Prostitution in the Gilded Age

by Kevin Murphy

  Cutting to the chase, the police board realized that they couldn’t rehire Captain Charles Nott without first reinstating Chief of Police Walter Chamberlin. It was such a mess that one commissioner said mirthlessly that the board had created a jug with two handles—both on the same side! Having heard all opinions, the board was so flummoxed that it began to daydream about resignations. They would be voluntary—as far as the public was concerned—but at least Chamberlin and Nott would be ancient history. Along with them, any “scandalous and indecent” letters would disappear along with the unfounded charges that Captain Nott tried to frame a madame.

  On November 20, 1871, the police commissioners accepted the resignations of both Chief Walter P. Chamberlin and Captain Charles D. Nott, all in the name of reorganizing the police force. The Democrats on the commission tendered one name to head the new department—a Democrat, Lieutenant Caleb L. Packard. A quick vote showed unanimity for Packard. A short time later, Mayor Washburne R. Andrus of Oakland, California became the new chief. Strangely, after Democratic Mayor Joseph Sprague got one year under his belt, in April 1875, he lobbied for, and then reinstated, Ex-Chief Walter P. Chamberlin. Sitting Chief Caleb L. Packard was forced to resign—without cause. In the never-ending political shenanigans of city government, Chief Chamberlin was eventually accused of taking a bribe from a gambler—falsely it turned out—and he had to resign effective January 1, 1882.[102]

  Speaking of police irregularities . . . . The larger-than-life poster child for police corruption in the Gilded Age has always been New York City Policeman Alexander “Clubber” Williams, who was as colorful as he was controversial. Born in Nova Scotia in 1839, he emigrated at a young age and apprenticed as a ship’s carpenter at William Webb’s shipyard on the East River. Together with Donald MacKay of East Boston, Webb and MacKay were the finest shipbuilders in the United States. But Alexander Williams wanted excitement. In 1866, he joined the NYPD and did two years in Brooklyn before transferring to Broadway, an area infested with thugs and toughs of every description. William quickly became known as a vicious street fighter and earned the nickname “Clubber Williams.” [103]

  Clubber Williams advanced quickly, and in 1872, was promoted to captain of the East 35th Street Station. In no time, he broke up the Gas House Gang and was transferred again, to the West 13th Street Station, a precinct house in the middle of the city’s nightclubs, gambling joints, and houses of ill repute. Williams was a master at selling police protection and quipped to a friend, “I’ve had chuck for a long time, and now I’m going to eat tenderloin.” This remark is said to be the genesis of the term “tenderloin district.”[104] (Note: Maps of San Francisco and other notorious cities, before 1872, do not include the word “tenderloin.”)

  Clubber Williams stayed in the tenderloin for two years before his methods were called into question. Despite being brought up on charges eighteen times, Williams was always acquitted by the Board of Police Commissioners. Clubber Williams remained in charge of the district until his promotion to inspector in August 1887. Williams was such a keg of dynamite that even after he was badly discredited and embarrassed by the Lexow Committee in the mid-1890s, New York City’s three-man Police Commission, headed by Theodore Roosevelt, decided that it would be best for everyone if Williams retired with a yearly pension of $1,750. (The average annual wage in 1895 was $438.)[105]

  If Clubber Williams represented a policeman gone bad, Hartford-born Joe Weeks single-handedly gave prostitution a bad name. Weeks’s father, a respected Hartford grocer, had four sons, three of whom took their places in society without difficulty. But Joe was a bad seed. From the time he reached manhood, Joe Weeks differed markedly from his brothers. In an incredibly short career of sixteen years, Joe Weeks partnered in more than a half-dozen houses of ill fame, found his way into police court four times for prostitution or liquor violations, made his way behind bars twice for beating his wife and once for refusing to pay his city taxes. The very first time he appeared in police court, Judge Samuel Jones said “he had always supposed the defendant had kept a house of questionable reputation and that he was one of the most noted keepers of houses of prostitution in the city.” Judge Jones worked hard to control his temper when he dealt with Joe Weeks.[106] (Note: Judge Samuel Jones was the same attorney who defended madames in police court in the 1870s.)

  Joe Weeks so completely destroyed his good name, he had to relocate to New Haven where he spent the last twenty years of his life. When he died, Rev. Henry Kelsey gave him a mass of Christian burial at the Fourth Congregational Church on Main Street, including a lovely burial at the Old North Cemetery. This would have appealed to Joe Weeks enormously, since he once kept a house of ill repute on Main Street directly opposite the Fourth Congregational Church. One assumes that his descendants visit his grave as often as they can!

  When the police raided houses of ill fame, chiefly those of unsavory characters, usually revenues were the driver. Moreover, it was money that should have been proffered at the beginning of the year. Joe Weeks’s arrest for not paying his taxes makes it clear that he was simply a money-grubbing proprietor of brothels and a poor businessman.

  During the course of Jo Bullock’s run-in with the police in August 1870, it quickly became clear that she was not under arrest. Beyond that, she had the good luck to get an associate judge and a prince of a man to hear her case. “Genial George” Sumner studied law with David Calhoun of

  Manchester. As the Civil War concluded, Sumner landed a position with the law firm of Waldo, Hubbard & Hyde in Hartford. Two years later, the people of his native Bolton elected him to the state House of Representatives. Not long afterward, he settled in Hartford and became an alderman in 1868. Rising like the star that he was, Sumner then served as city attorney and did a hitch as associate judge of the city court. In 1873-74, he acted as chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee.[107]

  What Jo Bullock didn’t know at the time of her police court hearing was that Judge Sumner and Ella Gallup of Plainfield were scheduled to marry in October—two months hence. In any event, Sumner put Jo Bullock and her three co-defendants under $100 peace bonds. Sumner claimed that the only purpose of the hearing was to let the frequenters of these houses know they were under the surveillance of the police, who intended to see that the peace bonds were kept.

  Sure enough, in October, Judge Sumner married Ella Gallup and they had two children—William Gallup and Julia Gallup. Neither of the children reached the age of two and Sumner’s wife, Ella, died in March 1875, leaving him alone in the world. (At the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collections Fund was founded and named for the wives of George Sumner and his younger brother, Frank.)[108]

  Tested as few men are, Judge Sumner soldiered on. In 1878, he beat Morgan Bulkeley in the city’s mayoral race. In his inimitable way, Sumner appointed the best men he could find—irrespective of party—for the positions in his administration. Judge Sumner held a number of different positions in state government, even serving as Lt. Governor of Connecticut from 1883 to 1885 under the divisive Gov. Thomas Waller. (Democrats called Waller “Connecticut’s Little-Giant,” while Republicans—like Gen. Joe Hawley—referred to him as “this cheap man.”) Judge Sumner never remarried and died of heart trouble at sixty-five.[109]

  Jo Bullock’s latest brush with the law—albeit without adding another arrest to her record—bothered her terribly. Still her options were few. In a businesslike manner, she made the appropriate payments and kept as low a profile as possible. Although Jo Bullock’s interest in prostitution derived from basic needs, there exists a mountain of historical background that would have interested her. To begin, fornication [carnal copulation] was never an offense under American common law. The Massachusetts Puritans, however, made fornication a statutory offense in 1692, two years before the law against adultery. The fornication statute was reenacted by the Massachusetts legislature in 1785.[110] Meanwhile open and gross lewdness was an offense of American common law
[open and gross lewdness meant two unmarried people living together]. American common law forbade keeping a bawdy house. Massachusetts’ colonial legislature made this a statutory offense in 1790 and the General Assembly followed suit in 1793.[111]

  In 1796, Connecticut’s general statutes said that “if any man shall commit fornication with a single woman . . . each of them shall pay a fine of six dollars . . . or be corporally punished by whipping, not exceeding ten stripes each. . . . “At the time, Connecticut was no haven for adulterers either . . .“Whosoever shall commit adultery with a married woman . . . both of them shall be . . . punished by whipping on the naked body . . . or burned on the forehead with the letter “A.”[112]

  Connecticut’s first legal crack at houses of ill fame came with an 1845 law stating, “Every person who shall keep a house of ill fame . . . for the purpose of prostitution . . . shall be punished by imprisonment in the common jail, for a term not exceeding six months, or by a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars.” Legislators made a distinction between houses of ill fame and disorderly houses. (A prostitute could scream loud enough to wake the neighbors, but as long as she wasn’t engaged in sex, the dwelling was only a disorderly house. The keeper of a house of ill fame could get six months in jail, while the person with a disorderly house got only three months. Both were subject to one hundred dollar fines.”[113]

  As usual, the law proved some very creaky machinery. Oftentimes the judges of the police court had a hard time figuring out the crime, the level of culpability, the history of the accused, and, of course, a reasonable punishment. Since the complete list of variables made the head spin, justice varied wildly and the arrested parties were completely flummoxed.

  Jo Bullock probably thought her house at 21 Sheldon Street was a double for Ada Leffingwell’s enormously successful place at 5 Arch Street. Both houses were very close to Main Street—in the best neighborhood in the city. This latest brush with the law—even at the gentle hands of Judge Sumner—caused her to rethink the whole matter. However, before she did anything, she talked to Tom Hollister—the Hartford-born businessman with the kind of police protection money couldn’t buy.

  Chapter 3

  A Different Tack

  After two run-ins with the police in as many years, Jennie spent her days in a dither. Like so many other women of her time, she had a grammar school education and no marketable skills. She couldn’t afford to quit, but she couldn’t afford to get arrested or detained again either. There was a point where the police would give up on a house and “break it up.” She couldn’t afford to let that happen.

  So Jennie concocted a plan. To begin, she approached Tom Hollister about buying one of his houses on Kilbourn Street. Most operators in the prostitution business only leased their houses so that they could disappear in the event of real trouble. By owning her house, Jennie would have an easier time convincing a judge that the girls living with her were friends and not prostitutes. The second prong of this attack followed along the same tack. By owning a place in the worst part of the city, the police would be more inclined to leave her alone—she continued to believe.

  Tom Hollister clearly had a soft spot in his heart for Jo Bullock because he sold her 43 Kilbourn Street. By April 18, 1871, the date of the title transfer, Milton Clyde of Springfield had already begun work on the Valley Railroad. (Since the tracks hugged the Connecticut River all the way to Old Saybrook, Clyde bought a cabin cruiser and ran the whole job from fifty feet offshore.) The reason that the Kilbourn properties were of interest was that the Valley Railroad needed the land by the river in Hartford. Naturally, those who owned property in the area would be handsomely rewarded. In May of 1873, Tom Hollister and Jo Bullock sold their Kilbourn Street property to the Valley Railroad for a nice profit.[114] (Though at this stage of her life Jennie called herself Jo Bullock, when she bought and sold property she still reverted to Jane McQueeney.)

  It’s clear by the way these documents were handled that Tom Hollister and Jo Bullock were working together now. She began to spend more and more time helping Tom Hollister run his State Street house and through the 1870s they set the stage for a life together.[115]

  For Jo Bullock, it seemed like a smart move. Tom Hollister’s business skills were better than hers and previously he depended on other women to act as madames at his house. Jo could be the new madame at the State Street place and things would continue smoothly. Incidentally, great instability characterized the tenderloin districts across America. Partnerships were formed and then collapsed; inmates left for better pay or a nicer madame; police court judges offered young prostitutes a choice between jail or a one-way ticket out of town; inmates got sick, or simply decided to quit the life. The players moved about constantly.

  At the time, there were three inmates at Tom Hollister’s house. From Vermont, there was a twenty-four-year-old dressmaker, Jenny Ford; another dressmaker, twenty-two-year-old Nettie Livingston, hailed from New York; and the nineteen-year-old Texan, Carrie Anesworth, pretended to be a milliner. Dressmaker and milliner were two of the most popular fantasy careers of young prostitutes. Another favorite—more popular in the Midwest—was clerk in a dry goods store. In Rhode Island, girls claimed that they “worked in a cotton mill.” But in Hartford, they preferred “worked in a silk mill,” as the Cheney Brothers hired thousands of young silk workers for their huge plants on Main Street—in the huge brownstone that later became Brown, Thompson’s—and then later Market Streets. Hands down though, dressmaker proved the most popular fantasy career.[116]

  One of Dr. William Sanger’s questions to his 2,000 patients concerned their trades before they entered prostitution. Almost half (933) were servants—though the girls who chose prostitution in the central Connecticut area clearly saw their choice as preferable to cleaning houses and entered prostitution before they would have begun work as domestic servants or housekeepers. According to Dr. Sanger’s data, another 499 lived with their parents; 121 were dressmakers; and, 105 were tailoresses.[117]

  Far more interesting in Dr. Sanger’s study was the average weekly pay of women and young girls before they became prostitutes. A shocking 26 percent were making only $1 a week; 44 percent were making $2 a week or less; and, of all the 2000 women in the study, 55 percent made $3 a week or less. (The average weekly wage for a man in 1855 was about $7.)

  Roughly one-half of the women had Protestant backgrounds, while another half were reared as Roman Catholics. The parentage of Sanger’s patients told an interesting tale. All of the women’s fathers were uneducated workingmen—farmers, laborers, carpenters, blacksmiths and so forth, while 94 percent of their mothers had no income outside the home. As one ponders these statistics, it becomes obvious that society had no work for young girls in the Gilded Age. If a young woman didn’t marry, she could work in a mill, a manufactory, or as a clerk in a store, but beyond these simple outlets, there were few choices.

  In Howard Woolston’s 1921 text Prostitution in the United States, his sample group of 1,000 prostitutes showed that if young girls entered the available trades, they could expect to earn $14.48 a week, while the inmates in the bordellos made $45.44 a week—more than three times as much. This windfall didn’t ensure happiness or a good life, but for those without education or prospects of any kind, it surely must have looked attractive.[118]

  In 1878, the social evil formed such a confused muddle across the United Sates that in Cincinnati, a wholesale raid of all the houses of ill fame ended in lunacy. Word quickly got to Police Superintendent George Ziegler that “the order was only intended to apply to Monte men, loafers, and prostitutes . . . not to ‘respectable houses of ill fame.’ At 2:30 p.m., the station houses were told to cease raiding and release all the prostitutes on their own recognizance. . . . When the few prostitutes—arrested before the order was quashed—were paraded into court the following morning, Judge Wilson discharged them all on the grounds that none of them were arrested on warrants, as required by law. Then the judge strongly impressed upon the offi
cers the importance of warrants in matters of this nature.”[119]

  In her move to State Street, Jo Bullock accepted a few tradeoffs. Thanks to Tom Hollister’s police connections, there remained very little chance of trouble with the police, but if something went wrong Jo Bullock would have to take the arrest. She might even be forced to spend a night in jail. Tom Hollister would do whatever he could to get her out on bail—or whatever else his lawyers could arrange—but Jo would have to accept the indignity. Besides the police connection, one last safeguard remained. Tom Hollister’s house on State Street catered to men of the highest rank and station. Judges, lawyers, legislators, businessmen, elected and appointed officials, and a host of other men of status sought out Tom Hollister’s luxurious house. These men, of course, did not want their favorite sporting house raided or compromised in any way. And lest we forget, some of these men called the tune for the mayor and members of the common council as well. In effect, this added another layer of protection.

  Jo Bullock and Tom Hollister dated through the mid-1870s, and on January 5, 1878, they married. As the license states, Tom Hollister, a forty-seven-year-old bachelor, married thirty-four-year-old Jane McQueeney, also single. Owing to the brutally cold New England weather in January, Rev. Samuel A. Davis married the couple in the rectory of the Universalist Church on Main Street. The Hollisters were members of the Universalist Church despite their lack of regular participation. Owing to the Hollisters’ business—and complete lack of penitence or intent to reform—attendance at weekly services would have caused too much hostility among other congregants. Logically, Jennie and Tom Hollister did not attend services very often.[120]