May's Social Justice Reading Circle

Author Talk

Book Talk with Author Marie Carter

May's Social Justice Reading Circle

May 8, 2024

Mortimer & the Witches: A History of Nineteenth-Century Fortune Telling, a Book Talk with Author Marie Carter

Please join HBSC and Marie Carter for a talk about her latest book from Fordham University Press. The titular character, Mortimer Thomson, wrote under the pseudonym Q.K. Philander Doesticks, P.B., and in 1857 he wrote a series of articles about “witches” or rather fortune tellers most living on Broome Street. This was later published the next year in book form as The Witches of New York as an expose of the evils of fortune tellers and the practice of clairvoyance. But the story of the women and of Thomson himself was more complicated than that. Carter will discuss the inspiration for her book, Spiritualism in the nineteenth century, the struggles of working women trying to make a living, and a little of the peculiar biography of Thomson, who had many connections with the Beecher family.

Mortimer and the Witches is an unflinching cultural history covering the social ills of nineteenth-century New York through the lives of women who were, at the time, memorialized in mocking print.
– Foreword Reviews

Books will be available for purchase, and for signing, at the program. Cash, Venmo, PayPal, and Zelle are accepted.

Joined by Alycia D. Jenkins offering tarot readings.

Marie Carter is a Scottish-born writer, tour guide, and tour guide developer who has been based in New York City for the last twenty-three years. Fascinated by New York City’s macabre and little-known histories in her writing and life, she is a licensed tour guide, as well as researcher and developer with Boroughs of the Dead, a walking tour company that specializes in strange, macabre, and ghostly walking tours of New York City. Her first book, based on her experiences in learning trapeze, The Trapeze Diaries, was published by Hanging Loose Press. Her novel Holly’s Hurricane was published in 2018 and was a finalist for the 2019 Montaigne Medal.

Photo Credit: Sangeeta Mehta

Location 77 Forest Street, Hartford, CT 06105

Doors Open 5:45 pm

Program 6:00 - 7:00 pm

School Group Interest Form

School Group Interest Form 2023

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

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Adult Group Interest Form

Group Tour Interest Form 2022

Thank you so much for your interest in a group tour at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center! Please help us schedule your visit by answering the questions below.

Group Name:

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What date would you like to visit? (The Stowe Center typically books group tours for Thursday through Sunday visits.)

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Please indicate the number of adults, seniors, and children expected in your group:

Are there special accommodations that can help us serve you best?

Are you interested in a joint visit with our neighbor, The Mark Twain House and Museum?

Yes, please.

No, thank you.

If yes, have you already contacted The Mark Twain House?

Yes

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.