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chemises and petticoats—so plentiful, and in so many styles and designs, that I would have been hard-pressed to select just one.
    The main floor attracted me the most. Close to the front doors, in a cleared area lined with potted petunias, a gentleman of aboutfifty in a dapper, dove-tan waistcoat sat at a piano playing folk tunes. I lingered nearby, sifting through dresses with elegant bustles, all the time basking in the piano’s welcoming melodies and studying women shoppers as they sized up the dresses’ lace collars and bead-galloon trimmings. I strolled by the piano player, delighting in his rapt expression. He looked up, nodded at me, and mouthed “Good day”—the first truly warm gesture anyone had offered since my arrival—and I smiled in return.
    I circled around to the other side of the first floor, to women’s shoes, and admired the selection of Curaçao-kid, pebble-grain, and French-kid styles. But I could afford no purchase, and self-consciousness overtook me, as if I were a maid pretending at her lady’s mirror. Reluctantly, I withdrew, promising myself I would return another time.
    The next day, I wandered into three small banks to inquire how I might open an account, whether a certain balance would be required, and what benefits each bank could offer. It pleased me to explain that I was exploring several options and would return if I chose to do business with them.
    Over the next several days, I visited other places of business, and shops as well, engaging the proprietors in both business exchanges and casual conversations: law firms (in search of a lawyer to advise me on a family matter); architectural offices (in the event I decided to build a home); dry-goods stores; apothecaries; and art galleries. I scrounged rumpled newspapers from hotel lobbies and pored over them by the smoke-stained lamp in my cramped hotel room. An article in the June 22 Chicago Times caught my eye:
    Detective Wooldridge Saves Three from White Slave Trade
CITIZEN TIP LEADS DETECTIVE TO LEVEE ATTIC
Early yesterday morning Detective Clifton Wooldridge, accompanied by a band of three police officers, staked out a house at 404 Dearborn Street. He was said to be acting on a tip from a courageous citizen who picked up a note flung from an upper window of the residence. The detective and his troops stormed the place at dawn, no doubt hoping to take the sleeping occupants-cum-captors by surprise.
An officer on the case reported that Violet Hastings and her solid man, Bo Cavanaugh, were wakened from a liquor-laced sleep and proceeded to carry on like stirred-up hornets, hollering that the police had no cause to be there and demanding to know whatever happened to their protection, though not in such genteel words.
Detective Wooldridge and his party made their way to the attic, where they broke down a bolted door and discovered three cowering girls, all dressed in flimsy gowns and living in dirty, cramped conditions. Upon seeing the police they cried out, “We are saved.”
Violet Hastings claimed she had kept the girls there for their own safety, but Wooldridge told this reporter that the young ladies had been seized at the train station, imprisoned by Miss Hastings, and likely slated to be sold to some associate of Hastings who would force them to work as harlots. Wooldridge explained, “These places conceal Chicago’s most shameful secret—young women stolen off the streets, locked in rooms against their will, and desecrated by men who care only about earning money from their misery.”
According to Wooldridge, hundreds of young ladies are abducted each year by white slave traders and held captive in one of the many houses that night after night defile women and the soul of this city. Detective Wooldridge says he will not rest until he uncovers all the degenerates who trade in white slaves and that the Levee District ought to know he’s not making idle threats.
    Was it true? Hundreds of women forced into prostitution? Perhaps.