by Karen Abbott
“There have been three books written about the Everleigh sisters,” Minna told Irving Wallace in 1945. “One is Come into My Parlor. It should have been called The Club. Another is the Gem of the Prairie. And there is also Lords of the Levee. Most of all this is a bunch of untruths and lies. But Come into My Parlor is the best.”
Minna’s creative interpretation of “untruths and lies” notwithstanding, she was right: of the three, Washburn’s book was the most complete and detailed account of the Scarlet Sisters and their times. (Gem of the Prairie— republished as The Gangs of Chicago—and Lords of the Levee devote considerably less space to the Everleighs.) Although Washburn’s biography is an invaluable resource—I could not have written this book without it—Come into My Parlor is slightly flawed as source material.
For one thing, Washburn’s nonlinear style obscures the sequence of events and conversations; whenever possible, I checked his account against others to determine the most accurate chronology. Washburn’s work is also compromised by the fact that the author was close friends with—and very protective of—his subjects. He repeats the misinformation about their ages and upbringings (assuming he was privy to the truth in the first place) and omits certain crucial events altogether. There’s an entire chapter in Come into My Parlor devoted to Big Jim Colosimo, for instance, but no mention of his threatening the sisters’ lives during the final days of the war against the Levee. Likewise, the Chicago Daily Socialist’s 1909 attack on the sisters and their resulting trip to Europe are skipped altogether, but corroborated by one of Minna’s late interviews with Irving Wallace.
Jane Addams declared in 1911 that “no great wrong has ever risen more clearly to the social consciousness of a generation than that of commercialized vice,” yet the national angst over the “social evil” has been overshadowed by other Progressive Era hallmarks: the push for women’s suffrage; Ida Tarbell’s scathing exposé of the Standard Oil Company; Carrie Nation and her renegade hatchet posse. (One historian suggests that the vice crusade’s “schizophrenic” nature is to blame; “admirable people” like Addams and Lillian Wald vied with “people who did not like sex.”) Luckily, the red-light district reformers believed both in their mission and in using publicity to achieve it, and documented their efforts—both legitimate and exaggerated—thoroughly.
I spent three years researching this book and relied often on two local libraries. Emory University’s Woodruff Library has every issue of the purity journal The Philanthropist (and its successor, Vigilance) as well as an excellent women’s studies section containing many old and rare books about prostitution and white slavery. I first came across the Chicago Vice Commission report and the works of Ernest Bell and Clifford Roe at the University of Georgia’s main library, and spent many productive (if dizzying) hours there perusing Chicago Tribune archives on microfilm. A number of contemporary books and studies also proved immensely helpful: The Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff; Perry Duis’s Challenging Chicago; David J. Langum’s Crossing over the Line; Ruth Rosen’s The Last Sisterhood; Mark Thomas Connelly’s The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era; and Amy R. Lagler’s doctoral thesis, “For God’s Sake Do Something: White Slavery Narratives and Moral Panic in Turn-of-the-Century American Cities.”
I hesitate to classify my numerous trips to Chicago as work. The people I met were unfailingly helpful, always willing to explain the intricacies of each El line or bus route (often more than once, thanks to my nonexistent sense of direction and utter lack of map skills). The city feels relentlessly vibrant and alive even inside the hushed research room of the Chicago History Museum or the basement of the gorgeous Harold Washington Public Library. At the latter I again logged countless hours in front of microfilm machines, cross-checking articles from the Tribune with those from a half dozen other prominent newspapers from the era (and becoming distracted, on occasion, by odd but charming glimpses of American popular culture at the turn of the last century: girls popped pills to gain weight; acne medicine not only promised to clear up “scabby crusts” but to produce a “new supply of rich, red blood” and a widespread fetish for “lovely arms” contests). The Harold Washington Library is as generous as it is stunning: every single photocopy was free. On several occasions I left the city with an extra suitcase, crammed full of research.
During my last excursion to Chicago I took a cab down to the Near South Side and spent an hour or so walking through the neighborhood that, one hundred years ago, was known throughout the world as the Levee district. Twenty-second Street was renamed Cermak Road in honor of Mayor Anton Cermak, who was fatally shot in 1933, and entire blocks of South Dearborn Street no longer exist. The exact location of 2131–2133 is somewhere on twelve and a half acres of property now owned by the Chicago Housing Authority, the current site of the Raymond Hilliard Homes. The complex, designed in 1966 by renowned Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg, is lauded for its aesthetic properties: two tall, curving towers laced with honeycomb-shaped windows. In 1999, Hilliard Homes was named to the National Register of Historic Places, the first and only time a Chicago public housing structure has achieved such distinction.
Citations for quotes and more obscure facts follow:
“Chicago, a gaudy circus”: Lindberg, Quotable Chicago, 110.
PROLOGUE: ANGELS OF THE LINE
only son and heir: Chicago American, November 23, 1905.
“Give the lady”: Chicago Daily Herald, August 25, 1982.
Tore through: Chicago Tribune, November 23, 1905.
“I shot myself”: Ibid.
A reporter at the Chicago Daily News: Madsen, 158.
breakdown in 1904: Chicago American, November 23, 1905.
“We are a funeral parlor”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 99. The author didn’t specify exactly which incident provoked Ada’s quip.
“brought a girl around”: Kimball, 87.
dab of gasoline: Duis, Challenging Chicago, 51.
She had an odd walk: Edgar Lee Masters, “The Everleigh Club,” Town & Country, April 1944.
“King and Queen of the Cokies”: Asbury, 246.
Mickey Finn: Ibid., 176.
Merry Widdo Kiddo: Ibid., 246.
“professors”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 167; Asbury, 266.
“How is my boy?”: Edgar Lee Masters, “The Everleigh Club,” Town & Country, April 1944.
Frank Carson: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 84.
“Beau Night”: Ibid., 187.
“to pleasure what Christ”: Ibid., 28.
Edmund, the butler: Ibid., 36.
Bucket of Blood and Bed Bug Row: Asbury, 264 and 246.
a teenage girl from a good family: Chicago Record Herald, January 9, 1905.
“They were the Angels”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 89.
PART ONE: THE SCARLET SISTERS EVERLEIGH, 1899–1905
STRIPED SKUNK AND WILD ONIONS
“An amusing city, Chicago”: Ibid., 45.
“vestibules”: Miller, 180.
“wonderful cure”: Sporting and Club House Directory, 36.
“at will through space”: Cleveland Moffett, “Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph,” McClure’s Magazine, June 1899.
first major automobile show: Musselman, 76.
“individual shortcomings of dress”: Dreiser, 27.
Eight years before New York Sun: Grossman, Keating, and Reiff, 882.
“Go to Chicago now!”: Miller, 169.
“She outgrows her prophecies”: Quoted in Miller, 188.
“Respectable women”: Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1936.
“most celebrated banging shop”: Longstreet, 119.
“A drunk is no good”: Kimball, Quoted in Fille de Joie, various contributors, 22.
Big Matilda: Ibid., 388.
“Nowhere in this country”: Ibid., 19.
Ignace Paderewski and Republican politicians: Wallace, 30.
Rosie Hertz, the so-called godmother: Jackso
n, 947.
Rose Hicks, “Lucky” Warren, Annie Chambers: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 18.
“wick dipping”: Fille de Joie, 20.
Carrie Watson, had retired: Asbury, 243.
“See Effie”: Come into My Parlor, Washburn, 19.
“She-caw-go!”: Miller, 181.
“It’s home to me”: Come into My Parlor, Washburn, 19–20.
“We have catered”: Ibid., 20.
“Chicagoua”: Grossman, Keating, and Reiff, 130.
A twenty-eight-mile-long canal: Ibid., 864.
“Walking in Dearborn Street”: Pierce, 409.
The town’s board of trustees: Asbury, 37.
The Great Fire of 1871: Miller, 159.
2,218 saloon licenses: Asbury, 89.
“Black-eyed Amy”: Dedmon, 146.
“Little Chicago”: Asbury, 108.
“everybody knows what a ‘French’ house is”: Sporting and Club House Directory, 39.
“least public colored house”: Ibid.
“Carrie Watson”: Asbury, 137.
“Miss Carrie Watson”: Dedmon, 145.
“Terror of State Street”: Asbury, 122.
Mayor Carter Harrison II: Asbury, 243. Harrison was actually the fourth namesake in his lineage, but due to the popularity of his father, he was often called “Junior.”
“Pick a baby”: Lindberg, Chicago by Gaslight, 127.
ANOTHER UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
“Stead was a man”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 120.
its own Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Walkowitz, 96.
“The slavery of black women”: Butler, 13.
“The poor child”: Stead, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon: The Report of the Pall Mall Gazette’s Secret Commission. London: Richard Lambert, from the July 6, 1885, issue.
GETTING EVERLEIGHED
February 1, 1900: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 21.
Several homeless people froze: Chicago Daily News, January 31, 1900.
“I talk with each applicant”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 110.
“Pleasure”: Quoted in ibid., 31.
Valerie, a doctor’s daughter: Ibid., 35.
“Every girl, if only”: Kimball, 33.
“I ain’t ashamed”: Quoted in Rosen, 101.
“It is not adequate”: Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 4, 225.
“I got to get out”: Quoted in Rosen, 158.
“I spent 3 days”: Quoted in ibid., 159.
Julia Yancy, Etta Wright, Dr. Maurice Rosenberg: Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1925.
red mouthwash: Lindberg, Chicago by Gaslight, 128.
“private conservatory of music”: Gerald Carson, “The Piano in the Parlor,” American Heritage 17, no. 1 (December 1965).
Vanderpool Vanderpool: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 167.
Two private suites: Lait and Mortimer, 33–34.
Everly: Longstreet, 294.
just like Sir Walter: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 21.
“I have always considered”: Letter from Evelyn Diment to Irving Wallace, January 20, 1989, courtesy of the Irving Wallace Family Trust.
“The double entendre”: Boehm, 84.
Such relationships were common: Rosen, 104, 171.
harlot folklore: Ibid., 105; Madeleine: An Autobiography, 144; Winick and Kinsie, 44.
Everleigh Club operations: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 29–30; Asbury, 253; Johnson and Sautter, 75–76.
“Utopia Novelty Company”: Hibbeler, 48. Hibbeler’s book is a racy (for 1960) account of the Everleigh Club based on interviews with the former butterfly named Doll. He was the piano professor at Freiberg’s Hall, and familiar enough with the sisters to merit a mention in Come into My Parlor.
“Be polite, patient”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 24.
“butterflies”: Ibid., 41.
“Just a bluff”: Ibid., 23.
“the King of the Brothels”: Wendt and Kogan, 369.
RITES FOR P.D. ARMOUR, JR.: Chicago Daily News, February 1, 1900.
“We’ve got her all wrong”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 25.
pocket more than $100: Asbury, 254.
THE DEMON OF LUST LIES IN WAIT
“You may believe it or not”: The Philanthropist, January 1886.
“an organized agency”: Ibid., November 1886.
authorities raided a Michigan lumber camp: Lagler, 58–59.
“These atrocities”: The Philanthropist, November 1888.
LOVELY LITTLE LIES
“Everyone wants to be”: Wallace, 54.
Ada and Minna Everleigh were born: U.S. census, 1870.
“ninety-nine percent more worthy”: Wallace, 54.
“I am absolutely”: Ibid., 52.
“No nursery stories”: Ibid.
“a voice much younger”: Ibid., 54.
The sisters’ forebears: Woods Hampton, 1–39.
The sisters’ father: Ibid., 68.
Twenty slaves cultivated: Slave Schedule 2, Slave Inhabitants in the County of Greene, State of Virginia, 1850.
At age twenty: January 2006 e-mail exchange with Allison White, special collections librarian and archivist, University of Virginia Law Library.
married his first cousin: Woods Hampton, 24.
Jennie gave birth: I followed the evolution of the Simms family through the 1870 and 1880 census.
“a grim reality”: Woodward, 187–190.
baby brother George was handed over: The 1880 census lists George W. Simms, age four, as a nephew living with W. B. Ward and Sarah Ward (née Sarah Simms, sister of Minna and Ada’s father).
family of five: Wallace, 54.
Their neighbors included: 1880 census.
Confederate general: Kemper was general of the 7th Virginia, which included many Simms men.
letter from Minna to Irving Wallace: Wallace, 47–49, 7; Irving Wallace Papers, Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University.
“I was strangely moved”: Ibid., 49–50.
“The Catholics”: Ibid., 51.
“I had a sister”: Ibid., 58.
the sisters moved from Madison County: Woods Hampton, 24.
“wealthy devil of a man”: Wallace, 56.
They hailed not: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 11–13.
“Do you know I’m related”: Wallace, 58.
“southern gentleman” and wedding details: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 14. I hired a private researcher to search marriage records throughout the state of Virginia, and none were found. I also checked every county in Missouri where the sisters lived or had family, also to no avail.
“No other man”: Ibid., 15.
“It is doubtful”: Ibid., 148–149.
“I love men”: Wallace, 59.
“estates in the South”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 16.
run of bad luck: Woods Hampton, 23.
“My mother would”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 16.
letter from Evelyn Diment to Irving Wallace, January 20, 1989, courtesy of the Irving Wallace Family Trust, Los Angeles, CA.
“lied about their background”: Phone conversation with Evelyn Diment, January 2006. When I spoke to her, the Everleigh sisters’ great-niece was eighty years old and living in Colorado.
In Omaha by 1895: Research conducted by a University of Nebraska at Omaha School of Criminology and Criminal Justice class in October 1992 revealed that a Minnie and Rae Everly are listed in the 1890 city directory, boarding at 822 Dodge.
“It is hardly conceivable”: Carl Uhlarik, “The Sin Sisters Who Made Millions,” Real West, December 1968.
The town’s Trans-Mississippi Exposition: I confirmed facts about the exposition with Gary Rosenberg, a research specialist with the Douglas County Historical Society.
“They were some punkins”: Real West, December 1968.
“They were some lookers”: Omaha World Herald, September 17, 1948.
Many courtesans suffered: Ros
en, 80.
“It is claimed that this disease”: Washburn, The Underworld Sewer, 303.
“wet, flabby sheep’s gut”: Green, 91.
condom names: Ibid., 95.
“You wouldn’t believe”: Quoted in Rosen, 96–97.
THE STORIES EVERYONE KNEW
“All civilization has from time to time”: Ellis, Little Essays of Love and Virtue, 165.
“Never before in civilization”: Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 5.
“agony column”: Quoted in The Philanthropist, January 1888.
“organized, systematized traffic”: Quoted in Lagler, 86.
“We have used facts”: Edholm, 3.
“false employment snare”: Ibid., 13–14.
“There are men”: Ibid., 26–27.
“When I was a bartender”: Ibid., 34–35.
LORDS AND LADIES OF THE LEVEE
“Laws should be like”: Lindberg, Quotable Chicago, 112.
Isaac Gitelson: Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1904.
a label marked “HONEY”: Chicago Tribune, October 13, 1904.
“make arrangements”: Asbury, 276.
the scale of prices: Wendt and Kogan, 322.
“Positively” Asbury, 276.
“Now see what they done”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 60–61.
“paper suits”: Ibid., 136.
“red ink” and following quotes: Ibid., 137.
Big Jim biographical information: Asbury, 312–314.
one of thirty-five in the city: Grossman, Keating, and Reiff, 857.
“I have watched men”: Washburn, Come into My Parlor, 148; Lindberg, Quotable Chicago, 110.
“Everywhere the names”: Wendt and Kogan, 285.
“largest and coolest”: Ibid., 170.
Hinky Dink biographical information: Ibid., 73–76. One editor of the Tribune, Robert Lee, doubted that Medill gave Hinky Dink his nickname.