Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul

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Description
Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history. Culminating in a dramatic last stand between brothel keepers and crusading reformers, this book presents a vivid snapshot of Americas journey from Victorian-era propriety to 20th-century modernity.

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Publishers Weekly (04/16/2007)
Freelance journalist Abbott's vibrant first book probes the titillating milieu of the posh, world-famous Everleigh Club brothel that operated from 1900 to 1911 on Chicago's Near South Side. The madams, Ada and Minna Everleigh, were sisters whose shifting identities had them as traveling actors, Edgar Allan Poe's relatives, Kentucky debutantes fleeing violent husbands and daughters of a once-wealthy Virginia lawyer crushed by the Civil War. While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their whores with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries. The bordellowhich boasted three stringed orchestras and a room of 1,000 mirrorsattracted such patrons as Theodore Dreiser, John Barrymore and Prussian Prince Henry. But the successful cathouse was implicated in the 1905 shooting of department store heir Marshall Field Jr. and inevitably became the target of rivals and reformers alike. Madam Vic Shaw tried to frame the Everleighs for a millionaire playboy's drug overdose, Rev. Ernest Bell preached nightly outside the club and ambitious Chicago state's attorney Clifford Roe built his career on the promise of obliterating white slavery. With colorful characters, this is an entertaining, well-researched slice of Windy City history. Photos. "(July)" Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal (06/15/2007)
Mining the sources of the "purity journal" "Vigilance" and its predecessor, "Philanthropist", as well as Chicago newspapers, government reports, and other archival sources, journalist and first-time author Abbott chronicles the history of the Everleigh Club that operated on Chicago's Near South Side from 1900 to 1911. At this renowned high-class brothel, enterprising sisters Ada and Minna Everleigh challenged the stereotype of the victimized immature woman by hiring only willing adults whose comportment, education, meals, and health they closely monitored. Paradoxically, "scarlet sisters" in the club had to abide by stated rules, such as abstaining from drugs in order to remain at a house for which there was a wait list of job seekers. Protected for a while through its patronage by politicians, sports figures, businessmen, and writers, the club finally succumbed when a moral purity campaign closed it and the other bordellos in the Windy City's red light district. Abbott's character sketches of individuals such as "Bathhouse" John Coughlin, Michael "Hinky-Dink" Kenna, and James "Big Jim" Colosino make this engaging study read like a novel. A complement to similarly focused studies of New York City, e.g., Timothy Gilfoyle's "City of Eros" and Elizabeth Clement's "Love for Sale"; recommended for the general public and social historians alike.Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

ISBN: 1400065305 | EAN: 9781400065301
Publisher: Random House (NY)  | Publication Date: July, 2007

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