Prostitution in the Gilded Age

by Kevin Murphy

  Judge Garvan dealt with every kind of criminal case under the sun, with a preponderance of drunkenness, thefts, and assaults. But on January 30, 1905, he was confronted with another proprietor of a house of ill repute. He paused and then proclaimed, “I’m opposed to the idea which is entertained by the proprietors of immoral houses. They . . . think . . . they can appear in police court, plead guilty, pay a fine as a sort of tax . . . and then go right back to business.” To convince them that the idea was an erroneous one, Judge Garvan sentenced Louise Duval, for conducting an immoral house on Commerce Street, to three months in jail. Mary Sherman and Gabrell Shenot, who were charged with being inmates of the house, were each fined $10 and costs, “after the judge had given them to understand that they would be sentenced to jail if brought into court at any future time.” It was 1905 and Judge Garvan’s toe had slipped into the water.[351]

  Clearly, Garvan didn’t have the stomach to send a dozen madames to jail after only twenty months on the bench. Given the choice, he would have loved to complete the task with a series of baby steps, convincing brothel owners to close up shop on their own. The sentencing of Louise Duval to jail for three months—and putting the fear of God into her inmates—was a move in that direction. Unfortunately, Judge Garvan’s break with the past didn’t create a big enough splash.[352]

  Four months later, on Saturday April 7, 1906, Judge Garvan faced another batch of messy cases. Some of the allegedly guilty parties were said to be proprietors; others claimed they were only married to proprietors; still others claimed they were merely frequenting houses of ill repute. Judge Garvan gave out a mixed bag of sentences, but was clearly frustrated, as he said, “In the past, these people have been brought into court and fined . . . then returned to the . . . same business.”[353]

  Judge Garvan knew what he had to do. At this point, he’d had more than three years’ experience on the police court, but was still fighting an inner battle with the iniquities of the law—the revolving door, the depraved people who ran the bordellos, and of course his part in callously throwing so many people out onto the street. It was one thing to accept the job of closing the sporting houses and quite another to actually do it.

  When Ethel Graves came before Judge Garvan that Saturday morning, the “Queen of the Madames” got the worst treatment any member of the demimonde had ever gotten. Besides being fined, the gay and festive Ethel was sentenced to thirty days at the Syms Street jail. Ethel’s lover, Dick Hyland, got the same. Though the amount of time given to Ethel Graves was less than that given to Louise Duval a year earlier, it represented a huge sentence because Ethel Graves ranked so high in the demimonde and always had the best lawyers. The point was to make something stick.[354]

  Ethel Graves was a prominent character in Bohemia for years, and knew enough to keep a man, plus a few high-priced lawyers, at her side. For years, Ethel Graves’s lover was “Tudor” Adams. He spent three fortunes on Ethel, who was in her prime and irresistible. After Tudor went broke, Ethel transformed herself from a chrysalis into a butterfly by opening the New England House at the bottom of State Street. It was the lowest form of brothel, where dissolution trumped eroticism. Dick Hyland, a young sport—with a wife and kids in Middletown—met Ethel’s needs and moved in with her.

  Ethel Graves and Dick Hyland appealed their cases to superior court, putting great faith in their lawyers. The superior court was thrust into an unenviable position. If the court didn’t come down hard on Ethel Graves and Dick Hyland, the other keepers of bawdy houses would rightly sense judicial weakness. Judge Garvan’s initiative would go up in smoke. That said, the black-robed, high priests of the superior court knew exactly what was happening. The Hartford Bridge would be completed in early 1908, so closing the houses in the middle of 1906 seemed like inspired timing. Mayor William Henney, Judge Edward Garvan, and Chief of Police William Gunn were not acting on a whim. They had the most powerful backing imaginable.[355]

  On June 6, 1906, Ethel Graves and Dick Hyland entered the courtroom of Judge Ralph Wheeler, originally from New London. Wheeler was a Democrat, who graduated from Yale in 1864 and was accepted into the New London bar in 1867. Wheeler served in the state Senate in 1874 and served as mayor of New London during Morgan Bulkeley’s controversial holdover term as governor—from 1891 to 1893. Morgan Bulkeley’s successor in the governor’s office, Luzon Morris, appointed Ralph Wheeler to the superior court in 1893. Wheeler was an astute jurist. Future governor, Simeon Baldwin, wanted to put Wheeler on the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1915, but Wheeler died before that could happen. Suffice it to say, Judge Ralph Wheeler had no trouble helping Hartford drive out the lingering vice that threatened to tarnish the city’s otherwise bright future.

  After hearing Ethel Grave’s motion in superior court, Judge Ralph Wheeler, through his long flowing white beard barked, “Ethel Graves, stand up! . . . . I will fine you $75 plus costs, with the understanding that you get out of the city and never return to do business in these parts.” In his turn, Dick Hyland got the same fine and ejection order. Given the options, the couple decided to take flight. Ethel sold the New England House to a friend and didn’t even arrange for future residuals, a common practice in the business. [356]

  At the New England House, the inmates were just waiting for the storm to blow over. They assumed that business would return to normal. Whoever bought the New England House should have done well, except that Morgan Bulkeley had already decided that the New England House was one of the many sinks of iniquity that would be bulldozed to make way for the approach to the Hartford Bridge. Over the critical years of building and opening the bridge, it’s obvious that certain members of the demimonde were slow to understand the powerful forces allied against them.

  By early 1907, the houses of ill fame in the tenderloin were still running flat-out. Though there were raids and the fines kept going up, the proprietors had dug in their heels. Judge Garvan’s legal machinations dragged along in desultory fashion through the spring of 1907, with the completion of the new Hartford Bridge in sight.[357] The bell rope was still lifting the monk, but the bishops could wait no longer; they were out of time.

  Owing to a raid on ten houses of ill repute on Saturday night and Sunday morning, July 6-7, 1907, Judge Edward Garvan had a most unusual sight in his courtroom on Monday morning. Sitting and standing about the court room were almost a hundred women in their very best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and most of the costumes were as loud as trolley gongs. The girls of the demimonde apparently wanted Judge Garvan to get the full libertine experience. The shocking colors and general mayhem made it seem more like another German-American orgy at the Auditorium than a sobering legal entanglement. But Judge Garvan wasn’t moved, for his intention was to turn up the heat on the madames and their girls. Turning his chair slightly toward Chief of Police Gunn, he cleared his throat and began. Judge Garvan didn’t want one syllable lost, so he conversed loudly in open court with Chief Gunn—

  Garvan: I want to ask you the reason for these raids. Do you intend to stop this vice or to let these people . . . continue?

  Chief Gunn: Anytime a warrant is given to me, I shall execute it.

  Garvan: Then you consider it the duty of the prosecuting attorney to issue a warrant for you to raid these places?

  Gunn: I do. Yes sir.

  Garvan: Prosecuting Attorney Harrison Freeman. I would like to ask you the object of these raids. Is it the sincere purpose to keep State Street and [other] streets free from vice?

  Freeman: It is the sincere purpose to clean State and [other] streets, and to keep them clean. There is to be a Boulevard along the west side of the river, and trolley cars are to run up State Street. It is the sincere purpose to keep the street clear of [brothels].

  Garvan: If it is the sincere purpose to stop this vice . . . the court will assist all that it can.

  Judge Garvan then fined, and sent to jail for three months, all the madames caught in the latest raid. . . . All of these women posted bonds and then cov
ered the fines of their inmates. As far as the jail sentences, they would take their chances in superior court. For the time being, they had loads of money and passed out plenty of gold $20 certificates in the payment of fines and court costs. The money collected came to $1,537.[358]

  Over thirty women of the half-world, the Bohemian inmates of the houses “in the Ward,” left Hartford. The girls could not be induced by the madames to remain anywhere near the Capitol City. Judge Garvan and Chief Gunn thoroughly frightened the girls and these footloose members of the half-world held their collective breath until their trains cleared city limits.[359]

  Judge Garvan showed an enormous amount of nerve. There had been many raids over the past forty years, but never before had a judge given three-month jail sentences to ten well-established madames. Judge Garvan caused a shock wave through the tenderloin that resulted in the wholesale exodus of prostitutes. It probably wasn’t consistent to send all the older madames—women who had been before the court many times—to jail for three months, but Morgan Bulkeley had a schedule to keep. Almost every house of ill repute—with the exception of a few truly outlaw French houses on Front Street—were badly crippled by Judge Garvan’s order.[360]

  Six of the ten madames appealed their cases to the criminal division of the superior court. When their cases, at last, found their way into superior court, it was a lovely Wednesday morning, and the women were bedecked in diamonds and their finest apparel—but it made no difference. After hearing from their attorneys, Judge Howard J. Curtis sentenced them all to three months in jail. Grace Howard, Grace Morton, Kate Lamphere, Laura Phillips, and Clara and Minnie Simmons from Providence, were taken into custody. It may not have completely sunk in at the time, but when at length they got back to their houses, it would be only to pack their bags and say goodbye to four bare walls. Hartford wasn’t an open city anymore.

  Many of the madames and proprietors of resorts in the city were through. They could see what was coming down the road. For example, Grace Howard—who seemed to have more pluck than ten women—fled Hartford for good in May 1908. She “purchased a New London place and installed new girls. She admitted that she did so for the purpose of making a good investment of a little money and New London was the only city in New England where houses of ill repute were practically guaranteed immunity from prosecution.”[361]

  The coup de grace delivered by Judge Garvan that Monday morning wasn’t a surprise to Morgan Bulkeley and the other bishops. The first trolley car crossed over the new Hartford Bridge on the afternoon of November 29, 1907—only four and a half months after the big raid. Since the nastiest job in the world was complete—and the cars were using the new bridge—Judge Garvan tendered his resignation to Governor Rollin S. Woodruff on December 5, 1907, to take effect on January 1, 1908. Garvan served almost five years as judge of the police court. With Judge Garvan’s resignation to take effect on January 1, 1908, one wonders if he assured Morgan Bulkeley that he would stay on the bench until 1908—the bridge’s scheduled completion date. The chronology supports this conclusion.[362]

  On Christmas Day 1907 the temporary bridge closed, and all traffic—walkers, teams and trolleys—had to use the new bridge over the Connecticut River.[363] The bridge cost $1,600,000. When the cost of the approaches was added in, the total came to $3,000,000. (Since this number was compiled in early 1908, when significant work on the waterfront remained incomplete, the final tally was likely much higher.)[364]

  On his last day, Judge Garvan walked blindly into a huge party in his courtroom. His bench was covered with American Beauty roses and Judge Walter Clark presented him with a handsome silver loving cup. The courtroom swelled with well-wishers—Mayor William Henney; his father, Hon. Patrick Garvan; six pastors from the biggest churches in town; state Senator Patrick McGovern; a dozen of the finest attorneys in the city; and another two dozen businessmen and dignitaries from all around the area. Judge Clark presented the cup to Judge Garvan and gave a little speech—

  You’ve been at the head of this court for nearly five years. You took it at a time when . . . . the legislature . . . passed the probation law so that it fell to you . . . to appoint the first probation officer for this court . . . .There is no brighter page in the history of the . . . police court, than that which records your administration.

  Edward Garvan had done what no judge before him was able to do, but he paid a high price. Judge Garvan had developed bleeding ulcers of the stomach and complications set in fast. He fought the battles as they came, but lost the war on March 4, 1910 when he died at his home on Farmington Avenue. He was thirty-eight.[365]

  A quick study of the friends and co-workers at Judge Garvan’s retirement party is enlightening. There were six clerics, a dozen prominent attorneys, and quite a few businessmen. But where were the bishops? Morgan Bulkeley sent his political sidekick, Patrick McGovern—still an actuary at Aetna Life, but now also a state Senator. The Goodwins were always the biggest taxpayers in Hartford because they owned so much real estate. In addition to the United States Hotel and many other rental properties, they owned a wide swath of farmland on the west side of Hartford—just waiting to be cut up into building lots. This land would someday become Woodside Circle, Goodwin Circle, Scarborough Street, Terry Road, Woodland Drive, Westerly Terrace . . . the list can hardly be enumerated. Didn’t the Goodwins benefit by the elimination of bordellos in Hartford? So where were Frankie and James Goodwin? Where were the Dunhams, who owned Willimantic Linen and Hartford Electric Light Company? (In fairness, the principal ownership of Hartford Electric Light had been transferred to Morgan Bulkeley, Billy Bulkeley, Thomas Enders, A.C. Dunham and three other Hartford men in 1884.)[366] Where was James Goodwin Batterson, the president of Travelers Insurance Company—the man with the largest private library in town, and a fine rolling estate at Albany Avenue and Vine Street?

  A list of the wealthiest members at The Hartford Club on Prospect Street—almost all Republicans—would render a good sampling of the bishops. Many years ago, most of the members had lunch in the grillroom as opposed to the main dining room. In this smaller venue, there sat a huge, round wooden table in the middle of the room, surrounded by smaller tables that seated from two to six diners. Very few people ever dared sit at the big table. The men who thought of themselves as the wealthiest and most influential men in town were the ones who used this central table. The most prominent members ate there when they chose, but no one at the club ever uttered the word bishop.

  After all the city’s brothels had been closed, the members of the Federation of Churches and the local pastors did an enormous amount of back-slapping as they suffered under the delusion that they had done it all. Actually, in 1895—right after the old wooden covered bridge burned— Morgan Bulkeley’s Bridge Commission conferred with city authorities and “emphatically insisted that every street approaching the bridge—that trolley cars, carriages, and automobiles used for a traffic way—should be free from brothels.” [367]

  The immediate effect of the displacement of so many houses of ill fame was like squeezing a balloon. Closing the bagnios in the heart of the tenderloin guaranteed that new brothels would spring up in other parts of the city, as the police predicted. Hicks Street, always considered a lovely residential street filled with respectable families on the north side of Bushnell Park, got its first two houses of ill repute about this time—at 22 and 46. The police closed them quickly.

  Potter Street was deep “in the Ward,” and packed with day laborers—mostly Irishmen and Italians. Full of rented tenements, it seemed a fairly easy place to start a house of ill repute. Once again, the police were forced to close down these new houses apace. In effect, the period from 1907 to 1911—when virtually every immoral house in the city had been closed down—was an uncertain time, when the final outcome wasn’t known. While Judge Garvan’s sentences in July 1907 should have been enough to close down the tenderloin, it was uncertain what the final outcome would be. Could the city stamp out all the brothels, or would f
orty years of uninhibited vice prove too much to overcome?[368]

  Naturally Judge Garvan’s jail sentences shocked everyone, but it must be kept in mind that the people of the tenderloin had no other skills. For this reason, and because the houses were so lucrative, some of them would fight Judge Garvan’s edict to the bitter end. While it may have looked like the houses of ill repute would all be closed by the time Morgan Bulkeley’s new bridge opened, the mop-up operations lasted through 1911. Even from 1912 through 1917, bawdy houses popped up here and there, but the police kept on top of the situation.

  Another huge consideration in Hartford’s clean-up in the first decade of the twentieth century, was the city’s police force. When organized in 1860, Hartford’s population at that time was 29,152, and there were only 8 sworn officers—including the chief. While the work of eliminating prostitution ground to completion just before 1910, the population of the city was 98,915, and the police force had swollen to 123 sworn officers. In other words, the population of Hartford rose 237% while the number of sworn police officers rose 1450%!

  What accounts for such a huge disparity? There are three trends to consider. Firstly, in 1860, there were ten houses of ill fame. By 1900, there were thirty, an increase of 200%. However, including streetwalkers, houses of assignation, and backroom operations, the growth rate of the sex industry was more like 400%. Any way you cut it, prostitution in the Capitol City was out of control.

  Secondly, city and town hiring practices always favored veterans. With Civil War soldiers and sailors still abundant in Hartford, the entire nation was crushed by the Panic of 1873—and a decade-long depression followed. Without question, all of the municipal departments were quickly loaded to the gunwales with veterans of the Civil War. This may have started an unprecedented climb in hiring at the police department that went unchecked until long after 1910.