Empire of Sin by Gary Krist

Author:Gary Krist [Krist, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7704-3707-7
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2014-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

UP on Esplanade Avenue—far from the ongoing turmoil in Black and White Storyville—retired madam Josie Arlington had fallen gravely ill. Sometime in early 1913, right around the time of the Tuxedo shootings, she had taken to her bed and had been declining ever since. By autumn, she was experiencing periods of delirium and had lost control of her bladder and her bowels. Whether this was a case of late-stage syphilis or some other disease is unknown. She was only forty-nine years old, but Josie Arlington had led a difficult and presumably unhygienic existence for much of her life, despite the luxury and ease she had more recently enjoyed as Mrs. Mary Deubler Brady.

Anna Deubler, now twenty-nine, was her aunt’s principal caregiver. According to the testimony of family friends, the two were still absolutely devoted to each other. And while there were others in the house to help—Anna’s mother, her aunt’s cousin Margaret, a nurse named Mrs. Jackson, and a family friend named Mrs. Walker—it was Anna who was mainly responsible for looking after the invalid. Once she even injured herself while trying to lift her now rather stout aunt from her bed. It was hard work for the slender young woman, but apparently Anna felt it was the least she could do for the person solely responsible for giving her the comfortable, respectable life she had enjoyed since birth.

Sometime in November of 1913, her aunt Mary became more forthcoming about her past. “Little girl,” she said one day when the two were alone, “how I have been fooling you.” She explained that she wanted Anna to help her write a book about her life—“a book for the protection of young women.” Anna was confused at first, but then, in a rush of confession, her aunt revealed everything. She told her all about her former life as a prostitute and then as Josie Arlington, queen of the demimonde, the famous madam of Basin Street. She also revealed that she and “Uncle Tom” had never been married, that even cousin Margaret had once been a prostitute, and that Margaret’s son—Anna’s own cousin Thomas—was a bastard, born in Josie’s first brothel on Customhouse Street.

Anna, understandably, was appalled. She ran out of the bedroom, found her uncle Tom, and asked him whether any of this was really true. “Child,” Brady said, “go back to Auntie and pay no attention. You know she is delirious.” But then Anna asked Mrs. Walker, who reluctantly confirmed everything. “My God,” the older woman lamented, “how much would Auntie not have given to spare you this.” Frantic, Anna went back to Brady and asked again if the story was true. Brady felt he could lie no longer. “Yes,” he said finally. “I’m sorry to say, it’s true.”

This sudden revelation was “simply horrible,” Anna would later say. She seemed especially upset by the fact that the whole family had been aware of the truth and hadn’t told her. “My father knew it; my brothers and my mother knew of the existing circumstances, and they countenanced it,” she said.

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