Chapter 11

The Levee

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What is the chief end of man?—to get rich. In what way?—dishonestly if we can, honestly if we must.

—Mark Twain (1871)

By 1893, with her pleasure-seeking lifestyle, Minnie had depleted the estate she received from James Walkup. It was time to find another source of money, and her longtime desire to relocate to Chicago was bolstered by a potentially profitable event: the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. People would be coming from all over to view the architectural wonders, taste exotic foods, marvel at cultural delights, and ride that new sensation, the Ferris Wheel.

Unlike the New Orleans Cotton Exposition in 1884–85, with its relatively paltry attendance, 27.5 million fairgoers would take in the Columbian Exposition over its six-month stand. It was estimated that 25 percent of the American population in 1893 visited the fair, which ultimately netted a profit of $1 million for its investors, after all expenses were paid. Perhaps Minnie thought she could cash in on this in some way.1

Minnie and Elizabeth Wallace moved into a flat at 1401 Michigan Avenue, which was not, strictly speaking, within the bounds of the Levee area but was close enough for her to participate in its lifestyle.2

The Levee, bordered by Eighteenth Street on the north, Twenty-second Street on the south, State Street on the east, and Armour Avenue (now Federal Street) on the west, was located on the South Side of Chicago and arose in direct anticipation of the baser needs of the men who would be attending the fair. Concentrated in this vice district were saloons, “sporting clubs,” restaurants, and brothels. In the heart of it were “‘dollar a girl’ joints, where the women provided services on a volume basis.” Sadly, many of these girls had been kidnapped or lured there by the false promises of con men whose job was to furnish the Levee establishments with women.3

In 1894, a British journalist named William Stead published an exposé of what was euphemistically (and also sarcastically) termed Chicago’s “underground economy.” If Christ Came to Chicago included a map that identified all the saloons and brothels in the Levee area, which—despite the book’s religious bent—may have been largely responsible for its astronomic sales (70,000 copies on the day it was released).4

As the years went on, the Levee would be responsible for the rise of the Chicago mob and men like Al Capone and Johnny Torrio. In Minnie’s day, it was under the political protection of two crooked aldermen, “Bath House John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, colorful figures in Chicago’s political scene and the “Lords of the Levee.” In 1910, a vice commission revealed that the Levee took in a staggering $60 million each year and housed “1,000 brothels, 1,800 pimps and madames, and at least 4,000 prostitutes.”5

The most notorious establishment in the notorious Levee at the turn of the century was a restaurant/saloon/brothel, Frank Wing’s, located at Twenty-second and State Streets. People went there to have a good time and also lose a lot of their money. One hapless business visitor ended up in Frank Wing’s and never got to where he was supposed to go. He spent $150 to $200 a day (of his employer’s money) buying drinks and meals for everyone, and when he tried to leave, the establishment’s denizens wouldn’t let him. One woman even tore off all his coat buttons to get him to stay. The businessman was there an entire week but, oddly, would leave at times, then listen to the blandishments of Wing’s patrons who beseeched him to come back. He even left to hire a lawyer to file a writ of habeas corpus so he could be freed from the saloon and its customers!6

Frank Wing’s, which we will have occasion to encounter again later, served liquor all night long, even after a law was passed forbidding saloons to do so after midnight. Although he was arrested for it, Wing continued to defy the ordinance, thereby demonstrating how financially advantageous it was for him to do so.7

At her new residence at 1401 Michigan Avenue (today the site of the famous Firehouse Restaurant), Minnie met two women: Josephine Moffitt and Gladys Forbes, both well-known courtesans.8 Josephine lived in the same building, and it is probable that she and Minnie were already friends. Born in New Orleans on January 10, 1869, just four days before Minnie, she attended the same convent school, the Ursuline Academy, at the same time.

Moffitt was not Josephine’s real name. She was the fourth of eight children born to Josephine Carrel Carleton, a Mississippi-born “mulatto,” and Adrien Guillemet (pronounced Gil-MET), a native of Bordeaux, France, who came to the United States in 1860 and settled in New Orleans. It was a common-law union, and Adrien had another, legitimate family, although he continued to support Josephine Carleton and their children until his death. As the child of a “mulatto,” Josephine also bore this as her official racial designation, although she routinely passed for white and, once she left New Orleans, never acknowledged that she was a person of color.9

Around the time of her father’s 1884 death from smallpox, Josephine caught the eye of an older, married man, J. Westley Moffitt, who began buying her expensive clothes. Eventually, he abandoned his wife and took Josephine to live with him in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Mrs. Moffitt followed them, begging Josephine to leave her husband alone, to no avail.10

Eventually, Moffitt tired of Josephine as well and in 1893 left her to seek employment in some fair-related activity in Chicago. Josephine followed him there, hunting him down at the Maine Hotel and—as his wife had done years earlier—pleaded with him not to abandon her. She simply showed up in his room one day and whiled away the time as she waited for him to come home from work by drinking several bottles of beer and leaving them strewn around the room. But Moffitt was through with Josephine Guillemet and was unmoved by her pleas.

Around this time, Josephine began using the surname “Moffitt,” possibly to remind her former lover of his obligations to her but more likely to give herself an air of respectability as “Mrs. Moffitt.” Although J. Westley Moffitt was out of her life, to account for his absence she told everyone—even the census taker—that her “husband” was a traveling salesman.

On her own in Chicago, Josephine made the acquaintance of Gladys Forbes, who owned the Monroe Restaurant and was a procuress of women for upper-class gentlemen. They shared flats off and on over the next several years, Gladys sometimes managing to snag a rich husband and Josephine sometimes rooming with another courtesan. Their “business” could not really be called a brothel, as the women they provided did not live with them. Instead, it was more of a men’s club run by women, a much higher-class operation than the usual Levee dives. Josephine and Gladys held parties with lots of music, dancing, food, liquor, and pornographic pictures and movies. Sometimes a gentleman would pair off with one of the invited ladies and take her to a bedroom.

Neighbors frequently complained about the noise at these establishments, which included the sound of fancy automobiles coming and going at all hours of the night. As tuxedoed, drunken rich men would spill out into the streets after a night of revelry, they were often raucous.11

One visitor, Homer Hitt, was a widower whose wife had left him $65,000 in trust for their infant son. He had moved into Chicago’s Auditorium Hotel, leaving his son in the care of his deceased wife’s parents in western Illinois. His wife was hardly cold in the ground before he began frequenting Levee establishments and encountered Gladys Forbes. Soon, he and Gladys were married and living the high life on the $65,000, floating between Chicago and New York City and going through $30,000 (over three-quarters of a million dollars today) before Hitt was removed as executor and trustee of his wife’s estate. Gladys divorced him not long after that.12

This, then, was the lifestyle that Minnie soon shared. Throughout her stay in Chicago, she never lived more than a few blocks away from Josephine Moffitt or Gladys Forbes.13 It is not clear, however, that she was also a procuress, as she seems to have preferred to have the gentlemen come to her home and make her the center of their attention, but she was definitely a member of the city’s demimonde. Now twenty-four, she hid her Kansas past by changing her name to Mrs. Mabel (sometimes Minnie) Estelle Wallace. She never used the name Walkup.14

On November 12, 1895, Elizabeth Wallace died of pneumonia, which she had contracted three weeks previously. She was sixty-six. Minnie purchased two plots in Forest Home Cemetery, one for Mrs. Wallace and—presumably—one for herself. She erected no stone to mark the spot or memorialize her mother.15

William Pitt Kellogg continued to be an ardent admirer and visited Minnie frequently. Although he was no longer a senator, he still lived in Washington, D.C. After Mrs. Wallace died, Kellogg bought Minnie a home of her own, a large yellow brick house at 3421 Indiana Avenue, and furnished it with expensive items.16 She hired a butler, a young man named Joe Keller, and a cleaning lady, Mrs. Sena Torrey, a cousin of her mother’s.

But, notwithstanding the financial help from Kellogg, Minnie had money troubles. She had run up bills for dresses ($600 worth) and other items in New Orleans and Chicago and now was being pressed for payment. She consulted a young attorney, Dethlef C. Hansen, about the statute of limitations on these debts: How much time had to pass before she would no longer be obligated to repay them?17 She had selected Hansen because he was something of a con artist whose specialty was representing young women trying to blackmail older (and usually married) men because of sexual indiscretions. And he was a friend of Josephine Moffitt and Gladys Forbes.

Dethlef C. Hansen was born in 1871, two years after Minnie, and graduated high in the Chicago College of Law’s Class of 1890 (today the Chicago-Kent College of Law, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology).18 He seems to have had a promising career as a legal orator, but chose instead to affiliate himself with blackmailers and confidence men. He lived in Tacoma, Washington, for a few years, then moved back to Chicago, all the while practicing law and doing everything he could to avoid stepping into a courtroom.19

Hansen must have had political aspirations in his earlier years. While in Tacoma, he joined a group called the Democracy of the State of Washington and in March 1891 wrote to Grover Cleveland (who was at that time between presidencies) to ask if he would join them to celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s birthday that April. Cleveland wrote a gracious reply in which he regretfully declined and took the opportunity to talk about the relevance of Jefferson to the current day.20

Dethlef Hansen had a more than passing acquaintance with a famous English blackmailer and flimflam man named Robert Davey (calling himself “Dr.” Davey or “Sir” Robert Davey), who was marginally connected with one of Chicago’s most sensational crimes: the 1897 murder of a woman by her sausage-maker husband, Adolph Luetgert (there was a strong rumor going around that Luetgert had actually ground up his wife in the sausage machine, but this was just urban legend). Davey was not connected with the murder but had bilked the prosperous Luetgert in a scam. It is not outside the realm of possibility, given Hansen’s later career, that he and Davey had joined forces at some point to take advantage of some rich sucker.21

Then, around 1895, and in the nick of time, from Minnie’s vantage point, a man of considerable wealth got caught in her web: John Berdan Ketcham, scion of a Toledo, Ohio, banking family. Thereafter, his life would never be the same.