Prostitution in the Gilded Age

by Kevin Murphy

  Edward Reed was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1821. Beginning his working life in a foundry, Reed switched to railroads in 1843. Five years later, he joined the New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield road, and the Reeds moved to Hartford.

  A decade later, when Hartford built its water works, Edward Reed served as one of the five original water commissioners. He knew so much about steam power that he turned out to be an enormous help on the project. The pump house for the water works housed an Elisha Root-designed steam engine to pump Connecticut River water to a reservoir atop Lord’s Hill (on Garden Street near Myrtle). As sometimes happened in city projects, the denizens who knew the least about steam engines fell in love with the Cornish engine—an engine designed to pump enormous amounts of water out of the copper mines in Cornwall, England. Though reliable, each cycle of the Cornish engine brought a colossal piston down with such a bone-jarring thud that it would have shaken the pump house apart in just a few years. Thanks to the efforts of Edward Reed and Elisha Root, the public at last got enough information to make the right decision and avoid a terrible mistake.

  In 1872, when a number of roads were consolidated, Edward Reed was promoted to superintendent and moved to New Haven. Two years later, he became a vice president. Reed voted Democratic, but the Republican-leaning Courant wrote at his passing, “He was a locomotive engineer and could run an engine, and a machinist and could make one, and a civil engineer and could build a bridge or lay out a curve. He was a large man, with good nature marked unmistakably on his face, and he had very many friends in this city, where he lived so long. His wife and both his daughters were with him at his death.”[195]

  Tom Hollister’s sister, Addie, presented a little more delicate matter. She had never married and still lived in the family homestead at 72 Hudson Street. Tom had to make sure that she remained financially comfortable.

  His biggest concern, of course, was his wife Jennie. Her health varied. She had good days, but she had bad days too, and running the operation on Wells Street in his absence would be tough on her. The maid, Jessie Lansing, would stay on, as would Annie Wilson, the cook and housekeeper, but life would still be tough for Jennie.

  The Courant managed a nice obituary for Tom Hollister, even mentioning, “In his younger days, he possessed a good baritone voice and sang at several concerts.” In the Gilded Age, a massive double standard existed along gender lines. Tom Hollister could be memorialized as a man “well known about town and to many people throughout the state, while his wife Jennie—in the same obituary—was referred to as “a well-known woman.” For Editor-in-Chief Charles Hopkins Clark to allow the use of this code-phrase for prostitute right after Jennie Hollister lost her husband seems beneath contempt, but Clark was known for his tedious rectitude and pompous personality. Be that as it may, the Courant’s tribute to Tom Hollister sounded much like that offered for Connecticut’s immensely popular Democratic Governor Thomas Seymour who died in 1868—“Probably no one man has more friends in the state.”[196]

  After Tom Hollister’s interment at Cedar Hill, Jennie’s health began to decline and Angeline Start became a frequent visitor at 76 Wells Street. Angeline liked to think that she offered an enormous amount of advice and counsel during Jennie’s last few years, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Jennie gave Tom Hollister’s horses, harnesses, and other equipment from the barn to Angeline and Joe Start. She also gave clothing to Angeline regularly and always paid Angie’s way when the two of them traveled together. As far as advice and counsel, one reporter laughed and wrote, “Jennie Hollister was not the kind of woman who needed a great deal of advice or counsel.”[197]

  At 9:00 a.m. on December 27, 1894, Thomas Adams Hollister died of interstitial nephritis (ureamia), a condition in which the kidneys lose their ability to pass urea. Bodily waste (urea) then finds its way into the bloodstream. Tom Hollister suffered greatly from headaches, swelling, and nausea. The funeral began at 2 p.m. on Monday, December 31, 1894 in the big front parlor at 76 Wells Street, and Tom Hollister was buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery later the same day. (In the 1800s, as long as gravediggers could turn the earth with a shovel, gravesite services continued along customary lines. Only when frost made the ground impregnable were caskets stored in crypts until spring.)[198]

  Tom Hollister’s last will and testament had been drawn up on February 1, 1891. For a man who owned quite a bit of property, the will wasn’t complicated. His older sister, Annie Reed, received $500. Since her husband proved so provident in all things, Tom could rest assured that Annie would be fine. Obviously, if she ever needed help, he would be there—or so he thought.

  In an effort to set Addie up for the length of her natural life, Tom gave her $2,600 and took back a mortgage for $1,400 on 72 Hudson Street. Better for him to hold the mortgage—which he could simply forgive if necessary—than to have it in the hands of bankers. Lastly, Tom gave the remainder of his estate, both real and personal, to his wife Jennie Hollister, his administrator.

  The appraisal of Tom Hollister’s estate showed the follow:

  ½ interest in 76 Wells Street $4,500

  2 horses $150

  wagons, sleighs, and barn app. $165

  cash in banks . . . $1,247

  . . . $1,078

  . . . $2,244

  1st mortgage, 72 Hudson St. $1,400

  farm (New Britain Ave.) $1,012

  1 diamond stud $100

  1 diamond ring $100

  1 gold watch $85

  =============

  $12,083

  Tom Hollister’s physician, Dr. Nathan Mayer, was a Bavarian immigrant. Nathan’s father, Rabbi Isaac Mayer—who lost his land during the German revolutions of 1848—served in Cincinnati and Rochester before settling in Hartford in 1859. Isaac Mayer became the first rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Hartford on April 1, 1856. Rabbi Mayer, a scholarly man, taught Hebrew and published one of the first Hebrew grammars in the United States in 1854, translated Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) into German, and wrote a textbook The Source of Salvation for Hebrew schools in 1874.

  Dr. Nathan Mayer was born on December 25, 1838, emigrated with his father in 1849, and graduated from the Cincinnati Medical School in 1859. He then returned to Europe for a two-and-a-half-year study-residence at Munich, Vienna, and Paris. In January of 1862, the twenty-four-year-old physician once again sailed for America and began his medical career as a field surgeon in the Union Army. In March 1862, he was commissioned assistant surgeon of the 11th Regiment Infantry Connecticut Volunteers, stationed in North Carolina. Later, he was promoted to surgeon with the 16th Regiment Infantry Connecticut Volunteers, replacing Abner S. Warner of Wethersfield, who had resigned. The 16th Connecticut wasn’t well trained and at the last minute was tossed into the fighting at Antietam—the bloodiest one-day battle of the War of the Rebellion. The regiment suffered 52 percent casualties at Antietam, but fought two-and-a-half months later at Fredericksburg, where they struggled through another bloodbath. Dr. Nathan Mayer was appointed surgeon of the 16th Connecticut on December 24, 1862, and Dr. Warner—who had mustered in on August 24, 1862—resigned on January 9, 1863.[199]

  Dr. Mayer was initially entrusted with thirty typhoid patients. He housed them in tents and crude log barracks left behind by the Confederates. Additionally, he trained all of the male nurses, stole a cow for milk, bought some beer to “stimulate his patients—Munich-style,” and even oversaw the operation of the kitchen in his spare time.

  All the while, Dr. Mayer was responsible for twenty-five smallpox patients who were squirreled away in the woods a half-mile from the typhoid unit. When the soldiers had recovered or been moved to the new hospital at Newbern, North Carolina, he burned everything and returned to his unit. When the 16th Connecticut was captured by the Confederates at Plymouth, North Carolina near the end of the war, Dr. Mayer landed in Libby Prison. He remained there a month, at which time he joined in an exchange of non-combatants. Not long after, he became a brigadier general and served as medical off
icer for the Union soldiers at Newbern. Dr. Mayer mustered out in 1865 and returned to Hartford.

  In civilian life, Dr. Mayer became one of the finest physicians in central Connecticut, running his medical practice from an office on Main Street while living on Pearl Street. As surgeon general of Connecticut under Gov. Marshall Jewell, Dr. Mayer wrote an 1873 report on the state’s prisons and jails. Like his father, Dr. Mayer was a scholar, known as a writer, poet, and music critic for The Hartford Times over a span of forty years. As a founding member of St. Francis Hospital in 1897, Dr. Mayer enjoyed an estimable position in the medical field. In early May 1912, he entered Hartford Hospital with weakness of the heart and a general breakdown of his system. Two months hence, in the late afternoon of July 10, 1912, he breathed his last.[200]

  Tom Hollister’s passing was discreetly noted in the local papers, but newspapers like the Bridgeport Sunday Herald found it cause for lusty satire and comic bacchanal. Bridgeport has always been a blue collar manufacturing city—and the home of legendary hucksters like P.T. Barnum—but the Park City trailed Hartford in residents. In 1900, the population figures for Hartford and Bridgeport were roughly 80,000 and 70,000, respectively. Also, during the Gilded Age, the per capita income in the Charter Oak City was the highest in the country, while Bridgeport lagged considerably. Additionally, since Hartford was the Capitol City of the state, it would always outshine a smaller manufacturing city. Bridgeport had a chip on its shoulder and always ached to humiliate the Capitol City in print. With this in mind, Tom Hollister’s obituary in the Sunday Herald served Bridgeport’s needs well—

  The funeral of the late Tom Hollister took place from the family’s residence, No. 76 Wells Street, this afternoon at 2 p.m. and was largely attended by the friends and relatives of the dead philanthropist. The services were conducted by Rev. E. S. Westcott, a lifelong friend of the deceased. A quartet of female voices, Misses Eva, Fanny, Cora, and Hazel, all of whom have for some time been members of the household of Col. and Mrs. Hollister, furnished the music. The selections were Watts’ charming hymn Her Golden Hair Was Hanging Down Her Back; Cardinal Newman’s I’m A Little Too Young To Know, and Tennyson’s O, The Midway. [The first two stanzas of the Watt piece tell the whole story.]

  There was once a country maiden came to London for a trip

  And her golden hair was hanging down her back

  She was weary of the country so she gave her folks the slip

  And her golden hair was hanging down her back.

  It was once a vivid auburn but her rivals called it red

  So she thought she could be happier with another shade instead

  And she stole the washing soda and applied it to her head

  And her golden hair came streaming down her back.

  The honorary bearers were men of various secret disorders in this city. Among the floral arrangements was a wreath of immortelles inscribed: “To My Old Landlord From A Reclaimed Woman;” a bank of flowers inscribed: “From Hazel;” a broken column from the Courant staff; and “a white dove carrying in its beak a card upon which was written: ‘I will see you later—Tate.’”

  A large assemblage from all walks of life attended the funeral. It has been ordered that the court go into mourning for three months.[201]

  Rev. E. S. Westcott was Attorney Edwin S. Westcott, an ornery, erratic lawyer from Glastonbury. About six months after Tom Hollister’s death, Attorney John Hooker asked Westcott to collect $200 from a client, yet Hooker never saw the money. Westcott claimed that the money was needed for “medical purposes,” and then ignored the matter. In turn, John Hooker launched a complaint with the Hartford bar. On May 28, 1895, Judge John M. Thayer disbarred Edwin Westcott “for conduct unbecoming a member of the bar.” Westcott’s life collapsed thereafter. His wife, Olive, sued him for divorce in 1900, claiming that he had deserted her on April 23, 1897. The last anyone heard of Edwin Westcott, he resided in Scranton, Pennsylvania, while working feverishly on a new patent medicine.[202]

  The song And Her Golden Hair Was Hanging Down Her Back was an 1894 popular song released on Berliner Records by Dan W. Quinn. Monroe H. Rosenfeld wrote the song—with music by Felix McGlennon. The satirists at the Bridgeport Sunday Herald attributed the “hymn” to Isaac Watts, the eighteenth century English hymnwriter, in an effort to heighten the humor and avoid any copyright problems, since the newly released song came out very close to the time that they composed this parody of Tom Hollister’s obituary.

  The “I will see you later . . . Tate” reference traces to Nahum Tate’s 1681 rewrite of Shakespeare’s King Lear entitled The History of King Lear. Tate’s version is similar to Shakespeare’s, but features a happy ending.

  Tom Hollister probably knew that his fifty-eight-year-old sister, Addie, was seeing a gentleman, because only five months after his passing, on June 5, 1895, she married Omri R. Brewer, a seventy-one-year-old farmer from East Hartford. Addie Hollister was a noted cook and baked all the pies for the café at Brown, Thompson & Co. on Main Street. The wedding took place at Addie Hollister’s homestead on Hudson Street and the bride and groom planned to live on the Brewer farm in East Hartford. In preparation for married life, Omri Brewer had extensive renovations done to his home on the corner of Main and Willow Streets.[203]

  Sadly, the marriage of Omri Brewer and Addie Hollister wasn’t necessarily what Addie needed. She died only three years after her wedding and was buried at Cedar Hill with her parents, Joseph and Louisa, as well as her brother, Tom, and his wife, Jennie Hollister. Omri Brewer is not buried with Addie.[204]

  Chapter 6

  To Every Season

  Jennie and Tom Hollister made an unbeatable business couple because they complemented each other so well. Tom Hollister was such a likeable person that meeting and entertaining politicians and businessmen from all over Connecticut turned into the easiest part of his job. He seemed at peace with his choices in life and was considered a boon companion. Meanwhile, Jennie Hollister had become the perfect hostess. An evening at 76 Wells Street—in the days before mass entertainment—tempted more than its fair share of men.

  Not to argue that houses of ill fame competed directly with other types of evening entertainment, but it should still be considered that options existed. There were opera houses, theaters, and concert venues all around town. Gone were the days at mid-century when the incomparable Jennie Lind—the Swedish Nightingale—had to perform at the Fourth Congregational Church on Main Street and bill her concerts as religious recitals.

  The Robert’s Opera House on Main Street had been taken over by Jacobs & Proctor in 1886. Jacobs & Proctor’s Opera House began their run by completely renovating the theater. They even installed a telephone so that patrons could reserve tickets without leaving home. Jacobs and Proctor’s offered everything from grand opera to traveling indoor circuses. (Vaudeville didn’t hit Hartford until 1910.) Despite the best of intentions, and a laudable pile of improvements to the theater, the partnership of Jacobs and Proctor only lasted a couple of years, after which Frederick Proctor worked alone until 1896. After that, the Hartford Opera Company leased the building. Competitors included Allyn’s Opera House on Asylum Street, numerous variety shows at Germania Hall, and the Horse Guard Armory on Main Street. The biggest auditorium in the city, Foot Guard Hall, was located on High Street and hosted the Governor’s Ball among other extravaganzas. Additionally, there were a dozen billiards halls and several bowling alleys. Though P. T. Barnum died in 1891, his circus—and its descendant, Barnum & London Ten United Monster Shows—still toured the eastern United States, usually hitting Hartford in early June. (It would take a very poor businessman indeed to close a show that made a profit of $10,800 in just two days!)[205]

  The early 1890s offered more amusements than had been seen before. Even the Panic of 1893 did not alter the great shift in American life. The Republican President Benjamin Harrison had three favorite hobbies: billiards, driving, and shooting. So said, in 1889, Connecticut Senator Joe Hawley went duck hunt
ing with President Harrison and four other men in Cypress Swamp on a James River estate belonging to the president’s Virginia relatives. During that outing, President Harrison—an arrantly bad shot—mistook a farmer’s hog for a coon and dispatched the fat “porker” with great panache.[206]

  The demimonde grew in the Capitol City each year, right up to the turn of the century. There wasn’t anything to alter the girls’ wicked ways, especially those who were just starting down the path of ruination. The Hollisters had become the oldest members of the Capitol City’s prostitution business. For this reason alone, they were completely separated from the unbridled younger members of the half-world. In 1890, Tom Hollister celebrated his sixtieth birthday, while Jennie turned forty-eight. At the same time that the flighty young girls in the tenderloin worried only about the next party, the older proprietors and madames were drawing up wills—Tom Hollister’s will was penned in 1891 and Jennie’s in 1893. Still, new characters heard the Lorelei‘s lieder of the wide open city on the Connecticut River and steered a course toward the Capitol City’s tenderloin district.

  Billy West was arguably the biggest sport that ever lived in Hartford. When it came to fast girls, horse races, or prizefights—not necessarily in that order—Billy could never get enough. His exploits were a constant topic of conversation in the half-world and he ran one of the best houses of ill repute—Jennie and Tom Hollister’s former house, the old Bange mansion on State Street.

  Billy’s real name was Ernest H. Stetson and he came into the world on January 21, 1862, in the small farming town of Ashfield, Massachusetts— twelve miles southwest of Greenfield. His father, James M. Stetson, worked as a farmer and stableman, and married Janey Bard at Halifax, Vermont, in 1858. Ernest Stetson’s grandfather, Merritt Stetson, owned a stagecoach company and his son, James M. (Ernest’s father), drove stages until he turned to farming when he was twenty-three.[207]