Milwaukee Mayhem by Matthew J. Prigge

Author:Matthew J. Prigge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Published: 2015-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Patrons drinking at a Milwaukee dance hall

WHi Image ID 6510

But most alarming was the diversity of the writhing crowd—young girls and boys, married women, professional mashers, dashing rakes, pimps, loafers, and prostitutes. And mixed among all of these were African American men, talking and dancing with white women, sitting at their tables and buying them drinks. That night, amidst the revelry, Chief Ellsworth vowed from beneath his worn-out hat to do what no other city official had yet been able to do—he would end the party at Rosina’s.

A week later, after yet another denial of a saloon permit for the place, Ellsworth struck. In the still of the hot summer night, he quietly trucked a small army of two dozen officers from the central station to Eighth and Galena. As the typical scene “of drunken debauchery and merriment” played out inside the hall, officers snuck into place, covering every door and window in the building. Just past midnight, Ellsworth’s men burst in through the main and side doors. The crowd of more than one hundred was set into a panic and a stampede soon ensued. For a few precious moments, revelers managed to stream through a window left unguarded by the police. But the gap was quickly sealed, and Ellsworth’s army aligned Rosina’s patrons into two long lines and marched them out into the street. A pair of patrol wagons were filled to capacity and sent to the south-side and central stations. Those left behind were marched under guard to the nearby west-side station. In total, eighty-four men, women, and teenagers were taken in, each booked on a charge of being an inmate of a disorderly house.

Lost in the tumult of the raid was Rosina Georg. Always one for dodging the law, she had somehow managed to elude capture during the raid. While her patrons were booked en masse, a pair of detectives returned to the hall to search for her. She was found quickly, hiding in the attic of the building. Handcuffed and hauled to the west-side station, she was charged, yet again, with being the keeper of a disorderly house and operating a saloon without a permit.

The morning after the raid, five hundred people crowded into Market Square to gawk at those pulled during what was being called the biggest raid in city history. Newspapers marveled at the makeup of the prisoners. The Sentinel noted that the men taken in ranged from boys to old men, with “really every condition and class of life . . . represented.” The paper described the women taken in as mostly between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five and consisting largely of the “daughters of the respectable German citizens of the north-western quarter of the city.” The Journal found a bit more variety, writing that “women known to police circles wore an indifferent look [in court],” while “working girls, caught away from home, bedewed their handkerchiefs with emotion.”

All but three of the arrested were convicted and fined five dollars. A pair of

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