The Life and Death of Anna Gardie: American Theater, Refugee Dramas, and the Specter of Haitian Revolution

Abstract

The first detailed report of the Gardie murder-suicide appeared in the New York Weekly Museum for July 21, which described the “dreadful circumstance” that had occurred between three and four in the morning of July 20 (“Saturday”). Another account elaborated on the location, calling it a “noted French boarding-house” at Pearl and Broad Streets (“Jealousy!”). Gradually accumulating more details, the accounts reconstructed a lurid, dramatic, and mysterious irruption of violence. Monsieur Gardie (whose given name is no longer known), the Weekly Museum reported,