Behind Brothel Doors by Jan MacKell Collins

Author:Jan MacKell Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TwoDot
Published: 2022-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Not everyone was happy with Annie’s choices. In January of 1912, an attorney from Sacramento, California, Albert Pait, placed an ad in the Daily Bee claiming Annie was really Margaret Alice Pait and that she had four long-lost brothers. Meanwhile, the use of Annie’s home on Wirt Street was still being debated by the Old People’s Home Association when Joseph Nelson, who still occupied the home, was found dead under mysterious circumstances. Some said the man committed suicide, depressed because Annie left him nothing. The Daily Bee, however, told a different story, reporting that Nelson took a spill in the alley behind the house one night due to a stroke. Witnesses saw a young man with him, who said he would take the elderly Nelson inside and summon help. The next day Nelson was found dead in his bed and the gas in the kitchen stove had been left on. The strange young man had disappeared. Although the death was ruled a suicide, Nelson’s death remains highly suspicious. Notable is that the house had also been broken into previously.

In the end, Annie’s mansion on Wirt Street never was used by the Old People’s Home Association. The house was described as a “very attractive, large brick house, having large reception hall, parlor, living room, dining room, kitchen, den on the first floor; six fine sleeping rooms on the second floor; large, completely finished third floor. House is in excellent condition, newly decorated throughout; fine hardwood floors all through; beautiful plumbing, tiled bath, lavatories on first floor and in bed rooms. Hot water heat. Nice south front yard; fine shade, large porch, good brick garage.” But the Association wanted an all-new facility and claimed there was not enough money to run the house at its proposed location.14 The Association was eventually granted permission to sell the property in 1913, and the beautiful mansion was eventually torn down—as was Annie’s palatial parlor house on Douglas Street.

Today, Annie Wilson is remembered each Memorial Day due to the kindness of Mrs. Thomas Kimball, founder of The Creche. During Memorial Day festivities in 1912, Mrs. Kimball, in a gesture of solidarity, placed a yellow rose on Annie’s grave. She continued the tradition, which did not go unnoticed, up until she died in 1930. After that, Mrs. Kimball’s son, architect Thomas Kimball, took up the annual ritual until he, too, died in 1934. Another woman, Eloise McNichols, carried on the tradition for a few more years. But the tribute had ceased by 1979 when some cemetery officials were seen once again gracing Annie Wilson’s grave with a yellow rose. The tradition was revived, and, hopefully, continues to this day. Meanwhile, Wilson & Washburn, a neighborhood pub in the former Burnt District, pays tribute to Annie Wilson and Josie Washburn, who worked for Annie before becoming a prominent madam herself in Lincoln, and later wrote the scathing truth about life in the demimonde.

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