Rose Butler (November 1799 – 1819) was an enslaved domestic worker in New York City.
The context surrounding her crime and sentencing highlights community anxieties, shifting ideologies on race and status, and gives a glimpse of what the institution of slavery was like in New York City, a subject that is seldom discussed.
[7][failed verification] After incarceration at Bridewell Prison she was hanged near present-day Washington Square Park, from a gallows in the city's potter's field, on the eastern side of Minetta Creek, about 500 feet (150 m) from the Hangman's Elm.
[8][9][10] The following doggerel lines were recalled 50 years later as having been "chalked about the fences": The New-York Historical Society holds "a confession, statements, and an affidavit", a total of seven items.
Included is a statement of Eliza Duell, a white woman placed in the apartment holding Butler during her arrest.