Product Description
Prim and proper Philadelphia has been rocked by the clash between excessive vice and social virtue since its citizens burned the city’s biggest brothel in 1800. With tales of grave robbers in South Philadelphia and and harlots in Franklin Square, Wicked Philadelphia; reveals the shocking underbelly of the City of Brotherly Love. In one notorious scam, a washerwoman masqueraded as the fictional Spanish countess Anita de Bettencourt for two decades, bilking millions from victims and even fooling the government of Spain. From the 1843 media frenzy that ensued after an aristocrat abducted a young girl to a churchyard transformed into a brothel (complete with a carousel), local author Thomas H. Keels unearths Philadelphia’s most scintillating scandals and corrupt characters in his rollicking history.
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Tom Keels, in his newest book ‘Wicked Philadelphia’ has once again offered an excellent read on our great city’s sketchy history, whether it be lost architecture, graveyards or brothels. The book spans several centuries of local anecdotes following William Penn’s founding of his Quaker ‘Holy Experiment’ which he named Philadelphia, and contains stories that would have the reader either gasp or chuckle depending on one’s particular bent at any given moment. Even as Penn’s statue gazes upon urban parks, office buildings and row houses from atop city hall, it is especially poignant to read of robber barons, high society prostitutes and crooked politicians (nothing new here!) who have been the dark undercurrent alongside well intentioned designers of this beautiful urban scape. If cadaver snatching, underhanded devious fiduciary deals and international intrigue feed into you voyeuristic tendencies, then this book is certainly for you. That being said, ‘Wicked Philadelphia’ takes the reader inside some of the dim and lesser known places and stories that have shaped our city’s past while providing an entertaining and detailed work that is always consistent with Mr. Keel’s impeccable historical research and style.
I’ve been waiting for a book like this. In spite of its prominent place in Lincoln Steffens’ The Shame of the Cities, Philadelphia has cultivated a reputation for Quaker simplicity and upper class gentility. It’s not fair. We have as many scandals as any other big American city and Thomas Keels knows all of them. My favorite chapter gives the historical background to one of the great sensationalist novels – George Lippards’ The Quaker City. It’s a story about seduction, murder, revenge, and violent class conflict. Lippard’s novel is one of the most unbelievable stories I have ever read and Keels shows that it’s all based on fact. He also has a chapter on one of the first Ponzi schemes. Naturally this kind of crime is named after a Bostonian. As I said, it’s not fair.
Good gracious! Who knew proper Philadelphia had such deliciously sordid skeletons in its closets? Tom Keels’s extensive historical research sheds new light on some of the darker stories behind the city’s staid, respectable facade. His writing is lively, insightful and spiced with just the right humorous twinkle. You don’t have to be from Philadelphia to enjoy this book tremendously. I have become completely obsessed with the tantalizing, unsolved 1923 murder of Dottie King! A great read that can be savoured again and again.
Seldom, if ever, has such a well balanced, well researched and well written book on the dark side of Philadelphia history been so much fun to read. Readers will laugh and cry, cheer and jeer at the real-life stories of some of Philadelphia’s most notorious, but nearly forgotten residents. As they’d say in Boston, this is a wicked good read!!
I love this book! Philadelphia and sin are my favorite subjects and author Tom Keels delves deep through history into this provincial town’s underbelly. This book rounds out unseemly stories I have heard and snippets that have been alluded to in other more “proper” history volumes. I am going to buy a big batch of this book and give it out at every gift-giving occasion this year.
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