The story is set mostly in a Philadelphia mansion named "Monk Hall", which serves as a private gentlemen's club and is also secretly a brothel and opium den patronized by some of the city's most respected citizens.

[1] Mercer was accused of the murder of Mahlon Hutchinson Heberton aboard the Philadelphia-Camden ferry vessel Dido on February 10, 1843.

Nonetheless, a verdict of not-guilty was rendered after less than an hour of jury deliberation, and the family and the lawyer of young Mercer were greeted by a cheering crowd while disembarking from the same Philadelphia-Camden ferry line on which the killing occurred.

He advertised it as "A Popular Journal, devoted to such matters of Literature and news as will interest the great mass of readers".

Lippard's Philadelphia is populated with parsimonious bankers, foppish drunkards, adulterers, sadistic murderers, reverend rakes, and confidence men, all of whom the author depicts as potential threats to the Republic.