by Jim Musgrave
Since the 1840s, Restell had been arrested twice, but both witnesses had died before the trial could be prosecuted. Today, abortion was such a big business that the National Police Gazette, one of the daily penny press newspapers, refused to take ads from Restell and had coined the term “Restellism” as a euphemism for any abortion. It had joined together with the big news journalists such as Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune and George Washington Dixon of the Polyanthos to condemn Madame Restell in their publications.
Of course, in reality, this was all a façade to sell papers, because Restell had never been convicted, and the abortion business under Tammany Hall politics was doing quite well and even thriving. While the penny press and big city papers made money off the sex and sin issue, the corrupt politicians and people like Jane the Grabber made their money off the women being used in the sex business each day.
Women like Irene were being kept isolated and drugged, forced into sexual servitude until they became pregnant, diseased or both. If they died, then more young women were recruited from outside New York to take their places in this endless carrousel of debauchery. One thing was certain: as long as it was extremely profitable to conduct business this way, these women will continue to be used, and the families of New York City will continue to be victimized by the results.
As I walked into the Union Plaza District, I could see up ahead to Becky Charming’s building. There was a big crowd of demonstrators, over 200 of them, and they were shouting and holding signs in front of Becky’s residence. As I got closer, I could see that Rebecca Charming “Jones,” daughter of New York Congressman Edward Jones, was outside addressing these demonstrators. Her fist was raised into the air punctuating her verbiage, and I felt sorry for those victims of her barrage, as I have been on the receiving end of her arguments in the past.
“Where did you get the idea that I keep women imprisoned? My women are legally bonded by this city, and they keep their own hours and are completely free to do as they please on their own time! You should be demonstrating down at the Tenderloin. Those girls are prisoners. They have no free will. They are kept drugged and have no access to contraceptives, which are proven to prevent diseases. My ladies have a doctor and get the best medical care available!”
I could see that the signs these demonstrators held reflected religious groups that condemned any and all prostitution, so I knew Becky’s words were falling on deaf ears. “God condemns harlotry!” “Arrest Rebecca Charming!”
What I was asking myself was who informed these demonstrators as to where Becky resided and who she was. I then saw that there were about a dozen Metropolitan Policemen standing on the outer perimeter of the crowd. They were smiling and standing, arms behind their backs, as if this were a Fourth of July picnic.
That’s when I remember what Gator O’Neil had said about those coppers who were let through the side door of the Palace Theater. I suddenly realized that this was round one of the brothel wars of New York City between Jane the Grabber and Becky Charming. I now needed to stop this demonstration before it got out of hand. Although this crowd appeared to be church-going types, there were a few tough-looking men who could be there to start some violent activities.
I had an idea of how to diffuse this situation. I extracted the folded paper I was going to show Becky, which contained our plan to disrupt the Palace Theater, and I held it up as I shouldered my way through the crowd of demonstrators until I stood in front of Becky. Luckily, she understood that I was there to rescue her, so she showed no sign of recognizing me.
“I am from the City Health Department. This woman’s water supply has been diagnosed with the cholera bacteria! Look at her color--she’s turning blue--a sure sign she has the disease! I must condemn this property at once before more lives are lost.”
There were gasps and screams from the assembled crowd, and I knew they were horribly frightened. During the cholera epidemic of 1866 over one thousand citizens died, and many of the victims were from the upper classes because the water all over the city had become infested with the bacteria.
Not only did the demonstrators leave, along with the hapless coppers, but the entire building heard about the cholera, and they were leaving by the dozens as well. As I walked Becky to 7th Avenue to catch a Hansom cab, she whispered to me, “That was quite brilliant, O’Malley!”
I told the driver to let us off in Central Park. We could see the steam-powered equipment standing at rest beside hundreds of trees that had been moved, and tons of topsoil that had recently been hauled from New Jersey. We continued down the path until we reached Bethesda Fountain, which was the central feature on the lower level of the terrace. Bethesda Terrace overlooked The Lake and was on two levels, united by two grand staircases and a lesser one that passed under Terrace Drive to provide passage south to the Elkan Naumburg bandshell and finally to The Mall.
I took out my paper record of what we had discovered at the Palace Theater, but Becky seemed sullen and reserved, so I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She turned to face me, and we could feel the cool, moist breeze come at us from over the showering waters of the fountain. “Patrick, I never told you this, but do you know why I decided to continue my prostitution business after the war?”
This was a new path to go down with her. I knew I would have to tread softly, so I answered, “No, but I can understand why you may have kept it to yourself.”
“Most of the women who worked for me during the war were from good families. Unlike what Hester Haskins and her kind do to force women into the profession, all of my girls came to it voluntarily, with no pressure from me. They each had a story about leaving a family back home, just the way you and your soldiers did, and each one told me that she knew what she was giving up in order to serve the troopers.” Becky walked over to the edge of the fountain and dipped her hand into the water. “The only thing my ladies have in common with Haskins’ women is the fact that they have lost respect.”
“Respect from their families?” I asked, but I immediately knew I had hit a tender spot because Becky whirled around to face me with a glare in her eyes I could see under the gas lights of the terrace.
“No, you ignoramus! Respect from society! Why should you and other men be lauded for a job that required so much horror and bloodshed? And yet, there we were, giving you a respite from the ghoulish endeavor of war on the battlefield, but when we returned to civilian life, we had nowhere to go. Our families had rejected us because society had rejected us.”
“I see what you mean. You want to change how society sees your business.” This was not the correct statement either.
“No! I mean we want the same respect that free Negroes receive. We want the same respect a favorite dog receives! Your Civil War was fought for freedom and emancipation from slavery. Now, we women are fighting our own civil war for those same rights. Why should a woman who sells her sex be considered a moral pariah? This is the only tool most women have with which to manipulate men. We can’t make contracts; we can’t inherit wealth or pass it on. We can’t keep our children or our house when we divorce. Oh, but we can work. Our children can too! Twelve to fifteen hours a day we can slave in poorly ventilated, dangerous textile mills and garment factories. Why shouldn’t working on one’s back be an improvement over that?”
Becky was leading up to something, and I was not aware of what it was. I was allowing her to vent, however, as there was probably no force on Earth that could have stopped her at that moment.
“We are not just fighting the greed and inhuman conditions represented by Jane the Grabber and the Tammany Hall politicians. No, we are fighting for respect, honor and decency toward all women, no matter what their profession! Work, no matter what kind of work, should have safety standards and the workers should have the right to negotiate for wages and for hours. It is this respect to which I refer--Mister Patrick James O’Malley--and no less! Am I making myself clear? This is nothing less than a women’s civil war!”
I was then
able to tell Becky about what Walter McKenzie and his boys, Superintendent John Kennedy and I were doing in her best interests. “We saw these same police, who were at your apartment building today, earlier in the day at the Palace Theater in the Tenderloin. Jane the Grabber let them in a side entrance. What I have deduced is that this is the firing upon Fort Sumter in your women’s war. We must now plan a counter-attack that will do more damage to this woman and her plans to take-over your business. I will also inform my men that you plan to take on City Hall, as well, due to the nature of the feminist cause behind our efforts.”
Becky ran up to me and clasped her arms around my neck. She then kissed my lips. “Thank you, Patrick! My ladies will also become soldiers in our little war, and whatever we can contribute will be all for a good cause. Perhaps one day women will look back at the Brothel War of New York City and see that it provided a beginning to women’s civil rights in America.”
I told Becky about what we had planned for the next days in this war, and she responded positively. She was impressed by how I was able to penetrate the theater and discover Hester Haskins’ safe. “We have a young man who can get into the safe. I think what we find inside will allow us to get the upper hand on her,” I said.
“Good job, Patrick! What about Kennedy? You said she has all the legal licenses right now. What can you do to overcome the legal problem?”
“Kennedy has been fighting his battles with Tammany Hall for years. He knows how to go about putting pressure upon these establishments so they begin to squirm. We can apply the same tricks to the Palace.” I took Becky’s arm into my own. “Let’s get you back now. Your fellow tenants should have a lot to talk about when you tell them what happened.”
She placed her right arm inside the crook of my left arm, and we began walking back to the cabs near the avenue. The springtime weather was perfect, and I felt the closest I had ever felt with Miss Charming. It was as if her confession to me had set the stage for a future victory that might make us friends for life. I had discovered that the issue of women’s rights was at least as important to her as it was to women like Bessie Mergenthaler, and it was also just as important to most women in America. However, like the slaves, they had been living under oppressive conditions so long they did not see what was happening to them.
“If you plan to fight a civil war, Madame Charming, then you must learn about the sneak attack,” I whispered in her ear. I then took liberties with her person, specifically down the front of her dress. I could hear her sharp intake of breath as we walked under the trees, and the birds sleeping in the branches above us began to coo and chirp in restless applause at my audacious behavior.
Chapter 4: Child’s Play
There were no more demonstrations at Becky’s offices in the Theater District. I assumed it must have been an invention of Jane Haskins. She must have been hoping that the public would get involved and cause unrest or even a violent confrontation in the street. On the contrary, there was no mention of the event in the penny dailies, and the only discussion in the neighborhood was about Becky’s building and the cholera. After she explained to them that it had been a way to stop the demonstrators who wanted her shut down, all of the tenants in her building understood. Becky Charming had a respectable reputation, despite her business.
We now needed to discover a way to embarrass Jane the Grabber. I believed the answer to our dilemma was to go back to the Palace Theater and crack Jane the Grabber’s office safe. I met up with Walter and his three Plug Uglies to tell them my plans. I brought the costumes we would change into before we went back to New York.
Gator O’Neil answered the door to the wharf shack on the Hoboken docks. He looked like a wounded soldier. His face was lacerated with a big scab that crossed his forehead and extended down the middle to his chin in three stripes. His right hand was also an infestation of rosy contusions on the knuckles, and his elbow had a deep puncture. “What happened to you?” I asked, stepping inside.
As he led me to McKenzie’s back office, he was limping. “The rich Knickerbocker Club boys were over here from New York, and they always likes ta put up money on fights with beasts. They catch ‘em in the forests in Tarrytown and hauls ‘em over here by ferry. I won me fifty dollars fightin’ a 400 pound Black Bear! Smacked him one on the snout and he whimpered away like a pup. I think I broke somethin’, but he got ta me first pretty good.”
“O’Malley! Ready for more spy work?” McKenzie greeted me at the door. He first pumped my hand and then pushed out a chair for me to sit. None of his other gang members was there.
I sat down and focused my thoughts. “I want to go back to the Palace, but I want to bring the twins, if I can. If we can get into that safe to see what she has in there, I believe we can improve our chances of finding something to pin on her. If we have too many men there, there are more chances we might appear suspicious.”
“Sure, I’ll be tellin’ ‘em. Do you wear the costumes again?”
“Yes, I have them in my satchel.” I opened my Army satchel and took out the two disguises--one for me and one for Bill--and lay them down on the office table.
“Billy boy says he’s cracked the combination. It shouldn’t take ‘em fifteen minutes to have the safe open. Wait here. I’ll get ‘em both. They’re dealing cards at one of my saloons.”
“Thanks, Walter. I’ll change into my Reynolds outfit.”
“Don’t call it that, me boy-o. That bastard killed my wife!”
“Right. I’m sorry, old man,” I said.
On the ferry to New York, I found out that the Maguire twins were always pulling tricks on others. Bill was the more intelligent, so he always took tests in school for his brother, Dan. In addition, they would share girlfriends, as the females could never figure out the tell-tale differences in their personalities. There were also minute physical differences, in that Bill had a birthmark on his heel, but he believed “A woman would never be looking at my heel,” he said, but she would “sure be callin’ me one, when she found out I tricked her!”
Dan also confessed to me that he had developed a liking for the young hooker Irene at the Palace Theater. His voice was adamant as he stood at the railing on the starboard side of the ferry boat and told me, “Mister O’Malley, sir. Can’t we get her out of that place? She don’t belong there. I could see it in her eyes. That Allen’s a no good bastard! Nobody deserves to live like a slave! Didn’t we just free all those slaves? Why can’t we free her?”
The wisdom of this young man was quite obvious. It was also clear that he had fallen for this young woman. “This is why we must find something on Hester Haskins. Right now, she is running a legitimate business, but if what we find in her safe proves to be in some way illegal or beyond the bounds of decency, then we can certainly close her down and rescue all those girls.”
We entered the Palace Theater at different intervals. Dan sidled up to the bar to distract John Allen, and ten minutes later I came in to sit at a table and hold a drink in my hand. Finally, Bill came in, stood in the foyer for a bit, and, when nobody was looking, climbed the stairs up to the second level where Hester Haskins’ office was. Hopefully, the Madame was not in.
We all played our different acting roles in the theater, and it was forty-five minutes later when a scream came from above. All heads turned up toward the second level. John Allen left his post behind the bar and hurtled up the stairs, four steps per leap. There were sounds of chairs being overturned, and some loud grunts and then a man was being dragged by the back of his coat down the stairs. It was Bill, and John Allen was doing the dragging, followed closely by Irene, two other girls, and Jane the Grabber. The line winded its way down the wide stairway until they were all standing in front of the bar. Dan stared at his disguised brother from his seat at the bar stool.
I decided to cause a distraction. I reached inside my left boot and extracted my Colt service revolver. I marched purposely over to where Dan was sitting and put my left arm around the lad’s neck while I kept my pist
ol on Allen. There were no other men in the theater, so I had the drop on him. “We’re here to get our little sister, Irene. Dan, go get her!” I told him. It took him a few moments, but he finally understood what I was doing. He jumped off his stool, ran over to where Irene was standing, her mouth agape, and he took her arm into his big hand.
“Bill, you can take your disguise off now!” I told the other brother. He immediately snatched off his wig, his spectacles and his beard. I was the only member of our group with a disguise at that moment.
“They’re twins!” said John Allen. “Are they your brothers?” he asked Irene.
“Yes,” she said, and she tried to pull away from Dan’s grip. “You can’t take me back!” she screamed.
“What were you doing in my safe?” Hester Haskins was angry.
I had to think fast. “We need money. Our parents are dead, and we have to take care of this ornery girl now,” I said.
“Let them go,” said Allen. “She’s not worth the trouble.”
“You best believe we’re going,” I said, waving my gun and walking backwards toward the front exit. Bill and Dan followed me, dragging little Irene between them. She was still wriggling like a worm to get free, but they had a good hold on her.
I knew the twins would not be back, but I might return. My Reynolds disguise was still in effect, and I might need it in the future. As we moved down the block, I tucked my pistol back into my calf holster. Dan was staring down at little Irene like a lost boy. Bill had to strong arm her to get her to move with us.
“We’ll take her over to Becky’s place in the Plaza Theater District. She already said she would take care of her. What do you think of that, young lady?” I asked her.
