The Acquisitions Table: The Whip

The Whip (New York, New York), Oct. 8, 1842. 

Racy papers were scandalous newspapers mostly published in the 1840s and 1850s in New York and Boston. AAS has one of the larger institutional collections of these lowbrow papers. Opportunities to acquire additional issues of these papers are few and far between.

An issue for one of the New York papers, The Whip, recently showed up on eBay. It happened to be the one issue missing in the Society’s short run of this title. There were numerous bids, but AAS was victorious in acquiring it. There are several articles in this issue related to prostitution and bawdy women. The Whip’s editor, George B. Wooldridge, was in prison when this issue was published, but his imprisonment didn’t stop him from writing pieces for the paper.

Published by

Vincent Golden

Curator of Newspapers and Periodicals, American Antiquarian Society

One thought on “The Acquisitions Table: The Whip”

  1. Hello Vincent,
    Was the editor in prison for his role in producing The Whip, or was it for some other charge? Do you know how many “issues” there were of The Whip?

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