Sin City

IIPM International Student Exchange Programme

Fallen women from pleasure paradise

“One never quite knows where evil, i.e., the vice squad is lurking in this business. The misogynists get a real kick out of surprising (shocking) you girls, when you give them the opportunity!!! . . . Therefore, you are to lock, double lock, triple lock all doors!!! . . . Figure it out, before they ‘get cha’!!!,” wrote Miz Julia in one of her ‘business tips’ to the 132 women who ‘worked’ around Washington for her firm Pamela Martin &amp. Indicted by a jury on federal racketeering charges Miz Julia, a pseudonym for Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is a woman who ran a high end – $300 an hour – “erotic fantasies’ service for the ‘Public Servants’ of Washington and a woman who draws an exact parallel to the Everleigh sisters of Karen Abbott’s debut non-fiction title Sin In The Second City Madams, Ministers, Playboys, And The Battle For America’s Soul.

In a sense, Abbott’s queer historical manuscript is a chronicle of times, a departure from the ‘history’s mysteries’ series to real flesh and blood tales of lowland Chicago. It transcends to the days of criminal glory of Chicago at the turn of the last century. A city notorious for having become a melting pot of crimes and for setting up of perhaps the most assured venture known to mankind – of bordellos. But here’s a den with a difference. For it’s a den run by the famous Everleigh sisters – Minna & Ada – of whose very mention spells a certain degree of class, a $50 entrance fees and opulent parlours where guests follow a code and wine replaces the reek of any hard liquor.

The sisters, on their part, perforated Chicago’s notorious Levee district – an equivalent of our red lights – by means of a porous thin sheet - successfully tucking away their past behind that veil and leaving most to ponder about. In particular for Abbott, the trace proved quite unnerving for at best she had Minna Everleigh’s dictated allegories to one Charles Washburn, who authoured Come Into My Parlor based on those parables that oft en ventured around unwarranted schmaltzy. But surely they reached the gates of Chicagoland from rural Virginia and were said to have fl ed abusive marriages “to vicious, violent men” only to set America’s fi nest brothel – a cathouse where ‘whores’ were treated well as compared to others down the road. Where an age limit of 18 was imposed when girls of 13 were drugged, raped and sold for $50 to enterprising Madams. By those standards, the Everleighs “ran a clean place” that forbade dealing with pimps and “beaters” and employed lasses out of their free will. They “brought a bit of decency to a profession rife with shame.”

However, beyond the Levee there was a growing movement against changes that challenged Christian America and against utter lawlessness, of which the Levee was a key bait along with its pompous sisters at 2131-2133 South Dearborn Street, its most anticipated victim.

Even though, in Ada & Minna, one found honest businesswomen who didn’t subscribe to the ‘White Slave Trade’ that eventually cornered politicians to come up with the Mann Act of 1910 that forbidding interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes, their sheer extent of bawdyhouse splendour at display with its “silk couches, the easy chairs and the grand piano, the statues of Greek goddesses peering through exotic palms, the bronze effigies of Cupid and Psyche, the imported rugs…..,” coupled with the ‘openness’ in ways of functioning, rung the death knell to the business in 1911. “The Club was the gleaming symbol of the Levee district, shining too brightly on those who operated best in the dark.”

Abbott’s selection of history to be retold lies a current flavour. “Has anything changed?” one might ask of the likes of the Everleighs or the more recent Miz Julia. Like its politicians and its wars, to put forth, a society reaps what it sows.

Edit bureau: Shashank Shekhar

Book Extract
“The Club was the gleaming symbol of the Levee district, shining too brightly on those who operated best in the dark.

“They were the Angels of the Line,” wrote journalist Charles Washburn, twenty- five years after the war over the Levee, “and, as angels, hated and persecuted.”

But on that fall night, as Minna Everleigh watched the reporter disappear into the murk of Dearborn Street, she did not fret about what trouble might come, or who would be behind it. She and Ada had work to do: keep books, prepare the courtesans and greet their boys, watching each man admire the seesaw sway of a girl’s rear as he followed her up the stairs. Would he like a warm bath, or something scrumptious from the Pullman Buffet, or a favor far too naughty to say aloud?

They ran the most successful – and respected – whorehouse in America, and had no reason, yet, to believe that would ever change.”

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru

and Economist) Initiative

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