Island of Vice

by Richard Zacks

  Then Roosevelt rose to leave. He said he had a train to catch. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Storer had prevailed upon him to leave Monday for his Tuesday night Cincinnati speech so as to give them more time together. He would be staying at their house in Walnut Hills.

  Roosevelt, like Grant, was chasing a job in the McKinley White House. Instead of cozying up to local Republicans about promotions, his patrons required a trip to the Midwest. During the next six days, when the Roosevelt reform police force would be flambéed over the Sherry’s incident, TR would be at headquarters only the morning of Christmas Eve.

  With Roosevelt gone by mid-afternoon, Parker took charge of the Chapman-Seeley investigation. Central office detectives quickly made a key discovery: belly dancer Little Egypt had indeed performed after Captain Chapman left. This was a bombshell. The “indignant” guests at the so-called innocent affair had possibly witnessed an indecent dance, if she performed fully nude. This fact, if proved, would provide complete vindication for the reform police raid.

  The detectives tracked down Little Egypt to an apartment on Seventh Avenue and 50th Street where she was living under the name of “Mrs. Harper.” They secretly brought her to headquarters in a closed carriage on Monday night, hustled her in the Mott Street back entrance away from reporters, and brought her to Commissioner Parker’s office. Chief Conlin and his aide, Sergeant Flood, stood present in the small room as witnesses, along with a stenographer.

  Little Egypt was really a Little Algerian. She said her birth name was Ashea Wabe; she refused to give her age but reporters later pegged it at around thirty-five. She was vivacious, petite, with long thick dark hair, and large dark eyes arced by heavy brows. She painted her lips deep garish red.

  Dozens of women called themselves “Little Egypt” and it’s impossible to know whether this Ashea Wabe danced under that name at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, but there’s no doubt that Midwest performance in the midway set off a hoochie-coochie craze in America. Vaudeville marquees blazoned Little Egypts. The United States was playing catch‑up to Europe’s nineteenth-century fascination in art (harem paintings) and novels (Flaubert’s Salammbô) with the sensual Near East.

  Little Egypt sat in Parker’s cramped little office; her eyes sparkled and she seemed to enjoy her situation at police headquarters, rather than dread it. Several times, she rose from her chair to demonstrate her dance movements. Once, she tried to draw “staid” Commissioner Parker’s hands onto her body to show how the Seeley guests had touched her.

  She spoke in North African French and heavily accented broken English, which the stenographer cleaned up into simple American phrases. She said her contract called for her to be paid $100 to dance two “nautch” dances. For the first, which she would dance on a stage, she would wear slippers and knee-high red stockings with no tights. “My thighs were to be covered with thin gauze from above the knees to the loins through which my body could be seen.” (A modern couturier might call her outfit black diaphanous harem pants.)

  Above her waist, she was to wear a small Zouave jacket that covered her breasts. Her midriff would be bare. She would wear a fez on her head.

  For the second performance, her encore, to be done among the dinner guests, “I was to dance entirely naked except for silk stockings and slippers.”

  Basically, this little Algerian was admitting that she was hired to commit a crime.

  She then told the story of what she actually did on Saturday night at Sherry’s. She had arrived around midnight with her “colored maid.” They were ushered to a private blue dressing room on the third floor and given champagne. An hour later, apparently when Captain Chapman was in the building, she was quickly hustled by two young employees to a small yellow garret room two floors higher.

  She danced her first dance around 3:30 a.m. “I did not dance the [nude] encore as I was told there was danger of the police coming again.” She said she repeated the first dance but did so off the stage and among the guests. She signed the affidavit “Egypt.”

  The woman was smuggled back out of 300 Mulberry. For a week, Parker and a very tight circle in the police department succeeded in keeping Little Egypt’s confession a secret.

  When the scandal broke for the public on Tuesday, December 22, most newspapers played it as the reform-crazed police violating the sanctity of Sherry’s to fish for vice. Headlines blared: THE INVASION OF SHERRY’S (Tribune) and POLICE OUTRAGE (World). The Washington Post said the police treated New Yorkers as children, “to be watched, and guarded and punished for naughtiness.” The paper blamed the “Roosevelt-Parkhurst combination” for inspiring Captain Chapman to the unimaginable effrontery of lecturing citizens mid-dinner and voicing his “shame” at their behavior.

  Even the reform New York Times sniffed: “The bad taste shown by young men who degrade good victuals and drink by interpolations of vaudeville stupidities is a matter into which the Commissioners need not inquire.” By the following day, it would call Sherry’s “a house of entertainment of the highest character which is frequented every night during the fashionable season by the wives and daughters of the best-known citizens of New York” and the paper would wonder about the quality of information that had prompted the captain to investigate.

  The World tracked down the man who gave the tip to the police and found out that he was a rival theatrical agent, with a gripe over fees and lost clients.

  Chief Conlin, Captain Chapman, and Commissioner Parker seethed at this portrayal of the police as bumbling intruders. (Roosevelt was in Cincinnati.) All three were convinced that Chapman had courageously done his duty in investigating a possible crime at a public restaurant.

  Parker gathered statements. He somehow convinced Herbert Barnum Seeley—a descendant of P. T. Barnum, the circus magnate, whose fortune totaled $3 million at his death—to admit that Little Egypt had danced. But he denied that she did anything lewd. “She proved so uninteresting and so unentertaining that at my request the manager called her off.”

  While the press harvested endless anonymous comments battering the police, none of the guests or the host or Louis Sherry brought formal charges against Captain Chapman. Very irritated, Conlin sent messengers with letters to all of the twenty-two guests asking them to give statements on Saturday, December 26. None of their names—besides that of Barnum Seeley—had appeared in print.

  Clearly, none of the married or single dinner guests wanted this case to continue.

  The Herald reported that on Wednesday afternoon some “brokers on the Consolidated Exchange” danced the “couchee-couchee” for twenty-nine-year-old bridegroom Clinton Barnum Seeley while someone sang, “She had never seen the Streets of Cairo / To the midway she had never been.” The World reported the shady past of host Herbert Barnum Seeley, a West Point dropout who had apparently bilked a Newport heiress out of $900 in a race-track bookmaking scheme.

  Roosevelt returned to headquarters the morning of Thursday, December 24; he had been guest of honor along with M. E. Ingalls, president of the Big Four Railroad, at the Ohio banquet. Bellamy Storer, having inherited the post from his father, was toastmaster.

  TR arrived in New York and immediately tackled the issue that rankled him most … Parker’s charge that he had helped Tammany’s Big Tim Sullivan. Roosevelt met with Sullivan and issued a statement in Sullivan’s name denying the charge. (Sullivan ducked out of the building.) Roosevelt stated that Parker had told “an absolute untruth.”

  Parker took a break from his Chapman investigations to issue a statement that Sullivan “in my room informed me” that Roosevelt revealed to him the rating given by each commissioner and Roosevelt had pointed out “that he had given [his] relative the highest rating of any of the commissioners.”

  TR left work early to start Christmas vacation. He didn’t comment on the Sherry’s raid.

  The weather for the four days through the weekend was frigidly cold and bright, with dazzling snow everywhere; TR called it an “ideal Xmas.” The family lit the candles on t
he tree and sang carols; TR, along with his oldest son, went skiing and chopped wood to feed the roaring fires. The children ate Ridley’s striped candy canes before breakfast, and even Edith agreed to play a silly Parker Brothers game called Pillow-Dex that involved bopping balloons across a net set up on the dining room table.

  On Monday morning, Roosevelt took the sleigh, train, ferry, and elevated car in from Oyster Bay. The commissioner arrived to discover that the investigation of the private dinner at Sherry’s—of which he knew no details whatsoever beyond the newspapers—was rushing headlong toward a trial before his own police board. Roosevelt was furious.

  Chief Conlin, wanting to resolve the matter, had already signed the paperwork to charge Chapman with entering Sherry’s “without a warrant” and for “behaving in a rude, boisterous, insolent and arbitrary manner.” Parker, as the sole member of the two-man Committee for Rules and Discipline who was not on vacation, had approved the charges and scheduled a trial for Thursday. (Grant was out west.)

  An influential alderman, reform Republican Benjamin E. Hall, showed up at 300 Mulberry Street, as representative of Seeley and his guests, to protest against a trial. He spoke to Chief Conlin, telling him, in effect, that these powerful men, once disturbed mid-dinner, now wanted this latest disturbance to end, and he pointed out that Clinton Barnum Seeley’s wedding was slated for Wednesday at Trinity Chapel. He told Conlin that none of them wanted their likenesses in the newspapers. “The higher the standing of the people, the greater the sensation.”

  The wealthy guests seemed dumbfounded that they would not be allowed to hurl charges of boorish behavior at the police department and then walk away. Conlin refused to drop the matter, said it needed airing at a trial. Alderman Hall walked through the building looking for commissioners. He spoke briefly to TR and made an appointment to see him on Wednesday. He found Andrews and made his case. Andrews climbed a flight of stairs to Roosevelt and the two conferred. They decided that the investigation was racing forward far too quickly, was being improperly handled solo by one commissioner (Parker), and that neither of them had been consulted.

  They found Chief Clerk Kipp and called a “special” board meeting for 3 p.m. Commissioner Parker was informed in his office but he didn’t go to the boardroom. A quorum of three was required, and Commissioner Grant was vacationing.

  Roosevelt waited, then, rage mounting, with Kipp and Andrews trailing, race-walked to Parker’s office, where they found him calmly reading. Roosevelt ordered Kipp to call the special meeting to order. Parker pointed out that they had recently passed a resolution—in his absence—that all board meetings must be held publicly in the boardroom. Nonetheless, Andrews, exasperated, shouted a resolution. “I move that the [Chapman] charges be referred to President Roosevelt for examination and that all proceedings in the case [including] subpoenas, be suspended for the present.”

  Parker calmly told Kipp to mark him “Absent” for this meeting, meaning they had no quorum. Andrews and Roosevelt started shouting. When they stopped, Parker offered to attend a board meeting in the public boardroom in five minutes. He showed up as agreed. Andrews brought the same resolution to the floor; TR and Andrews voted in favor and so did … the exasperating Parker.

  Parker told the assembled newspapermen the board should hurry. “The papers have fiercely denounced the Captain, the Chief of Police and the Department, and we ought to learn the truth.” Roosevelt and Andrews announced they would immediately begin their own investigation. (Neither man knew about Little Egypt.) The words stalling and cover-up sprang into the following days’ newspapers. Adjudged the World: ALDERMAN HALL PULLS WIRES FOR HIS FRIEND AND CLIENT SEELEY: ROOSEVELT’S FINGER IN THE PIE.

  Despite the Christmas season, relations between Parker and Roosevelt were hitting new lows. Parker’s irritating precision, his marshaling of obscure facts, repeatedly pricked TR’s passionate beliefs and bluster. Then on Tuesday up bobbed the ghost of McMorrow, the allegedly bribe-paying patrolman, to make matters even worse between the two commissioners. Back in April, TR’s probe into the $200 bribe had fizzled, undermining his case against Parker. Mayor Strong had still not rendered a verdict about Parker’s removal.

  TR had left the investigation open for six months, and now the board was cleaning out a backlog of all untried cases. Commissioner Andrews presided over the hearing that morning. McMorrow’s lawyer demanded to interrogate Roosevelt since Roosevelt had received the original confession, which formed the only evidence against his client.

  During the course of the questioning, the lawyer noticed that parts of two pages of the four-page confession seemed to have been cut out. He asked Roosevelt about it. Roosevelt replied that McMorrow had said that he “understood” that his bribe money was headed to a commissioner’s secretary but he had offered no proof. “I brought it before the board and at the request of the commissioner I cut the pages out.”

  The lawyer asked: “Have you any objection to revealing the name of the commissioner mentioned?”

  Roosevelt: “Commissioner Parker.”

  The words lingered in the room; the lawyer seemed surprised that TR had answered the question. The day’s headline in the Herald would be: PARKER’S NAME CONNECTED WITH CHARGES OF BRIBERY, and in the World: ROOSEVELT’S QUEER STAB AT PARKER. Since the charges hadn’t panned out, Parker’s name had never been made public.

  Parker was, as usual, attending to business elsewhere but word snaked through the building to his secretary, Louis Posner, who relayed the information. Later that day, Parker issued an indignant statement harshly criticizing Roosevelt. He pointed out that he was the only commissioner to oppose McMorrow’s appointment, because he had learned that the man had been fired from the Eighth Avenue Railroad. He said he didn’t know—from April to November—that a written confession against him existed and he flatly denied asking Roosevelt to tear out or cover up any evidence.

  The next day, the antagonists resumed the scuffle.

  The board met at its usual time on Wednesday, handling ninety minutes of business. Roosevelt, resisting pressure from wealthy Republicans, voted along with Andrews and Parker to bring Captain Chapman up on charges, to allow him to clear his name or be convicted. As the meeting wound down, Parker mentioned that he wanted a word with Roosevelt. Commissioner Andrews disgustedly requested permission to adjourn the meeting so he could leave the two men alone (with reporters).

  Parker asked why Roosevelt had concealed McMorrow’s written confession from him for so long. TR replied that he thought Parker had seen it.

  Parker said he clearly recalled talking to Roosevelt about bribery cases. “We joked about it … I said the word was that you were the only commissioner not bribed because you didn’t need the money.”

  Then Parker leveled the charge that Roosevelt didn’t mention the confession because he was trying to “trap” him and bring that case to the mayor. Parker added that Lincoln Steffens of the Evening Post had revealed to him last spring that Roosevelt and Andrews were searching for crimes by Parker and “were greatly disappointed when McMorrow fell through.”

  Roosevelt slammed his hand down on the table and denied it. He demanded that Steffens be brought in and questioned.

  Parker then brought up the cut-out pages. TR said he thought it was Parker’s wish, to protect his young secretary. Parker asked if any copies of those pages still existed. Roosevelt thought that his secretary, Minnie Kelly, might have one. Parker said: “I should consider it a great favor to have it so that I can make it public.”

  They wrangled some more over Big Tim Sullivan; they wrangled over several newspaper quotes; they wrangled over the sergeant promotions. Along the way, something must have snapped in Roosevelt; he must have had some inkling of the fruitlessness of the endless bickering, or some faint memory of advice from Edith and Cabot Lodge.

  He turned to his fellow commissioner and said: “Parker, I feel toward you as Tommy Atkins did toward Fuzzy Wuzzy in Kipling’s poem after he had smashed the British square. ‘To
fight ’im ’arf an hour will last me ’arf a year.’ I am going out of town to-night but I suppose we will have another row at the meeting next Wednesday.”

  Commissioner Parker laughed and replied, “I’ll be glad to see you when you get back, Roosevelt.”

  TR tried desperately to enjoy New Year’s at Oyster Bay. He was welcoming the onset of 1897 amid gorgeous snow, but the rite, this year as always, coincided with ending his season at Sagamore Hill and closing up the house. After January 1, he and Edith would be moving the clan back to Bamie’s on Madison Avenue for at least the next four months.

  Just two days into the New Year, Roosevelt unburdened himself to Lodge. “Here matters are worse than ever,” he wrote in a letter, inadvertently misdated January 2, 1896. “The [Republican] machine is really infamous. Not only do they back Parker, but they have induced Grant by the promise of their aid with McKinley, and he has openly gone in with Parker. I have said the latter is a liar a dozen times; I cannot shoot him, or engage in a rough-and-tumble with him—I couldn’t even as a private citizen, still less as the chief police officer of the city.”

  This bleak portrait of his life as commissioner served as a not-so-subtle reminder to Lodge to please try to get him out of New York and back to Washington.

  The same night that TR wrote to Lodge from Oyster Bay, a boxer fighting in Manhattan at the Broadway Athletic Club was knocked into a fatal coma during a police-sanctioned fight. Many in the press leaped to blame Roosevelt.

  He had been outspoken on the topic less than two months earlier.

  “When I was at Harvard and sparred for the championship I suffered a heavier punishment than any man there did. And I have been knocked out at polo twice for a ten times longer period than Choynski was knocked out for. I don’t care very much for a professional sport of any kind but I thoroughly believe in boxing as I believe in football and other manly games.”