‘The Wickedest Man in New York’ by Robert E Cray revisits an arresting episode in nineteenth-century Manhattan: when a Water Street dancehall became the unlikely stage for a public religious drama. In 1868, journalist Oliver Dyer published a sensational profile of John Allen, a dancehall proprietor whose establishment was infamous for liquor, music, and the sex workers who lived there. Dyer’s portrait of Allen as “the wickedest man in New York” gripped the city and pulled thousands of curious onlookers toward the Fourth Ward, a waterfront district long associated with poverty, sex work, and the tensions of a changing metropolis.

‘The Wickedest Man in New York’ illuminates the forces that shaped urban religion in the early Gilded Age, offering a compelling portrait of a city captivated by sin, salvation, and sensational newsmaking.

September 2026 | Paperback 248 pages | ISBN 9781421455105

For further information please visit: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53898/wickedest-man-new-york