Bible House, Astor Place, home of post office Station D, where Ellen Eyre collected her mail. Wood engraving by W. Roberts. New York Public Library.

The most detailed newspaper report mentioning Ellen Eyre appeared in The New York Herald on June 20, 1862, under a provocative headline: “Strange Mode of Black Mailing. A Man Personates a Female Character—Interesting Developments, Etc.”[1]

The Decoy Letter

The paper reports that eleven days earlier, on Monday, June 9, an unnamed man had received a seductive letter from Mrs. Ellen Eyre requesting an evening meeting between 120 and 130 West 9th Street, on the street's south side. The man receiving the letter had found Eyre's letter suspicious and reported it to the police.

A decoy letter was then sent on Wednesday, June 11, to Eyre at Station D of the post office, Astor Place, suggesting a new meeting place and time.

That evening, between 5 and 6 o'clock, Detective William Wilson observed a “black man” at Station D, picking up mail for Eyre.[2]

Detective Wilson followed the courier to a house on 9th Street and, on entering, asked its inhabitant: “Are you the doctor?” He referred to the name of a physician on the door. The inhabitant of the house answered that he was the doctor. When Detective Wilson asked who Ellen Eyre was, the detective was told that this was none of his business.[3]

John A. Kennedy, Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. Harper’s Weekly, 1865. Library of Congress.

Arrest

The detective then arrested the individual and took the prisoner before John A. Kennedy, General Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police.

Wilson then searched the 9th Street house and discovered “papers showing that this business had been carried on for nearly five years,” and among the victims were “many prominent citizens, including one popular judge.”[4]

The prisoner was then taken to police headquarters, where “Inspector Dilks recognized him as being the party dressed in female apparel who was brought before him some three months ago” -- around March 1862. The prisoner had been “allowed to depart under promise of doing so no more, and leaving the impression that it was indeed a woman.”[5]

The paper then reports of the prisoner: “He was locked up for further examination.” The prisoner was incarcerated for eight days before a hearing to set possible bail. Detective Wilson, under the instructions of “Deputy Superintendent Carpenter,” then removed all of the prisoner's trunks and furniture and brought them to police headquarters.[6]

The Herald reporter adds: “On searching Coffin's room the police found a carpet bag full of the black mail letters addressed to gentlemen of the first respectability up town.”[7]

The paper also reports that the police found “about five hundred dollars worth of elegant female wearing apparel.”[8]

“It is said that he has been carrying on the game for some time, and has operated both in Washington and New Orleans.”[9]

The Hearing

On the morning of June 19, the prisoner was brought before “Justice Kelly” and the following hearing confirmed the events already discussed. The next day the paper reports: “A complaint was yesterday entered against the party as a disorderly person, upon which he was held, and, in default of bail, was committed.”[10]

The Halls of Justice (the Tombs). Engraving by E. D. French, 1896. Library of Congress.

At that hearing, “a respectable down town lawyer” testified that he had received a suspicious letter from “Coffin,” investigated the matter, and then reported it to the police. The “respectable down town lawyer” is apparently the person who first reported the suspicious letter to the police. We have identified him as “Walter Burton.”

At the conclusion of this hearing, the paper reports, “the magistrate locked him up, in default of $1,000 bail [the equivalent of approximately $32,000 in 2025], in the Tombs,” the notorious New York City prison.[11]

And Then Nothing!

And that, incredibly, is the last we hear of the prisoner! The New York Municipal Archives contains no record of this hearing before Justice Kelly on June 19, 1862, and no record of any further hearing, trial, or sentencing.[12] After a while newspaper reports peter out and “Ellen Eyre” disappears from history.

Then, in the early twentieth century, Eyre's letter to Walt Whitman becomes part of a larger discussion attempting to ascertain the poet's sexual desires, erotic acts, and intimate relations.