Ghosts of the Red Light District

×

Expand

Looking south from Fourth Street and Wells about 1917. Not far from the Red Light District.

Anyone who has been paying attention to me these past few years – both in terms of what I write about and what I talk about at parties, funerals, holidays, etc – knows that downtown Milwaukee was once teeming with brothels. I wrote a piece about Milwaukee’s most famous madam – the oft-misunderstood Kittie Williams – earlier this year in the print edition of the Shepherd, but I want to take some time now to acknowledge some of the more “underground” characters of Milwaukee’s red light district and pinpoint where exactly their “dens of sins” once stood.

This is the first time these women and their houses have been written about publicly. In the summer of 1913, a state commission empanelled to investigate vice and prostitution in Wisconsin sent a team of private sleuths into Milwaukee ’s red light district to gather information about the business of prostitution in the Cream City . Their findings – housed in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison – provide an incredible image of an almost entirely forgotten Milwaukee .

The “Housekeeper”

Also included in the vice commission archives – and available online in part – is testimony from dozens of women involved in the sex trade in Milwaukee . The women questioned by the commission were remarkably candid, speaking freely about their lives and operations in the city. Their business was such an open secret, evidently, that most did not bother to deny the charges. The only accused madam who refused was Miss Alice Mosher, who kept a seven-room apartment flat on the first floor of a home at 210 Sixth Street – presently somewhere underneath a ramp on the Wisconsin Center ’s parking garage. Despite her insistences that she worked for a pittance as a housekeeper, investigators found Ms. Mosher’s house to be a very busy spot. She had a live-in woman who worked the door and turned away anyone she did not recognize. Unless, of course, they were sent by Mosher’s casual boyfriend, who played piano at nearby Ducey’s Café and kept an eye open for “live ones” who looked as though they might be search of a good time. Ostensibly, Mosher’s flat also functioned as a boarding house. When an investigator asked one of Mosher’s girls if he could rent a room – just for sleeping – she replied, “Oh. That is all right… but I thought you have come to **** me.”

The “Old-Timer”

Violet Young was an Irish madam who kept a house at 562 East Water Street . Today, the street is known as North Water and the site is occupied by the Rumpus Room, a restaurant in the 1000 North Water Building . Young was known as an “old-timer” in the trade by 1913. Her spot was favored by laboring men, who were lured from nearby saloons and street corners by Young’s stable of hard-luck ladies. Young had been in the business since the age of 15, when she ran away from home to escape parents who found her behavior to be “too wild” and beyond their control. She was known to keep “mixed-race company” and was fond of the bottle. Like many of Milwaukee ’s madams, she was protective of her girls. Just a few weeks before investigators profiled her place, the police had insisted she put one of her girls out. The cops said the girl was too young and needed to be sent home. Young refused, insisting the girl had no place else to go. She argued with the police until she was placed under arrest herself. She took the fall and served a short jail term, all the while refusing to let the girl be run out of town.

The Palm Garden

The Edward Howard Saloon and Palm Garden once occupied 212-216 Fourth Street , and is presently the mid-section of a parking garage. In the 1910s, this part of downtown was near enough to Milwaukee’s small-but-growing African American district that a number of the bars and clubs in this area were known – or “notorious” given the attitudes of the era – for having a dedicated following of both white and black patrons. Ed Howard’s place was one of them. It was also one of the many saloons of the area to offer more than just live music and cold drinks. Commission investigators made careful note of the mixed-race crowds, who sat together and danced to “smutty” ragtime tunes jauntily performed by an African American musical combo. The singer was a woman named Mattie, who made $12 a week and was also granted the privilege of “working” the men of the crowd after her shows and was allowed the use of an upstairs apartment bedroom. Milwaukee police cast an especially jaundiced eye on the Howard place, as he was known to give work to “pimps and rounders” to shield them from arrest for vagrancy.

“Naturally Bad”

Mary Schaefer never knew her parents. She grew up in a brothel in her native Missouri and ran away at age 12 to Michigan , where she was a working girl by 14. She told investigators that she was “naturally bad” and was “bad with boys” as a young girl. She was 40 years old when she arrived in Milwaukee with a small fortune amassed from operating a string of brothels in Kalamazoo , Michigan . She purchased a home at 522 Edison – a site presently somewhere in lobby of the Milwaukee Center – and turned it into one of Milwaukee ’s most resilient “sporting houses.” At one time, Schaefer kept as many as a dozen girls, but was down to just two “old-timers” by 1913. She served mostly working men, but also catered to young men brought to her place by their fathers. The men would come in, she told investigators, and ask for a “nice, clean girl” for their sons. She said the father did this for their sons’ “health.” Schaefer had made so much in the trade, she had a “kept man” named Sam whom she lavished with gifts. She rented a luxurious apartment flat for him and had recently given him a new automobile. Schaefer swore she had pure French blood, but it was commonly whispered in the district that she was part African American.

The Bucket of Blood

The alleyway that ran between Third and Fourth Streets, connecting Wells and Cedar (now Kilbourn), was once one of the most notorious pathways in Milwaukee . Known as the “Bucket of Blood,” it was home to a number of low-end brothels, many of which either employed or catered to African Americans. Fannie Stewart, one of Milwaukee ’s most established black madams, kept the house in the lot behind 207 Third Street . Stewart had no live-in prostitutes, but ran her place with women who were brought there by their pimps in the afternoon and early evenings. The women solicited customers from the alley and along Wells Street , charging fifty cents to a dollar per turn. Stewart had previously run a whorehouse on Armour Avenue on Chicago ’s southside, but rumor had it that the place had gotten so rough the cops had run her out of town. She was known to be a liberal user of cocaine and investigators found that most of her girls were addicted to the drug as well. Stewart also worked as a prostitute herself, for a pimp known only as “Bad-Eye Jimmy,” who was – in the words of investigators – a “fiend after white girls.”

Want to hear more strange and scandalous stories of from the old town? Join me at “Sleaze & Scandal: A Streets Tease” at the Streets of Old Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Public Museum on December 2. I’ll be presenting on one of my favorite characters from Milwaukee ’s long-ago and will have copies of my new book, Milwaukee Mayhem, for sale and signing.