Tim Crumrin - Wicked Terre Haute

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.com

Copyright 2019 by Tim Crumrin

All rights reserved

First published 2019

e-book edition 2019

ISBN 978.1.43966.638.8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018963528

print edition ISBN 978.1.46714074.4

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Dedicated to Steve Cox, Ph.D.Mentor, colleague, great friend, kindred spirit

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Anyone researching the history of Terre Haute owes a huge debt of gratitude to Mike McCormick, the official Vigo County historian. Mikes depth and breadth of knowledge of Terre Haute is unequaled. I owe you, Mike. Terre Haute is lucky to have many institutions dedicated to preserving its history. Three were particularly helpful in researching this book. As always, Marylee Hagen, Susan Tingley and Rachel Wasmer of the Vigo County Historical Society offered their ever-smiling expertise. The staff at the Vigo County Public Library, including Matt Bird, JJ Coppinger, Janice Knight and Sean Eisele, remain indispensable sources for local history. Cinda May and Katie Sutrina-Haney of the Cunningham Memorial Librarys Special Collections and University Archives at Indiana State University were helpful as always. My thanks to Bob Ferguson and Fred Nation, Cheryl Blevins and John Moats for sharing their insights and memories.

And, as always, to my wife, Robin, without whom

INTRODUCTION

For over a century, Terre Haute, Indiana, was known as a sin city. Its West End was one of the most notorious red-light districts in the Midwest. At its height, in the 1920s, it contained sixty brothels and nearly one thousand prostitutes. The city was also a haven for gamblers of all stripes, and in 1956, more bets were placed through a wire room in Terre Haute than anywhere in the nation except Las Vegas.

During Prohibition, it was a bootlegging center. With the illegal booze operations came gangsters and gang warfare. Hijackings, violence and murder were common as rival gangs from St. Louis and Chicago fought for turf.

This book tells the stories of the colorful people and events that gave Terre Haute its well-earned national reputation.

FRAIL SISTERHOOD OF THE BAGNIO

Prostitution is the so-called worlds oldest profession. That designation may be debated, but it is a business that has always been part of society. It is perhaps, the profession whose business plan has changed the least over the millennia. It is now, as it ever was, a person (most often a woman) selling or bartering their body.

Over the years, prostitutes and their places of business have gone by many names: Cyprian, whore, lady of the night, streetwalker, tom, snapper, courtesan. The magnitude and variety of these terms helps to demonstrate the ubiquity of prostitution.

Terre Haute was founded in 1816. It was an overwhelmingly male place for its first decade or so. Gambling and drinking were likely the first vices. After all, those are things men did when they were in each others company in frontier areas like early Terre Haute. By the early 1820s, Terre Haute had several inns that catered to townsmen and transients alike.

We do not know the name of the first prostitute to arrive in Terre Haute, nor the date of her arrival. But came they did. Besides welcoming travelers and locals, Terre Haute was often home to riverboat men and workers on the National Road, which became the towns main street. Later, it served as a base for canal workers and the navvies who built the railroads. These men were eager for a drink, a bet and the pleasure of a womans company. There were even prostitutes who attached themselves to the construction crews, traveling with them like camp followers in the Civil War.

The 1842 Terre Haute ordinance that made prostitution illegal. Vigo County Historical Society.

Initially, prostitution was likely conducted by a woman working alone or perhaps two women who banded together. They would meet men in saloons or inns. Their assignations would take place in an inn room, the back of a saloon or any other spot that was available. That spot might be an alley, a stable or in a convenient bush. It was hardly glamorous.

Eventually, they gathered together in a single location such as a house or the second floor of a saloon or other building. The first of the brothels that would so be associated with Terre Haute was formed by 1840.

Prostitution became so well ensconced in Terre Haute by the 1850s that brothels (bagnio, derived from the Italian word for public bath, was the oft-used nineteenth-century term) sprouted along the towns rutted streets. They became such a problem that the common council had to enact an ordinance against them in 1842: That all houses of ill fame, houses of assignationbe classified as nuisances, and as such are subject to be removed.

The first woman to be publicly named as a madam was Sue Garvin in 1867. She was arrested along with two of her girls. One of the girls was Charlotte Hammonds, who later opened her own bagnio and became quite notorious. Appropriately enough, her house was at Third and Cherry Streets, which was within an area along the Wabash River later designated by local authorities as the boundaries of the red-light district. She was not the last madam to rise to notoriety. Unlike later Terre Haute newspapers, nineteenth-century papers delighted in stories of madams and their girls. The stories were presented with a mix of bemusement and horror at the dissolution acted out upon the streets of Terre Haute on a daily basis.

Though many of the brothels were located in the West End, they seeped into other parts of town following the Civil War. It would not be until the turn of the century that the West End once again held the majority of bagnios within its scandalous environs.

The bagnios varied greatlysome were clean and well-ordered, while others were literally disorderly houses. Perhaps the absolute worst was just across the river bridge near the Terre Haute city limits, which butted up against the miasmic bottomlands of the Wabash in a dismal, disease-infested area later known as Taylorville. Amid hovels that were little more than lean-tos was a grimy, crime-ridden little tent city. Some of the tents were little more than portable bagnios. One was the domain of an unwashed, haggard river bottom prostitute. She was surrounded by sickly-looking, half-clad women. These places were lowliest of the low, where a womans body could be bought for as little as a dime or a half-eaten loaf of bread. It was degradation at its worst.

Judging from the list of names of madams, it is safe to estimate that there were at least twenty-five or more brothels in Terre Haute at any given time in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Of course, not all Terre Haute prostitutes worked in brothels. There were also streetwalkers who were known as wandering prostitutes. They indeed walked the streets of residential areas, tempting husbands with wandering eyes, inexperienced young boys or whoever strolled by. Ida Jones and Mattie Gray were arrested for trolling in neighborhoods on the same night in 1867. Evidently, business was not good that evening, as both were listed as impecunious and unable to pay fines of $8.95 and were sent to jail. In 1880, a woman named Mary Meyers was arrested and fined $7.70. The man who was caught with her was William Graham, who was fined $9.70 for associating with a prostitute. As they were caught, it is likely they were enjoying each other in a public place. Sometimes they had to use alleyways, clumps of trees or darkened streets.