It is very strange what has become of the stereotype plates containing James Gordon Bennett’s curious relations with Fanny Elssler, during her famous sojourn in America. Can you inform me, Ross & Tousey, where they are? If you will tell me, I will not tell Bennett that you told me, which will not give him a pretext to stop your supply of Heralds again, by which you told me you lost several thousand dollars. Besides, if he does, you can get rich fast enough by selling the Ledger and Alligator. So tell us where these mysterious plates can be found. Perhaps they are on storage in Philadelphia. “Who knows?” as the amiable Dr. Wallace very often says at the close of his abrupt and hurried Herald editorials, when he is thirsty or hungry, or wants to go to the Theatre or Opera.
Mr. Erben, the Trinity Church Organ Grinder, will please inform me if he owns a house in Baxter street, and if the character of the inmates are as respectable as himself, and especially the females. James Gordon Bennett will also please go into Baxter street, and ascertain and inform me if Mr. Erben’s house is as reputable as Helen Jewett’s old residence, at No. 41 Thomas street. Speak out, Satans Numbers One and Two.
I had to omit the continuation of my Life this week, which will appear in the next number of the “Alligator.”
Mayor Daniel F. Tiemann’s Forced Seduction of a Lady on Randall’s Island—Simeon Draper’s Lascivious Propensities—Most Damning Revelations.
Some years since, there was a lovely domestic circle in our city, consisting of a husband, wife, and three children. The father died, and the widow was cast upon the world, without means to feed and clothe and educate her precious offspring. She had been the favorite daughter of affluent parents, and was educated by the ablest teachers. In conversation, she was eloquent and impassioned, and her fluent and melodious words, as they flowed from her red and pouting lips, and her even and pearly teeth, fascinated all who had the envied fortune to linger on her luxuriant language, and pretty smiles, and dimples, and most extraordinary purity of expression. Governor Simeon Draper fastens his voluptuous eyes upon her, and her fate is sealed. Three years since, Gov. Draper proposes that she become a matron on Randall’s Island, and she accepts his proposition, and he procures her a situation. After she began to discharge her matron duties, Governors Draper and Bell (now Supervisor), entered her domestic apartment on Randall’s Island, and asked her what she had in the next room, pointing their fingers to her bed room. She said they might look for themselves. They replied: “What are you afraid of?” She said: “I am not afraid, but I do not desire to go into a bedroom with two gentlemen.” They then seized her, and strove to drag her into her bed room, when she resisted and finally screamed, which alarmed them, and they withdrew their hands, and said: “You need not be afraid to go with us into the bed room, singly, as we know that you have let a friend go with you into your bed room ever since your husband died, and enjoy your fascinations to his heart’s content.” She said: “If my friend has done the thing of which you speak, neither of you shall.” Governors Draper and Bell then retired, but Draper soon returned, and proposed to buy two cloaks for two handsome girls who were about to leave the Institution, and said that she should go to the city and buy them, and at the same time purchase one for herself, regardless of price, and send the bill to his office, and he would pay it. She objected on the ground that if she accepted the proposition, he would expect licentious favors in return. Draper said that he was so anxious to stay with her, that he wouldn’t mind giving her $50 in cash. She said that she feared her friend would hear of it, and withdraw his affections, and might kill him, and perhaps her, as he truly loved her, and was of a very jealous and impulsive nature. Draper said she needn’t be afraid, as he could never hear of it. She then accepted his proposition to go to the city and purchase the cloaks, and directed the bill to be sent to his office, which was done, and he paid it. At this time, a fervent friendship was budding into bloom and blossom, between herself and Governor Daniel F. Tiemann, to whom she immediately disclosed all that had transpired between herself and Governors Bell and Draper. Tiemann affected great exasperation, and wrote her statement, (which terribly excoriated Draper,) with the design of presenting it to the Ten Governors in open session. This alarmed her, and she told her friend what had occurred, and that Governor Tiemann was about to expose Governors Bell and Draper to the Board of Ten Governors, and to the whole world, to which he strongly objected, as it might involve them in a common ruin, and he urged her to request Governor Tiemann not to present the document. And he assured her, if she permitted Governor Tiemann to do this favor for her, that he might soon want her smiles and beauty and caresses and embraces, (like Bell and Draper), as a requital for his apparently disinterested and meritorious services in her behalf. She saw Tiemann, and the document was suppressed. Draper heard of her movements, and became jealous of her partiality for Tiemann, and he had her suspended. But Tiemann had her reinstated. When Bell and Draper’s time expired as Alms House Governors, Gov. Tiemann immediately resolved that her friend should not visit the Island, as the first movement to his contemplated seduction of the beautiful matron. And he was so determined, that he resorted to the daring effort to exclude him, even after he obtained a permit. For Gov. Tiemann clearly saw that while her friend visited her, he (Tiemann) would have a poor chance to gratify his own lust. Tiemann finally succeeded in ejecting her friend from the Island, and on a dark and rainy afternoon, slyly meandered into her apartment, and after some loving smiles, and dulcet words, and melting sighs, and tender glances, he drew his chair towards her, and began to feel of her. She long resisted his extraordinary amorous movements, and struck him twice, and scratched and bit him, and terribly exhausted him and herself in their mutual struggles, and thought she had conquered him. But in his last desperate rally, he overpowered and vanquished her, and she had to let him go his whole length, and he accomplished his most hellish purpose. Her boy was living in the West, and wrote to her, that he was not only displeased with his relatives, but with the western country, and desired to return to New York. She showed the letter to Gov. Tiemann, and told him that she had not the money to spare to defray his expenses home. He asked her how much it would cost. She said $15, when he gave her $40, assuring her that he would not have it known for the world, that he let her have money to pay her son’s expenses home. She quieted his fears, by assuring him that she would never disclose it. She sent the money to her boy, and he came home. Gov. Tiemann then got him a situation, but the boy had seen Tiemann take improper liberties with his mother, and as he strongly suspected he had allured her from the paths of virtue, he very indignantly refused to accept the situation tendered by Gov. Tiemann. But in eight months afterwards, Gov. Tiemann obtained another place for the boy, and after unceasing importunity, he finally persuaded the boy to accept a situation in Broadway, where he now is. Last Autumn she had an interview with her friend in this city, when he charged her with sexual intercourse with Governor Tiemann. She burst into a tremendous flood of tears, and cast herself into his arms, and craved his forgiveness in rending accents. He asked her why she had long permitted Governor Tiemann to use her beautiful person. She said that as he was poor, and Governor Tiemann rich, and had foiled Draper in her suspension, and had elegantly furnished her apartments on the Island, and had paid the expenses of her boy from the West to the city, and had got him a good situation in Broadway, and had made her magnificent donations in jewelry and apparel, and had let her have money when she asked him,—and fearing that if she refused to gratify his lust, he would instantly have her dismissed as Matron, to endure again the tortures of penury,—that in view of all this, she had let him have sexual intercourse with her whenever he desired. But that she despised him for his wickedness, as he was a Church Member, in good standing, and as he professed to be one of the leading Reformers of the age. Her friend asked her how much money he had given her, and she said: “Quite a large sum, some of which I have deposited in a Bank,” and she told him the name of the Bank. She also told him where the chairs, sofas, mirrors, stoves, &c., were purchased, and showed him the receipted bills, which she placed in his hands, and he has them now. She then besought his pardon, and assured him that she would leave the Island, and come and live and die in his affectionate embraces. He forgave her, and she returned to the Island, and told Governor Tiemann that she desired to leave and return to her friend’s humble abode, which alarmed Tiemann, who implored her in tears to remain, and he would protect her as long as he lived, and when on the eve of death, he would make ample provision for her support during her life. They were together in her apartment, for ten successive hours, in a most exciting and harrowing scene, when he promised to give her $500 on the following day, and she finally yielded, and remained, and is at the Island now, both as a Matron and as Mayor Tiemann’s Mistress. Her friend was so exasperated with her double treachery, that he went to one of the Ten Governors, (who is now in the Board,) and disclosed in writing under his signature the entire villainy of Tiemann. The Governor in question sent for Tiemann, and asked him if the statement was true, when he colored into a ball of fire, and left in shame and silence. The Governor did not expose Tiemann, in consequence of his innocent and interesting family, and his aged father, and his numerous relatives, including the versatile Peter Cooper, whose adopted daughter Mayor Tiemann married. These revelations will cause the worthy citizens of New York to bend their heads in sorrow, to behold a man of Mayor Tiemann’s exalted professions of purity and piety, guilty of crimes that should consign him to the rack, and to an eternal hell.