by Jim Musgrave
“Why, how did you guess? My name is Doctor Alberto Rubio, and I direct in the Palace Theater of New York City. My wife, who is our theater’s manager, and myself are here to look for new talent. We like to visit the local theaters and talk with the staff. The new season is coming soon, and we need actresses to perform.” John accented the word “perform” by pronouncing it “per-fahm.”
“Actresses? Why, I’ve acted in several of my school’s productions! I was Beatrice in Seven Sisters just last year.”
John knew he had planted the hook deep within her psyche. “I couldn’t help but notice, my dear, your dress is funereal. Has there been a tragedy in your life?”
The girl swept her white hands over the front of her black dress and looked down at her shoes. She then slowly raised her head and considered his face. “My father passed. He was all I had. But I have a boyfriend, Jeffrey,” she stammered, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.
Little Susie moved over to put her arm around the girl’s shoulders in mock sympathy. “Don’t you have anybody to look after you, dear? What’s your name? How old are you?”
“Irene Sanders. I am sixteen. My Aunt Margaret has taken me in, but I don’t like her. She never lets me go out with friends, and I have to do all the chores.”
John knew it was time to present the bait. He took out the glossy playbill from the Palace Theater. It was, of course, all fictional, but it looked impressive, especially to a young lady from the farmland outside Boston. The print said, “Palace Theater, New York City is auditioning for the coming season. Ingénues are preferred, and experience is appreciated.”
“What’s an Ingénue?” the girl asked.
“It’s a character we need,” said John. “She is the innocent girl from the country who falls in love with the dashing young city boy. He falls in love with her and teaches her all about how to become a sophisticated young woman in the heart of the throbbing metropolitan excitement.”
“I could do that!” Irene said. “I can sing, and I can even dance! Will there be musicals?” The girl’s gray eyes were sparkling with expectant joy.
“Is your aunt waiting for you up there?” Little Susie asked, looking up the hill toward the church.
“No. She waits for me at the cable cars. She likes to eat her sweets at the corner confectionary.”
“I don’t want to be too premature, but I do believe you may just be what we’re looking for,” said John, taking Irene by the hand. “Come with us to our hotel, and we shall see if you really can perform,” he added. “I don’t see why your aunt needs to know, do you? My wife and I have turned young women just like you into popular stage performers. Don’t you think it’s high time you were in charge of your own destiny, Irene?”
“Yes! Of course I do!” she said, and she squeezed John’s hand and smiled up at him. Behind her, Little Susie was dipping her hand into her handbag. The laudanum was there. She knew the audition would be brief, and her sleep would be long. It would last all the way back to New York. “To sleep, perchance to dream,” she said, and she saw Irene turn her head back to recognize her.
“Shakespeare! Hamlet is it not?” she asked.
“You are so right, Irene! I know you’re going to be perfect for the Palace,” said Little Susie, and she winked at the young girl and smiled knowingly. “There are all kinds of young men who will become entranced by the likes of you!”
* * *
Hester Jane Haskins, better known in the Tenderloin as “Jane the Grabber,” stood over Irene, who was splayed out on a plush red divan in the center of the suite where Jane auditioned her girls for the entertainment. Irene was wearing a blue nightgown and red slippers given to her by Jane.
Jane wore a Chinese silk robe with a black and white panda on the back, and she was counting money seated behind a business secretary table. Up from the floorboards there was the slightest odor of machinery coming from down below.
After a week under her special care and treatment, the older woman knew the girl was now conditioned by the drugs and the booze, so she was drifting in and out of a hazy reality that made her as pliable to manipulate as a gingerbread doll.
“Get up! Go see John. He wants you to be ready for tonight’s action. I want you to serve drinks and look beautiful. You won’t see any food or drugs until you learn your place around here. Are you clear about that, little lady?”
Irene nodded her head drowsily. She stood up on baby bird legs and began to walk out the door. John’s room was right next to Jane’s. Irene had watched all the new girls as they went to John’s room. Their heads were cast down, and they seemed to be fearful, but when they came out of that room the next morning, they would often be singing and looking quite changed. Irene knew this was no real theater, even though the girls did do some acting and dancing in this converted playhouse from the 1840s. But Irene knew that wasn’t all that was required of them.
The door was unlocked, and she knocked on it before entering.
“Come in!” said John Allen. Irene now knew his real name. He was no director, Doctor Rubio. He was John the bartender. And his wife, Little Susie, was a woman who could roll drunks quicker than Irene’s father had once milked a cow in a contest at the fair outside Boston.
As she opened the door, the room inside became a wonderland of gas lights shining through multi-colored panes of stained window glass, and John Allen was sitting on top of an Arabic cushion smoking an opium pipe.
On the wall, directly above his head was a strange glowing image of a circle. Within the circle were two shapes of the same size that looked like tears. One was black and the other was white. Inside the black tear was a white ball. Inside the white tear was a black ball. Her young mind, addled by the laudanum, became increasingly wary. Why did they want her to meet John? What was happening to her?
“What’s wrong, my pet?” John asked, and that’s when she turned and ran.
She stumbled down the winding stairs to the street level, pushing against other girls who watched her run past them with a vague disinterest. Irene flew outside into the cacophony of sounds and excruciatingly pungent odors of Satan’s Circus.
As she ran, her addled senses took in the gambling men sitting at the dark tables, the smoke from their cigars circling around their heads like clouds of doom. She stumbled into her next-door neighbor’s tavern, and the man inside took her by the arm and pulled her into a back room.
She was frightened for her life until she saw that in his hand he held a Bible. He looked sincerely into her face and smiled. “Don’t fear, young lady. I am here to save you from that den of iniquity. The name’s Jerry McAuley, and I was once held in the devil’s grasp. Demon rum was my lord and savior, by God, until I saw the light! I can now save you! Just let me give you some fresh coffee, and we can talk over what you’ve experienced.”
Before Irene had a chance to respond, John Allen came bursting into the back room. He had with him an officer of the law, a skinny youth with a night stick in his hand and fuzz on his pale face. “McAuley, you scoundrel! Unhand that young lady!”
Jerry McAuley reluctantly stepped back. “John Allen, you are the wickedest man in New York! You will rue this day. Mark my words. The Lord has ways of dealing with your kind, and crooked police won’t be there to protect you, either!”
John pulled Irene by her arm. She squirmed at first, but then, when Allen gave her another dose of laudanum, pouring the elixir into her open mouth, she retreated back into her make-believe world of addiction.
All she could remember was when the tall bartender pulled off his black coat and undid his white shirt; she saw his body was tattooed with dozens of snakes! They seemed to wriggle upon his naked torso like the Garden Demons they represented, and John Allen picked her up into his arms and carried her to his bed.
“Now, young lady, I am going to put you into joyous ecstasy. For, you see, I am no longer just a man of Jesus. I am a convert to an ancient religion of Nature. I am a soothsayer, the Shaman of our tribe, and you are
one of my mistresses! I shall now show you the worldly pleasures of the flesh such as you have never in your life experienced. It is the pleasure that Adam and Eve beheld in that ancient Garden of Eden, so long before. It has now come to the Palace Theater, and you can partake of it until you’ve become a woman of the Godly flesh at last!”
Irene felt his hands all over her body as she lay there, and her mind reeled with a mixture of shame and loss of innocence. She whispered one word only as he entered her. “Jeffrey!”
In the adjoining room, Jane the Grabber heard the girl cry out, as the walls of the old theater building were quite thin. She chuckled to herself as she counted the money from last evening’s proceeds.
There had been a procurement of fourteen new girls from New England, the land of plenty, as she called it. Innocent young wenches were lured into the big city by well-dressed agents like John and Little Susie Allen, believing in dreams, and becoming indentured to Jane by the dreams of opium.
Soon she would be wealthy enough to move uptown into the territory of her despised rival, Miss Rebecca Charming. Hester Jane Haskins knew, however, that she needed to make one big push in order to earn enough for the high cost real estate buildings supplied by Tammany Hall.
She needed to discover a way to guarantee victory over Charming and that stupid boyfriend of hers, Pat O’Malley. O’Malley was just like the only honest cop in New York, another Irishman, John Kennedy. The draft rioters in ’63 almost beat Kennedy to death, but some do-gooders came along and convinced the gang that the police chief had died. They had left him, good as dead, but now he had risen, like so many of these pot-lickers did, to make it their sole purpose in life to put her out of business.
There were also the intellectual scammers like Doctor Edward Bliss Foote. He gave women birth control in the mail! Becky Charming used his book, Medical Common Sense, and she believed in his free speech group, a collection of free-thinkers and nincompoops. Charming even allowed her girls to wear Foote’s womb veil instead of aborting the problem at Madame Restell’s on Broadway the way Jane did. Restell gave Jane a percentage of each abortion, and it put the fear of God into each slut who experienced it.
This Charming would have to pay handsomely for her high and mighty attitude and her Vassar College education! Jane the Grabber was moving up into high society, and she was going to take down the likes of Becky Charming as she did so.
“Oh God! Yes!” The new girl was heard screaming from the other room.
“John! Shut that bitch up!” screamed Jane, and she slammed down the lid on her money box with a loud bang.
Chapter 1: Free Thinking and Animal Magnetism
New York City, First Presbyterian Church, April, 1868
Becky and I were seated in the back row of the lecture hall at 428 Broad Street inside the First Presbyterian Church. Ironically, it was the same location that the now defunct American Emigrant Company had held its meetings. My father had infiltrated their membership and we had broken the case by going down to Tennessee and finding the kidnapped inventor and Jewish philanthropist, Doctor Arthur Mergenthaler. As a result of our bringing the miscreants to justice, I was still close friends with the widow, Missus Bessie Mergenthaler, and her son Seth.
We were attending a meeting of Rebecca Charming’s favorite organization, the free speech group, co-founded by the man who was at the rostrum this very evening, Doctor Edward Bliss Foote. We had arrived a bit late and were forced to settle for these rather confining seats in the back pew row. I was used to the rear because that’s where I sat when I attended Mass, which was fairly infrequently.
I was occupying my time by observing all the others as they listened to Doctor Foote speak. They were all keenly observant in their city finery, wearing hooped skirts, waistcoats and top hats; they were leaning forward in their pews, gravely nodding their heads whenever they agreed with what the good doctor was saying.
These people made up the liberal establishment of New York City, the free-thinking stalwarts of academia, business and the arts. Most of the Tammany Hall crowd would never be caught dead inside a lecture of this sort, as they were busy making thousands of dollars off the poor women about which Doctor Foote was presently expounding from his pulpit.
Doctor Foote was a handsome man in his late forties, with thick brown hair and a well-groomed mustache, and the piercing gray eyes of a man of learning who could also spot a business opportunity. His brown suit and vest were pressed and distinguished-looking as he stood behind the podium and poured water from a carafe into a glass and took a long drink before he continued speaking to the assembled crowd of supporters.
“In my medical practice, I have seen these women suffering the scourge of venereal disease, eventually spreading it like the plague amongst an unwary populace. The only sane method of preventing such devastation is through proper personal hygiene, examinations by a reputable physician and through the use of my womb veil. It is my practice to make this contraceptive available to all free-thinking women, regardless of social standing or race, so we can all be protected from diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea. I have updated my book, Medical Common Sense, and you can purchase a copy at the back table where my clerk, Roger, is now standing.”
Becky stood up and raised her hand.
Doctor Foote immediately recognized her because she was on his Board of Trustees. “Yes, Miss Charming? You have a question?”
“Doctor Foote, I wanted to know about your new electro-magnetic machine. Do you believe it can really cure physical maladies?”
I knew that Becky believed wholeheartedly in Doctor Foote’s machine, as she was now going to see him each week to receive a treatment. I frankly thought it was all a bunch of malarkey, but I listened to his response along with the crowd of eager followers.
"Happily for suffering humanity, the therapeutic value of the electrical discoveries of Galvani, Faraday, Cross and others has been tested in the universities and hospitals in England, France and Germany. Galvanism, electro-magnetism and other forms of electricity, are now extensively employed in the best institutions of the old world with the most flattering results."
“Is it also true that one must be magnetic himself in order to deliver the charge efficiently and with best effect?” Becky asked.
“Oh yes! The reputation of electricity has suffered by its bungling application in the hands of inexperienced operators. Being an eminently successful electrical operator is a God-given gift. He must be in the possession at all times of a good supply of animal magnetism. To be a first-rate operator, a physician must be a battery unto himself!"
I heard several of the women as they gasped. I leaned over to Becky and whispered into her ear, “I believe the good doctor has just inserted his electric foot in Doctor Foote’s handsome mouth.”
“Shush! You have never had his treatment have you, Patrick?” she admonished.
“No, and I plan not to. You are enough of a charge for me, young lady,” I said.
Becky did her usual half-smile, half-smirk, and turned back around to listen to the rest of Doctor Foote’s speech.
However, we were not going to be able to hear it because the double cedar doors to the church opened wide to admit a balding, rotund veteran of the Civil War on the Union side, who had become a one-man proponent of America’s morals, and who marched down the aisle flanked by his coterie of suited officials from the Young Men’s Christian Association. He was wearing his walrus beard and sidewhiskers and his suit of black with the snow-white shirt and cravat. He came right up to the front of the church and stood, at military at-ease, in front of Doctor Foote, waiting patiently until the older man completed his thought.
“Without the freedom to learn from our scientific brethren all over the world, we will never advance in medicine,” Doctor Foote said.
“Doctor Foote, when one is making a profit from the sinful loins of prostitutes and using the public’s trusted postal service to transmit pornographic literature--not science--then there is no advancement. There
is only a land of what the Bible correctly termed ‘Gomorrah’!” I could see spittle flying from this portly man’s mouth, and that’s when I recalled where I had seen this gentleman during my own service to the war effort.
As the crowd booed and hissed at what Mister Anthony Comstock was saying, I remembered an incident in Atlanta when the 17th Connecticut Infantry was bivouacked next to our regimental tent. Becky’s girls were taking customers, as was their usual occupation for the war-weary troopers, when a man came stomping into General Sherman’s tent. He was dripping wet from the rain, and he was a short corporal. “Corporal Comstock reporting for Reverend Captain Baylor! This is a cease and desist order to stop the illegal prostitution going on in this camp!” The short man handed me the paper. He had the same walrus mustache and sidewhiskers running all along his upper lip to finally encircle his ears like grappling hooks.
I looked down at the letter from this lowly Company H Chaplain and his portly little messenger. “Soldier, do you know that General Sherman himself gave orders that these patriotic women be protected from all enemies--both foreign and domestic--and that you and your good chaplain are, in effect, enemies? I suggest you take this piece of latrine paper and put it to good use. I plan to visit the ladies’ tent myself after I get off watch.”
I watched as this man’s face became beet red, and he began to sputter in exactly the manner I was seeing inside the church. “You and your kind are uncouth, cursing sinners, and you will all burn in hell!” Comstock shouted, turning on his heels and leaving the tent. I never saw him again until this night.
It seemed this Comstock was repeating his errors in civilian life because the Reverend Winston Wheeler of the First Presbyterian Church came down the aisle with two policemen. He was a tall and skinny man with bushy sideburns and matching eyebrows who walked as if he were pushing something in front of him reminiscent of President Lincoln. He stood in front of Comstock and cleared his throat. “Ahem! This is a free speech gathering, and you are welcome to attend, Mister Comstock. However, if you continue to disrupt these proceedings with your interruptions, I will be forced to have you and your associates escorted from this church.”