Prevalence of Prostitution in Chicago.

Prostitution is an appalling evil in Chicago. One can scarcely look in any direction without seeing some evidence of it. Street walkers parade the most prominent thoroughfares, dance houses and low concert halls flaunt their gaudy signs in public, and houses of ill-fame are conducted with a boldness unequalled anywhere in the world. The evil is very great, and is assuming larger proportions every year, and I now make the startling assertion, that the prostitutes of Chicago are as numerous as the members of the largest denomination of the city. From the most reliable information obtainable there are about six hundred houses of prostitution and about two hundred and fifty assignation houses in Chicago. The number of women known as prostitutes, and those who “receive” privately, and associate with women whose character is beyond reproach, is astounding. Of the number of women who resort to prostitution as a means of securing money, or from other motives, who yet manage to maintain positions of respectability in society, of course no estimate can be made. They are, unfortunately, very numerous, and are said by persons in position to speak with some degree of accuracy to equal the professionals in numbers.

These things are sad to contemplate and disagreeable to write about. The whole subject is unsavory; but no picture of Chicago would be complete did it not include an account of this terrible feature of city life, which meets the visitor at almost every turn; and it is believed that some good may be accomplished by stripping the subject of all its romance, and presenting it to the reader in its true and hideous colors.

The professional women of Chicago represent every grade of their wretched life, from the hells of the fashionable houses of ill-fame to the slowly dying inmates of a Dearborn street brothel. They begin their career with the hope that they will always remain in the class into which they enter, but find, when it is too late, they must go steadily down into the depths, closing their lives with a horrible death and a pauper’s grave.

The so-called first-class houses of Chicago are conducted with more or less secrecy. It is the object of the proprietress to remain unknown to the police as long as possible, but she finds at last that this is impracticable. The sharp-eyed patrolmen soon discover suspicious signs about the house and watch it until their suspicions are verified, when the establishment is recorded as a house of ill-fame, and placed under police surveillance. These houses are not numerous, however, and not more than thirty in the entire city. Large rents are paid for them, and they are generally hired furnished. They are located in some quiet, respectable portion of the city, and outwardly appear to be simply private dwellings. It often happens that the neighbors are in ignorance of the true character of the house, long after it is known to the police. It is a notorious fact that some of our finest avenues and boulevards are infected with the infamous “houses.” The proprietress is a woman of respectable appearance, and passes as a married woman, some man generally living with her, and passing as her husband. This enables her in case of trouble with the authorities, to show a legal protector and insist upon her claim to be a married woman.

The inmates are women in the first flush of their charms. They are handsome, well-dressed, generally refined in manner, and conduct themselves with outward propriety; rude and boistrous conduct, improper language, and indecent behavior are forbidden in the parlors of the house, and a casual visitor passing through public rooms of the place would see nothing out of the usual way.

It is difficult to learn the causes which induce these women to adopt a life of shame. No reliance whatever can be placed upon the stories they tell of themselves. It cannot be doubted, however, that they are generally of respectable origin, and some of them are otherwise fitted to adorn the best circles of society. Some are young women who have been led astray by men who have failed to keep their promises to them, and have drifted into sin to hide their shame, others are wives who have left, or have been deserted by their husbands; others still have deliberately chosen the life, gratifying their love for money and dress; and others again appear to be influenced by motives of pure licentiousness. Whatever the cause of adoption of such a life, it is evident they have seen better days. They are still fresh and attractive, and for a while pursue their gilded career of sin and shame, hoping that they may be fortunate enough to retain their place in the aristocracy of vice. The proprietress will have no others than attractive women in her house; and as soon as the inmates begin to show signs of the wretched life they lead, as soon as sickness falls upon them, or they lose their beauty and freshness, she sends them away, and fills their places with more attractive women. She has no difficulty in doing this, for she has her agents on the watch for them all the time, and unfortunately new women are always soliciting admission to such places. Besides this, the proprietress knows that her patrons soon grow tired of seeing the same women in her establishment. She must make frequent changes to satisfy them, and she has no scruples about turning a woman out of her doors to begin the descent of the ladder of shame. Therefore, about one or two years is the average term of the stay of a woman in a fashionable house. A few do remain longer, but the number is so small as to constitute scarcely an exception to the general rule. As long as her “boarders” remain with her, the proprietress treats them fairly enough, apart from the fact that she manages to get out of them all the money she can. The women earn large amounts of money, but a considerable portion of this goes for board and other expenses in the house, and their extravagant habits and tastes exhaust the rest. They save nothing, and if taken sick must go to the Charity Hospital for treatment. Their dream of saving money lasts but a short time, and they leave the fashionable houses penniless.

The visitors to these houses are men of means. No one without a full pocket can afford such indulgence. Visitors are expected to spend considerable money for wine, which is always furnished by the proprietress at the most exhorbitant prices, and at a profit of about 200 per cent. A large part of her revenue is derived from such sales, and she looks sharply after this branch of the business. The shamelessness with which men of standing and prominence, many of whom are fathers of families, resort to these houses and display themselves in the parlors is astounding. Indeed, the keeper of one of the most fashionable houses boasts that married men are her principal customers. Sometimes the visitor desires that his visits shall not be known. For such persons there are private rooms, where they are sure of seeing no one but the proprietress and the woman for whom their visit is intended. These houses are largely attended by strangers visiting Chicago; these, thinking themselves unknown in a large city, care little for privacy, and boldly show themselves in the general parlors. The proportion of married and middle-aged men among them is very great. You will find among them lawyers, physicians, judges of the courts, members of congress, and even ministers of the gospel, from all parts of the country. This may seem a startling assertion, but the police authorities will confirm it. If the secrets of these places as regards their visitors could be made public there would be a terrible rupture in many happy families throughout the land, as well as in the metropolis. Men who at home are models of propriety, seem to lose all sense of restraint when they come to Chicago. These same gentlemen would be merciless towards any female member of their families who should display a similar laxity.

To return to the women: the inmates of the first-class houses rarely remain in them for more than two years. Their shameful and dissipated lives render them by this time unfit for companionship with their aristocratic associates. The proprietress quickly detects this and remorselessly orders them from her house. She knows the fate that awaits them; but her only care is to keep her house full of fresh and attractive women.

The Next Step.

Having quitted the fashionable house, the wretched woman has no recourse but to enter a second-class house, and then go down one grade lower in vice. The proprietress is cruel and exacting, and boldly robs her boarders whenever occasion offers. The visitors are more numerous, but are a rougher and coarser set than those who patronized her in the first stages of her career. Money is less plentiful, her life is harder in every way, and she seeks relief from the reflections that will crowd upon her in drink, and perhaps to drunkenness adds the vice of opium. Her health breaks fast, what was left of her beauty when she entered the house soon fades, and in two or three years she becomes unfit to even remain in a second-class house. She is turned into the street by the proprietress, who generally robs her of her money and jewelry, and sometimes even of her clothing, save what she has on at the time. The wretches who keep these houses do not hesitate to detain a woman’s trunk, or other effects, upon some trumped-up charge of arrears or debt, when they have no longer any use for her. The poor creature has no redress, and is obliged to submit in silence to any wrong practiced upon her.

The woman whose career opened so brilliantly is now a confirmed prostitute and drunkard, bloated, sickly and perhaps diseased; she is without hope, and there is nothing left. It is only four or five years, perhaps less, since she entered the fashionable boulevard mansion, beautiful and attractive in all the freshness of her charms, and little dreaming of the fate in store for her. She is not an exception to the rule, however. She has but followed the usual road, and met the inevitable doom of her class.

Going Down Into the Depths.

From the second-class house the lost woman passes into one of the bagnios of the “red-light district” or some similar place. Here her lot is infinitely more wretched. Her companions are the vilest of her class, and the visitors are among the lowest order of men who cannot gain admittance into places such as she has left. She finds herself a slave to the keeper of the house, who is often a burly ruffian, and even more brutal than a woman would be in the same position. She is robbed of her earnings, is beaten, and often falls into the hands of the police. She becomes familiar with the courts, the bridewell, and whatever of womanly feeling remained to her is crushed out of her. She is a brute simply. She remains in Green, Peoria or some other like street for a year or two—human nature cannot bear up longer under such a life—and is then unfit to remain even there. Would you seek her after this you will find her in the terrible dens and living hells—even in places of infamy and degredation that a former Mayor was compelled to stamp out, so utterly repugnant was it to even the lowest instincts of man. To the burning disgrace of Chicago, some of these pestiferous vice-breeding places are allowed to exist by the “stink-pots” who govern the city. These poor, vile, repulsive women, slowly dying from their bodily ailments, and the effects of drink and drugs, have reached the bottom of the ladder, and can go no lower. She knows it, and in a sort of dumbly, desperate way, is glad it is so. Life is such a daily torture to her, that death only offers her any relief. She is really a living corpse. The end soon comes. Some die from the effects of their terrible lives, and oh! such fearful deaths; and others are killed or fatally injured in drunken brawls which so often occur in this locality; and others still seek an end of their miserable existence in the dark waters of Lake Michigan.

I draw no exaggerated picture of the gradual but inevitable descent of a fallen woman in Chicago. Every detail is true to life. Seven years is the average life of an abandoned woman in the great city. She may begin her career with all the eclat possible, she may queen it by nature of her beauty and charms in some fashionable house, at the beginning, and may even outlast the average term at such places; it matters not; her doom is certain. The time will come when she must leave the aristocracy of shame, must take the second step in her terrible career. Seven years for the majority of these women, then death in its most horrible form. Some may, and do, anticipate the end of it by suicide; few ever escape from it.

“The wages of sin is death.” Some cherish the hope that after a few years of pleasure, they will reform; but alas, they find it impossible to do so. A few, a very few, do escape, through the aid extended to them by the “missions,” but they are so few that they but help to emphasize the hopelessness of the effort. The doom of the fallen woman is swift and sure! “The wages of sin is death.” Once entered upon a career of shame, the whole world sets its face against her. Even the men who associated with her in her palmy days would turn a deaf ear to her appeals for aid after she has gone down into the depths. I would to God that the women who are about to enter upon this terrible life could walk through the purlieu of the “red-light” district and witness the sights that I have seen there. I would they could see the awful, despairing faces that look out from the bagnios of that terrible neighborhood, and realize that, however brilliant the opening of their career may be, this must be the end of it. It is idle for them to hope to escape the doom of the fallen woman. “The wages of sin is death.” Would anyone know what sort of death? Let her come to Chicago and see.

Many of the women of the town never pass through the various gradations of vice that I have described.

Many never see the inside of a fashionable house of ill-fame, but begin lower down the scale, as inmates of second-class houses, as waiter girls in concert saloons, as inmates of dance houses—which were so prevalent in Chicago years ago—or as street walkers. These meet their inevitable doom all the more quickly, but not less surely.

The city is full of people, men and women, whose object is to lead young girls into lives of shame. They watch the hotels, depots and large stores and lure respectable girls away on various pretexts. Every inducement is held out to working girls and women to adopt the vile trade, and many fall willing victims. Hundreds of these women are from rural districts of adjoining states. They come to the city seeking work and are sometimes successful. Often, however, they can find nothing to do, and when poverty and want stare them in the face, they listen to the voice of the tempter, become street walkers or inmates of houses of ill-fame. Sometimes, while they are in the first days of their success, they will write home that they are pursuing honest callings in the city and earning respectable livings, and will even send money home to their deluded parents. After a while the letters cease—the writer has gone into the depths; they are lost!

It is, indeed, strange to see how these women will cherish the memory of their homes even in the midst of their shame. They will speak at the pleasant home, or their aged father and mother, in accents full of despair. Often these memories will cause them to burst into uncontrollable weeping. If one should try to take advantage of this moment of tenderness, and urge them to make an effort to reform, they are met with but one answer: “It is too late.”

The keepers of the bagnios of the city use every means to lure young women into their power. Some years since, a girl who had managed to escape from a notorious brothel, told the following story:

“I watched the advertisements in the papers to see something that would suit me. I learned that a Mrs. G—— of —— street wanted two girls to do light chamber work, and I hastened there, with a friend, in quest of the position. We were received by Mrs. G——, who began to explain to us the nature of the duties we were expected to perform. It was an awful proposition. She kept a house of ill-fame. We fled. I was much discouraged. Not so my friend, who told me there was another lady down the street, who was really in want of a girl to help her. We went to her house. It was another of the same sort; but after I got in there my clothes were taken from me, and the woman furnished me with some sort of silk, trimmed with fur, and tried to make me act like the other girls in her establishment. I remained there from Saturday to Wednesday night, because I could not get away. I had no clothes to wear in the streets, even if I should succeed in reaching them, which was impossible, and the woman who kept the house was angry with me, brutally so, because I would not comply with her wishes. I and another young girl tried to escape by the back yard. The other girl got away, but I was discovered by the keeper, who drove me back into the house with curses. On Wednesday evening I was made to sit at a window and call a man, who was passing, into the house. He turned out to be a detective, and arrested me, and was the means of my freedom!”

The police are often called upon by relatives of abandoned women to assist them in finding them and rescuing them from their lives of shame. Sometimes, in the cases of very young girls, these efforts are successful, and the poor creature gladly goes with friends. Others again refuse to leave their wretched haunts; they prefer to lead their lives of infamy.

One night a young man called at the “Apollo,” a theatre and dance-house on Third Avenue—now Plymouth Place—and inquired for his sister Dora, who, he had learned, was in that place. The young lady came out, while he was speaking, in company with a well-dressed man. Instead of complying with her brother’s entreaties, she entered a carriage, with her escort, and drove to a nearby police station to seek relief from her brother’s importunities. The brother followed, told the sergeant the story of his sister’s shame, and asked him to keep her there until he could summon the father. The sergeant complied with the request and the father soon appeared. He was a respectable oil manufacturer and had lavished wealth and fine dress upon the wayward child. He confirmed his son’s statements, and appealed to his daughter to go home with him. She answered him flippantly, and the indignant father cursed her for her sin, and would have attacked the man with her had not officers prevented him. The woman was locked up for the night in the station house, and brought before court the next morning. The father urged that she should be sent to some reformatory establishment, but the woman met him with the statement that she was twenty-three years old, beyond legal control, and therefore entitled to choose her own mode of life. Her plea was valid, and the magistrate was unwillingly compelled to discharge her from custody, though he endeavored to persuade her to return to her family. She then left the court room, was joined by several flashily-dressed women, and departed in high spirits, completely ignoring her relatives.

One of the worst classes of abandoned women consists of street walkers. On any of the business streets and even in outlying districts these women are very numerous. They are generally well-dressed, and, as a rule, are young. They pursue certain regular routes, rarely pausing, unless they “pick-up” a companion, when they dart off with him to some side street. On the brilliantly lighted thoroughfares the police do not allow them to stop and accost men, but they manage to do so. The neighborhoods of the “hotels” and the places of “amusement” are their principal cruising grounds, and their victims are mainly strangers to the city. Many of them have regular employment during the day, and ply their wretched trade at night to increase their gains. They accompany their victims to the “bed-houses” which are conveniently at hand, and if an opportunity occurs will rob him. They frequent the dance halls and concert saloons; in fact, every place to which they can obtain admission, and lure men into their company. As a rule they are vicious in the extreme, drink heavily, and in some cases are fearfully diseased.

In former years many of the street walkers were in the regular employ of the “panel-houses,” which were numerous at that time. These houses were kept by men, who were among the most desperate roughs in Chicago. The woman is either mistress of one of these men, or in his pay. The method pursued was as follows: The street walker secures her victim on the street, or at some concert hall, or dance-house. He is generally a stranger, and ignorant of the localities of the city. She takes him to her room, which is an apartment provided with a partition in which there is a sliding door or panel. The confederate of the woman is concealed behind the partition, and at a favorable moment slides back the panel, enters the room and strips the clothing of the victim of the money and valuables contained in it. If discovered, the panel thief endeavors to disable the victim. The latter is no match for his assailant, and is from the first at a disadvantage. The thief is desperate, and is generally armed. He does not hesitate at anything, and, if necessary, will murder the victim, the woman assisting him in the fearful work. Then the body is left until near morning, when it is placed in a wagon engaged by the thief, carried to the river or lake, and then thrown into the water. Generally the robbery is accomplished without the necessity of resorting to violence. The victim either puts up with his loss in silence, or reports it to the police. The records at headquarters contain reports of numerous robberies of this kind. So the evil went on. Strangers in this city incur terrible risk in accompanying street walkers, and women whom they meet on the street, at concert and dance halls to their homes. In nine cases out of ten, robbery is certain. Murder is too often the result of such adventure. Truly, Solomon was wise indeed when he wrote: “He hath taken a bag of money with him—with her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with flattering of her lips she forced him—he goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hastened to the snare, and knoweth not it is for his life—her house is the way to hell going down to the chambers of death.”