Sporting Male Weeklies in 19th-Century New York: An Interview with Patricia Cline Cohen, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz

46 Historically Speaking · September/October 2008 Sporting Male Weeklies in 19th-century New York: An Interview with Patricia Cline Cohen, Timothy J. Gilfoyle, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz Conducted by RandallJ. Stephens INTHE 1840SA COLLECTIONOFSPORTING MEN'S WEEKLIES, calledtheflashpress, reportedon the sexualunderworldof New York City. Thepapers —with titles like the Flash, the Whip, the Rake, and the Libertine—were widely condemnedby the city's moralreformers andmiddle-classevangelicals. Butthat didnothing to diminish thepopularity of theflashpress. In oyster bars andbrothels scatteredacross the city, bachelors readlocalgossip andscandalous stories of treachery in the sex trade industry. In 2008 Patricia Cline Cohen, Timothy]. Gilfoyle, andHelen Lefkowii\Horowii\ publishedThe Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York (University of Chicago Press). Theirlandmark studyshedslightonthe rowdysexual cultures of a bustling metropolis. The book reveals much about mid-19th century views on race, sex, consumption, religion, andmorality. Historically Speaking associate editorRandallJ. Stephens recently spoke to the authors about theirwork. Randall Stephens: Why had so few historians used "flash" news· papers before the 1980s? Patricia Cline Cohen: The "flash" newspapers of the early 1840s didn 't surface in any library or repository until the mid-1980s, when eighty-six issues of the Flash, the Whip, the Rake, and the Libertine were brought to the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) by a New Hampshire man whose father had acquired and then carefully saved the set in the early 20th century. That first owner was George Underwood, a well-known New York City and Boston sportswriter who covered the boxing world. Our hypothesis is that the flash papers—which covered sports and particularly boxing —had been retained by one of the original editors and dien handed down in sports journalism circles until Underwood got them, somewhere between 1910 and 1930. Timothy J. Gilfoyle: Some issues could be found in die New York City District Attorney Indictment Papers in the New York City Municipal Archives. Most were related to the libel charges involving the flash press editors. But diese prosecution files contained only single issues, so historians who might have seen them as the indictment papers were processed after 1975 would never have known how many issues of the various flash papers were ever published. Cohen: Scholars have long known about the many satirical newspapers that existed in die 183Os-1850s. The English weekly Punch is die leading example, with its cartoons, sharp political humor, and masculine community-building attributes. But Punch is quite tame compared to the New York flash papers, Richard Catón WoodvNIe, Politics in an OysterHouse, 1848. Courtesy of the WaitersArt Museum . 75% of the entire print runs, and they reveal an alternative sexual universe . Stephens: Could you say something about why diese periodicals emerged in the early 1840s, ran for a few years, and then ceased? Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz: Quite simply, the courts shut them down. New York did not have anti-obscenity legislation at the time. But conservative forces were able to use the power of the common law to charge the editors with "obscene libel."Judges dien followed die rules of English courts, which were oblivious to what we now call First Amendment freedoms. These rules shaped the definition of obscene matter and limited evidence presented to die court by the defense. The editors were found guilty and served terms in jail. Interestingly enough, after they served their time, a number of them had fascinating, even important careers. Stephens: Why are these papers important? What do they tell us about the era? which took the sexual underworld of die big city as their main theme. The US. did not lack for humor papers either; many cities had short-lived weeklies widi jokes, tall tales, and local gossip, written by and for "loafers," young men who proudly embraced this term of opprobrium. But scholars haven't used them much. They haven't been objects of collection; they have survived mainly in isolated issues. What is unique and significant about the four papers published in New York City between 1841 and 1853 is diat we have a lot of them, perhaps Horowitz: What drew me initially to these papers was their explicit engagement in sexuality outside die prescriptions of respectability. In the late 1990s, following the lead of Carl...