Episode 3: The Invisible Lady

In 1804, an Invisible Lady arrived in New York City.

She went on to become the most popular attraction in the country. But why? And who was she? In this episode, we chase her through time, finding invisible women everywhere, wondering: What is the relationship between keeping women invisible and the histories of privacy, and of knowledge?

Image: Jill Lepore, The Invisible Girl, age 5

Onlookers listen to the Invisible Lady through a speaking trumpet while peering into a seemingly empty box.

KEY SOURCES

The newspaper articles about The Invisible Lady. You can see some images of here.

The newspaper articles about the death of Mrs. Bayard. You can check them out here.

Amy Gajda’s law journal article, “What If Samuel D. Warren Hadn’t Married a Senator’s Daughter?

The full text of the Supreme Court Case Olmstead vs. United States is available here.

Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis seminal article, “The Right to Privacy”, published in the Harvard Law Review in 1890. 

H.G. Wells’s book, The Invisible Man, published in 1897.

The film, The Invisible Man, released in 1933.