Prostitution in the Gilded Age

by Kevin Murphy

  The newspapermen in Bridgeport made a cogent point here. Bridgeport had a reputation as the most immoral city in Connecticut when it came to houses of assignation—fleabag hotels where soiled doves brought customers. Well and good, but when it came to the open acceptance of brothels, no municipality in the state could hold a candle to the Capitol City. Slicing the baloney a little on the thin side, one reporter noted, “In Bridgeport, the vice and immorality is light and frothy; in Hartford, it eats at the very roots of society from the highest to the lowest. . . . Hartford’s immorality results . . . from its shifting population. State officials are coming and going all the time, and when the legislature is in session, there is a large transient population in the Capitol City.”[301]

  As the public became more and more anxious for information about the new Hartford Bridge, Morgan Bulkeley finally released a truncated version of his overall plan to transform the whole East Side of town.

  In February of 1902, a New Bridge meeting commenced at the Hartford Board of Trade. The room seated about two hundred, but quickly it was standing room only. As different matters were discussed, it quickly became clear that everyone wanted a stone bridge. The Connecticut River Bridge and Highway Commission presented plans for the new bridge and its approaches. On the tables were huge architectural models of the plans under consideration.

  Morgan Bulkeley made a few points. Firstly, the bridge must be erected at the same spot where the old bridge stood and the Hartford terminus must be at Morgan Street (because the state only owned the land where the old bridge stood). Secondly, $500,000 was provided for the erection of the bridge and the improvement of the causeway in East Hartford. This improvement alone would take half the money, and the other half was not enough to build the bridge.

  The first plan envisioned an approach to the bridge coming diagonally from Morgan Street to the police headquarters on Market Street—then on to Main Street. This choice was the most expensive. The second option provided for the approach to run from Morgan Street to State Street. This offered a much wider approach to the bridge. A third scheme provided an approach from Morgan Street through State and Commerce Streets. (These three plans are simplified, but each involved huge changes to the landscape, including bulldozing buildings, moving railroad tracks, and so forth.)

  The commission was hampered in all its plans by the fact that the General Assembly had fixed $500,000 as the cost of the bridge and the five towns that benefited most were expected to pay for it. Hartford’s share was $379,000. In an odd arrangement, Hartford also received half of the tax money paid to the state by the trolley companies using the bridge. Out of these funds, the commission had constructed the temporary bridge and the causeway in East Hartford. The only way to raise more money was for the people of Hartford to pay more. Naturally, the commission wanted to know whether or not the citizens of Hartford would accept this.

  Morgan Bulkeley then told of the various kinds of bridge structures and their costs—from a girder bridge that would cost about $750,000; to a steel arch bridge at $880,000; and lastly, a stone bridge that would run $1.6 million. These figures did not include the cost of approaches in Hartford and East Hartford. Depending on the approach accepted, a sum between $750,000 and $1,357,000 had to be added to the cost of the bridge. Most people wanted a stone bridge, with a total price tag of about $3 million. (Author’s note: Massive cost overruns were rare in the early part of the twentieth century, but Morgan Bulkeley undoubtedly sensed that the work he had in mind could not possibly be completed for the sums that were being discussed.)

  The upriver cities and towns were positively rabid when it came to the “draw” in the bridge so that upriver navigation would remain a viable dream. (By lifting the draw, boats could pass through the new bridge.) Under the laws of the United States, a bridge cannot be placed across a navigable stream without a draw, unless the war department gives permission. If a draw had to be used, it would add considerably to the expense of the new Hartford Bridge.

  Morgan Bulkeley saw it this way: “Of the ten bridges between here and Springfield, only one had a draw. Besides, the river couldn’t be navigated above Hartford by any boats that couldn’t slip under the arch of the new bridge—as the span would be forty feet above low water mark. The draw issue was a dead letter.[302]

  At the next meeting of the common council, resolutions were adopted to appropriate $1 million for a stone bridge across the Connecticut River and $709,000 for the approach from the city. Both matters had to be submitted to vote of the people.[303]

  On March 11, 1903, the Courant reported that the bridge commissioners had reached a definite decision: the new bridge would be made of stone.[304] At one-fifth of a mile, it would be the largest stone arch bridge in the world.

  The most fascinating part of the construction of the new stone arch bridge involved the caissons. To imagine a caisson, think of an upside-down shoebox, without a lid. Secondly, pretend that the shoebox is made of very thick wood and the top is layered to a thickness of three feet. Lastly, imagine that there is only six feet of headroom in the finished wooden caisson.

  The man in charge of the caisson work was engineer Walter C. Ritner, who worked on the caissons at the New York and Brooklyn ends of the East River Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge). In the simplest form, at the Brooklyn Bridge, Ritner had to go down 96 feet, whereas, at Hartford he would only have to go down 60 feet to hit bedrock. However, there were only two massive piers at the Brooklyn Bridge, each requiring a caisson measuring 88 feet by 144 feet. For the Hartford Bridge, Ritner would have to sink eight caissons, each measuring 22 feet by 103 feet. After the final caisson was built and the men were digging out the earth from under it, eight caissons would be working in unison.

  To build these caissons, Ritner brought by boat three million feet of southern pine to the site. Since the biggest sloop on the river could only handle a half-million board feet of lumber, it took six massive sloops to get the lumber in place. Each of these sloops drew eight feet of water, and the water at the center of the river—near the Hartford Bridge site—was only twelve feet deep.

  As the caissons were completed—including their three-foot thick tops—concrete was poured on top to push the massive pile of wood to the bottom of the river. Then, twenty men went inside the caisson and dug it down to bedrock. Laborers on the Brooklyn Bridge got only $3.50 for a three-hour day, which was all they could work because of nitrogen narcosis—“the bends.” The ordinary laborers in the caissons at the Hartford Bridge received $2.50 for an eight-hour day. At a depth of fifty-five feet, the workday dropped to six hours and the hourly wage rose to $2.75. The men reached $3.00 when the concrete work began in the caisson.[305]

  On March 1, 1904, the caisson work began. The first trolley car would not cross over the bridge until November 29, 1907.

  Concurrent with the work on the new stone bridge, the Connecticut River Bridge & Highway Commission began a huge municipal renewal program. As Morgan Bulkeley sought to clean up the avenues to the new Hartford Bridge, he began knocking down buildings with the enthusiasm of a little child. The repugnant waterfront neighborhoods that had festered like open ulcers for a century came tumbling down. Ferry, Kilbourn, Commerce, Pleasant, and Charles Streets—as well as sections of Talcott, Grove and State Streets—were all slated for destruction. A new avenue, Connecticut Boulevard—running along the waterfront and forming a “T” at the entrance to the new bridge—would take their place.

  The newspapers documented each demolition as if the city were losing the mansions and country houses of highborn Victorian noblemen. “One brick building at the extension of the Charles Street has been torn down, and a building at the corner of Front and Pleasant Streets is now being torn down. Some of the families have been given fifteen-day notices to get out. It is estimated that fully 300 families will be obliged to move from buildings required for the bridge, the approach, and the boulevard.”[306]

  For four years, this process continued, as a part of town that had long ago outlived
its usefulness, came under the bulldozer’s blade. Humorously, some of the very properties that had become notorious, even wicked, were mourned alongside those with a sliver of redeeming social value. For some odd reason, the public had the vast butter soft heart of a woman when it came to lost causes and condemned neighborhoods.

  In a phrase, Morgan Bulkeley was a live-and-let-live kind of man. If most people were happy with the way vice was handled, then he could live with it. That said, with the new Hartford Yacht Club rising from the waters of the Connecticut River, and State Street designated as the most important approach to the new Hartford Bridge, he could see that the time had come for massive changes in the city. These changes did not coalesce in Morgan Bulkeley’s brain overnight.

  Several years before the old covered bridge burned, there were efforts afoot to replace it. However, when the bridge went up in flames in May 1895, the matter was predictably moved to a front burner. Even so, Morgan Bulkeley still had about eight years from the fire to the beginning of construction on the new bridge. This gave him the time he needed to coordinate a complete upgrade in Hartford’s East Side, together with the construction of the new Hartford Bridge. In the end, it was as if the bishops proclaimed “On all of the major approaches to the Hartford Bridge, there will be no brothels.”

  Chapter 8

  The End of an Era

  After Tom Hollister’s death in 1894, Jennie’s health declined more each year. She was only fifty-two when her husband passed away, but her constitution wasn’t what it should have been. Even her signature on Tom Hollister’s estate papers—unlike her earlier copperplate flourishes— showed a weak and trembling hand, suggesting a much older woman.

  Jennie and Tom Hollister had only been married for sixteen years, but these were comfortable and successful times. After Tom Hollister’s passing, not only could Jennie see huge changes coming to Hartford, but she had a better understanding than most, thanks to conversations with her high-powered patrons. The massive urban renewal taking place on the East Side would not immediately affect Wells Street, but Jennie knew enough people at City Hall to know that Hartford’s war on vice would eventually blanket the whole city. It was only a question of time.

  In the last few years of the 1890s, Jennie did some traveling with her old friend and mentor, Angeline Start. They took trips to New York, Boston, Old Point Comfort—at Hampton Roads, Virginia—and a few other places. They thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company. Jennie was now doing better financially than Angeline Start, who seemed to have less cachet than a barn swallow. Undoubtedly, this bothered Angeline Start since she had five years on Jennie Hollister and had given the younger woman her start.

  In addition to continuing the Hollisters’ business, Jennie continued as the charitable soul she had always been. Her obituary in the Courant—a paper not enamored of those in the prostitution business—spoke volumes. “Her death caused more comment than is usually the case when a woman of the half-world is called before her Maker. But Jennie Hollister was an extraordinary woman. She was charitable to a considerable degree and was beloved by many poor unfortunates who knew when they heard of her death that they had lost the best friend they had on this earth.”[307]

  Dr. Harlan P. Cole and his son, Dr. Hills Cole—homeopathic surgeons and gynecologists, with an office in the old Cheney building on Main Street—were Jennie Hollister’s physicians. A few years earlier, Dr. Hills Cole had diagnosed her with a “fatty heart,” and that was given as the cause of Jennie’s death on Sunday, April 29, 1900. Since the allopathic physicians—the forerunners of today’s medical doctors—believed in harsh treatments, including intestinal purging with calomel and vomiting induced with tartar emetic, homeopaths often achieved better results with their gentler methods. Patients, especially women, preferred the homeopaths’ milder techniques. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Jennie Hollister gravitated toward homeopaths despite her husband’s preference for an allopathic physician.[308]

  Family and friends attended Jennie Hollister’s funeral at 76 Wells Street on Thursday, May 3, 1900, and she was laid to rest the same day at Cedar Hill Cemetery next to her husband, Tom Hollister, his parents Joseph and Louisa Hollister, and his sister, Addie. The family monument in Section 5, Lot 147 at Cedar Hill is quite impressive and ringed with smaller stones for the individual family members.

  At her death, Jennie Gertrude Hollister suddenly had a middle name. With all the games Jennie played with her name throughout her life, this one might be the most curious. The name Gertrude appears frequently in the nineteenth century Hollister genealogy. It is not an Irish name. It seems that Jennie McQueeney made one final name change—to Jennie Gertrude Hollister—presumably because she liked the sound of it. This may be thought of as the perfect exit for a member of the half-world, whose members had more aliases than bank robbers in the Old West and never tired of reinventing themselves.[309]

  Though Jennie wasn’t yet sixty, she had outlived her mother, father, and four siblings. Beyond that, Tom Hollister had already made bequests to his two surviving sisters, large enough sums to last them the rest of their lives. It seemed that the three daughters of Bridget McQueeney Mahon of Hartford, Timothy McQueeney’s sister, were Jennie’s only kin. The first of these three, Anna Mahon, was so painfully shy that her name never appeared in the papers. The last two women, the widows Bridget Mahon Luckingham of Hartford and Mary Mahon Dalton of Waterbury, came to the fore. They were first cousins of Jennie Hollister.

  Just when it seemed that they were the only heirs, Judge Arthur Eggleston, with the help of the chief of police in Cleveland, Ohio, located an uncle, Francis “Frank” McGuire, who was the brother of Jennie Hollister’s mother, Jane. Born in 1832, Frank McGuire was seventeen years younger than Jennie’s mother. “He was born in Ireland near where [Jennie] Hollister was born and came to the United States in 1849.” When Frank emigrated, he took the Abeona from Liverpool, with four of his siblings and landed in New York on December 7, 1849. They all went to Providence first and Frank worked as a laborer. Then he found a job in New York as a butler in a private home, and lastly served as a waiter at the Stillman House in Cleveland where he remained for over thirty years.[310]

  McGuire wasn’t much of a talker, but told Judge Eggleston quite a bit about the McGuires and McQueeneys of Dublin. McGuire explained, “His father, mother, and all of his siblings were dead now. Many of them didn’t marry and those that did never had children.”[311]

  Frank McGuire was sixty-eight, never married, and suffered from kidney problems and cirrhosis of the liver. He last visited Jennie Hollister two years ago in Hartford. After Frank McGuire finished his interview with Judge Eggleston, he drew up a will. If McGuire should die unexpectedly, he would still be the heir to his niece Jennie’s estate, and his will would direct all of Jennie Hollister’s funds to beneficiaries of Frank McGuire’s choosing.

  With these legal matters resolved, Frank McGuire went to live with his niece, Mary Dalton, and her four children in Waterbury. Speaking of Mary Dalton, Frank McGuire told Judge Eggleston, “She is a child of a sister of the father of Mrs. Hollister.”[312] (Bridget McQueeney Mahon was the younger sister of Timothy McQueeney, and she and her Irish-born husband, Patrick, came to America shortly after Jennie’s family.)

  No sooner had Frank McGuire put matters in order, than he took sick. At this point, the money had not yet passed to Frank McGuire because the estate was still in the process of settlement. On November 26, 1900—only seven months after Jennie Hollister’s passing—sixty-eight-year-old Francis McGuire passed away in Waterbury from Bright’s disease.[313]

  Before the discovery of Frank McGuire, the death of such a successful madame touched off a scavenger hunt for her will. The Wells Street property was turned upside down and, finally, Judge Arthur Eggleston sheepishly announced that he had the will; it was admitted to probate on May 8, 1900 without opposition.

  Jennie’s last will and testament seemed a simple enough document, executed on April 26, 1893, with on
ly four bequests: Firstly, Jennie gave $150 in trust to her husband, Tom Hollister, . . . “The money to be paid annually to Bishop Harkins of Providence, Rhode Island, to take care of Lot 16, Section 6 at St. Francis Catholic Cemetery in North Providence, Rhode Island.” (The final resting place of her beloved sister, Catherine “Katie” McQueeney, who was laid to rest in 1875.)[314]

  Secondly, Frank McGuire was to receive $1,000. Thirdly, her cousin Anna Mahon was given “all of Jennie’s books and family pictures, but no pictures of Jennie Hollister, nor the oil painting of Jennie’s sister, Katie.” Fourthly, the rest of Jennie’s estate, both real and personal, went to her husband, Thomas Hollister.[315]

  Probate Judge Harrison Freeman asked for the amount of the personal estate in order to set bond for the administrator. No one knew, so Fred Holt of the Connecticut Trust Company agreed to help. Holt said that the personal estate was between $12,000 and $14,000, mostly in bonds. After entertaining requests for an administrator, Judge Freeman assigned J. Gilbert Calhoun, and at the suggestion of Judge Arthur Eggleston, set bond at $15,000. Appraisers of the estate were also appointed and Angeline Start was asked to continue watching the Wells Street property.

  After Jennie’s funeral, the young prostitutes working at 76 Wells Street—Lillian Brown, Ida Miller, Edith Blane, and Jennie Smith—took their personal belongings and left the house. The only two items they were not allowed to take were a pair of talking parrots. Angeline Start knew the birds belonged to the girls, but she refused to let the parrots leave the premises. Of course, the idea of talking parrots in a brothel is rife with humor—and maybe that’s why Angeline didn’t want them to leave. What if these seemingly innocent parrots had been trained to say, “Welcome back, Governor Bulkeley?” Angeline Start had enough imagination to realize that the talking parrots were as good as two little kegs of dynamite. Whether or not the parrots could actually speak remains a titillating mystery. In any event, common sense suggests that the parrots got their necks wrung and wound up in the Connecticut River.[316]