“Rosina is a small woman—a frail being of the inferior sex—but she is bigger than the city of Milwaukee,” wrote the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1884. Their subject was Rosina Georg, operator of the Johannesburg tavern at Eighth and Galena, who was succeeding in the male-dominated local bar business and doing it on her own terms. Georg was just one of a number of Milwaukee women who ran nightspots in their own colorful ways.
Officials had long sought to close her dancehall and saloon when she went to war with City Hall over their refusal to grant a tavern operating permit. Despite regular raids and numerous arrests, Georg could not be moved to close down the rowdy Johannesburg. After her lawyer managed to have several of her arrests voided on technicalities, the Sentinel wrote, “She is becoming a howling terror to the legislative body.” After running the place for more than two years without an operating permit, she sold the bar and returned home to Michigan with her new husband, whom she’d met when he served as a juror during her last trial.
While Georg flexed legal muscle, Mary Genser used her physical strength to enforce the rules at a trio of taverns her family owned in the brothel and slum-bar district near City Hall in the 1930s. Standing just five feet, four inches tall, Genser was described by her granddaughter as a “very big woman” with biceps like “grapefruits.” Genser had little trouble holding her often-rowdy patrons in check. She kept a length of hardened rubber hose behind the bar and was not shy about threatening a crack across the mouth to anyone who got out of hand.
Milwaukee’s most famous barwoman was probably “Dirty Helen” Cromell, who kept the little Sunflower Inn tavern on West St. Paul for more than 40 years. A former prostitute, she was known by locals and travelers alike for her foul mouth and endless supply of bawdy tales from her younger days. Cromell served nothing but scotch and Old Fitzgerald whiskey at the Sunflower. A request for a mixed drink brought a vulgar rebuke from the hostess, but it was all in good fun. Cromell left the bar scene in 1960 due to her failing health, leaving Milwaukee’s evenings a little “cleaner,” but not nearly as lively.
For more on Rosina Georg and other bawdy tales of Milwaukee’s past, check out Matthew J. Prigge’s new book, Milwaukee Mayhem: Murder and Mystery in the Cream City’s First Century, available at local booksellers and mkemayhem.com.
