PDF Ebook Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, by Karen Abbott
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Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, by Karen Abbott
PDF Ebook Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, by Karen Abbott
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Review
“Delicious… Abbott describes the Levee’s characters in such detail that it’s easy to mistake this meticulously researched history for literary fiction.” —— New York Times Book Review “ Described with scrupulous concern for historical accuracy…an immensely readable book.” —— Joseph Epstein, The Wall Street Journal “Assiduously researched… even this book’s minutiae makes for good storytelling.” —— Janet Maslin, The New York Times“Karen Abbott has pioneered sizzle history in this satisfyingly lurid tale. Change the hemlines, add 100 years, and the book could be filed under current affairs.” —— USA Today“A rousingly racy yarn.” –Chicago Tribune “A colorful history of old Chicago that reads like a novel… a compelling and eloquent story.” —— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Gorgeously detailed” —— New York Daily News“At last, a history book you can bring to the beach.” —— The Philadelphia Inquirer “Once upon a time, Chicago had a world class bordello called The Everleigh Club. Author Karen Abbott brings the opulent place and its raunchy era alive in a book that just might become this years “The Devil In the White City.” —— Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine (cover story) “As Abbott’s delicious and exhaustively researched book makes vividly clear, the Everleigh Club was the Taj Mahal of bordellos.” —— Chicago Sun Times “The book is rich with details about a fast-and-loose Chicago of the early 20th century… Sin explores this world with gusto, throwing light on a booming city and exposing its shadows.” —— Time Out Chicago “[Abbott’s] research enables the kind of vivid description à la fellow journalist Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City that make what could be a dry historic account an intriguing read."– Seattle Times“Abbott tells her story with just the right mix of relish and restraint, providing a piquant guide to a world of sexuality” —— The Atlantic “A rollicking tale from a more vibrant time: history to a ragtime beat.” – Kirkus Reviews
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About the Author
Karen Abbott worked as a journalist on the staffs of Philadelphia magazine and Philadelphia Weekly, and has written for Salon.com and other publications. A native of Philadelphia, she now lives with her husband in Atlanta, where she’s at work on her next book. Visit her online at www.sininthesecondcity.com.
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Product details
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (June 10, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812975995
ISBN-13: 978-0812975994
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
281 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#160,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Prostitution was rampant in urban America at the turn of the 20th Century with the influx of immigrants from foreign countries and rural areas, poor wages for young working women, and a repressive standard of sexual morality. Many cities had laws declaring prostitution illegal, but in fact they tried to control the spread of the "social evil" by establishing "segregated" areas where the practice was allowed to flourish. Chicago was well-known for its openness to prostitution, and its most notorious segregated area was called the "Levee" on the city's near south side. The Levee was a large, diverse area which included block upon block of "resorts", ranging from small 25 cent "cribs" to posh establishments that catered to the city's elite.In her recent book "Sin in the Second City", Karen Abbott, a former journalist, tells the fascinating story of the Levee with a focus on its most glamorous resort, the Everleigh Club and its Madams, the Everleigh sisters, Minna and Ada. The Everleigh sisters were born Minna and Ada Simms in upper-class Virginia. After failed marriages, the sisters opened a brothel in Omaha, Nebraska and then, after investigating the market, opened what rapidly became the leading and most expensive brothel in the Levee, the Everleigh (named for "ever-lay) Club.Abott tells the story of the Everleighs with verve and affection. They maintained a posh resort replete with a gold piano, works of art, heavy carpeted waiting rooms, elegant dinners and beautiful women who were known as "Butterflies". The Everleigh's prided themselves on the way in which they treated their butterflies. The Everleighs disdained the "white slave" traffic and carefully interviewed the young women wishing to work in their resort. The butterflies were free to leave their employment, received regular medical examinations, excellent food, and even some education. They were not whipped or brutalized, as was the case in many other brothels. The butterflies were allowed to see their boyfriends one evening per week if they wished and were encouraged to see themselves and their chosen career with respect. Part of the reason the Everleigh Club was able to succeed on this basis was because it was upscale and expensive, catering only to the wealthiest individuals.Abbott's book describes the interaction of the Everleigh Club and the sisters with the other inhabitants of the Levee. The Levee depended for its existence on graft and corruption within the Police Department and the political leaders of Chicago's first ward. The Everleigh sisters participated fully in keeping their area safe from the law. Many of the other madams and proprietors of resorts in the Levee were jealous of the success of the Everleigh Club and tried to ruin its business. The lives of the sisters were threatened and on one occassion, a rival madam tried to frame the sisters for murder.The Levee and the segregated districts attracted the attention of the reformers. A group called the "Purity League" was tireless in its attacks on the Red Light District and a minister named Ernest Bell in 1904 opened a "Midnight Mission" in the Levee. Beginning in 1904, he and his congregation held nightly vigils in front of the Everleigh Club. There was also political pressure that ultimately spelled the doom of the Levee. City and State attorneys became concerned about White Slave Traffic -- the forceful induction of young women into prostitution -- and through their efforts won a series of sensational cases against white slavers. Ultimately their efforts led to the passage of the Mann Act and to the closure of the Everleigh Club and the Levee. Abott concludes, consistently with most people who have studied the matter, that the extent of "white slavery" was greatly overstated and that the Mann Act, with its loose and vague proscriptions, led to a curtailment of civil liberties far beyond the evil it was designed to correct.Abbott's book is less a work of historical scholarship than a book which brings a place and an era alive. In its opening chapters, before it gets bogged down with the varied attacks of the Levee, Abbott offers a compelling portrait of a place and an era with all its blemishes and excitments. She introduces, for example, the reader to "Big Matilda" who advertised herself as "Three hundred pounds of black passion: Rates 50c: Three for One Dollar." Abbott shows life in the Levee, including its local newspaper, the annual first ward Ball, the dance halls, and the payoffs. The lively individual scenes include a retelling of the visit of famous African American heavyweight boxer to the Everleigh Club and its unhappy consequences. In a passage late in the book, Minna Everleigh rushes into another brothel to try to rescue a former butterfly from a brutal beating at the hands of another madam. Abbot describes the life of a prostitute named Suzie, who came to the Everleigh Club from another resort and after one day left to marry her customer. For all the interest of many individual moments and the flowing character of some of the writing, the book seemed to me disjointed and hard to follow in places.The closing of the Levee in 1914 obviously did not mark the end of vice in Chicago. A young and rising Al Capone makes a cameo appearance in Abbott's book. The work of the ministers and the politicians did not end the social evil but merely moved it. Abbott's book is not a detailed study of prostitution, and it is tinged with her reserved but obvious admiration for the Everleigh sisters. The book seems to suggest a return to a carefully limited "segregated" area -- which some cities continue to use -- as a plausible means of controlling prostitution, and its apparent necessity to its customers and practitioners.Robin Friedman
I am very impressed with this book, by what it describes, and how it describes it. In an afterword the book's author, Karen Abbott, tells us this is her first book. That makes it even more impressive, a journalistic masterpiece that also tells an amazing story unified around a place, Chicago's Red Light district, and a twelve year span of time from 1900 to roughly 1912. It is a story of Chicago political corruption and the religious and secular movements that eventually changed it, but not before a pair of sisters, Minna and Ada, touchingly portrayed by Ms. Abbott, hailing from a moderate success as young madams (a pair of more business savvy sisters the world has perhaps not seen since) moved to Chicago, managed to procure a 50 room town mansion in a most fashionable part of Chicago's red light district and proceeded to turn it into the most fabulously wealthy revenue generating and elite brothel the world has ever seen.The Everleigh Club had 3 orchestras, yet more piano men (called professors), every room a theme lavishly decorated in the art of the world. There were fountains that spritzed perfume, and a dinning room laid out like an elegant Pullman car of the day serviced by master chefs and replete with linen cloth and crystal glasses. Dinner, if you were so inclined, cost $50 and in case you are wondering, to translate 1900 dollars into 2007 dollars (the year of the book's publication) you multiply by 25, so $1,250 for dinner. The club's nightly minimum was $50 for any other services besides dinner, and very many of the millionaire scions and their sons who were the club's clientèle spent much more than that on their regular visits.On the other side of the ledger the girls, called butterflies by the sisters, made staggering sums of money for their day. A young woman working retail or perhaps as a stenographer in those days made $6 a week. A prostitute in an otherwise higher end resort might make $35. An Everleigh butterfly made $100 (remember multiply by 25). The sisters paid $40,000 a year in various sorts of protection and political money to keep operating, a trivial sum. The sisters took in that much on a slow night! The butterflies had free room and board, the private services of a real doctor. They were educated, if not when they arrived, then by the sisters themselves who followed local politics and society in great detail. Butterflies could talk about politics and art, knew how to light a man's cigar, and in all ways be delightful companions for an evening and not merely sex partners. There were servants to do the laundry, clean, and service the house in the daylight and of course many facilitators for the nightly parties that typically ran on until 5 or 6 am. Nothing like the Everleigh club had been seen before or since.But the club lived in its own wider environment surrounded by jealous madams and their girls who all wanted to be butterflies. There were the fixers, the aldermen, the mayors and the preachers and moral reformers who began their crusades to close all the clubs in the early years of the 20th century. At first they had little effect, but persistence paid off for them all, and the whole red light world came crashing down in 1912 and 13, the Everleigh club along with it. There is an amazing story here of thousands of girls from all over the world who disappeared into the seedier side of this district over these years driving much of the reform movement. There was crime, human and property, of staggering proportions. In the seedier resorts clients were routinely drugged and robbed. This also drove the reform movement though such practice was forbidden at the Everleigh club. The club stood above and apart from all of this, but couldn't avoid being mentioned in the same breath though its clients knew differently.In the end the sisters had the last laugh. They left the business very rich after 12 good years, moved to New York City, and lived the rest of their days (decades) in respectable high-society comfort. May they both now rest in peace, and thank you Karen Abbott for a delightful story bringing both the sisters and the place back to life once again.
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