Friday, August 03, 2007

Number Eighty-Five

The Best Little Whorehouse in Chicago

The story of the city’s most exclusive brothel—and the reformers who shut it down.  By Dan Kelly, of the Chicago Reader

KAREN ABBOTT STARTED her first book scouring microfilm of the Chicago Tribune at the University of Georgia library. The sister of her great-grandmother had disappeared during a trip to Chicago soon after the two emigrated from Slovenia in 1905, and Abbott, an Atlanta-based journalist, was curious about the city and times that had claimed her. Her research led her to the Levee, Chicago’s red-light district, where many missing women were said to have ended up, and then to Ada and Minna Everleigh, madams of the infamous Everleigh Club. “It’s cheesy,” says Abbott, who spent three years writing Sin in the Second City, released this week by Random House, “but I came to think of them as family. I have pictures of them hanging up in my house right now.”

Little is known of the Everleighs’ background. They claimed descent from Kentucky aristocracy but are believed to have come from a Virginia family hit hard by the Civil War. Simms was their real name; Everleigh—a pun—was assumed, as were, the women insisted, their southern accents. “Just piecing together their whole background,” says Abbot, “they were ingenious in how they learned to present themselves.” After running a brothel in Omaha, the women moved to Chicago in late 1899 to establish a high-class bordello.

Ada and Minna bought a retiring madam’s mansion at 2131-2133 S. Dearborn and put out a call for women interested in work free from pimps, abuse, and indentured servitude. Madam Vic Shaw, the sisters’ greatest business rival, kept a professional whipper on staff.

The Everleighs hired women who were attractive, experienced, and drug- and alcohol-free; the minimum age was 18. Younger sister Minna instructed them in charm and culture, covering subjects ranging from literature to the art of seduction. She dressed them in couture and dubbed them the Everleigh butterflies.

House rules were strictly enforced under threat of immediate expulsion: no picking pockets, no knockout drops and robbery, and no boyfriends. The girls also had to pass monthly examinations for venereal disease. They were paid well and those dismissed were easily replaced from the Everleighs’ long waiting list of candidates.

To stay open the sisters had to placate crime lords and politicos alike. Ike Bloom, who fronted a sleazy Randolph Street dance hall, set a sum of ten grand a year for protection by the likes of Chicago Outfit founder James “Big Jim” Colosimo. “Tribute” was also paid to First Ward aldermen Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse John” Coughlin.

Visiting the Everleigh was an experience available only to the elite. The parlors were lavishly furnished with paintings, sculptures, a perfume fountain, a gold-leaf piano, and solid gold spittoons. Clients could enjoy rare wines, string orchestras, and fireworks. The dining room served gourmet fare. “A lot of the patrons came just for the meals,” Abbott says. “The girls were almost a side attraction.”

By most accounts the sisters were high-hatted and tough as nails but had hearts as gold as their gilded parlors. The soft-spoken Ada was considered the brains of the operation—she balanced the books and was responsible for hiring; Minna socialized in the parlors with guests and was known for her sass. “I wish I could be more like her,” says Abbott. “To not care what anybody thinks ever is sort of liberating.”

Entrance was by referral letter only, and clients were expected to spend a minimum of $50 per visit or face banishment (a three-course meal could be had for 50 cents at the time). High-profile guests included Prince Henry of Prussia, who made a special stop at the Everleigh during a visit to Chicago in spring of 1902. “It was more of a gentleman’s club,” says Abbott. “The cachet of being able to go there, just because they turned down so many people. It became an exclusive badge of honor just to be admitted.”

Occasionally the house was caught up in scandal. When Marshall Field Jr., son of the store founder, was found shot at his Prairie Avenue home on November 22, 1905, rumor spread that one of the Everleigh butterflies had done it. The coroner’s report backed the official story—that he’d shot himself while cleaning his hunting weapon—but gossips insisted he’d been wounded during a visit to the club the previous night and smuggled back home by the sisters.

Unlike earlier Everleigh narratives like Charles Washburn’s Come Into My Parlor, Abbott’s account devotes a lot of space to the progressive politics of the era. The number of women who worked outside the home jumped from 3,100 to 38,000 in the 30 years between 1880 and 1910, she says: “Everybody was freaking out about women entering the workforce in such large droves, leaving their rural homestead and entering the big city.” Not all of them found legitimate work, and when women started disappearing the nation was gripped by a white slavery panic, fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment. The only way a good white Christian girl could become a whore, Americans were convinced, was if she was seduced, drugged, and sold to a brothel.

Religious reformers descended upon the Levee, preaching and pamphleteering in an attempt to shame patrons and “save” the district’s women. The Everleigh sisters referred to these late-night missionaries as “firemen” and welcomed them to the house to talk to their girls. None of the butterflies were said to have shown any interest in leaving.

Abbott says the Reverend Ernest Bell started preaching outside the brothels in 1902 after he was propositioned in front of the Chicago Theological Seminary. He admonished the district’s sinners to repent despite being bashed and gassed by Levee pimps. “If I were a novelist I wouldn’t have been able to name him Ernest,” Abbott says. “I think he really believed in what he was doing and his motives were true and good and upright. He really believed he was saving women from Satan’s clutches.”

Others reformers, like Clifford Roe, an assistant state’s attorney, jumped on board to further their own political interests. “I think Roe was a bit more Machiavellian and manipulative with the facts,” says Abbott. He developed a side business lecturing and writing books with sensational titles like Panders and Their White Slaves.

The white slavery scare was also used as an excuse to attack the non-Protestant immigrants pouring into the country. Both Bell and Roe pointed the finger at foreigners in their condemnations of theatrical agencies, dance halls, and ice cream parlors. “Shall we defend our American civilization, or lower our flag to the most despicable foreigners—French, Irish, Italians, Jews and Mongolians?” Bell wrote in his 1910 book Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls.

Chicago prosecutor Edwin Sims fought prostitution in Chicago and was the inspiration for the Mann Act of 1910, also known as the White Slave Traffic Act. “I am determined to break up this traffic in foreign women. It is my sworn duty, and it should be done to protect the people of the country from contamination,” he told the Tribune in 1908.

“Some of the things the federal officials were saying I had to read twice,” says Abbott. “Like ‘War on Terror,’ they had their political talking points and they used them very effectively to manipulate the public and push their own agenda forward.”

Mayor Carter Harrison II, who usually turned a blind eye to illegal goings-on in the Levee, was eventually forced to reckon with the reformers’ growing political power. In 1911, after a friend from outside Chicago showed him “The Everleigh Club, Illustrated,” a leather-bound brochure with national distribution, he ordered the brothel’s closure.

Gradually the other brothels, dives, saloons, dance halls, gambling parlors, and opium dens of the district were also shuttered. On July 24, 1933, workers tore down the building that once housed the Everleigh Club, “heedless of the fact that they were wiping out one of the most lurid chapters in Chicago history,” according to a Tribune report from the time.

Although rooted in ignorance, the white slavery panic did give women, who were still a decade from suffrage, a rallying cause. “Through the end of it they started having hearings about women’s wages, [asking] how can a girl work in a factory for six dollars a week and not be expected to supplement her income doing nefarious things?” says Abbott. “The white slavery scare was a chance for [women] to insert themselves in political discourse.”

Meanwhile books like Roe’s, which included scenes of terrified harlots escaping brothels in flimsy negligees, made sexuality an acceptable topic of conversation. “Those narratives were like porn for puritans, but it was the first time people could discuss that, in a way, and not be considered untoward,” Abbott says.

As for the Everleigh sisters, after just over a decade doing business in Chicago, they’d amassed a million dollars in savings—$20.5 million today, Abbott estimates—and even more in jewelry, art, and Oriental rugs. They changed their name to Lester and moved to New York, where they bought a brownstone on the Upper West Side and founded a poetry discussion group with local ladies who knew nothing of their past. Minna died first, on September 16, 1948, at the age of 82. Ada lived until 95, dying January 6, 1960, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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The Golden Age of Chicago Prostitution: A Q&A with Karen Abbott from the Freakonomics Blog

Sin in the Second City, a new book by Karen Abbott, offers an in-depth look at the prostitution trade in turn-of-the-century Chicago. In particular, Abbott focuses on the Everleigh sisters, two madams who ran a high-class brothel on South Dearborn Street that earned them extraordinary wealth and international fame. Abbott agreed to answer our questions about her book.

Q: Could you describe the economics of the Everleigh brothel? What was the total income? Salaries for the Everleigh madams and their prostitutes? Food/decorating budget?

A: On a busy night, the Everleigh sisters could make as much as $5,000. They spent $18,000 per year in renovations alone, including the upkeep of a $15,000 gold piano and several $650 gilded spittoons. They allotted a budget of $2,000 to $5,000 a month for imported spirits. The sisters sold bottles of champagne for $12 in the parlors and $15 in the bedrooms, but never beer or liquor. They also paid about $800 a month in protection fees [to law enforcement officials].

The Everleigh Club “butterflies,” as they were called, pocketed from $100 to $400 each week—an unthinkable salary in other houses. “One $50 client is preferable to ten $5 ones,” Minna [Everleigh] advised her courtesans. “Less wear and tear.” A man had to pay $50 just to walk in the door, in an era when a three-course meal cost fifty cents. Dinner in the club’s Pullman Palace Buffet could cost another $150.

When the sisters retired, they had $1 million in cash, the equivalent of $20 million today.

Q: Tell us about the legality of prostitution. What was the stance on enforcement in the 1900s? How has it changed?

A: Prostitution was technically illegal at the turn of the last century, but it was also ubiquitous. Today’s image of the drug-addled streetwalker toiling under the menacing glare of her pimp wasn’t the norm back then. When the Everleighs were in business, every city with a population of more than 100,00 had a bustling red light district where dope fiends, pickpockets, and brawlers got their kicks next to lawyers, ministers, moguls, and, of course, politicians. Vice thrived, with municipal indulgence.

Brothels were considered a necessary evil; prostitutes kept “respectable” women safe from rape and the baser fantasies of their husbands. The Progressive-era reformers challenged this way of thinking, which led to a major culture war. The Everleighs were targeted because they were this gleaming, shining symbol of open and protected vice, known around the world.

Q: Does the Everleigh experience relate to the current scandal involving a D.C. madam? How damaging was it to one’s career or reputation to be associated with a brothel in the early 1900s? In your view, do the same rules still apply?

A: Absolutely! Prostitution and politics are inexorably linked, both literally and figuratively. The press inevitably zeroes in on the politician in the aftermath of such scandals: How sincere was his apology? Can his career survive? His marriage? The focus is rarely on the prostitute, who wields tremendous power in these situations. It’s a fitting paradox: these “fallen” and “ruined” women can easily bring the fall and ruin of others.

The Everleigh Club might be the only brothel in American history that enhanced, rather than diminished, a man’s reputation. Clients reportedly boasted, “I’m going to get Everleighed” tonight, which helped to popularize the phrase “get laid.” A man wouldn’t want to be seen at the “lower” houses, however. There’s an anecdote in the book in which Minna recruits a harlot named Suzy Poon Tang from a lesser brothel to service a special client who would only enter the Everleigh house. They truly adopted Marshall Field’s business philosophy: give the customer what he wants.

Q: If the Everleighs existed today, would their business plan still succeed? Would their investment be better suited for, say, a web site?

A: They were incredibly inventive, maverick businesswomen, and I think they would have adapted well. Ada [Everleigh] was the brains of the operation. She maintained the books, interviewed the prospective Everleigh “butterflies,” and generally kept the operation running smoothly. Minna was the outgoing sister, a master social manipulator who attracted clients, advertised effectively, and cemented the Everleigh Club “brand,” if you will.

If they were operating today, I think they’d have a multi-pronged approach: run an elite, discreet call girl service, and also an online experience in which a man could “visit” a virtual Everleigh Club. He could explore the different parlors, listen to the three-stringed orchestras, and mingle with courtesans. After he made his choice, they’d connect via web cam. And if the sisters were arrested, I don’t think they’d squeal like the D.C. Madam [did]; it’s an unforgivable breech of madam etiquette.

Q: Were there any particularly surprising facts that you came across — revenue streams, perhaps, you wouldn’t have anticipated?

A: The most shocking statistics were in the Chicago Vice Commission report, issued in 1910 after reformers conducted exhaustive interviews with prostitutes, madams, streetwalkers, dance hall girls, and every other denizen of the Levee district. The red light district’s annual profits were calculated, “ultra” conservatively, at nearly $16 million per year ($328 million today). The report counted no fewer than 1,020 brothels in Chicago and five thousand full-time prostitutes — a number that didn’t account for the thousands of streetwalkers, part-timers, and girls who hustled on the side. One madam at a fifty-cent brothel testified before the Commission that she and just one prostitute earned $175 to $200 per week. She also claimed that she herself entertained 60 men in one night for fifty cents each. She had $7,000 in the bank.

During one particular survey, girls were asked why they entered the “sporting life.” Nine answered they were seduced; three could not earn enough to live by any other means; two were enticed into the life by other women; two were too “ignorant” to do any ordinary work; two lost their husbands by death and two by desertion; two said they were naturally bad (one said she was “born with the devil in her,” the other that she was “bad with boys before she was 15”); two said they wanted to afford fine clothing; and two claimed they were ruined by drink.

The Commission called oral sex “pervert methods,” and reported that it was on the increase in the higher-priced houses. The girls who performed “pervert methods” earned two to three times more than “regular girls.” Such methods, the reformers discovered, were practiced almost exclusively in the Everleigh Club, on the advice of the Club’s physician.

Q: Did police officers, government officials, and prosecutors receive a discount for services?

A: Minna set a policy of entertaining newspaper reporters and state legislators for free. It worked: the Everleigh sisters got press when they wanted it, and stayed out of the headlines when they didn’t. They also made necessary donations to a roster of politicians in Springfield in attempts to help thwart harmful state legislation, including one check for $3,000.

Q: How were prices set? What was the price disparity between rates for the house’s most popular woman versus the least?

A: In the Everleigh Club, every girl entertained for the same price; there wasn’t any hierarchy. If you were accepted as an Everleigh butterfly, you were going to earn more money than any prostitute in the world.

There were set prices for other services in the Levee, however. The price for stopping an indictment on a charge of pandering was $1,000. On the complaint of harboring a girl, $2,000. Massage parlors paid $25 a week for protection from prosecution; larger houses of ill fame, $50 to $100 a week, with $25 more if drinks were sold. Saloons paid $50 per month to be allowed to stay open after hours, and $25 per week for each poker or craps table. Prices were set by two crooked alderman, “Bathhouse” John Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna, and their lieutenants made collections every week. Over the course of a dozen years, according to Minna, Levee bosses collected $15 million in graft payments. The Everleigh Club alone kicked in more than $100,000 in cash.

Q: You mentioned a Chinese prostitute whose unique services were requested by a wealthy Chicago businessman. What other preferences did men of the era exhibit? In your view, have these preferences changed in the last century?

A: There were some other “unique” services. One of my favorites was an Everleigh Club client by the name of Uncle Ned. Once a year, around the holidays, Uncle Ned would pay enough money to rent out the entire club just for himself. He didn’t want wine, or gourmet food, or a bath, or even to climb the stairs. He requested two buckets of ice, into which he thrust his bare feet. He drank a tall glass of sarsaparilla, and then shouted, “It’s a wonderful day for an old-fashioned sleigh ride,” while the girls danced around him singing “Jingle Bells.”

Another odd bird was a guy nicknamed the “Gold Coin Kid.” He always brought a bag stuff with — you guessed it — gold coins, and requested a courtesan named Doll. She would recline on her bed and let him toss the coins between her legs. Every time he hit the bull’s-eye, he let Doll keep the gold.

There were also “strip-whip” matches at the lower houses, during which harlots would wrestle naked and whip each other bloody. When Prince Henry of Prussia visited the Club, he got off on watching the harlots rip apart a cloth bull with their teeth—a reenactment of the murder of Dionysus’ infant son. There was something for everyone in the Levee — just like today.

Q: How was race handled in the brothels? Were white and black prostitutes kept separate? Did the members of the profession flout the racial conventions of the time, or stick to the mainstream view of racial inequality?

A: The Levee district was segregated in very specific ways. There were brothels where light-skinned black women serviced only white men, and other houses where dark-skinned women catered only to black men. Girls in Japanese and Chinese houses served white men, and girls in French houses performed oral sex only, and only on white men.

Minna and Ada Everleigh had at least one Spanish prostitute over the years, and several Jewish girls, but no black women. They took pains to insist they weren’t personally prejudiced — “Even though I am a Virginian,” Minna said, “I am not intolerant” — but they knew their wealthy white clientele did not want to mix with other races. There was a famous incident in 1909 when the boxer Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, was admitted to the Club only because his manager was a powerful player in the Levee. But the Everleigh sisters didn’t predict that their girls would find him so charismatic and charming; five women left with him, and all five were fired.

Q: You discuss at length the media’s role in shaping public opinion on turn-of-the-century prostitution, particularly the issue of “white slavery.” How has media portrayal changed towards prostitution?

A: During the “white slavery” hysteria, prostitutes were considered victims whose souls needed to be saved. They were “fallen” women who could be rescued through prayer and legislation, and returned to respectable lives.

After World War I, when the white slavery panic began to wane, this viewpoint shifted. Prostitutes were regarded as feeble-minded, maladjusted girls who were ruining America’s moral fabric. I think this latter view still holds today, particularly with regard to streetwalkers. No one in my neighborhood in midtown Atlanta cares if the prostitutes on our corner receive any kind of social assistance; they just want them out of sight. These are probably the same people who consume the most online porn. One of the major themes of the book is the cyclical nature of religious fundamentalism in this country. The old adage is true: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Q: A recent study by a Canadian criminology student found that 2/3 of “off-street” prostitutes have never experienced violence in the course of their job, while more than 90% of the study participants had a college education. The results led one Canadian professor to state, “The importance of this research is that it shows that the prohibitionist argument is ideological and political. It provides a huge stumbling block and strongly favours decriminalization.” Do you agree?

A: I think the Everleighs were definitely onto something. The world’s oldest profession isn’t going to go away; why not regulate and tax it? An argument can be made that legitimizing the business would keep its practitioners safer from physical abuse and disease. It seems to work in Nevada.

I’m torn on whether or not sex work is inherently empowering or exploitive for women. I tell all of these fun anecdotes in the book, but, truth be told, a lot of the women entered the sporting life — even Everleigh Club girls — for tragic reasons. Their husbands deserted them, and they had small children to support. Their parents died, and they had younger siblings to take care of. Some were considered promiscuous and kicked out of their homes so they figured, why not get paid? Many Everleigh girls married well and went on to live “respectable” lives, and others met unhappy endings. One committed suicide, and another was found dead in an alley, her hands severed at the wrists so her killer could take her diamond rings. It’s a perennial question: if this is the only choice you have, is it really a choice at all?

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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

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