plots less elaborate than that which the facts of this astounding crime constitute have been declared improbable in the pages of the novelist. Who, after this, shall deny that truth is stranger than fiction?”
Factual reports are incorrigibly influenced by conventional plot structures. Information produced for profit must maximally affect the reader’s body. Sensation is inevitable. What, then, does it mean to write a “full and complete account”?
“Thus all argument founded upon the fiction is applicable to the truth: and the investigation of the truth was the object.”