Fr. 346e Courtesan Note

Only one reader can ever collect Fr. 346e Courtesan Note, Series 1891 $1,000 Silver Certificate, the infamous Courtesan Note (a.k.a. “the Marcy Note”) since it is absolutely unique in private hands. The only other specimen is held by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Numismatic Collection. It is illustrated here by an unissued proof note (itself rare) and the original illustration showing the famous courtesan Josie Mansfield, which was engraved at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for use on currency.

Specifications

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Backgound
The vignette on the issued note is sometimes identified as “Columbia” although as can be seen she was originally called “The Centennial,” because her likeness was created to represent our country for its 100th birthday celebration in 1876.

In both cases, the young women shown was based on an image of Ms. Mansfield, a brassy show girl and canny “loose woman” of the late 19th century, who became involved in one of the most infamous and bloody love triangles of the period.

Josie arrived in this world at Boston circa 1842 and was named Helen Josephine Mansfield. Her admirers, of which there were a great many during her eventful life, said she possessed “dazzling white skin, thick black hair, and enthralling gray eyes,” none of which except her magnificent tresses translate very well to a more prosaic and conventional bank note image.

In the early 1860s, Josie threw over her convent upbringing and took up with a married man in San Francisco. The gent was old enough to be her grandfather, and the scandal sent Snob Hill pulses sky high.

“Opulently beautiful” and buxom (something thoroughly disguised by the currency image) Miss Mansfield skipped the racy bay town scene in the company of actor Frank Lawler. The couple landed in New York City, where she hung around the theater set. She caught the roving eye of another rich suitor, playboy speculator, and political manipulator “Jubilee Jim” Fisk.

Josie also fell in with another thespian of the period, free love advocate, spiritualist, and former San Francisco cigar girl Victoria Claflin Woodhull, a couple years her senior. Woodhull collected a cadre of intellectuals, bohemians, free-thinkers, wastrels, politicians, thespians, and morally compromisable young women. An early suffragist, Woodhull also became the first female candidate for U.S. President.

According to American Heritage, rich Jim Fisk “fell thoroughly under the spell of Josie Mansfield.” Big Jim had made his bucks as a Civil War cotton runner, speculator and serial philanderer. He purchased the rank of “Colonel”. After the war Fisk teamed up with Jay Gould to attempt to corner the gold market. They very nearly succeeded before their scheme came to a crash and precipitated the Black Friday panic of September 24, 1869.

Fisk had also made money on the Erie Railroad, where he and fellow railroad pirates Daniel Drew and Jay Gould used fraudulent stock to swindle Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt out of millions. Fisk poured this money into New York theaters, among other things, which served up to his married but straying eyes a chorus line full of show girls, hired for his lavish productions.

Josie’s early talents on the stage are mostly legend. Very little substantiation exists. She may have only been a pretty hanger-on or wannabe. Whether she actually became a prostitute or not is also subject to debate. It seems indisputable, however, that Fisk did meet the young woman in a house of ill repute, managed by sometime actress and madame Annie Wood, with whom she did have a relationship.

Fisk was beguiled. He expended corporate funds promoting his actress-protégé Josie. He purchased Pike’s Opera House, corner of 23rd Street and 8th Ave, in 1869 to showcase Josie’s talents as well as serve as his business office. Fisk renamed the luxurious premises the Grand Opera House. He changed the standard fare from theatrical dramas to musical farce to accommodate Josie’s more limited range of talents.

Although married (his wife a safe distance in Boston), Fisk set up Josie -- the "Cleopatra of 23rd Street" -- as his mistress in a deluxe New York brownstone on 24th Street near his New York digs and the theater.

An unappreciative wench, Josie was discontent with roving eyes of her own. She jilted her sugar daddy for one of his business associates, playboy Ed Stokes. Josie lavished Fisk’s funds on her other wastrel boyfriend. A spoiled rich kid, Stokes, wanted more and convinced Mansfield to help him blackmail Fisk.

Fisk started paying out, but in time the shakedown ended up in court. Josie showed up at court in what has been described as a low cut, black silk robe. She perjured herself, and shortly thereafter Stokes gunned down robber baron Big Jim Fisk on Jan. 6, 1872, at the Grand Central Hotel on Broadway.

America was enthralled by these events played out in the racy newspapers of the day. Potboiler narratives screamed “Josie Mansfield, the Siren,” “How a beautiful woman captivated and ruined her victims,” and described the Mansfield Mansion love nest, her suitors, and especially fixed on the assassin, Ed Stokes.

If all this sounds a bit familiar, in 1937 a movie was made about this blighted love triangle between James Fisk-Josie Mansfield-Ed Stokes called “The Toast of New York.”  According to a Time magazine review when the film came out, Fisk “dies repentant, clutching the pretty paw of Josie Mansfield (Frances Farmer), the obscure little actress whom he has made the belle of New York.”  Although still a murderer, Stokes’ character was reduced to a minor figure in the movie.

After the scandal, Josie decamped for the Continent and England. She was accompanied by another actress, the male impersonator Annie Hindle. Josie’s infamy had preceded her. She became known in Europe as “The Kurtisane (Courtesan) Josie.”

According to Gene Hessler, BEP contract engraver Charles Kennedy Burt originally engraved Ms. Mansfield’s famous likeness in Phrygian cap in the wake of the Fisk murder as “The Centennial.” However several c. 1890s proofs of the vignette depicting Mansfield leaning on a federal shield and a sword were in the G.F.C. Smillie family archives that surfaced several years ago. Pencil notations on the card stock on which these vignette proofs were mounted attribute this work to Lorenzo Hatch.

That portrait was re-engraved by G.F.C. Smillie in 1894 for use on the $1000 Silver Certificate, authorized three years earlier. The new engraving replaces the Phrygian cap with a tiara of stars and a chaplet of leaves. The federal shield is replaced by a shield-shaped counter with the denomination. She retains her sword and star-studded necklace, but her glorious flowing tresses have been shorn.

The New York Times leaked the identity of the female on the note on July 29, 1894. The Times said that Treasury insiders identified the portrait of Columbia on the new $1000 Silver Certificate "was taken from a photograph of Josie Mansfield."

Collecting
Fifty-six hundred of these notes were originally issued. Virtually all of them have been redeemed, destroyed or lost. As mentioned above only two examples are known (and only one in private hands). The one known collectable example is billed as one of the “Triple Crown of American Currency” in the Joanne and Edward Dauer collection (ex-Amon Carter). Amon once brought this prized note to an early Memphis Paper Money show so collectors could see it.

Thus the infamous Courtesan $1000 Silver Certificate is technically non-collectible. Even a proof of the face of the bill brought great excitement when auctioned on May 6, 2005. It brought $43,125.

There’s a dispute over Josie Mansfield’s ultimate end. Her death at Beverly, NJ was reported Saturday, May 26, 1888. However, according to other accounts “[h]er looks fading. . . [she] lived on and on, impoverished and utterly forgotten, until 1931” in Europe. Some list the date as Oct. 27, 1931. Beautiful and vivacious but deadly, Courtesan Josie would have been in her late eighties at the time.

And, oh yes, what about the “Marcy” who also appears on the face of the bill? He was William L. Marcy, a U.S. Senator, New York Governor, and Presidential cabinet member who died before the Civil War, an odd choice it seems to receive second billing to a strumpet.