Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott

Author:Karen Abbott
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: History: American, Chicago, 20th Century, Social History, WI), Illinois, Psychology, Human Sexuality, Ada, United States - 20th Century (1900-1945), Social Science, Midwest (IA, Brothels - Illinois - Chicago, Brothels, ND, NE, Everleigh Club, History - General History, State & Local, Minna, United States - State & Local - Midwest, United States, IL, IN, Illinois - Local History, History, Prostitution - Illinois - Chicago, OH, MO, MN, MI, Prostitution, General, KS, Everleigh, History - U.S., Biography & Autobiography, SD
ISBN: 9781400065301
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

Now this, the First Ward leaders acknowledged, was a problem. True, Chicago’s rank-and-file press corps spent more time at the Everleigh Club than in their offices. Minna always recalled the morning a fire erupted in a warehouse near the Levee. Flames spread, trapping several inside. An alarm shrieked through the streets.

An editor at the Tribune called for reporters. No one responded. Sighing, he picked up the phone and dialed the Everleigh Club’s phone number: Calumet 412.

“There’s a 4-11 fire over at Wabash Avenue near Eighteenth Street,” he said. “Any Tribune men there?”

“The house is overrun with ’em,” a maid replied. “Wait a minute, I’ll put one on.”

But newspaper publishers and owners weren’t at liberty to indulge in such behavior. Any newspaper that profited from writing about the Levee had an obligation, at the same time, to editorialize against the district. The Tribune, as Chicago’s paper of record, had taken the lead on both fronts.

Hinky Dink, now worried about sagging sales, assumed charge of the tickets himself and recruited Ike Bloom to help. First Ward henchmen again made the rounds, carrying rolls of tickets and lists, deciding who could be hit up and how hard:

“Mercy, a hundred tickets!” moaned a madam on the list. “Why, it was only seventy-five last year—and my girls don’t go anymore, it is getting that common!”

“You’ve got two more girls here than you had last winter, ain’t you,” the collector pointed out. “Well, then.”

And the madam found a hundred tickets clenched in her fist.

“Seventy-five tickets?” asked a businessman, sitting in his Loop office. “Your ball is getting pretty rough, and the newspapers—”

“You got a permit for a sign last year,” the collector interrupted. “Didn’t you? Huh?”

He did indeed, so seventy-five tickets now cluttered his desk.

Ladies of the Levee, at the behest of Hinky Dink, circulated the Union Stock Yards, flashing legs and waving reams of tickets at meatpackers. One hundred more reported for “nightly duty” in the back room of a saloon owned by Jim O’Leary (son of Mrs. O’Leary of Great Fire fame) on South Halsted Street, advising cattlemen in town for the stock show that they really must stay just a bit longer, check out the fabulous Derby at the Coliseum on the fourteenth. Bundles of tickets were shipped to red-light districts across the country, where sympathetic madams doled them out to harlots and loyal clientele.

And someone harassed the reverend of Garfield Boulevard Presbyterian Church, the latest reformer to join Farwell’s anti-Ball efforts, leaving two menacing telephone messages and mailing eight letters, each written in the same firm, bold hand:

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