Sin in the Second City (49 page)

Chuck Kahler, my sweetheart and greatest champion, should remind me every day how lucky I am to have him.

And finally, to the great, inimitable city of Chicago: Thank you for having so many fabulous old secrets, and for being so willing to share them.

N
OTES AND
S
OURCES

Every girl who entered the “sporting life” did so intending to abandon her old one, and only in later years did the Everleigh sisters speak of their past—albeit, of course, in largely apocryphal terms. Minna never published her novel,
Poets, Prophets and Gods
(which purportedly included a chapter based on deceased sister Lula), and in 1938 she told Theodore Dreiser that she and Ada had written a book about their madam careers. This, too, went unpublished, but it’s curious that the sisters penned a book at all—or at least claimed to—considering the fact that Charles Washburn’s biography,
Come into My Parlor,
had been released two years earlier.

“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.

P
ART
O
NE:
T
HE
S
CARLET
S
ISTERS
E
VERLEIGH,
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: Jackson, 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.