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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. A scandalous affair, a kidnapping, a high-profile divorce trial with accusations of forced abortion, those are not the plot lines from the latest premium streaming drama. They are the details from the shocking true story of a 19th-century New York City divorce. Mary Strong and her husband Peter came from old money families in New York high society. It was, by all accounts, a good match, even one made for love, but in 1862, Mary made a shocking confession. She had been carrying on an affair with Peter's younger brother, Edward. What's more, she was pregnant. The child could have been either brothers. Attempts to keep the scandal a secret eventually ended when Mary fled the city with the couple's youngest child and Peter filed for divorce. The resulting trial captured the public in the 1800s and over a century later caught the attention of my next guest. Author Barbara Weisberg recounts the story of this contentious marriage in her book Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. We are speaking to her as part of our series, Women Behaving Badly, a tongue-in-cheek look at unruly women in New York City.

Barbara, welcome to All Of It.

Barbara Weisberg: Thank you so much. I'm so thrilled to be here.

Alison Stewart: When did you first encounter this story?

Barbara Weisberg: Oh, a long time ago. I was working on another project, and I came across it in a diary of a New Yorker named George Templeton Strong. He writes about everything having to do with New York in this diary that goes for 40 years, I think. Right in the middle of it, he talks about this terrible divorce that his cousin Peter is going through. There's a real personal connection between George and Peter, the divorced guy in my book.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Barbara Weisberg: The story just fascinated me, and I kept on researching it in bits and pieces through the years.

Alison Stewart: Yes. What kind of research were you able to do?

Barbara Weisberg: Well, it was difficult because, as you well know, we had a pandemic in the middle of my trying to do my research, and I love libraries, so I had to learn how to do my internet research. It is astonishing what one can find up there now, passports from 1830 where you can see people's pictures and discover descriptions of them. Before the pandemic, I was able to go to the New York Municipal Archives, and there's a wonderful archivist there who helped me. It was all very official and everything was filed away, all these divorce papers.

I went back after the pandemic and said, "Oh, can't you find more? Can't you find more?" He said, "Well, this is catalog. It's right here." A few days later, he came out, literally, with a shopping bag and all these rolled-up, yellowed papers. They were all depositions from people who had not formally testified at the trial. These were just packed away in the library, and he unearthed them for me in the shelves. Librarians are wonderful.

Alison Stewart: We're talking with Barbara Weisberg, the author of Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. Let's get into the actual participants. Mary Stevens and Peter Remsen Strong met in 1852. She was only 19. He was 29. What drew them together?

Barbara Weisberg: Something very important back in the day was what social class you were from. They were both from the same class of wealthy merchants, lawyers, what were called, the world of old New York, prim and proper and fancy. They were also both lively, interesting, well-educated young people. It's said that Peter fell desperately in love with her when he met her.

Alison Stewart: What was New York City like when they were together, when Mary and Peter were dating or courting?

Barbara Weisberg: It was very small New York, really. Greenwich Village was the heart of the wealthy residential area. The businesses were all downtown around Battery Park. The city was just beginning to expand beyond Union Square so it was much smaller. You didn't have quite the separation that you do now between supposedly good areas and bad areas. There's a quote from somebody who says that on every street, you could find a combination of a school, a church, and a brothel.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Well, it's interesting because you talked about being around Waverly Place, a home or two in Waverly Place, and a place on Bleecker. Did you go visit those places?

Barbara Weisberg: I did, and many are not there anymore. In many respects, New York does remain a 19th-century city that you can find lots of older, older buildings. The place where the Stevens family lived on Bleecker Street, right across from it, there does remain a structure that was the home of one of the Roosevelts of the time.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the affair. You said that they were a good-looking couple, a couple that were meant to be together, but obviously there was some friction that started to fray. What was the first encounter of something was wrong? What was the first encounter of something wrong?

Barbara Weisberg: Well, I actually think the first encounter of something wrong occurred almost immediately after the couple's honeymoon because Mary was very much an urban creature. She was raised right smack on Bleecker Street, and as soon as they got married, Peter took his bride to the country. Now, the country at the time was bucolic queens, but he lived there on an estate that belonged to his wealthy mother. It was basically a family compound for Peter's family. His four brothers lived there. One of his sisters lived there with their spouses and their kids. Mary almost immediately was taken away from everything she knew and transported into a world where she was surrounded by in-laws. I think that probably from the beginning irked her, I would think.

There were certainly differences in temperament between the two of them. Peter was a social butterfly who he had an inheritance, and even though he was trained as a lawyer, he chose not to work. He was away fairly often. He would come into Manhattan and visit his friends and his clubs. Mary was a more serious person. She was somewhat religious. Of course, they began to have children. They had three daughters. She was at home at the family compound in Queens, being a mother, which she loved. She was a good mother. Peter loved his children also but he was often about and living, I think, a different kind of life.

Alison Stewart: We're talking with Barbara Weisberg. She's the author of Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. It's the case of Peter and Mary Strong and the divorce that shocked 19th-century New York. Now, Mary had an affair with Edward Strong, who happens to be her husband's brother. She, in the throes of grief, because their daughter died, she announces that she's had an affair and had an affair with Edward Strong. Let's start with what do we know about Edward Strong.

Barbara Weisberg: Edward was a widower, and he was considered an absolute paragon of virtue. He was the church deacon, and he was the godfather to Peter and Mary's little baby daughter, who had just died. When Mary confesses to the affair to her husband, Edward is just going off to war. He has volunteered to be a Union soldier. Everybody thinks that Edward is just this paragon of virtue. He is something of a daredevil. We begin to see a little bit in the war that he does accomplish some very interesting feats. He takes Confederate soldiers through front lines to bring them to a different prison and is decorated and is promoted. He is a bit of a daredevil, but he nevertheless is also supposedly very religious, very moral, very good godfather to their baby.

Alison Stewart: Let's look at two ways that Mary views what happened and what Peter views what happened. What's Peter's version of what happened?

Barbara Weisberg: Peter's version of what happened is that his wife completely betrays him. I think he is utterly shocked and utterly horrified because in women in Victorian America are supposed to be genteel and they're supposed to be proper and they're supposed to be well-behaved, not badly behaved. Oh, no, no, no. He is horrified. Mary says that there are two different versions of how this affair may have begun, and they come out at the trial.

One version, which is Peter's family's version, is that Mary was a seductress who seduced Edward. The other version, which is Mary's family's version, is that Edward pressured her and eventually assaulted and may even have raped her and, at that point, the relationship continued from there, as we know, can sometimes happen with victims of assault. For Mary, what you hear is tremendous guilt and tremendous ambivalence but she has also said, she is said to say that there were times when she felt comfortable in the affair and did not feel guilty and therefore may have been really complicit in it.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about divorce at the time. How common was divorce? What allowed someone to file for divorce in New York City?

Barbara Weisberg: Divorce at the time was really rare and almost impossible to get to the point where couples who wanted a divorce often just split. Maybe the husband would go west or the wife would run off to her own family. One of the reasons it was so difficult to get was that marriages were revered, and to break that bond was considered something that undermined the very foundation of the state. One partner or the other had to be found at fault for a divorce even to be considered. What happens in New York, which is very strict, is that the only fault on which a divorce will be granted is adultery.

That's cruelty doesn't count, desertion doesn't count, only adultery. To sue for divorce means that you're basically advertising infidelity. Nobody really wants to do that, particularly the snooty upper class who, again, have this reputation to uphold. For women at the time, divorce is really a disaster because women most often depend on their husband for income. Women are not allowed to work in most situations, and even worse, in most situations, women lose custody of their kids in a divorce situation.

Alison Stewart: The father gets custody.

Barbara Weisberg: The father gets custody of the children.

Alison Stewart: Is that the reason why Mary ran away with their youngest daughter, with Allie?

Barbara Weisberg: Absolutely. It seemed very clear that Peter wanted full custody of the children, wanted to control whether or not Mary was allowed to see them, and would indeed have gotten custody in court. She had lost one baby daughter, the baby daughter had died, and the older daughter, who was only about 10, was living with Peter, Mary's husband, and he was not letting Mary see her. When she had an opportunity, she ran away with the middle daughter, who was Allie and was about five at the time.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York with its author, Barbara Weisberg. Abortion enters the story when Mary reveals that she was pregnant.

Barbara Weisberg: Yes.

Alison Stewart: The family claimed that Peter forced his wife to end her pregnancy after he learned of the affair. Let's talk it broadly. What were the societal opinions and attitudes towards abortion at the time?

Barbara Weisberg: For the first half of the 19th century, abortion was basically widely accepted, and nobody really paid any attention to it. By that, I mean an abortion pre-quickening was widely accepted, and quickening are the first movements of the baby in the womb. After that, after quickening, it was considered illegal and there would be a fine or possibly a prison term. By the middle of the century, male doctors had taken over the whole business of women's medicine from midwives. Women's medicine was lucrative. They were becoming more interested in their reputation and finances as physicians. What happens is, as doctors take over the business of women's medicine, they are less sympathetic to women's needs.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Barbara Weisberg: You begin to have laws criminalizing abortion, really, from quickening on. As these laws become stricter, they also, it's a class situation, because they could ignore abortion if it was poor women or single women, but the attitudes were more and more married and wealthy women were looking to have abortions. This would never do because, of course, the better class of children were the ones who supposedly needed to be born. By the end of the century, you begin to have very strict abortion laws. That was not true before. For good at least half a century, abortion was readily available and then it became less available as the century wore on.

Alison Stewart: Through your research, could you tell, did Mary had an abortion?

Barbara Weisberg: We don't know for sure. One of the reasons I really like stories like Strong Passions is that there are mysteries about the human heart that really can't be resolved. My instinct is that it was awfully convenient that this abortionist actually was a tenant of Peter's and that Peter continually visited the abortionist. Then he gave her, right around the time Mary was supposed to have the abortion, he gave his tenant, the abortionist, wonderful terms on her lease so- [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Right.

Barbara Weisberg: -I felt like there's a payoff going on there.

Alison Stewart: You're listening to my conversation with Barbara Weisberg, author of the new book Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. We'll hear more about the divorce proceedings after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. We continue the latest installment in our series Women Behaving Badly. It's a tongue-in-cheek title for a segment about unruly New York women throughout history. I've been speaking with Barbara Weisberg about her new book, Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. It's about a gilded-age divorce of Mary and Peter Strong after Mary admitted to having an affair with Peter's younger brother. It was a case that captured the public's attention, and that's where we picked up the conversation with Barbara Weisberg.

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Alison Stewart: Given everything that was going on at this time, why do you think people were gravitating towards this story? It was in the papers.

Barbara Weisberg: I think people were looking for some distraction from the absolute horrors of war. Every family was dealing with death and wounded relatives, and Lincoln's assassination, such a terrible time. And as we know, in our day and age, there's nothing like high-society gossip to take your mind off more painful topics. It was particularly interesting at the time because unlike now, when celebrities really want all the news about their lives broadcast everywhere, the upper class was very private, very insular, had cared about discretion. No matter what they did, they cared about discretion and not having it out in the news. The fact that this divorce broadcast this bad behavior from Boston to San Francisco was very unusual and very thrilling, I think.

Alison Stewart: You go through the trial, and there are various witnesses, and a lot of the testimony comes from people who worked for them, worked for the Strongs. Who was the most convincing witness?

Barbara Weisberg: I think the witness that I found most interesting, if not altogether convincing, was the governess because the governess admits that she parts with Mary on not entirely comfortable circumstances. What you can feel from her testimony is that it really is colored by her feelings toward Mary. She tells some stories under direct examination. For example, that at one point in the evening, they hear Peter's carriage coming and Mary rushes out of Edward's bedroom, and that she actually witnessed this, but under cross-examination, she says, "Well, no, the windows were closed, so I'm not sure I exactly heard Peter's carriage. Well, the lights weren't very bright, so I'm really not sure that it was Edward's room that she was coming out of." I guess I'm answering your question in a backwards way because I'm talking about who was least convincing and why.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Barbara Weisberg. We're discussing Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. This is the point where I'm going to announce what happened. The big reveal is the jury ended up deadlocked. Deadlocked. They were in a cold room. They wanted to get out of there, [chuckles] but what do we know about why the jury could not agree on a verdict?

Barbara Weisberg: Let's start with New York State law, which, in my opinion, is absolutely loony at this point in time. Not only was adultery the only ground for divorce, which it's my understanding that that held true until 1966 in New York. The only ground for divorce was adultery, that's my understanding. Here's what's crazy back then, if both partners were accused of adultery and both were found guilty of adultery, divorce was denied. New York State law insisted that these two adulterers had to remain married.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] I'm so sure that they just went off and said, "Okay, fine. You do you. I'll do me. I'll have relationships with other people. I'll be someone else's squire to the event."

Barbara Weisberg: I think so.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Barbara Weisberg: What did happen was what we think happened in this case, is that all the jurors agreed that Mary was guilty of adultery, but the Stevens family, Mary's family didn't want there to be a divorce. They didn't want Peter to have what he wanted. They didn't want Peter to get custody of the kids. We think that they, the Stevens family, Mary's family, bribed two of the jurors to say that they, in fact, were convinced that Peter had had an affair with the abortionist.

Alison Stewart: What happened to Mary's life? Now that this is deadlocked. There's no divorce. What does she do?

Barbara Weisberg: Mary has taken Allie. Again, Mary comes from a wealthy family so there are means there. Mary goes off to Paris and lives in Paris with her little daughter. This is not as happy as it sounds because Mary is basically an exile and a Pariah in her homeland, however, Mary and Peter eventually agree to divorce. They go before a referee and essentially have a private settlement. The terms of the settlement, basically, are that Mary agrees, yes, she's an adulterer, that's fine, and Mary and Peter agree to split custody of the children. Peter takes Mamie, the oldest child, who has been living with him, and Mary takes Allie. She finally has legal custody of Allie. Once the couple has this divorce by decree as opposed to by jury, Peter is free to marry again, but Mary, as the party at fault, is not free to remarry.

Alison Stewart: Because she's the adulterer.

Barbara Weisberg: Exactly. Eventually, Peter dies. When Peter dies, Mary, by law, is free to marry again. She finds herself a wonderful aristocratic Frenchman and gets married and they live happily for some years until he also dies. Mary's life, she is so transgressive in so many ways, but her life winds up almost as proper as it started out.

Alison Stewart: I do want to point out before you go, is that Mary has a connection to Edith Wharton, who later had her own divorce and wrote about high-society women entrenched in scandal. What was the family connection? Do we know if Mary was an inspiration to Edith Wharton?

Barbara Weisberg: Mary is 30 years older than Wharton, but Wharton is Mary's first cousin once removed. That means that Wharton's mother, I'm pretty sure this is how it goes, Wharton's mother is Mary's first cousin. In any event, Mary and Wharton are cousins. I have found no direct evidence that Wharton draws specifically on the story of the Strongs in any of her works. I haven't seen evidence of that in any of the letters that I have encountered. However, the very themes that Wharton writes about marriage and divorce in an age of tremendous transition is really the stuff of the Strong story. It's a family story that I am convinced she must have heard of.

I just have to tell you what just happened, Alison. I got a letter from a reader, and she said, "I want you to know about something." In the Strong story, as I tell it, a piece of evidence brought up at the trial is a particular painting. This reader who wrote to me told me that in Wharton's last, one of her very last novels, there's a divorced woman who was finally allowed to come home to America. She's been living in France like Mary did. When this divorced woman in Wharton's novel walks into the room that used to be the room she shared with her husband, there's a painting on the wall, and it's the exact painting that, in fact, was on the wall in Mary and Peter's bedroom, and that is discussed at length in the trial.

Alison Stewart: Goosebumps. Goosebumps. [laughs]

Barbara Weisberg: Goosebumps. Thank you to that reader.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. My guest has been Barbara Weisberg. Barbara, thank you so much for being with us.

Barbara Weisberg: Thank you so much. I really appreciate your interest in the book.

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