Nothing succeeds like excess.
—Oscar Wilde (1893)
William Hale Thompson wanted to give a bachelor party for his brother Gale, who was about to get married. Thompson would later be known as “Big Bill,” mayor of Chicago and one of its most corrupt politicians, but in February 1898, he was just the twenty-nine-year-old big brother of the groom. He set up what he thought would be the perfect celebration for the boys in the bridal party: drinks at the Chicago Athletic Club, followed by dinner at Gladys Forbes’s Monroe Restaurant (where they would see a little vaudeville entertainment), and then maybe end the night at Frank Wing’s—a boozy, bawdy sendoff for Gale.1
One of the invitees to Thompson’s shindig was William Wallace “Billy” Pike, twenty-six, a bachelor who still lived with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Eugene S. Pike, at 2101 Prairie Avenue. Eugene Pike was an extremely successful and influential capitalist involved in real estate and banking, and his address included him among the city’s wealthiest people. Across the street, at 2100, was John B. Sherman, general manager of the Union Stock Yards, whose home had been designed by his son-in-law, the famous architect Daniel Burnham, who also resided there. Down the street, at 2115, was Phillip Armour of the meat-packing company. Department store magnate Marshall Field lived a couple of blocks away at 1905, and George Pullman, of railroad car fame, was at 1729.2
To have a Prairie Avenue address was to have arrived among the movers and shakers of the Chicago—and, indeed, even the national—scene. But by 1898, residents were becoming more than a little nervous at the increasing encroachment of the nearby Levee district. There could have been no greater disparity than that between elite Prairie Avenue and the venal Levee, and by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, many of the mansion dwellers would move to Lake Forest and other locales, far away from the vice center.
On that Saturday night in early February, the men of the bridal party had several before-dinner drinks at the Chicago Athletic Club, then at 10:00 P.M. headed out for the Monroe Restaurant—where they had even more drinks with dinner. Around midnight, a parade of prostitutes showed up. They had been tipped off—probably by Gladys Forbes—about the presence of the rich boys and, under pretense of “wanting to see the vaudeville show,” swarmed in at short intervals. There were at least ten of them and maybe as many as fifteen. Among them were Minnie Ketcham’s old pal Josephine Moffitt and Josephine’s current roommate, Alice Morris, another courtesan.
The arrival of “these females, as you call them,” as William Hale Thompson would later say, broke up the party, especially since the prospective bridegroom wanted no part of their company. Everyone left the Monroe Restaurant, and Thompson hailed a cab for himself, his twenty-one-year-old brother Percy, and Billy Pike. Outside the restaurant, Josephine Moffitt and Alice Morris bemoaned the fact that they had no way to get back to their flat at 3000 Indiana Avenue (although no one seems to have thought to ask how they got to the Monroe from there). “Come on, get in, girls,” William Thompson told them. “We’ll take you home.”
There wasn’t enough room for everyone inside the landau, so Billy sat outside with the driver. (The roof of a landau covered only the back part of the carriage.) A chubby young man with an easygoing, ingratiating manner and a slight lisp, Billy was often shy around women. He was the youngest of the three Pike sons, with Charles Burrall “Charley” Pike two years older and Eugene Rockwell “Gene” Pike the eldest by five years. All three boys were intensely devoted to their parents and to one another.
Billy had a “proneness to conviviality” in general and a fondness for alcohol in particular. Like John Berdan Ketcham, he was a club man, and his opportunities for socializing were enhanced by his memberships in the University, Saddle and Cycle, Chicago Athletic, Chicago Golf, and Tolleston Clubs.
After a while, Billy began to get cold and also thought he was missing out on the opportunity of being in close contact with the two women. He climbed down and got inside, snuggling up next to Josephine, who was by herself on a short seat. Alice was sitting between the two Thompson brothers.
Somewhere along the line, the party decided to proceed to Frank Wing’s, but by then William Hale Thompson had begun to have second thoughts. At that time, he probably entertained political ambitions and realized that a public trip to Frank Wing’s in the company of two “women of easy virtue” would do him no good. Besides, he was disgusted with the behavior of Josephine Moffitt, who—within five minutes of Billy’s getting inside the cab—had begun making out with him and asking him to come home with her that night. Outside Wing’s, Thompson announced that he was calling it a night and told his brother Percy to make sure Billy got home all right, as he was drunk and in the hands of “bad company.” Unfortunately, Percy seems to have had a different idea of what “seeing that Billy gets home all right” entailed.
Percy, Billy, Josephine, and Alice went into Wing’s and spent about an hour there drinking a quart of champagne, after which they all went back to 3000 Indiana, where the boys spent the night. The next morning, Sunday, while William Hale Thompson was having breakfast at the Metropole, Charley and Gene Pike came to him to find out what had happened to Billy, as he had not returned home the night before. Mrs. Pike was literally sick with worry, and her sons asked Thompson to write a note to Billy and tell him that he was to return home immediately. Thompson, who knew exactly where Billy was, wrote the note and sent it by messenger to 3000 Indiana.
Billy does not seem to have been very experienced with women, as he was absolutely enthralled with Josephine, whom he called, variously, “Baby Jo,” “Dearie,” “My Little Jo,” and “Sugar Heart” in the many letters he sent her over the years they were involved. At first, he thought she was single, but she eventually told him she was “Mrs. Moffitt,” separated from her husband because of his addiction to drinking and betting on horses.
Early on in the relationship, Josephine sought advice from Minnie Walkup Ketcham as to how to get the most money out of Billy Pike. Minnie advised her to get him drunk (not a difficult task where Billy was concerned) and have him sign some kind of paper saying they were married. Hence, she could establish a common-law relationship and easily get money out of the young man or his family to avoid a scandal. Josephine had no intention of marrying him but wanted some leverage in case they ever split up.
In the meantime, Josephine had a good thing going, and she intended to keep it as long as she could. She wanted to find a new flat that she could share with Billy. He intended to continue living at home, mostly to please his mother, but two months after meeting Josephine at the Monroe Restaurant, he signed a lease for a flat at 2342 Calumet Avenue (next door to where she had formerly roomed with Gladys Forbes). He gave her $300 for new furniture (she would later use this furniture as collateral for a $370 loan), paid the rent each month, bought all the groceries, and even paid the wages for a maid.
An example of how taken Billy was with Josephine Moffitt, but also of the strength of his devotion to his mother and his social obligations, can be seen in this undated letter:
Dearie: I tried to get up and see you this afternoon, as I wanted to see you, if just to talk to you a second, but I promised Percy [Thompson] I would go to the theater with him, and my mother got me to come home right after the theater, and I just happened in and said good night, and as it is not 12 o’clock, you see I have kept my word. Last evening I didn’t get away from the supper until after 11, and I would have gone to see you then, but, Jo, it is hard to stay out when I know my mother is fretting about me, so I came right home. O, Jo, I wish I could see you now. I feel so blue, and I know you would cheer me up. Just think, Jo, I have told you all my secrets, so I must think a great deal of you.
In May 1898, just after Billy had signed the lease for the flat for Josephine, his brother Charley was married to Frances Aura Alger, the daughter of President William McKinley’s secretary of war. The wedding took place in Washington, D.C., and Billy was the best man. The president and his wife attended the wedding, and there were many other notables present, which should have been a big thrill for Billy, but he was consumed instead with thoughts of his “Baby Jo.” Here is the letter he wrote to her from there:
My Little Jo: Will drop you a line before going to luncheon. Am having a pretty fair time here, but feel awfully tired, as I have been on the go so much—dinner party last night and then a breakfast this morning at 10:30, and now have to go again at 2 to a luncheon, and to another dinner again tonight.
Have met most of the high life down here. They seem too stuck up, which seems unnatural to me, being the same old rough rider. I had a few moments to myself this morning, so took a cab and went down to the postoffice and was much disappointed not to get a letter from you. I miss you so much and have thought of you a hundred times and the many pleasant times we have spent together. I have not drunk anything to speak of, as it worries the family, and then there is nothing in it.
The bridesmaids seem like nice girls, but seem too stuck up, which gives me a pain. This evening am going over to [the] White [H]ouse with the bunch and give [President] Bill McK. the glad hand. I wish I was out of this place and back in our flat. I know I would feel more at home and would get a glad welcome. . . . Well, I must go, as the [others] are waiting for me. Yours, affectionately, with much love, Billy.
As Billy was certainly raised with wealth and privilege, his finding everyone—including the undoubtedly attractive bridesmaids—“stuck up” was probably just meant to reassure Josephine that he did not esteem her less because of her lower station in life. The reference to his not drinking “anything to speak of” lets us see that Billy was on his way to developing a problem that even his family noticed. For whatever motivation she might have had for it—maybe to exert her control over him, as this was toward the end of their relationship—Josephine once had Billy sign a pledge that “he will not drink one drop of intoxicating liquor until January 20, 1902, and that he will treat his little Jo better and will not go any place that is not proper for a gentleman.”
But Josephine was no stranger to the excessive use of alcohol and was quite the party girl herself. She frequently had guests at the flat—at Billy’s expense. One get-together got quite noisy, and other tenants in the building complained. Billy had invited some of his friends for dinner, and Josephine brought in “ladies” with names like Freckled Sal and Sheeny Cora.
Josephine’s prime failing was that she was too “over the top,” too obviously a courtesan, a style that could only work with someone as inexperienced as Billy Pike. She was common, cheap, and tawdry, whereas her friend Minnie Ketcham was much more subtle. Josephine would have done well to have learned more from her.
Sometimes Billy would get daring and take Josephine to 2101 Prairie Avenue, but never when the family was home. On one occasion, he had forgotten his keys and Michael Toomey, the elderly neighborhood watchman, let them in through the door to the furnace room. Toomey could see at a glance what kind of woman Josephine was, and he cautioned Billy: “You will see some young lady some day you will want to marry and this woman will make trouble for you.” But Billy paid no attention.
At times, whether through family or business obligations, or maybe through shame, Billy would stay away from Josephine. When that happened, she would show up on his street, wearing gaudy, conspicuous clothing that fairly shouted out what she was, and ask Toomey if he’d seen Billy. Toomey always said he hadn’t, even if he had, and then she would stand in the street and watch the Pike house, often two or three times a week, waiting for Billy to appear.
Surely, Josephine knew better than to show up on Prairie Avenue dressed like a prostitute, and if she had any hopes of marrying Billy, she would have attired herself more in keeping with the women in his society. However, her motive was not marriage but blackmail. By standing outside his house, she was saying, “See how much trouble I can cause for you if you don’t do what I want?”
Josephine thought nothing of attacking Billy physically, sometimes raising deep scratches on his face. Nonetheless, when the lease on the Calumet Avenue flat expired in May 1899, they set out to find another (why they could not continue in the old one was never stated). Billy was about to sign a lease on another flat when the landlord backed off because he “didn’t like the looks of [Josephine Moffitt].” Instead, they found lodging at 2803 Indiana Avenue, and once again Billy paid the rent there.
But Josephine was very possessive of Billy and attempted to keep tabs on him at all times. She would sometimes call one of his clubs to see if he was there, and once she called his brother Gene at the Athletic Club and told him that Billy was out with some man, drunk, and she couldn’t find him. The drinking friend’s name was William F. Berman, whom Billy had met around 1900.
Berman did not meet with Josephine’s approval as a companion for Billy, probably because he could see right away what she was up to. When the couple was having difficulties getting along, Josephine called Berman and screamed at him: “Keep your hands off of this matter, you miserable scoundrel, you! You are a drunkard. You are taking my Billy away from me; you are taking him to other women.”
Dethlef Hansen’s humiliating public breakdown during the trial of his lawsuit against Minnie Ketcham rankled him deeply. He had asked Josephine Moffitt to be a witness for him against Minnie (probably to corroborate her meretricious motives in marrying John Ketcham), but she was friends with Minnie and had refused. So now Hansen sought revenge against both of them. And, of course, he knew about Josephine’s scamming of Billy Pike and Minnie’s part in it. He would have also learned, either from Josephine herself or from Minnie, who had known her in New Orleans, that Josephine was not white, but a person of color.
The Hansen v. Ketcham trial ended in mid-June 1901. Approximately a month later, Billy’s father received a note (signed only “Lawyer”) that warned him his son was in danger because he was “infatuated with the daughter of a New Orleans negress.” Eugene Pike wasted no time confronting his son and told him in no uncertain terms to end the affair. Although Billy might have put up some resistance earlier in the relationship, by July 1901, he seems to have been glad to be able to get out of it. At any rate, his family’s wishes would always come first.
On the evening of July 31, Billy, Josephine, and William Berman dined and drank at a beer garden at Cottage Grove Avenue and Twenty-third Street. Cowardly Billy had decided this would be his last date with Josephine, but he would leave it to Berman to tell her this; he had already tried to break up with her, unsuccessfully, in April 1900.
After the trio left the beer garden, Billy and Berman walked far enough ahead of Josie that she could not hear what they were saying. It was un-characteristically ungentlemanly of Billy, and Josephine called out, “You must be in a hurry.” “I am,” Billy replied. “Are you ashamed of me?” she asked. “I am,” he told her. She wanted him to go home with her, but he refused, saying he was going to his parents’ home on Prairie Avenue. A terrific argument ensued. “I’ll give you money,” Billy concluded feebly. “You better give me a whole lot,” Josephine retorted angrily.
Billy gave Berman the note his father had received from “Lawyer” and told him to show it to Josephine. It would serve as an explanation for their breakup, and he could avoid further confrontations with her. So the next day, Berman went to her flat and told her she must have enemies. “Why do you say that?” she asked. When he showed her the letter, she scoffed at it. “How ridiculous it is. I never had any idea of marrying Billy Pike.” Berman told her she would probably be paid a visit by Billy’s father, and she said, “If he does come down here, I don’t know anything about Billy Pike and I will tell him so. How ridiculous it is to call me a nigger.” Then she began to cry.
But that was the last Josephine saw of Billy Pike for over a year. She tried her old trick of standing on his street, but he never appeared. Under advice from Minnie Ketcham as to how to extort money from his family, she began a letter-writing campaign, sending missives to Billy’s parents separately—primarily targeting his mother—and telling them she had a common-law marriage with their son. She hinted that some money could make her go away; otherwise, an embarrassing public lawsuit would follow. They didn’t cave in.
Josephine bided her time as long as she could, and when her letters yielded no results, she went lawyer shopping. First she tried Hugo Pam, Dethlef Hansen’s attorney from Hansen v. Ketcham (she had rightly deduced that Hansen had been the author of the letter that was her undoing, so she could not hire him). Then she went to the Mayer brothers, Levy and Isaac, and after that to George Trude. She told each attorney she had a wedding ring and a signed statement of their marriage from Billy. But when she was told to bring those in before they could proceed, she had to give up. “You know I can’t go back to see [George Trude] because I have not got that little paper,” she told Gladys Forbes. She had been hoping that Trude or one of the other lawyers could succeed in getting a settlement without the papers.
Somehow, Josephine managed to convince Elmer Bishop to take her case, possibly with the idea that once a lawyer was in the picture, the Pikes would be more amenable to settlement. The suit was filed in April 1902, but no settlement was forthcoming. She had no choice but to go to trial, which was set for November, on the matter of “separate maintenance,” the term for alimony to be given to a “divorced” spouse in a common-law marriage. Josephine would have to prove that there was, indeed, a marriage, that Billy had abandoned her, and that he thus owed her a monthly allowance.
Billy was represented by none other than Alfred S. Trude, who had defended Minnie Ketcham when Dethlef Hansen sued her, and also by the distinguished John Barton Payne, who would go on to serve as the U.S. secretary of the interior under President Woodrow Wilson. Trude and Payne had shrewdly waived a jury trial and elected instead to let Judge Clifford decide the case. This is always the prerogative of a defendant, with the court’s concurrence, and Billy’s lawyers didn’t want to take a chance on Josephine’s tears swaying a jury in her favor.
From start to finish, eight days in all, the case of Moffitt v. Pike (Josephine would have to establish her right to the use of the name Pike) was an enormous source of entertainment for the crowds who attended it daily and the newspapers that covered it. The distinction of the defendant and some of his witnesses, the flamboyance of the plaintiff, her lifestyle, and her claims—all provided viewers and readers with an almost vaudeville-like environment. For some of the testimony, the court crowd had such a good time that Judge Clifford banged his gavel constantly.
Unlike the trend with prominent murder cases, where women showed up in droves, the Moffitt-Pike separate maintenance trial was attended predominantly by men—possibly hoping to find out how to avoid ending up in the same situation with women they were dating but had no intention of marrying.
Bishop’s opening statement presented Josephine Moffitt as succumbing to the wiles of the defendant, then being betrayed by him after he got her to consent to a “marriage” during their meal at a restaurant. Trude’s statement painted a different picture, one of a “designing woman” who had found out how wealthy Billy’s family was and wanted to hold on to him by threat of exposing the affair to his parents. When he talked about Josephine’s “haunting of the Pike neighborhood dressed in gorgeous raiment to make herself conspicuous for the purpose of annoying his family,” Josephine had such a fit of hysteria that she had to be taken out of the courtroom. Trude was unmoved: “We were told that at a certain stage of the trial this woman was to weep and become hysterical, but I did not expect it to come so soon.” (Trude would give Josephine no quarter, as he had to a sobbing Dethlef Hansen in his lawsuit against Minnie.)
And, in fact, Josephine’s entire direct examination was punctuated with frequent jags of hysterical crying, a problem she did not have during Trude’s cross-examination. She described her relationship with Billy in great detail and told of the “wedding vows” exchanged between the courses at the DeJonghe Restaurant, located in the Masonic Temple building. She had not known Billy for more than a couple of weeks when he proposed, she said, and she replied that she would be proud to be his wife.
There were problems, however, because Billy’s parents would object and would disinherit him, so he wanted it kept secret. At first, he thought they should go to Milwaukee (Josephine was no doubt remembering Minnie’s wedding trip to the “marrying parson,” Reverend Hunsberger), then changed his mind, took out a pencil, and wrote: “This is to certify that Josie is my own little wife and whatever happens I shall never leave her.” They held hands and exchanged private vows.
Now, although Josephine had approximately fifty letters Billy had sent her over the years, she did not have this all-important “marriage certificate.” Someone had stolen it, she said. Billy had also given her a ring in the carriage after the meal at the DeJonghe, but she had lost that. So she had no written document and no wedding ring. Trude wanted to know why Billy had waited until the carriage ride to give her the ring. Wasn’t the usual thing to do it at the exchange of vows? Shouldn’t he have done this in the restaurant? Josephine had no answer.
During her direct examination, Josephine was waxing long on the endearments the two lovers shared and how much Billy cared for her. Finally, Trude had had enough. “There is a lot of slush going on here, and we haven’t objected to it because we don’t want to appear to be captious.”
Naturally, Josephine lied about everything that made her look bad. She denied introducing Mrs. Margaret White, an older prostitute, to Billy as “Mamma.” She denied calling Gene at the Athletic Club and also denied telling Berman to stop interfering with her relationship with Billy. She claimed she didn’t know beforehand that Alice Morris was a prostitute, and that discovery was one of the reasons she wanted to get out of the flat she shared with her and get a new one with Billy. She shaved five years off her age, claiming she was twenty-eight when she was really thirty-three, although nobody knew that at the time. (By 1921, she was taking twenty years from her actual age, and in 1930 a whopping twenty-five—which would have made her just four years old when she first met Billy Pike!)
The most sensational witness of the trial appeared on the second day: William Hale Thompson, who since that 1898 bachelor party had gone on to serve as alderman in Chicago’s Second Ward and had just before the trial been elected as county commissioner. So many men showed up to watch that they could not all see the “stage,” so they stood anywhere they could find a bare spot: the radiators, the chairs, the tables, and even the window ledges. Thompson’s testimony caused so much laughter that Judge Clifford was constantly threatening to clear the courtroom—though he never followed through.
Thompson was mortified by having to give this testimony because it revealed that he and his pals had frequented Levee places. Consequently, he tended to give his answers in a stiff, quick voice. Of all Billy’s friends at the bachelor party that night in 1898, Thompson was the only one to testify. The others had left town so they wouldn’t have to reveal their own peccadilloes on the stand. (Percy Thompson, who knew a good deal more about the evening than his brother, was supposedly laid up because of an appendectomy.)
William Hale Thompson claimed not to know anything about the prostitutes’ being at the Monroe Restaurant, that “someone had played a trick on him by bringing [them] in.” As he described the scene of the women entering the restaurant, with the spectators enjoying it more than they should have in a staid court of law, the judge was forced to stop the proceedings: “I wish this audience would understand this is not a vaudeville show and if they don’t keep order the sheriff will clear the room.” But they didn’t keep order and the sheriff didn’t clear the room.
During cross-examination by Elmer Bishop, Thompson revealed his political persona when Bishop was trying to get him to admit that everyone, particularly Billy, was drunk. The witness refused to commit himself either way: He wouldn’t say they were drunk, but would not say they were sober, either. Billy was not drunk, but “possibly he may not have been entirely sober.” (After Thompson’s testimony, he was so embarrassed that he left Chicago for a full two months because he could not face his fellow county commissioners. But when he came back, they welcomed him with open arms and didn’t seem to have even remembered his humiliation.)
Trude and Payne focused their defense on presenting witnesses who would testify that Josephine Moffitt had never moved about in the world as other than a woman named Moffitt—sometimes “Miss,” but more often “Mrs.” She never used the name Pike or told anyone she was married to Billy. In fact, she sometimes told people that her “husband” Moffitt was a traveling salesman. And when she took out a loan with a man named Mogg, using as collateral the furniture Billy provided, she declared on the documentation that she was a single woman.
Another sensational witness appeared for the defense: Josephine Moffitt’s former friend Gladys Forbes. It was she who revealed the plan hatched between Josephine and Minnie Ketcham to milk Billy Pike for his fortune and also the fact that the former intended to have a hysterical fit at some point during the trial. The reason for their breakup was never explained, but if Gladys knew about Josephine’s plan to sham hysteria, it must have happened between the filing of the lawsuit in April and the beginning of the trial in November.
By then Gladys Forbes was living with Thomas P. Shannon, who had at one time been a Chicago supervisor. Although she sometimes referred to herself as Mrs. Shannon, they were never married. A somewhat sinister incident had occurred a couple of months before Josephine Moffitt filed her lawsuit. In 1896, Gladys’s mother, Mrs. Ann Foley of Milwaukee, somehow got a four-year-old orphan girl from a Catholic foundling hospital in New York City, then gave the child to Gladys and Tom Shannon for “adoption.”
Gladys and Tom took no legal steps to adopt the little girl, whose name was Margaret Thorpe, but raised her and provided her with nice clothes and toys. When Margaret was ten, the nuns at the orphanage came to the conclusion that Gladys was “not a fit guardian” and wanted the girl back. Since Gladys and Tom had never done anything about adoption, the judge decreed that the hospital still had jurisdiction over Margaret Thorpe and ruled that she would have to go back to New York City; the issue of Gladys’s parental fitness was not addressed.
Margaret, obviously having picked up some of Gladys’s devious ways, asked if she could go back to their flat at 2001 Michigan Avenue, to “say goodbye to Mother.” She was allowed to do so, and while she was there, excused herself to go to the bathroom . . . and never returned. While the orphanage employees were out looking for Margaret, Gladys Forbes and Tom Shannon cleaned out their flat—including the carpets—and vanished with the girl.3 (Given Gladys Forbes’s lifestyle, she hardly seems the type to want to raise a child, so the question must be asked: To what purpose did she acquire this little girl?)
On the stand in Moffitt v. Pike, Gladys presented a scene that may give a clue as to the eventual falling out of the two friends. Supposedly, when Tom Shannon realized that Josephine intended to blackmail Billy Pike over their relationship, Shannon picked up the phone to call Billy’s brother Gene and warn him. Josephine flew into a rage, took a pair of scissors, and cut the telephone wire. Now, as Gladys and Tom were con artists themselves, it seems unlikely that either would suddenly succumb to a spasm of moral rectitude regarding Josephine’s blackmail plan. It may be that the two were angry at being left out of the scheme (after all, it was at Gladys’s restaurant that Josephine and Billy met) or perhaps Josephine had just revealed that she intended to cut them out of it.
Josephine claimed that she could not have cut the phone wire because she had locked herself in her room after Tom Shannon threatened to hit her (although she did not say why he wanted to do that). Gladys’s response to this on cross-examination was “Mrs. Moffitt is capable of taking care of herself. She has scratched men’s faces that I know of.” Between Gladys’s version and Josephine’s, we may be seeing hints of greed on both parts as to whether Gladys would get a share or how big that share would be. That might be why Tom would threaten to hit Josephine, if he did in fact do so, and why he would call (or pretend to call) Gene Pike to reveal the scam.
When Billy Pike finally took the stand for himself, the vaudeville show reached a new level. Billy was red with embarrassment and extremely uncomfortable at the testimony he had to give, Josephine spent much of the time sobbing while he was testifying, and the audience was highly amused by it all. Pike had to admit that he had been to Frank Wing’s more than just that one time on the night he met Josephine, that he had made out with her in the landau, that he had spent that first night with her and later shared flats with her, and that he had given her a lot of money over the years.
But the highlight for the crowd was when Billy had to answer questions regarding the “guest list” for the dinner party to which he invited his friends and Josephine invited some “young ladies”: There was Fanny (last name unknown), Myrtle Goodrich, Freckled Sal, and a mother-daughter pair of prostitutes named Woodward. And how about Sheeny Cora? Billy thought she hadn’t been invited and so probably wasn’t there. These were all known prostitutes, and Judge Clifford’s gavel hardly ever got a rest during the description of the party.
(Another entertaining moment for the courtroom audience came with the testimony of Gus Dreyfus, a cigar dealer, who had roomed at 2340 Calumet Avenue when Josephine lived there. He had complained of the noise coming from her flat, but then admitted that one time the noise might have been coming from his own—because of a little supper he and his roommate had given for another male friend, two young ladies, and an old woman who acted as a chaperone. Apparently, one of the women—possibly a little the worse for wine—had a fit of hysteria. When Trude asked Dreyfus who the guests were, the flustered witness caused much amusement when he admitted, “I really can’t think of their names now to save my life.”)
In his closing argument for Josephine Moffitt, Elmer Bishop argued, “She is just as worthy as he is, a little better morally, and just as good physically, I think, and all she lacks is the money and the social position, both of which ought to be supplied by her husband.”
Trude took a more worldly look at the whole thing, particularly the bachelor party, where he said that probably not all the young men there were entirely shocked at the presence of the prostitutes: “I believe that at least one-third of them were engaged at the time in the agricultural pursuit of sowing their wild oats.” But, he stated, most of them had settled down since that time, “for when the crop is gathered reason usually returns once more.”
However, Trude must have been uncomfortable at his position because of the role his former client Minnie Ketcham had played in scamming Billy Pike, so he had his cocounsel, John Barton Payne, handle it. Payne called Moffitt v. Pike “the child of the Ketcham case”: “How Mrs. Ketcham won, by what means I don’t know, and Mrs. Ketcham advised this woman to do what she did. I think the Pikes deserve credit for resisting the attempts to blackmail them.”
Judge Clifford took the matter under advisement and issued his ruling about ten days later. He found that Billy and Josephine were not married but that “if her testimony is to be believed as to what happened at the Masonic temple and afterward, there is no doubt they were husband and wife,” which illustrates the nature of Illinois law at the time and how easy it was to establish—or claim to have established—a common-law marriage.
Clifford found it telling that Josephine had lost “the most important [paper] Pike had ever entrusted her with,” as well as the wedding ring, yet had kept all those letters from him over a three-year span. Regarding her letting Billy and Percy spend the night with her and Alice the very first time she met them, Clifford was critical: “If a girl thinks lightly of her reputation, she cannot expect others to have a high opinion of her.”
Finally, the judge pointed out all the evidence that showed Josephine Moffitt acting as one unattached and using the surname Moffitt, never Pike. He concluded that the relationship was “meretricious in its inception and never has been changed, and that no common law marriage ever took place between them.”
Josephine appealed Judge Clifford’s verdict, and in 1904 the appellate court upheld that decision in an opinion that seemed to be directing the legislature to get rid of this dangerous law, that it should not be legally permissible to have such marriages with no third person present. In the meantime, such common-law claims should be “closely scrutinized and never sustained unless clearly proven by credible and satisfactory evidence.”
A year later, the Illinois legislature took the appellate court’s advice and repealed the legislation regarding common-law marriages because of its susceptibility to schemes like the one perpetrated by Josephine Moffitt.4
After the failure of her lawsuit, Josephine went to New York City and worked as a chorus girl, claiming to be twenty years old, although she was close to forty by then. It didn’t take long for her to glom onto a man she probably perceived as wealthy: Prince Victor of Thurn and Taxis, a title given his family by the King of Prussia for their handling of the Royal Mail. But Victor wasn’t wealthy; he just seemed so. And, like Josephine, he was a con artist. He had borrowed $120,000 from a woman in Paris so he could go to America and try to entice an heiress to marry him.5
But Josephine, to her dismay, discovered that Prince Victor wasn’t rich at all. Not only that, he had a serious gambling habit and would frequently pawn expensive items for less than half their value, then lose that money at the track. When he ran away from her and escaped to Europe, she thought she could get money from his family by pulling the common-law marriage trick again. She wrote to his brother, Prince Maximilian, and told him she and Victor had exchanged vows in a restaurant and therefore were legally married under U.S. law, that they had to get married that way until Prince Victor could get permission from the Emperor of Austria.
Josephine hinted to Max that money would make her forget all about her claims against his brother, but not how much it would take. He ignored her, so she declared—in the press—that she would go to Europe and find her “husband.” If necessary, she would appeal to the Emperor of Austria. She now began calling herself “Princess Josephine of Thurn and Taxis.”
In the meantime, the woman who had loaned Prince Victor the “bait” money got nervous at not having received any of it back, especially as she had borrowed it from various sources. She got a court order in Paris and had the prince’s belongings confiscated from his hotel room, but he had next to nothing there. Probably as a result of not paying his debts, which was something no gentleman ever did, Prince Victor was kicked out of all his clubs and also had his commission in the Austrian Army revoked.
To protect himself against Josephine Moffitt, Prince Victor filed an injunction in London to prevent her from claiming they were married and also from calling herself Princess of Thurn and Taxis. Besides, he said, Josephine was already married . . . to Billy Pike! As he had expected, Victor was denied his injunction. He had merely wanted to let Josephine know that he would not capitulate to her demands.
And so Josephine Moffitt disappears from our story for now, but—like a bad penny—will eventually return. While she was pursuing her latest scheme, her friend Minnie Wallace Walkup Ketcham had embarked on her own next adventure.