Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul

by Karen Abbott

  When the last guest had exited, Ada minded the harlots while Minna rushed upstairs to her boudoir. Locking the door behind her, she willed her mind to stand still, the knot to dislodge from her throat. She picked up the phone, dialed Freiberg’s Dance Hall, and asked for Ike Bloom. The music beamed through the receiver as loudly as if it were playing in her room. Bloom’s usual barked hello was softened; he’d been expecting her call.

  She and Ada would pay and pay well, Minna said, skipping pleasantries, if Bloom could offer sound proof that there was even a slim chance of continuing. Just say the word, and the Everleigh Club would wage a last stand.

  “Go away for a few months,” he said. “There’s a nasty rap against the place and it may take months for the smoke to clear. Nobody else was closed, which is the tip-off—they were gunning for you and they’ve clipped you. Nothing we can do this morning. It’s one of those things—what the hell. We stalled the order all day, didn’t we? I did all I could. I’m licked on this one. Call me in the afternoon. But make up your mind it will cost you forty g’s. Worth it, ain’t it—what good are them oil paintings if the joint is shut? Hock one of ’em if you’re short. Things aren’t as simple as they used to be. Now go to bed and forget it.”

  Minna replaced the phone and crept back downstairs. Servants paced the length of the parlors, asking her, “What do you think?” For once in her life, she didn’t know. She found Ada and ordered the courtesans to the Gold Room.

  “We’re going from bawd to worse—retirement,” Ada joked, falling into a divan. “Let’s go to Europe.”

  One harlot stomped her heel soundlessly into the lush carpet. Tears forked down her cheeks, sopping up powder and rouge.

  “What about us?” she asked, sobbing. “Where can we go?”

  “There are plenty of houses,” Minna said.

  “Not like this one.”

  The Everleigh butterflies clustered close together, dresses of scarlet and emerald and sapphire still vivid beneath the dimmed lights, a tangle of jewels in a chest. Six hundred of them had come and gone, and here was what might be the final group. It occurred to Minna that this conversation was the most intimate act the Club had witnessed in all its eleven years.

  “I’m afraid there never will be one like the EC,” she said slowly. “You all have a little money due you, enough to last a month or two. I would suggest that you clear out from the Levee entirely. It has nothing substantial to offer…. Find a job, a husband, anything, but don’t depend upon this life for a career. It’s washed up, as we used to say in the theater. It’s done for, good and done for…. In this town, they have been known to rob a man of thousands of dollars, toss his body into the lake and forget it. We get into a little mess and they call out the cops. You figure it out.”

  She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the settee. Ada’s cold hand found hers. The crying died out, a sniffle at a time. A moment passed, and then there was a small frenzy of energy, a sound like a nesting bird. Minna opened her eyes to see a harlot tearing her dress. A sleeve separated from its bodice, a triangle of bright silk swooning to the floor.

  “Why not?” the girl said, crying again, and went after the other sleeve. “I won’t need it anymore. A hell of a manicurist or a waitress I’d make in this getup.”

  Her hands matched the fury of her sobs, splitting the neckline to reveal her corset, rampaging the hem into long tatters. Bits of fabric flurried in the air. No one moved to stop her. The harlot thrust a finger first at Ada, then at Minna. “And neither of you did a damn thing to stop ’em!” she screamed. She leaned over to an end table, grabbed a champagne flute, and hurled it against the far wall.

  The crash lured a policeman from his post at the front door. He stood by the parlor entrance, unnerved by the sight of thirty weeping women—one half-naked, clearly hysterical—and shattered glass.

  “Want me to lock you all up?” he asked, a listless threat.

  The half-naked harlot stumbled toward him, fists raised. “Brave, ain’t you? Who do you think you’re scaring, you big bum?” She picked up an abandoned champagne bottle from the floor and reared back. Minna jumped up and latched the harlot’s arms from behind, fit her lips against her ear.

  “Poor kid,” she whispered. She gave the cop a look. “Leave her to me, please.”

  He nodded and left the parlor.

  The girl twisted until they were facing each other. Her mouth opened in the dip between Minna’s shoulder and neck. “I’m sorry,” she said, crying again.

  Minna traced a hand along her back. “We’re all nervous and unstrung,” she soothed. “I understand just how you feel. It’s a terrible shock to all of us. And there is nothing any of us can do about it. I think we better all start packing.”

  She released the harlot, who held the remains of her dress together as she walked from the parlor. One by one, the other girls followed and trudged upstairs. The madams waited until the last bedroom door had slammed shut, then sneaked away to Ada’s boudoir. They needed to discuss an attack.

  Ike Bloom was stalling, the sisters agreed; at this point, he didn’t know much more than they did. Mayor Harrison was another question mark. Someone or something had gotten to him. Was his attack on the Levee fleeting, or did he plan to run for higher office? Bathhouse John Coughlin always boasted that Our Carter’s son would one day be president. If he were indeed dreaming of a career beyond Chicago, he’d need to pander to the city’s upper tier. If not, this was all for show, and things would ease slowly back to normal.

  Best to leave town for six months and wait things out. The sisters determined they had about $1 million in cash (nearly $20.5 million today), a stash of diamonds worth $200,000; $150,000 in oil paintings, antique tapestries and Oriental rugs; and client IOUs totaling $25,000. They’d start off in Rome, pay respects once again to Apollo and Daphne, and see what beckoned from there.

  As the sun began its climb the sisters still lay across Ada’s bed, sleep proving as fickle as everything else.

  At 8:00 a.m., they rang for coffee and the morning editions. News of the Club’s closing occupied every front page. Chief McWeeny telephoned the 22nd Street station from his home over the police wire at 12:45 a.m., a full twelve hours after Carter Harrison gave the order. The sisters’ clout, it was implied, accounted for the delay. The mayor seemed to be playing both sides. “Vice in Chicago can exist only under the most stringent regulations,” he said. “The Everleigh Club has been advertised far and wide.” He balanced this sly endorsement of segregation by vowing to close “a score” of resorts in the South Side Levee. The Chicago Daily Socialist, strangely enough, appeared the most optimistic about the Club’s chances, headlining their story EVERLEIGH CLUB CLOSED; WILL BE OPENED AGAIN.

  Downstairs, trunks crowded the hallways and harlots bustled about, writing letters and sending telegrams. Every few moments, a Western Union messenger appeared at the door, delivering offers of employment from madams around the country. “Two French blondes,” one wire requested. “Can use two all-around brunettes,” read another. “Best five-dollar house in New Orleans with positive security and hundred dollars weekly for five girls under twenty-five—STOP—will advance railroad fare.”

  Offers also came, naturally, from Vic Shaw and her closest madam comrades. One of the Everleigh sisters’ favorite courtesans, Grace Monroe, accepted a position at Madam Zoe Millard’s place, 2034 South Dearborn Street. Madam Millard was a friend of Vic Shaw’s, and loathsome even without that unseemly social connection.

  “Until I get something better,” Grace said, apologizing.

  By 10:00 p.m., several cabs idled in front of 2131–2133 South Dearborn. Harlots were more resolute, now, than teary, lining up to kiss their madams good-bye. The sisters also maintained composure, emphasizing gratitude over regret, hinting that the Levee might not go without them for long.

  After the exodus the Club seemed subdued and sickly, caught at an un-flattering angle, and the sisters decided to let it rest. They would go see a matinee, step
into another world for an afternoon. After calling for their automobile, they asked the servants to take down any important messages, and set out for the Loop.

  That afternoon, Mayor Harrison strolled east on Monroe Street, breathing in deeply as he passed the Delft Candy Shop. He spotted an alderman, Joseph Kostner, walking toward him. The men shook hands and waited for the rattle of the elevated train to subside before attempting conversation. The mayor was about to discuss the Everleigh Club closing, at Kostner’s prodding, when the alderman pointed a finger across the street.

  “Don’t you recognize your friends over the way?” Kostner asked, laughing.

  Harrison squinted through the traffic and crowds.

  “I looked across the street,” he wrote later, “to see a pair of females rigged out as though for a fancy dress ball in the lightest, the brightest of garb with bright hued hosiery, dainty hats, low shoes, the flimsiest of flimsy gossamer gowns of delicate hues suitable for young girls in their teens. It was the notorious pair of sisters. They were headed west; I turned back, hustled to the corner, crossed to their side and sauntered slowly to get a good view.

  “Whited sepulchres they were, or rather gaudily bedaubled sepulchres, moving mincingly along, proud of the attention they excited, for who could help but stare at these caricatures of human kind, with their absurd affectations, poor, wretched, doddering burlesques of femininity?”

  Alderman Kostner followed the mayor across the street and appeared by his side, out of breath.

  “Had the sisters recognized you,” he said, “what they would have called you and done to you would not be fit for description!”

  Two days later, Chicago awoke to find itself under a mantle of snow, the first fall of the season. Sweepers were affixed to streetcars to clear the tracks, and men got to work in the Loop, shoveling piles into horse-drawn carriages to be hauled away and dumped into empty lots. President Taft planned to arrive in Chicago that evening for a three-day visit, and City Hall didn’t want any complications.

  On South Dearborn Street, unimportant to such official business, rolling drifts were permitted to linger, a serene vision that belied its denizens’ current mood. In the Club, Minna and Ada covered the last mahogany table, packed away the last crystal flutes, draped a sheet over the last statue. Everyone was gone now, even the servants and maids, though the sisters told Etta Wright, their longtime housekeeper, that they’d be in touch upon their return to Chicago.

  Throughout the week, Levee lords and their emissaries had rung the Club’s bell, trying to persuade the sisters to stay in the city, even if undercover, and answer the reformers’ salvo. Ed Little, owner of ten resorts on Federal and Dearborn streets (and no known relation to George Little), came to pay his respects and told the sisters the Club could be reopened for $20,000, half the amount Ike Bloom had suggested. Minna was skeptical.

  Could she have the personal promise of Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink? she asked.

  Little didn’t know. The aldermen were being cagey; maybe they, too, were trying to determine how far the mayor might go.

  Big Jim Colosimo and Ike Bloom, those vicious sweethearts, were waiting for the Everleighs at the LaSalle Street station. Big Jim captured a sister in the crook of each arm and squeezed. They’d be “going strong” as soon as they returned, he promised. Bloom offered a bony hand and leaned in close. “You ain’t got a thing to worry about,” he said. “We’ll have you back in no time. We’ll get the Little Fellow and Johnny Coughlin to work on the mayor.”

  The 20th Century Limited lumbered forward on the tracks, and a smartly attired Negro porter hauled the sisters’ luggage to their car. They waved from the observation platform as the train blasted out of Chicago, gusting great spires of smoke. They would leave the city just as they’d arrived back in the winter of 1899, dining at a table set with expensive English china, slipping between Marshall Field’s silk bedsheets, dreaming—fitfully now—of the finest brothel in history.

  “Do the best you can, boys,” Minna called to her friends. “We wish you luck. We’ve had ours.”

  DANGEROUS

  ELEMENTS

  It is the code of honor among wolves that no high-minded lamb will squeal.

  —HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD

  The Everleigh sisters were fortunate to have made it out of Chicago at all. The Bureau of Investigation—which, thanks to the Mann Act, now employed agents in every state and large city—had enlisted the cooperation of major railroad companies. Executives at L&N, Illinois Central, the Southern, and Chicago & Northwestern, among others, distributed circulars ordering ticket agents to watch for women or girls “known to reside in the so-called segregated districts.” Pre-paid tickets, a favorite trick of panders, could not be delivered to female residents of red-light districts, nor could scarlet women place deposits on tickets for anyone else, even if the intended recipient lived nowhere near a whorehouse.

  These early investigative efforts proved expensive, and Congress, still suspicious of this nascent Bureau of Investigation, played stingy with its budget. In October 1911, money for white slave investigations dried up entirely—a predicament that, in the parlance of the reformers, “aroused” them to send thousands of petitions, telegrams, and letters to every politician in Washington, D.C. Ernest Bell, returning home from yet another white slavery tour (this time through Europe, following right behind the Everleigh sisters), put the Midnight Mission on the case as well, asking his main lieutenant, Melbourne Boynton, to draft letters to Congressman Mann and President Taft.

  “I note that special action by Congress is required to secure the necessary funds for enforcing the provision of the Mann White Slave Act,” he wrote. “It should be generous enough to allow for a nation-wide, vigorous enforcement of the law against the unspeakable traffic.” Their efforts soon paid off. The Bureau of Investigation launched a subagency called the Office of the Special Commissioner for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic. Mann Act violations were again a top priority, so much so that the Bureau’s director resigned his post in order to become this “special commissioner.”

  Closer to home, Bell and his fellow reformers had another reason to celebrate. “Mayor Harrison deserves greatest credit for closing up the Everleigh Club,” Dean Sumner crowed, “the most notorious dive in the United States if not in the whole world. What to do with the girls who have gone astray is yet an unsolved difficulty. Bad women are a dangerous element.”

  But Bell and his cohorts were concerned less with a solution to these “dangerous elements” than with destroying the one neighborhood that welcomed them.

  “My dear Mr. Mayor,” Boynton wrote to Carter Harrison, “there is no excuse for the continuing of such a lawless region…. It is particularly objectionable and dangerous in the presence of such a large population of foreigners. American ideals and institutions are trailed in the dust by such official recognition of vice.”

  Less than two weeks later, Boynton was at it again.

  “Dear Sir,” he wrote to Mayor Harrison, “even Salt Lake City has abolished its vice district. Ought not Chicago to do as well as Mormondom?”

  Harrison received these missives, sighed, lowered his head to his hands, and decided to steal some more time. In March 1912, he ordered another probe of the Levee district, this time to be conducted by the Chicago Civil Service Commission. Maybe, if he were lucky, their investigators would contradict the vice commission report and recommend that the red-light district continue on as it had been—separate and, in its own complicated way, equal.

  John D. Rockefeller Jr. decided against continuing Roe’s work in New York City’s vice districts, though he declined to cite any specific reason, and the prosecutor took slight umbrage at the fact that Junior had a colleague break the news. “I am instructed to advise you,” the letter stated, “that the Committee feels it unwise to continue the experiment beyond the present fiscal year ending April 1, 1912.”

  Nevertheless, the termination was fine with Roe. He’d discovered a vast net
work of panders among New York City’s cabdrivers and even beat them at their own game, paying $600 a month in protection fees to crooked policemen so he could operate a “pretended” disorderly house in the Tenderloin. (Big Jim Colosimo and Maurice Van Bever, eat your hearts out.) But owing to the undercover nature of the project, the press had gone an entire year without printing Roe’s name. Other reformers and groups, in the meantime, had finagled their way into the spotlight. Katharine Houghton Hepburn, mother of the future actress, and other prominent suffragists even papered the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, with sensational handbills:

  DANGER!

  MOTHERS BEWARE!

  60,000

  INNOCENT GIRLS

  WANTED

  TO TAKE THE PLACE OF

  60,000

  WHITE SLAVES WHO DIE

  THIS YEAR IN THE U.S.

  The Cincinnati Vigilance Society (which organized in 1910, after Roe’s visit to the city) claimed credit for numerous Mann Act arrests. And vice commissions modeled after Chicago’s were convening even in such unlikely hotbeds of sin as Minneapolis and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It seemed to the prosecutor that he silenced himself just when he was needed most. Besides, Elsie had just given birth to their daughter, Marjorie, and the mission to save young girls was suddenly, and fiercely, personal. Roe put aside his hard feelings (as well as any lingering reluctance to discuss his private life) to send a birth announcement to Rockefeller, who offered his “cordial congratulations.”

  So upon hearing Rockefeller’s verdict, Roe embarked on two endeavors sure to renew his national reputation as the premier white slave crusader. He began another book, The Girl Who Disappeared, dedicating the work to “my devoted wife, who has inspired me to greater efforts in the campaign for better and purer manhood and womanhood.” And he reached out secretly to reformers across the country with this proposition: Why not merge all of the principal organizations fighting the white slave traffic into one cohesive group? His plan was brilliant in its simplicity. Strategic headquarters would be staffed with lawyers, detectives, and educators. Whenever a city—any city—wanted to start a crusade, this group would supply detectives to investigate conditions and lawyers to prepare evidence.