#big lize

So I doubt anybody is gonna be half as excited as me about this but brawling juggernaut gold-hearted sexworker Big Lize (Jan 1848) was created BEFORE brawling juggernaut fireman Mose the Bowery B'hoy (Feb 1848). They later became a couple in the Mose Theatrical Universe.

I had always seen Lize presented through the Mose’s girlfriend lens, but she was first the muscle in Ned Buntline’s MYSTERIES AND MISERIES OF NEW YORK, a popular melodrama which was ripped off by the play A GLANCE AT NEW YORK, which introduced Mose.

Buntline, the guy whose plot was lifted for first GLANCES and then NEW YORK AS IT IS (same plot, but bigger part for the hugely popular Mose character), ended up writing a ton of the Mose sequels (and, I think, their novelizations). Lize had died a noble death at the end of MYSTERIES AND MISERIES, but nobody ever let a popular character death stop that character from coming back in the sequels, now, did it?