Prostitution in the Gilded Age

by Kevin Murphy

  PROSTITUTION IN THE GILDED AGE

  The Jennie Hollister Story

  Shining Tramp Press

  Dedicated to my sister-

  Barbara the Doll

  Contents

  Introduction 13

  Chapter 1 Jennie McQueeney of Dublin 19

  Chapter 2 Entering The Oldest Profession 49

  Chapter 3 A Different Tack 84

  Chapter 4 The Demimonde 112

  Chapter 5 Tom Hollister’s Passing 134

  Chapter 6 To Every Season 153

  Chapter 7 Two Random Events 187

  Chapter 8 The End Of An Era 216

  Appendix A 260

  Author’s Notes 269

  Acknowledgements 286

  Bibliography 288

  Index 293

  Cover: Oil Painting by the Author; Other Art, Pictures, & Maps by the Author,

  the Connecticut State Library, 231 Capitol Ave., Hartford, or old newspapers.

  Copyright © 2015 by Kevin Murphy

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, including photocopying, mechanical, or recording without written permission from the publisher or author except reviewers who may quote brief passages for reviews in newspapers, magazines, journals, or Internet web pages. Permission can be arranged by writing to the publisher.

  Published by Shining Tramp Press

  2114 Harbor View Drive, Rocky Hill, CT 06067

  ISBN 978-0-9749352-4-9

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  E660 - 664

  Murphy, Kevin J., 1949-

  Prostitution in the Gilded Age: The Jennie Hollister Story

  Kevin Murphy. – 1st ed.

  303 p.; 23.5 cm.

  Includes author’s notes and index.

  Prostitution

  Biography

  History, Prostitution, U.S., Gilded Age

  History, Hartford, Connecticut

  Printed by Amazon

  First Edition: January 2015

  Introduction

  Jennie Hollister was one of the most successful madames of the Gilded Age—that curious period from about 1870 to 1910. Every city in the land had a duplicate copy of Jennie Hollister. Fannie Porter’s San Antonio, Texas brothel was a frequent stop for outlaws, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In San Francisco, Sally Stanford outshone the other madames and eventually became the mayor of Sausalito. Josie Arlington of New Orleans’s “Storyville” opened her first bordello on Customhouse Street in 1895. Eleanora Dumont had bawdy houses in gold and silver boomtowns all over the Rockies. Annie Wilson, Queen of Omaha’s Underworld, eventually bequeathed her twenty-five-room mansion to the city for a hospital. Dorothy Parker ran Dorothy’s Rooms at the Last Chance Gulch in Helena, Montana. The differences between these women, and their houses of ill fame, could be etched on a ladybug’s nose. By following the highs and lows of Jennie Hollister’s life in Hartford, Connecticut, the lives and careers of all other prostitutes and madames come clearly into focus.

  Jennie Hollister seemed the perfect madame—very attractive, stately, overflowing with personality, and possessed of a strong native intelligence. Jennie’s home—and parlor house—rested elegantly on the east side of Bushnell Park, the central park of the city. This 6,000-square-foot Second French Empire mansion sat at 76 Wells Street and it was as beautiful and luxurious as any home in town.

  The Gilded Age represented the only time in American history when prostitution was virtually legal. The Civil War proved such a grizzly affair that, afterward, the average citizen were unmoved by a little vice. By the turn of the twentieth century, even small cities had dozens of bawdy houses and countless houses of assignation. In addition, there were plenty of saloons and cigar stores with backroom operations.

  Eventually, America regained its social conscience and, almost overnight, the houses of ill repute disappeared. The truly lucky madames were the ones who didn’t live to see the end of an era. Jennie Hollister passed away in 1900, just a few years before the houses of ill fame were closed forever. Though Jennie ran a luxurious and orderly parlor house, it would never have survived society’s social reforms and return to righteousness.

  Jennie Hollister’s seventeen-room parlor house was almost as roomy and comfortable as Governor Morgan Bulkeley’s Italianate mansion on Washington Street or Mark Twain’s huge “steamboat” manse—both just a few blocks away. The Hollister place glistened with white clapboards and phallic red brick chimneys atop a Pennsylvania gray slate mansard roof. The property enjoyed almost a hundred and ten feet of frontage on Wells Street, and the back and side yards accommodated lush and charming gardens. The Hollisters’ home at 76 Wells Street, with its aristocratic clientele, brought out the envy in all the city’s other madames.[1]

  A leafy collection of elms, oaks, and maples shaded the house from the noonday sun. Looking west, Jennie Hollister could see the great expanse of Bushnell Park, with its lazy Park River, miles of bridle paths, and acres of well-manicured lawns. What had originally been the lifeless “city park” became such a huge attraction that, on Sunday afternoons, families from miles around took leisurely carriage drives through this verdant playground.

  Just to the west of Bushnell Park, and fairly touching the clouds, stood Connecticut’s mammoth new State Capitol—the working venue of some of the Hollisters’ best patrons. Jennie and Tom Hollister entertained the finest collection of lawmakers and businessmen of money and property. Men of the highest station, from all over the state, spent their spare time at the Hollisters’ house of ill repute. Jennie and Tom Hollister bought the place in early 1882, and spent a fortune on lavish improvements, including steam heat. Jennie Hollister was twelve years younger than her husband, who passed away in 1894. When Jennie died in 1900, she had been in business for eighteen years—and her arrest record for keeping a house of ill repute featured only one smudge—in 1899. All those years, when wary clients broached the subject, Jennie replied reassuringly, “We have never been bothered by the police during the many years of our existence.”[2]

  Tom’s father, Joseph Hollister, had been a New York City policeman and as a courtesy, the local police gave the Hollisters extensive latitude. In turn, the Hollisters made sure that each January the chief of police received about the same as a saloonkeeper would pay for his license—$450 in cash. (That’s why bordellos weren’t usually raided in early January, as police waited for proprietors to do the right thing.) The Hollisters also made sure that the chief, captains, lieutenants, and beat cops all received Christmas gifts. Lastly, Jennie and Tom ran 76 Wells Street in an orderly manner. The police had no trouble leaving the Hollisters alone.

  Far more important in the calculus of Gilded Age prostitution, were the “bishops”—not the religious sort, but the city father type—who felt that prostitution was a necessary evil. As a result, houses of ill fame operated freely while the police kept a careful—albeit distant—watch. The police knew every house: the proprietors, proprietresses, madames, inmates, runners, and patrons. (Runners were business solicitors.) Yet they rarely raided the orderly houses. When they did perform raids, revenue drove the incursions. Without these houses of sin, streetwalkers would overrun the city, creating a terrible atmosphere for respectable women and businessmen alike. Elected officials, merchants, bankers, professional men—and even clerics—felt it best to allow the houses of ill fame to operate, as long as the businesses were orderly.

  Cities across the country set up red light districts to corral the vice. Bawdy houses were allowed to operate freely. After a fashion, the scheme worked well. When Mark Twain first visited Hartford in 1868, he w
rote a letter to his editor at Alta California magazine and gushed, “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, [Hartford] is the chief . . . [it] seems to be composed almost entirely of dwelling houses—not single-shaped affairs . . . but massive private hotels, scattered along the broad, straight streets. . . . Some of these stately dwellings are almost buried from sight in parks and forests. . . .You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here. . . .The morality of this locality is . . . marvelous. . . .Young ladies walk these streets alone as late as ten o’clock at night, and are not insulted. . . . I see the whole female element of the community . . . turn out about eight o’clock in the evening and swarm back and forth through Main Street. . . . It is said that ladies of the highest respectability go freely to lectures and concerts at night in this city of 40,000 souls, without other escort than members of their own sex. . . .”[3]

  Could Jennie Hollister’s place have been one of those that Mark Twain walked by when he lived in Hartford? We’ll never know for sure, but it might have been. If keeping prostitution behind closed doors made Mark Twain think so highly of the city, perhaps the bishops knew what they were doing.

  Throughout the 1890s, as wilder and bawdier characters of the demimonde poured into the wide-open Capitol City of Connecticut, vice of all sorts ran on borrowed time. In 1895, the wooden, covered bridge to East Hartford burned until the river swept away the few remaining charred splinters of wood. Naturally enough, the common council appointed a new bridge commission. At the helm of this new body was ex-Gov. Morgan Bulkeley who had been mayor of the city from 1880 to 1888. When it came to individuals, Bulkeley had no prejudices of any kind, but he loathed the demimonde. In the end, as Bulkeley sweated over the cost of the longest stone arch bridge in the world, he made a fateful decision: there would be no houses of ill repute on the streets that led to the new bridge.

  Bulkeley bought up huge sections of the tenderloin, including vast stretches of the waterfront along the Connecticut River, and bulldozed buildings with abandon. Gone were the flophouses, the flag taverns, tumbledown shacks, and the houses of ill fame that had plagued the city from the earliest times. The toughs and the prostitutes had lost their homes and their haunts. Meanwhile, just before traffic flowed over the new bridge in late 1907, Judge Edward Garvan of the city’s police court sent ten madames to jail for three months. Up to that time, the madames only paid fines. The tenderloin trembled, as the city closed down around them; soon they would have to leave.

  One last note: When Jennie McQueeney began working in the roadhouse of her friend and mentor, Angeline Prentice, she took the name Jennie Taylor. Around 1870, when she started her own house, in a failed attempt to remain in the shadows, she became Josephine “Jo” Bullock. Lastly, after she married Tom Hollister in 1878, Jennie Hollister emerged. The name stuck until her death in 1900. If your storyteller has done his job correctly, these changes will be fairly smooth and almost imperceptible.

  Chapter 1

  Jennie McQueeney of Dublin

  In late September of 1842, Jennie Hollister was born Jane “Jennie” McQueeney in Dublin, Ireland. (The names McQueen and McQueeney derive from McSweeney.) The infant, Jennie, bore her mother’s name, Jane (McGuire) McQueeney. As a toddler, young Jennie McQueeney was an absolute doll, with blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, and a sharp little mind. The barbaric Celts, the Viking plunderers, the Norman invaders, the alternating Anglo-Norman rulers, and the English Kings spent thousands of years enslaving the Irish people—their blood and sinew spilling into Ireland’s ever-evolving cauldron of brains, talent, bone, and bowel. In the end, these disparate forces combined to create divine little creatures like Jennie McQueeney.[4]

  The Irish have always been famous for naming children after parents and relatives, forcing a new identity upon the younger generation. Little Jane became Jennie; the girl, Bridget, became Delia; the son, Denis, became Dinny; and so it went. All her life, Jennie McQueeney used the formal name, Jane, only on important occasions: penned in the ship’s manifest before her voyage to America; on mortgage papers; affixed to her marriage license; and engraved on her impressive tombstone in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford. All other times, Jennie sufficed.[5]

  Timothy McQueeney, Jennie’s father, was an illiterate laborer in Dublin—on the eastern shore of Ireland. The McQueeneys, with their four girls; and the McGuires, with eight children, lived just north of what was then called the River Anna Liffey—a substantial body of water that ran west to east across the center of Dublin. Both families were Roman Catholic. The McQueeneys worshiped at St. Michan’s on Church Street, while the McGuires prayed at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street. The name St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral suggests a painful history. The Church of Ireland—Anglicans—own St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, but it has always acted as the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin. Ireland’s history brims with thousands of these historical curiosities.[6]

  For Jennie McQueeney, 1842 proved a monumentally bad time to enter the world. From 1700 to 1841, Ireland’s population quadrupled to 8.2 million residents. The island had become painfully overcrowded and the stress cracks of an economic disaster were already beginning to show.[7]

  The Great Famine, though officially bracketed between 1845 and 1851, plunged Ireland into at least seven decades of suffering. The Irish died and emigrated in record numbers, and the population of Ireland kept falling until 1926, when it leveled off just above 4.2 million. A common phrase during this long and painful period was “deserted Ireland,” for there were empty cottages all over the countryside and Ireland had no young adults. Old folks and small children seemed the only inhabitants for a long time after the Great Hunger.[8]

  Cottier farmers, who owned nothing and lived completely on potatoes, overran Ireland by the time the blight brought Ireland to ruin in 1845. The Irish had seen famines before and told themselves that the following year would be different. However, in July 1846, a Relief Commissioner sent the following report to England: “I am sorry to state that. . . . The prospect of the potato crop this year is even more distressing than last year—that the disease has appeared earlier and its ravages are more extensive.” Truth told, in 1846, the potato harvest was only 20 percent of pre-Famine levels. To make matters worse, much of that paltry crop rotted in storage.[9]

  As Ireland’s economy crumbled, emigration levels climbed, especially in far western Ireland where people were hungry and destitute. In Counties Mayo, Galway, Clare, Cork, and Kerry, emigration was the highest in the land. So was crime. In Dublin, crime rose only about 50 percent above pre-Famine levels. But in the far western counties, it went up more than 100 percent.[10] It could hardly be helped; people were fighting, stealing, and killing for food.

  With few options, many of the hungry, evicted Irish farmers were descending on the cities, looking for relief. Life in cities like Dublin deteriorated fast, and the economic collapse extended far beyond the shores of Ireland. In cities all over western Europe—London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Paris—tradesmen and artisans gathered at large, hot-blooded rallies to air their grievances, and more importantly, to demand jobs.[11]

  Trinity College and the Irish Parliament had been built just south of the Liffey, in Trinity Ward and the South City Ward. All along the river, quays berthed ships carrying goods and raw materials of every description. These ships were loaded and unloaded by a massive collection of poor, illiterate Irishmen, living just north of the Liffey in the dilapidated tenements of the North City Ward. The poor, uneducated residents of these dilapidated buildings, of course, included Jennie McQueeney, her parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

  As illiterate laborers, the McGuires and McQueeneys didn’t have a chance in such a desperate economy. Both families had been on the lookout for something better. At length, Timothy McQueeney got encouraging news from relatives in America. They lived in Providence, Rhode Island, but thought Timothy McQueeney and his family would find work and a good life in Hartford, Connecticut. Around 1850,
a familial connection existed between Hartford and Providence that has been lost over time. Just as the Dublin and Kingstown railroad had come to Ireland in 1834, the Hartford, Providence, and Fishkill railroad came to Hartford in 1839—and connected to New York a decade later. The workforce shifted to the cities as steam power replaced Connecticut’s 200 water powered mill towns, a trend that grew mightily throughout the Gilded Age.

  As a stellar example, Pliny Jewell of Vermont came to Hartford in 1845 and began a leather tanning business on the banks of the Park (Little) River. Three years later, he opened a shop on Trumbull Street, and in a few short decades, P. Jewell & Sons became the largest producer of industrial belting in the world. Hartford burgeoned with businesses, from saddlers to printers, who started small in the mid-1830s and built their firms up into world-beaters by the 1850s. After an ill-fated handgun-manufacturing venture in Patterson, New Jersey, Samuel Colt returned to Hartford in 1847 to produce ever more sophisticated revolvers. To cap his enormous success, in 1855, Colt built the largest private armory in the world, Colt Patent Fire-Arms Company, on the banks of the Connecticut River in the city’s south meadows. In the same vein, Christian Sharps had been issued a patent on a unique breech-loading rifle in 1849. The orders for this one rifle began the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company on Rifle Row (later Capitol Avenue). All of this doesn’t even touch upon Case, Lockwood & Brainard, the largest printer in Connecticut; Plimpton Manufacturing Company, the largest government envelope printer in the United States; and a dozen other major concerns that originated in Hartford around the middle of the nineteenth century. It seemed that the city couldn’t help itself as it blossomed into a vast manufacturing hub and the demand for skilled mechanics and immigrant Irish laborers grew with the businesses in this supercharged town on the shores of the Connecticut River.