Sin in the Second City Read Online Free PDF Page A

a wall until they were too dazed to resist.
    Little Cheyenne and other vice neighborhoods observed strict rules about race and even ethnicity. A guide to neighborhood brothels titled The Sporting and Club House Directory offered separate, pointed entries for “French Houses” (“everybody knows what a ‘French’ house is,” the editor wrote, “and we need offer no further explanation”) and “Colored Houses.” Upscale black madams like Vina Fields employed blond-haired black prostitutes who serviced only white men, and Madam Lillian Richardson emphasized that her brothel was “the least public colored house in the city.” Little Cheyenne was also home to Carrie Watson’s elegant house on Clark Street, which for years enjoyed worldwide fame despite the fact that its only advertising was courtesy of the resident parrot. Housed inside a gilded cage near the entrance, the avian pimp squawked, “Carrie Watson. Come in, gentlemen,” in emphatic repetition.
    The Everleighs had heard of Madam Watson. They knew she was once revered by Chicago leaders and left alone by the police. Most important, she’d affected the right attitude. “Miss Carrie Watson says she would be willing to reform,” one red-light newspaper reported, “but she can’t think of any sins she has been guilty of.” The sisters intended to pick up exactly where the legend left off—and improve on every one of her contributions to the trade.
    The line of brothels and dives on State Street, from Van Buren to 22nd, was known as Satan’s Mile. Kitty Adams, better known as “the Terror of State Street,” hailed from Satan’s Mile and in the span of seven years robbed more than one hundred men. She and her partner, Jennie Clark, were arrested in August 1896 for slugging an old man and fishing $5 from his pocket. The Honorable Judge James Groggin, who presided over the case, acquitted the women, issuing a celebrated ruling that any man who ventured into the district deserved whatever he got.
    Custom House Place, the adjacent area, earned an international reputation during the World’s Fair. Its most infamous attractions were dives called “panel houses.” The walls in these resorts were punched full of holes, placed strategically behind chairs where the johns hung their pants. As one harlot distracted a trick in bed, another would slip her hand through the crack and snatch his wallet.
    Number 144 Custom House Place was operated by Madam Mary Hastings, one of the pioneers of what was known in Europe—and soon in America—as “white slavery.” During frequent trips to neighboring cities, she extolled the virtues of Chicago and its high-paying jobs, returning with gullible young girls aged thirteen to seventeen. She took the girls’ clothing and locked them in a room with six professional rapists. Once “broken in,” the girls were sold to other madams for $50 to $300 each, depending on age and appearance. The eminent British journalist William T. Stead visited Hastings’s brothel while researching If Christ Came to Chicago, his damning 1894 screed about sin in the Second City.
    The Everleighs vowed never to deal with pimps, desperate parents selling off children, panders, and white slavers. If you treated girls well, they would come begging for admittance. A prospective Everleigh courtesan must prove she’s eighteen in order to earn an interview, understand exactly what the job entailed, and know she’s free to leave anytime, for any reason, without penalty.
    Riding through Custom House Place, the sisters noted it was still a busy district, even six years after the World’s Fair. Mayor Carter Harrison II had ordered all brothels on Clark Street, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare, to evacuate, citing complaints from citizens who took the new trolley car to and from work. The majority of madams and saloon keepers defied the edict and stayed put, others migrated to the West Side, and the rest, very gradually, packed up their