Feminism and Fortune Telling: Women of the Lower East Side Trolley Tour

Long before psychic infomercials and hotlines became all the rage, individuals seeking love advice or answers to life’s questions went to visit working-class fortune tellers in New York’s Lower East Side. In 1857, humor writer Mortimer Thomson (1831–1875)—using the pseudonym Q. K. Philander Doesticks—published a series of exposés in which he labeled these women “witches,” leading to arrests and public intrigue.

On this trolley tour, we’ll delve into the complicated and peculiar life of Thomson, who crusaded against these clairvoyants. We’ll also discuss the practice and influence of spiritualism and fortune telling on the lives of these working women and how they unexpectedly ended up at the center of the era’s most sensational stories.

This tour will be led by Marie Carter, tour guide with Boroughs of the Dead and author of Mortimer and the Witches: A History of Nineteenth-Century Fortune Tellers.

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