Women, Law, and Lawlessness in 19th-Century New York
Posted on June 28, 2026 in Butterfly Games, Events
New York City-area friends: please join me on Tuesday, June 30, at 6:30pm at Jefferson Market Library for a Historical Novel Society–New York Chapter panel, “Women, Law, and Lawlessness in 19th-Century New York.”
I’ll be moderating a conversation with historical novelists Nancy Bernhard and Catherine Siemann about women, power, crime, scandal, and survival in 19th-century New York City.
A Conversation About Women, Crime, and Power in Historical Fiction
Nancy Bernhard and The Double Standard Sporting House
Nancy Bernhard is the author of The Double Standard Sporting House, a historical novel set in 1868 New York City.
The novel follows Nell “Doc” Hastings, the owner of a high-class brothel that also funds a free clinic for women. When the Tammany Hall criminal syndicate takes over the city and girls begin disappearing into the sex trade, Doc is forced to decide how far she will go to protect vulnerable women.
Catherine Siemann and Death Uptown and Downtown
Catherine Siemann will be discussing her novel-in-progress, Death Uptown and Downtown, featuring Gilded Age lawyer Emma Lockwood.
Set in 1890 New York, the novel follows Emma as she practices law on the Lower East Side, serving immigrants and working people. When a tenement collapse kills dozens and a developer is murdered uptown, Emma must navigate both the legal system and the unwritten rules of class, gender, and respectability to uncover the truth.
The Conversation
Both novels ask fascinating questions about women’s agency in a world built and controlled by men.
What counts as justice when the formal justice system is corrupt, compromised, or unavailable? How do women work within systems that were never designed for them? Can scandal be both a weapon and a form of protection? And how do historical novelists write compassionately about vulnerable communities without romanticizing or sanitizing the realities of their lives?
Event Details
Women, Law, and Lawlessness in 19th-Century New York
Presented by the Historical Novel Society–New York Chapter
Date: Tuesday, June 30
Time: 6:30pm
Location: Jefferson Market Library, New York City
I would love to see you there. Come for the history, the fiction, the scandal, the mysteries, and the strong women characters. I’ll be there signing copies of my own historical novel, Butterfly Games.
