How Murder of ‘Beautiful Cigar Girl’ Inspired Edgar Allan Poe

When the body of 20-year-old Mary Rogers was found in the Hudson River in 1841, New Yorkers were transfixed. Known citywide as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl,” Mary’s mysterious death set off a media frenzy — and later captivated Edgar Allan Poe, who made her case the basis for his only true-crime detective story.

Mary Cecilia Rogers was, by all accounts, a phenomenon. The daughter of a widowed boardinghouse keeper, Mary moved with her mother to Manhattan and, as a teenager, began working behind the counter at John Anderson’s Liberty Street Cigar Shop in Lower Manhattan.

There, she became a sort of minor celebrity known throughout the city as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl.” Admirers, artists and politicians flocked to the shop, drawn by her beauty, wit and easy charm, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

On July 25, 1841, Mary disappeared after telling her mother she was going to visit relatives. Three days later, her body was found in the Hudson River near Sybil’s Cave in Hoboken, N.J. — her dress torn, her face battered.

The New-York Tribune described a “peculiar expression of suffering” and noted marks of violence around her neck, suggesting foul play. In the weeks and decades that followed, writers and the public would focus on the purported finding that a scarf or lace being tied around her throat — a detail that, as Amy Gilman Srebnick wrote in her book The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, was largely a product of evolving legend and Poe’s later fictionalization, rather than an established fact of the original investigation.

As the initial investigation stalled, new twists kept the story in the headlines. Weeks after Mary was buried, the children of Frederica Loss, who ran a tavern near the crime scene, discovered a handkerchief marked with Mary’s initials, along with her parasol and parts of her dress, hidden in the brush. Their mother reported the find to police, according to Smithsonian Magazine and Srebnick’s book.

Loss told authorities she had seen Mary with a tall, dark-complexioned man the day she vanished. On her deathbed, Loss identified the man as Dr. T. P. Quigley, a local physician, according to Srebnick’s book. This revelation added fuel to rumors that Mary may have died during a botched abortion — a theory that quickly gained traction and was later echoed in Poe’s fictionalization of the case.

At the same time, police received an anonymous letter claiming that Mary had been seen in Hoboken with six men the day she disappeared, per Srebnick’s book. The tip heightened suspicion that she may have been the victim of a gang attack and the investigation’s direction shifted once again.

As the case grew colder, New York’s press only grew more feverish. Columns speculated endlessly about the men in Mary’s life, her engagement to Daniel Payne and her connection to local criminals. Just a year earlier, Mary had disappeared for several days, only to return unharmed, claiming she had simply visited friends. According to Srebnick’s book, the newspapers at the time breathlessly reported her safe return, but the incident fed public speculation about the mysteries of her private life. But this time, there would be no return.

The search for answers grew more desperate after Payne, wracked with grief and hounded by reporters, died by suicide near the very spot where Mary’s body had been found.

Contemporary coverage scrutinized his actions in the days before her body was discovered: “It seems he has been searching for Miss Rogers — his betrothed — two or three days; yet when he was informed on Wednesday evening that her body had been found at Hoboken, he did not go to see it or inquire into the matter — in fact, it appears that he never went at all, though he had been there inquiring for her before. This is odd, and should have been explained,” the New-Yorker wrote, per Smithsonian Magazine. (The New-Yorker was a periodical unrelated to the contemporary publication, The New Yorker.)

His note read, “To the world — here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life,” according to the publication.

The case might have faded into legend if not for Poe, who became fascinated by both Mary’s story and the ways it exposed the failures of early police work.

In 1842, he began serializing The Mystery of Marie Rogêt — a thinly veiled retelling of the Rogers case — in The Ladies’ Companion. Poe transplanted the story to Paris, changed Mary’s name to Marie Rogêt and recast her as a perfume shop worker instead of a cigar girl. He set out to solve the fictionalized case using logic and deduction, relying on contemporary newspaper reports and incorporating new theories as the real investigation unfolded.

But as fresh speculation emerged — including the theory that Mary had died during an attempted abortion — Poe revised and extended his story, never providing a conclusive solution, according to Poe the Detective, a book by John Evangelist Walsh.

The case’s notoriety lingered for years. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Mary Rogers’ death was cited during debates that led to New York’s first anti-abortion law in 1845, and her murder was referenced in arguments for creating a professionalized police force in the city.