Online Lecture: Hudson River Undercover

Online Lecture: Hudson River Undercover

Wednesday, July 8th - 7:00pm

10$ General Public / $5 HRMM Members

This is an online lecture. You will receive a Zoom link by email before the event.

“Hudson River Undercover” explores how working-class recreation and private surveillance collided aboard Hudson River steamboat excursions during the early twentieth century. The talk focuses on an investigation report written mere weeks after the onset of federal wartime alcohol prohibition in July 1919 by an undercover agent working for New York’s Committee of Fourteen, an influential private anti-vice organization backed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Held in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, the investigation report reveals how wage-earning women articulated femininity and sought out individual freedoms, companionship, pleasure, and romance via Hudson River steamboat excursions at a time when authorities were particularly anxious to monitor and control working women’s leisure activities.

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