Peppermint Flat and the Bawdy Houses on the Radio!

There's been a flurry of google searching on "peppermint flat" and we wondered what it was. Turns out it's on the radio!

This is great! The history show on KMUZ, "Salem through the Years," has picked up the story of Salem's red light district.You can listen to the podcast on 1905 here.

For even more on E.E. Nichols see our note here. And you can read all about Peppermint Flat.  For all our stories on Salem vice, see here.

Don't Shoot the Piano Player! Sousa, Ragtime, and 1905 Bawdy House Habitues

Visitors to brothels in 1905 St. Louis might have heard ragtime, and if you were especially lucky maybe something by Scott Joplin.

What was the music in Salem brothels?

Firm evidence is pretty slender. CT is out of our element here in local music history, and our thoughts are all too speculative. Nevertheless, by a happy coincidence, the Salem Concert Band gives us a clue and helps to describe the general musical world of the first decade of the 20th century.

On Sunday the band plays a program titled, "In the Steps of Sousa." It features music Sousa played in Salem.

The Dwellers of the Western World suite by Sousa was played by Sousa’s band in Salem during the tours of 1911, 1915 and 1927. Sousa had introduced the suite to other lands during his world tour in 1910-1911, and this year the work will return to Salem. Its three movements are entitled “Red Man, “White Man” and “Black Man.”

As in beer, in music German immigrants were key.

Germans invented the saxophone and valves for brass, and German military and performing models were influential generally. There were certainly military bands in Salem. The Salem Military Band appears in a couple of photos right around this time (here and here). Sousa's band and compositions arose from this nation-wide love of military bands.

Germans were important in other ways. Joplin and, a decade or two later, many of the important jazz composers and instrumentalists took lessons from German music teachers. As Gunther Schuller says in The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz 1930 - 1945, "practically every town in America had a German music teacher and...these provided musical training to the likes of Scott Joplin, Benny Goodman, and Earl Hines, and countless others." We owe thanks to names like Julius Weiss (Joplin), Franz Schoepp (Goodman), and Von Holz (Hines).

In Salem one of the tantalizing names is H. H. Deiner. He appears as a pianist for Fanny Davenport's brothel. (Fanny Davenport was also the name of a famous actress, so this is almost certainly a pseudonym. She appears in the 1905 Marion County census, but not obviously in the 1900 or 1910 Federal census. Deiner is even more elusive.)

The history of jazz in Salem is not yet written and, so far away from the Mississippi, jazz would have come slowly and lately here. There's probably not much of a history to write. The rhetoric gets pretty ugly sometimes. Still, it's difficult to imagine that some ragtime wouldn't have got played in the traveling shows that came to the Grand Theater. The papers have ads for coon shows and minstrel shows, and it's likely their successors came too. At the same time, Salem was overwhelmingly white, and wouldn't have provided much of a home or the performing personnel for the musical innovations of ragtime. 1905 is probably early for much ragtime here.

A couple of contemporary performance notes suggest the popular tastes in music - and echo off-handedly the ugliness. When the Reed Opera House closed in 1900, the Salem online history says:

A Salem newspaper published a farewell to Reed’s Opera House on April 26, 1900. Patton Brothers, managers since 1896, opened the theater for the last time with a performance by the Great Barlow Minstrels. The show was rated among the best minstrel performances ever seen in Salem. Galleries were packed and fewer than a score of empty seats remained in the who house. The "niggers" said the critic, "were black, their teeth white, and their jokes recent".¹ Between acts, Hal Patton came upon the stage and made a nice farewell speech.

A little later in January 1905, the theatres were booking vaudeville, "musical burlesque," and minstrel shows. (A longer survey of the listings is beyond our scope here, alas.)

Not surprisingly, more is known about classical music in Salem. Writing about "Music in Salem: 1900 - 1930" in Marion County History, Dorothy Pearce said that three important music teachers had been students of Emil Winkler, "who taught at Willamette and in Salem in the 1890s."² Winkler was "a recent graduate of the Conservatory at Leipsic [sic], Germany" and people in Salem felt "it was unquestionably a great stimulus to the school to have this instructor fresh from his studies in one of the great European music centers of that day."³

Without more information, it seems reasonable also to place Deiner in this context of German immigrant musicians. Germans had the musical training, the technique, and the cultural authority and status - even for a lower-status job like a brothel piano player. Deiner may also have been itinerant. He appears not to have stayed long and hasn't left obvious traces in various censuses or directories.

In March of 1905, city police raided Peppermint Flat and arrested Deiner and Davenport.

CAUGHT AGAIN

E. E. NICHOLS MUST ANSWER TO CHARGE OF FREQUENTING HOUSE OF ILL-FAME

Police Make Raid and Capture Offender Second Time – H. H. Deiner, Pianist, Also Taken in – Fanny Davenport Booked for Disorderly Conduct

As the result of another move made by Marshal Cornelius and his men last evening, Ellsworth E. Nichols must face the charge of frequenting a house of ill-fame, H. H. Deiner, a piano player, will be required to answer a similar charge and Fanny Davenport, the land-lady of a notorious house on “peppermint flat,” is booked for disorderly conduct. Nichols still being held under a former bond was allowed to go upon his own recognizance. The Davenport woman promised to appear in court when wanted so was not taken into custody, and the piano player put up $20 cash bail to insure his appearance.

Determined to carry out the original plans, and follow along the lines mapped out at the meeting held by the city officials a few weeks ago, Marshall Cornelius, assisted by Officers Lewis and Murphy, made a raid upon the house of ill-repute on Ferry street, conducted by Fanny Davenport, between 7 and 8 o’clock last evening. H. H. Deiner, a pianist employed at the place, was the first victim to fall into the clutches of the marshall, who had entered the house while the other officers stood guard upon the outside. Nichols next put in an appearance and was promptly gathered in. The landlady became very indignant at the action of the police and her fit of temper brought her into the game with a charge of disorderly conduct placed against her. The three cases will be called in the police court by City Recorder Moores at 2 o’clock this afternoon.

Marshall Cornelius and his faithful men deserve much credit for the good work they have done during the past few weeks toward purifying the atmosphere of the sporting districts of this city. Every move, originally planned, has been successfully carried out and the individuals sought have in each instance been taken in and punished.

When the news became noised about that Marshall Cornelius intended to rid the city of all undesirable characters, many of the idlers and worthless individuals who had been in the habit of parading the streets with flying colors, packed their grips and left the city between two days. The general public would be surprised (pleasantly of course) to know the number of this class who bid farewell to Salem and departed in a hurry. Among those who absented themselves to avoid arrest were also several women, of the class known as street walkers, who had made Salem their home for many months.

The action of the police has had a remarkable effect and is meeting with the hearty approval of the people. The movement inaugurated shortly after the new officers entered upon their duties has by no means reached its end, in fact it has but commenced. Among others, whose of the kindergarten class who are in the habit of roaming the streets at late hours and who can often be seen entering questionable resorts, will receive due attention by the police in the near future. This class includes girls as well as boys, a number of whom are of respectable parentage. The officers will show no favors but propose to make a thorough clean-up and in this they should, and will receive the hearty support of all respectable citizens of Salem.

Nichols is far more visible than Deiner. He shows up consistently in the Polk directories. In 1896 E.E. Nichols lived in the Eldridge Block; in 1905 Ellsworth was a laborer at 297 Front; and in 1926 E. Ellsworth lived at 243 N. Front. He died on December 8th, 1946, at the age of 85, having lived at 702 North Church Street.

Nichols seemed to have a nose for trouble and he might also have been a "sporting man." Earlier, in April 1901, he'd got into trouble with slot machines. Unfortunately his obituaries are brief, just-the-facts-ma'am.

¹At least in the Capital Journal, the quote is actually, "The niggers were black, their teeth white, and the jokes nearly all of recent vintage." This is likely another example of Maxwell's penchant to quote from memory.

²"Music in Salem: 1900 - 1930," in Marion County History, vol. iv, June 1958, pp. 43 - 46.

³Robert M. Gatke, Chronicles of Willamette, the Pioneer University of the West. Portland, OR: Binsford & Mort, 1943.

Chinatown's "Bell Tower" - Brothel or just False Alarm?

In his piece on Chinatown, Ben Maxwell referenced a brothel called the "Bell Tower."¹

The east side of Liberty Street between Court and State was a Chinese settlement of evil repute. Bell Tower, a bawdy house with very sinister reputation was located there as was another place or two with similar reputation but catering to Oriental patronage. A Chinese prostitute was stabbed to death in 1895. Other Chinese occupied rookeries on Ferry Street and tumble down structures at Commercial and Trade owned by Ed Hirsch.

Just what was going on in Salem's Chinatown in 1895? Records are few, extant histories are incomplete and sometimes deliberately vague in the name of propriety, and everything else is shrouded in old-timey nostalgia.

In addition to Maxwell, two other writers have taken a run at one part of the "bell tower" story. While we don't think Capital Taps can do any better with an elegant or satisfying narrative, we can at least do a better job of sharing some of the evidence. Our conclusions cannot be firm, but we think there's more to be wrung from the newspaper accounts!

What appears to be the primary evidence for the Bell Tower brothel is a horrible murder, a shocking episode of domestic violence. We'll see, though, that the scene of the crime was near the fire bell tower in the alley, and that there's no reference to a brothel by this name. At the same time, it appears to be common knowledge that the victim was a prostitute, working out of a boarding house. We'll also look at the ways different writers selected different points of emphasis.

The Salem Pioneer Cemetery lists the victim as Toyo Watanabe. Murdered on the 4th, she was buried on the 8th of October, 1895.

The news reports on the 5th and 6th are full of lurid detail. But sometimes they quiet down and the details seem reliable. On the 5th the Statesman mentioned that Toyo was studying English and apparently learning to write it. She spelled her name differently (even the spelling of English names in the paper wasn't entirely stable, however).

[Her] reception room had but little furniture in it, one or two chairs, a plain heating stove of cheap make, a large and expensive Saratoga trunk, locked, and a small parlour table, on which were some ordinary nick-nacks such as a woman of her class might keep about her, together with some large-sized, calendared writing paper on which was scrawled, in characters that spoke of a beginner in the art of writing, and no doubt made by the woman herself, who was known to be illiterate but anxious to learn this particular accomplishment. Such cramped and irregular writing as it was, it was difficult to decipher it...[we] read "Philli Coup H." "Hair Oil" "Meigle Toyo" "Miss Meigle Toyo," "$50," "3120," "210," "Heppbin," "Mrs. Willie Heppbin," and other matter, and besides this there were several telegrams, more or less back dated, addressed to William Heppbin, from Portland, Albany and elsewhere. (It will be remembered that this woman was involved in a police court scandal some months since with young Wm. Heppburn of this city, who has since gone east.)

This forcibly abandoned scene of domestic self-improvement and striving remains touching across the years.

The "police court scandal" had unfolded earlier in the year. Though the reports do not mention a name of any brothel, they are clear on Toyo's profession. In March, the Capital Journal reported

Young Heppburn, who is so infatuated with a Japanese woman in this city, with whom he ran away, is now involved in a peck of trouble. Last evening in a dispute with a Chinaman, in a Chinese restaurant, on Court street, Hepburn cut the former on the head with a teapot, cutting a serious gash...Young Hepburn appeared before Judge Edes this morning...

Two months later, he was in court again. From the Statesman:

Judge Edes yesterday announced his decision in the case against William Hepburn on preliminary hearing for larceny, accused by his quondam Japanese "lover." The judge decided to hold Hepburn to the grand jury...

The Capital Journal added that the charge was "larceny of a diamond ring and other jewelry from a Japanese courtesan."

Perhaps readers will offer better interpretations. But as I read it, the most likely interpretation is that Toyo was working as a prostitute in a Chinese boarding house. Prostitution might have supplemented her income or it could have been her primary job. One of her clients become possessive. Whether the man he attacked with the teapot was another client, was a pimp or other "protector," or perhaps was Toyo's actual lover, Hepburn saw him as a rival.

Whether Toyo saw Hepburn as more than a client is not clear. If they had indeed "run away" together, if she had herself written out her name as his wife, then perhaps there was more of a relationship. But it's also not difficult to imagine her writing her name at his request, part of services rendered, but perhaps fearful of his violence and jealousy.

(I suppose it's possible the writing was his, left after he murdered her - but this requires that all the news reports and the participants at the inquest conspiring to cover-up a murder. Possible, but not likely. In any case, speculating on the identity of the murderer is beyond the scope of this post!)

On October 5th, 1895 Statesman reported:

MURDER MOST FOUL

A JAPANESE COURTESAN SLASHED TO DEATH LAST NIGHT

Mouye Toyo Yields Her Life to the Passionate Rage of a Chinese Lover

Not for six long years, or since William Hawkins shot Harvey Ogle to death in June, 1889, has this community thrilled to the shock of murder, until 7:30 o'clock last night, when the wild screams of a woman and shrill, prolonged notes of a police whistle gave out their startling alarm and summoned officers and citizens to the scene of an atrocious butchery that has no parallel in the criminal records of Salem and but few elsewhere.

Chief of Police Dilley and Officer Bert Savage, who were in the immediate neighborhood at once rushed to the house of Mouye Toyo, a Japanese courtesan on the east side of Liberty street about midway between State and Court streets...

The paper was not at all ambiguous or euphemistic about Toyo's occupation. Though the press also sensationalized the murder and played up the element of race, it's hard to think the talk of prostitution was a smear and wholly fabricated. We have documented a clear pattern of prostitution in downtown Salem from 1893 to 1912, and the rhetoric of the newspaper writers suggests they expected readers to accept it as a matter of course. It was normal, though regretted and ostensibly not part of polite society; but it was not exceptional.

Here is the east side of Liberty, the block bounded by Liberty, State, High, and Court streets in the 1895 Sanborn map (click on it for a larger view). Several houses are labeled "Chinese" and you can see the fire bell structure in the center of the block on the alley. Note also the stables downtown (great photo here) where the Grand Theater would be built in 1900. Just off-map is a large chicken coop!

Here's a detail of the fire bell ("drive under" it says!) and of the houses immediately to the west, fronting Liberty. This is essentially where the Metropolitan and Engleberg Antiques are located, and the bell on the alley directly behind.



I believe the house furthest west is the same house shown in the newspaper, though the footprints are different, with the paper's diagram being more schematic than to scale. (North is also to the right rather than up.)

Below the "back yard" portion of the diagram are the words "bell tower." I believe Maxwell construed this as a caption, identifying the name of the brothel, rather than as a something merely locating the tower in the alley behind the back yard. (He also called Toyo a "Chinese prostitute" and all the evidence clearly shows she is Japanese - this points to what I assume is Maxwell's habit of writing from memory rather than notes, and stressing the narrative hook over strict historical detail.²)

It's possible, of course, that the house was called the "bell tower" brothel, named in popular talk for its proximity to the fire bell, but that name is nowhere used in the body of the news articles. Not in the news pieces about the murder, not in the inquest articles, and not in the burial notice. With the lurid details the articles do include (and even embellish in some instances!) you'd think they'd include this detail if it was significant.

Over the years writers have been skittish about the extent of prostitution downtown. Certainly, the history of Peppermint Flat has been neglected. Writing in the Statesman in January 2004, Capi Lynn appears to deemphasize the possibility that the murder victim was a prostitute.

Years ago, when helping renovate Pioneer Cemetery, [a researcher] asked a long-time caretaker if he knew any details of Watanabe's life.

"Maybe she was a `business' woman," the man said.

Some reports referred to Watanabe as a courtesan. Others suggested that she might have been married.

The newspapers were full of claims that she was a prostitute!

A decade earlier, writing in the Japanese Discovery of Salem, Oregon, volumes 7 and 8 (summer 1992 and summer 1993), Barry Duell devoted much research and several pages to the case and never once mentions prostitution. Since he is writing about sister-city type exchanges and relations, it is not surprising that he might want to play down anything touching on vice. But the length of his omission is remarkable nonetheless, as he even quotes and footnotes the same news articles cited here.

Perhaps in another post we can discuss the possible identity of the killer (who was never found) and the ways the Salem media represented Chinatown and its "Celestials." Duell does discuss this in some depth, and CT may not have anything to add, however. We'll just add that the episode shows Chinatown as a lively border zone where Anglo, Japanese, and Chinese mixed and traded - and killed.

¹Though this is quoted from the Salem Online History article, "Salem's Chinese Americans," the passage is from Ben Maxwell's article, "The Chinese in Salem", published in Historic Marion County, volume 7, 1961, pp. 9-15. While the online article credits Maxwell at the end as a reference, the article is in fact mostly just long stretches of quotation. It and other similar instances of pastiche should be revised to identify the long quotes, reformatted as republication, or rewritten as new work.

²We are aware that CT has the opposite problem! Drilling into perhaps an overabundance of detail at the expense of a good story. Such is life...

Not in my Neighborhood: Downtown Tries to Fend off "Ill Fame" and "Moral Defamation," 1893

Sanitation and prostitution were long-time problems, not limited to the typhoid scare of 1909 or peppermint flat between 1900 - 1910. They also tapped into fears and anxieties. In 1893 almost two decades earlier, managing dirt and disorder, whether represented by the raw sewage variety, or by the metaphorical and menacing "other," was also top of mind. Two episodes that year show intense interest in drawing a line between clean and dirty society. Both show that the line was generally difficult to draw and more than a little fuzzy.

OUTRAGEOUS PROGRESS MADE

Encroachment of Houses of Ill Fame on a Business Block

The business block just north of Hotel Willamette now possesses a full-fledged red-windowed bawdy house. This is an insult to hitherto respectable business block in Salem.

Looking out of the hotel dining room and staring people in the face is a low dive. Ladies passing on the street are apt to be brushed or jostled by the women on the street. The home is rented by some one in Portland and is owned by the Hirsch estate of that city. A window as been draped in red to catch attention from State street.

The place formerly had better tenants but was vacant six months.

There should be a vigorous protest form all who live in that block.

The next day a quasi-editorial note appeared.

IN THE BUSINESS CENTER

Bawdy Houses Forcing Their Way Towards Commercial Street

No action has been taken so far to remove the house of ill fame from opposite the Hotel Willamette. It is an injury to that property and an injury to the entire business interest of the city.

The city authorities should consider this matter at once. The city police should be ordered by the mayor or by the city council to raid the house that has recently been opened in the same block with Ladd & Bush bank and other prominent business houses of the Capital city of Oregon.

THE JOURNAL wishes to sound a warning against this encroachment by houses of prostitution upon the best business blocks in the city. Such things cannot be tolerated across the street from our only first-class hotel, and in the block with our principal bank and leading business house. The disreputable office should be confined to the territory it now occupies and wiped out if that is possible. If that cancer is allowed to spread it will take its next step into Commercial street. THE JOURNAL considers it the duty of police and magistrates to use all their power and authority to drive out this vile traffic before it becomes established and thus save our moral defamation and injury to property.

It is not necessary to call names in this matter. A newspaper is not a public prosecutor, nor defamer of individuals. It is not necessary to state that a Salem business man in good society pays the rent for these women. The facts are not hard to get at. But the city government should act.

Later that fall, attention turned to Chinatown. The view of Chinatown is mostly appalling, and yet nativist rhetoric was hardly atypical then and still sometimes echoes today. Nevertheless, the problem of raw sewage was real, and was a problem of infrastructure, not merely of assimilation or respect for cultural differences.

CHINESE FRAGRANCE

The Authorities Gently Reminded of Filthy Chinatown

A sure way to spoil an appetite for several meals ahead is a trip through the alley in the rear of the China dens on Liberty street.

The foul smell arising from the carcasses dumped into this alley, is only equaled by the stench that emanates from the back doors of the row of dens that front on Liberty and State streets.

If it is true that this race of people live on dead cats, rats, etc., the den must now have on hand a surplus stock in that line. In this alley near the tower of the fire bell, which they are now using as a dumping ground for their surplus edibles, lie a number of putrid carcasses that give rise to an oder that would do credit to a soap factory.

The writer observed in this alley, through the sense of sight, emphasized by that of smell in two dead cats, one that has laid for many days and another that is swollen to immense proportions, just nearing the ripening stage, and if not removed will thicken the atmosphere around with its odor in a day or two.

In this same locality lies a decomposing rat that contributes its share to excite the olfactory nerves, and to this is added the fragrance of a dead chicken and odor arising from bones of meat that are dumped into the alley with more or less flesh on them. The idea one gets of Chinese life at their backdoor is anything but exalted and the closer one gets to their dens the more nauseating the smell.

There is one place on Liberty street where they never take the trouble to carry the slop pails to the back door, but empty it out a at [sic] side window where stands a pool of their filth which is very unsightly as well as deleterious to the sanitary conditions of the surroundings.

The white residents in the neighborhood of Chinatown are beginning to complain, and they as well as the entire population of the city should be protected against the filthy habits of these uncanny people.

That part of the city known as Chinatown, centrally located in the Capital City, is a fruitful source of disease and moral degredation [sic] and is becoming a menace to those ow[n]ing property or doing business in that vicinity. Within easy stone throw are three Chinese or Japanese houses of prostitution besides one conducted by American demi monde.

Chinatown should be renovated, forcing the denizens to conform to sanitary laws as well as moral laws or that hole should be depopulated.

For more on Chinatown, see the rehash of Ben Maxwell's article. More on Salem's multiculturalism here.

On Wednesday, January 20th, as part of honoring the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, at the Library will be a showing of the film, The Ku Klux Klan in Oregon 1920-1923.

Madam McGinnis in the Census - decade by decade

Happy New Year!

With the symbolic roll-over from 2009 to 2010, from the aughts to the teens, and to get ready for the 2010 census, it seemed like a good time to visit the census records for Hattie McGinnis. Like the pioneers before her, she also came west, and her movements recorded at ten year intervals tell a story of mobility and seeking opportunity - and probably also of escaping the past.

Oh, I'd love to have a photo of Madam McGinnis! But we haven't found one yet.

Though the records are not entirely consistent, they mostly agree that she was born in Ohio in the 1840s. She is first visible in the 1880 census, and she and James McGinnis show up in Arkansas. They didn't make an obvious appearance in the 1890 census.


But by 1900, we have a more-or-less complete entry. Hattie had moved to Peppermint Flat in Salem. She was listed without James, and the residents of her brothel at 142 Ferry were all enumerated: Pauline Phillips, age 23; Ida Bunell, 26; and Dora Mason, 27. Down the street, at 122 Ferry, Emma Thomas and Ruth Doe were also listed. (Map shows south side of Ferry between Liberty and High.)

Pauline Phillips killed herself not long after the census. According to the paper, her family, the Reisners, lived in Denver, but they weren't obvious in the census.

In 1910, again only Hattie was listed in the census. Her brothel was larger: Olive Ritchie, age 25; Pearl Vivian, 30; Gladys Hayes, 24; and Madge Kelley, 20. Each of the ladies declined to give their place of birth, and instead just listed the United States. Since they were all likely using pseudonyms, the vagueness is not surprising. In the household were also two servants: Un Toy, age 50, from China; and K. Samoti, 26, from Japan.

In 1910 the Oregon Supreme Court had upheld McGinnis' conviction, and I have not yet determined whether she left town. She disappears from the Polk directories. In any event, by the time that Governor West had "cleansed" the district in 1912, she must have left.

In 1920 Hattie is reunited with James and they appear in San Diego. We'll have to learn more about their activities in San Diego.

Finally, in 1930 there is a James McGinnis in prison in San Diego. No Hattie. More work is necessary to determine if this is the same James McGinnis.

So the census - the staple of genealogical researchers everywhere! - gives us at least an outline of a narrative.

Mission Mill and the Marion County Historical Society today officially merge. Hopefully this will be the start of something "absolutely" wonderful. CT's wish for the new year? That MCHS finds the means to start publishing more and to put their archives online. There's no reason old issues and articles shouldn't be indexed, online, and more easily available! One of our New Year's toasts is to the new, combined entity. Prost!

Madam McGinnis Buries Pauline Phillips: "Suicide of a Courtesan"

Daniel Fry's description of Peppermint Flat captures the ambiguous image of the prostitute in Salem: He burnishes it up as a little glamorous, but the details reveal it as confined and constrained in awful ways.

The people who lived on Ferry Street were the gay ladies of that day. This was a legal profession at that time, and they often drove around in horse-drawn cabs, showing their fine clothes and seeing the city which was about the only way they had a chance of doing so.

Gleaned from newspaper pieces, which of course have their own silences and appeals to glamour or sensationalism, the tragic story of Pauline Phillips shows the confinement and constraint, and the apparent impossibility sometimes of getting out.

Phillips had come to Salem from Denver, Colorado. Newspaper reports give her age as about 24 (the 1900 census as 23), and as having an 8 year old daughter. She was born in May, 1877, in New York City, and grew up as Emma Reisner. If the ages are correct, she had been a teen-age mother, bearing her child at 15 or 16. She had been married to James McDogget and subsequently divorced. It's not certain whether James fathered the daughter. Between the divorce and young motherhood, she may have felt herself to be the source of some scandal - or others may have saddled her with disgrace.

At any rate, Phillips came to Salem around 1896, not yet 20 years old. She did not have her daughter. Even without any scandal or shame in Denver, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario where Reisner was fleeing abuse of one kind or another and sought to remake her life. She adopted the pseudonym, "Pauline Phillips," and must have sought work. Whether she first turned to prostitution or did so only after failing to find regular employment is unclear. But for whatever reasons, prostitution seemed best or the only escape. It likely paid more than regular work.

In time, despair and possibly addiction engulfed her. The paper reports

The woman had been very dissipated for some time. About two months ago she smashed a plate glass window on Commercial street while crazed by liquor. She was then committed to the asylum, but was released after six weeks treatment. She has been very despondent since, and has threatened to take her own life.

Another account added that she was in love with "a local sporting man, who did not reciprocate her affections." Perhaps this man toyed with her affections and seemed to offer a new escape. And she was separated from her daughter. Whether she was what we would today consider mentally ill, her life had all the ingredients for profound and desperate unhappiness.

Finally, on July 19th, 1900, she did take her life.

Pauline Phllips, an occupant of a house of ill-fame at 142 Ferry Street committed suicide Thursday afternoon by drinking carbolic acid.

The poison was taken while the other occupants of the house were at supper in another room, about 5:30 p.m.

Drs. Shaw and Robertson were called in, but nothing could be done to save the woman’s life.

Phillips body was taken to the undertakers, Rigdon & Clough (the successor business still extant, and an Oregon150 history here) and an inquest confirmed the suicide. Hattie McGinnis made burial arrangements.

Madame McGinnis, in whose establishment the unfortunate woman ended her life, acting for “the fraternity” made all arrangements to give the poor girl a decent burial.

Phillips is buried in the Salem Pioneer Cemetery. Her gravestone, once standing, but now knocked over, is a little overgrown with grass. McGinnis apparently did indeed raise enough money for a proper headstone. The grave is not one of a pauper's, though today it is unremarked upon and neglected.

A couple of days after the funeral, a note thanking the Woman's Christian Temperance Union appeared in the paper:

CARD OF THANKS We take this means of extending our heartfelt thanks to the ladies of the W.C.T.U. for the kindness and courtesies extended on the occasion of the funeral of the late Pauline Phillips; we also wish to thank Rev. Dr. John Parsons for conducting the funeral services. MABEL RHODES MRS. HATTIE McGINNIS

Though we might think of the WCTU as temperance zealots, this notice points to one way that women collectively stood together against sexism. It was women banding together to fund a decent burial for Phillips, not the men who purchased sex. By placing social and political critique under "morality," temperance forces were able to be more active. The absent father, whether he was drunk in a saloon or visiting a prostitute, was presumably harming the lives of his children and wife. The WCTU also knew that there were limited ways for women to make a living. And, of course, the WCTU was also involved in agitating for women's suffrage. So the WCTU was not merely saying "no" to real pleasures that might be abused, but was aiding more progressive causes.

Note also the presence of a priest at the funeral. McGinnis is hardly shunned. The prostitution at Peppermint Flat and Hattie McGinnis' activities appear to be a largely accepted part of Salem society at this time, just as Fry had said.

A few days after the burial, the weekly Capital Journal made some effort to publish information about Phillips' relations.

The correct and maiden name of the dead woman was Emma Reisner, but she was the divorced wife of James McDogget...The woman’s parents reside at No. 3934 Winter street, Denver, Colorado....She had told her companions that she had a daughter eight years of age, who is probably with her grandparents.

It is not clear why this was published. Was it intended to shame the parents? We'll see if we can find out more about the Reisners and McDoggets.

In 1900 the whole of Marion county had a population of 27,713. Salem was mostly bounded by Mission on the south, Union on the North, and 17th on the east. There were pockets of houses to the north and south - but Salem was a small town, a little smaller than Monmouth-Independence is today.

Still, there was lots going on that we've forgot. Hattie McGinnis worked a seam between the licit and the illegal, between the accepted and the immoral. She exploited her workers and took care of them. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to help Phillips enough before Phillips decided to end it all.

Madam McGinnis goes to the Oregon Supreme Court

After the October 1909 trial of Hattie McGinnis, the appeal was set for March the following year. The details of the appeal are mostly technical, regarding the way an amended law affects evidence gathered under a previous version of the law.

What is interesting, though, is the way the law, an Oregon statute, seems to have been written to enable vigilante purity groups to exercise quasi-law-enforcement and judicial functions. Everyone was quite open about the use of ordinary citizens to “spy” on others, not merely to tip authorities to the possibility of wrong-doing, but actively to gather evidence that would be used in court.

From the March, 1910 preview of the appeal:

Considerable interest attaches to these cases because of the fact that there has been considerable of a crusade waged against the women by a reform element in the city, and should the law point raised by the defense before the supreme court be upheld it will put a cessation to these crusades as it will practically be impossible to secure evidence which will convict….

When the legislature passed a law declaring it to be unlawful for any person to maintain and conduct a bawdy house, it also passed a rule of evidence that a conviction of the offense might be had by proving the common reputation of the house. Beyond the evidence of a few detectives employed by the reform element to spy on the women for the purpose of securing evidence against them, the greater portion of the evidence adduced, came under this rule of evidence.

At the trial itself, the paper once again underlined the “reform crusade which had swept over the city.” The article went into further detail and outlined the three main questions to decide in the appeal. First, the nature of hearsay and evidence regarding “common reputation.”

Beyond the testimony of a hired detective or two, there was no other direct testimony against the women, and their conviction was secured by the introduction, under a state law on evidence, as to the common reputation of the houses conducted by them.

Additionally, there were two parts of the jury instruction that were problematic, and the attorneys for the McGinnis wanted to use what looks like a form of jury nullification.

Attorney Kaiser, it appears, took occasion in making his appeal to the jury to revert to the Scriptures and in the course of it said: “let him who is without sin first cast a stone at her.” Judge Burnett, in instructing the jury said: “it is not a question for the jury who cast the first stone or any other stone, the jury has nothing to do with that;” and this it is contended made the argument of Attorney Kaiser ridiculous in the eyes of the jury and operated to the prejudice of the defendant.

Another point relied upon by the defense was the judges instruction on the subject of what constitutes reasonable doubt. After giving the ordinary definition of reasonable doubt, he made this addition: “The jury is not entitled to resolve itself into doubting Thomases, who refuse to be convinced by the testimony.” This, it was contended by the defense, had an effect upon the jury which was prejudicial to the defendants, and was reversible error.

Finally, on April 12, 1910, in STATE v. McGINNIS, 56 Or. 163, 108 Pacific 132, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled.

The court disposed of the contested jury instructions quickly.

It is fair to assume that by the argument advanced the Jury were in effect admonished by defendant's counsel that, unless they were guiltless of the particular offense of which she was then being tried, they should follow the declarations of the Saviour, made when a woman was brought before him charged with adultery…The duty of jurors is to determine an issue according to the rules announced by the court. It is not their province to base a verdict on their preconceived notion of justice, their passions, prejudices, or personal experience acquired in violations of the moral code. The instruction correctly started the law and no error was committed in giving it.

More interesting is the discussion of evidence. The court recognized that participants in prostitution are not likely to be caught In flagrante delicto.

It is not to be supposed that the crime of adultery or fornication will be committed in public, or that parties guilty thereof will be taken in the very act.

The court held that “reputation” was admissible. This had, it seems, two parts. The first part concerned the reputation of the house itself – that everyone knew prostitution occurred there. The other part concerned the ownership of the house, as “common fame,” rather than legal documents like a title or lease, established that McGinnis possessed or owned the house.

The court, over objection and exception, permitted witnesses to testify as to the reputation of the defendant's ownership of the house alleged to have been used for immoral purposes….

Our statute does not limit "common fame" to the evil behavior prevailing in a bawdyhouse, and such phrase may be as well employed to establish the other averment of the indictment respecting the ownership of the property or the right to its possession as the general reputation of the building, and, such being the case, no error was committed in admitting the evidence in question…..

And the court concluded that

"Common fame," which serves to establish a character either of a person or thing, was competent evidence.

I have not meaningfully researched the history of “common fame” or its current usages, but some cursory googling suggests it mostly appears in 19th century citations and in religious contexts, especially religious purity laws. Whatever we may think of prostitution, the means here to prosecute it appears to rely dangerously on rumor and reputation rather than on hard evidence. The reporter appears to understand this when he wrote that the appeal threatens a "cessation to these crusades."

After this McGinnis disappears from the city directories. Perhaps she moved away, perhaps she was shunned or otherwise became a non-person in society. Hopefully we’ll find more.*

At any rate, two years later Oswalt West completed the "cleansing" of Peppermint Flat, and drove remaining prostitution activities underground.

(*We do have more on the earlier activities of Hattie McGinnis, so look for more installments on Peppermint Flat.)

Peppermint Flat & Potiphar's Wife: Madam Hattie McGinnis in 1909

For a little over a decade, Hattie McGinnis, whom we met in 1900, was likely Salem's most famous madam. Almost exactly a century ago, in October 1909, she and four others, were tried for "conducting a bawdy house."

Though little is said about it today, for a quarter-century, Salem possessed an infamous red-light district on the edges of downtown Salem. The district, hardly more than a block or two, was called Peppermint Flat, an area on Ferry Street between High and Liberty. McGinnis' boarding house, the purported bawdy house, was on the alley on the south side of Ferry. In the old addressing, it was located at 142 Ferry street. You can see a note on 122 Ferry that the house elevated on posts - "on posts, open under."


In Historic Marion, Winter 1998, “The Saga of Daniel J. Fry, Part 3…My Youth on Gaiety Hill," Daniel J. Fry, jr. (see notes on now-demolished Fry warehouse here) said:

Ferry Street was a no-no street. It was really all built up on stilts. Water stood in that part of town nearly all summer long. The people who lived on Ferry Street were the gay ladies of that day. This was a legal profession at that time, and they often drove around in horse-drawn cabs, showing their fine clothes and seeing the city which was about the only way they had a chance of doing so. There was a very narrow, high walk along Ferry Street over this sunken part of the city, and I was riding my bicycle along there one day and gawking into the windows to see what I could see, when I ran off and broke my arm. I was very much chagrined because I shouldn't have been there in the first place because we children were never supposed to go that way.

And in Lewis E. Judson's book, Reflections on the Jason Lee Mission and the Opening of Civilization in the Oregon Country, cited in the Pringle, Glenn-Gibson, Claggett and Mill Creeks Watershed Assessment (chapter 3 here), Judson says:

there were places in Salem where people who respected their reputation did not go. The principal one of these was the block of Ferry Street between Liberty and High Streets which was left to public women. This was known as ‘Peppermint Flat’ where the houses and walks were built on stilts over a lagoon-like former channel of the Willamette River. A trace of that old channel still exists in the depression centering at the intersection of Ferry and High Streets and the alley through the block southwest of that intersection. That ancient channel ran from a broad front on Pringle Creek between Commercial and High Streets, north on Liberty to Ferry, then east to the center of the block on State Street south of the courthouse. From there on north to Mill Creek was low ground. During the high water of 1861, a steamboat followed this channel and tied up in State Street opposite the courthouse.

McGinnis had earlier been "haled before the municipal courts of Salem, but due to defective local laws, they were discharged." It's not clear exactly when this occured, but McGinnis was charged with vagrancy in the winter of 1906. In February 1906, the paper notes

the pleadings did not set out with sufficient force that defendant was a vagrant. She showed tax receipts on property. [neither] The code nor the ordinances define vagrancy and it could not be confused with disorderly conduct, and breaching of the peace....The city had a right and had the power to define vagrancy, [the city argued]. The court could not agree with him. The city had no right to say that an idle person was necessarily a vagrant. The ordinance was held invalid, and the complaint was insufficient. The case against Mrs. McGinnis was dismissed.

It is not clear whether the 1909 case refers to this or to an attempt in 1908 or 1909 to charge her. The gap between attempts may indeed be three years. As Fry noted, at the end of his life, prostitution was essentially "a legal profession," and seemed to be more tolerated than not. vice flourished in many forms. Opium use was an open secret.

But not everyone tolerated the vice, and prohibition forces were growing in the early 1900s. By late 1909, law enforcement shifted tactics to county court. On October 6th the Capital Journal reported

True bills were handed down late yesterday afternoon by the grand jury against Emma Thomas, Julia Downie, Rose Leland, Hattie McGinnis and Dollie Richie. These women are charged with conducting a bawdy house in the city of Salem. This morning all five of the defendents were arraigned before Judge Burnett in the circuit court, and after District Attorney McNary read the indictment, Attorney Wm. Kaiser, representing the defendents, asked until 10 o’clock tomorrow morning in which to plead, which was granted by the court.

Just what the outcome of these cases will be is difficult to foretell, but it is the opinion of many that some interesting points of law will be introduced by the attorneys before the cases are decided.

10 days later, on October 16th, the paper reported that

Hattie McGinnis and Emma Thomas, were tried and found guilty yesterday in the circuit court of conducting a bawdy house…

The trials for the other women followed in short order. The first jury took 7 hours to deliberate, but the following ones were quick. About the third trial the reporter noted

The jury was out but a few minutes, which shows it is much harder to fire the first dornick.

Jury selection, too, took time, and one can only wonder about the reasons a juror might have been "unsuitable":

The examination of the jurors consumed two hours time yesterday morning before 12 suitable men could be passed upon.

The defense in the first trial, which I believe was McGinnis', offered no witnesses, but the state had many. The paper describes the state's evidence:

U. G. Kellogg was the principal witness for the state. He testified that he had called at the resorts of ill fame on Ferry street conducted by Hattie McGinnis and Emma Thomas, where he witness acts contrary to the public morals and dignity, and that he had “purchased a malt liquor known as beer in these two houses.” Mr. Kellogg testified that the proprietoress had behaved like Potiphar’s wife, while he took the part of Joseph…[He said that he was a member] of the Law Enforcement League and had called at these two houses for the purpose of securing evidence….

The vigilantism of the Law Enforcement League is both alarming and humorous. The puritanical self-importance suggested by the biblical citation even funnier!

On the 22nd or 23rd of October, four of the women were sentenced to 30 days in jail, and McGinnis fined an additional $300.

The verdict was appealed. In a second note, we'll see what happened during the appeal. [updated with link]

Albany Farmer Fleeced by Floozies, 1900

This is from the Capital Journal Weekly in 1900. It shows a lively and shifting boundary in Salem between vice and the law, and between saloons and brothels.

Hattie McGinnis was an important madam in Salem for several years, and her "boarding house" was on Ferry street in the red-light district, called "Peppermint Flat." The boarding house was where the Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield office is on the corner of Ferry and High. Peppermint grew in the swampy depression - which you can still see in the sunken alley between Ferry and Trade. During floods, the depression filled and became a waterway off Pringle Creek and the Mill Race.

The "Turner block" is also known as the northern part of the Eldridge Block. It and the Parvenue Tower were demolished in 1954 for a Lipman's parking lot. Today the Chemeketa Parkade stands there. The southern portion of the Eldridge block remains as Greenbaum's Quilted Forest.

GOT HIS MONEY BACK

A LINN COUNTY FARMER FALLS AMONG THIEVES

Is Relieved of Over $600 by Salem Vultures But His Cash is Recovered by Chief Gibson

There was a sensational story behind the four-line item published in Saturdays' JOURNAL to the effect that Recorder Judah had imposed a fine of $10 on a farmer who had imbibed too freely, but for good reasons the officers did not wish to publish all they knew.

The farmer in question, whose name is with-held, was relieved of about $600 in cash on Friday night while under the influence of drugged liquor, the job being done by a couple of Salem's prostitutes, who were compelled to cough up $525 of the spoils by shrewd and energetic work on the part of Chief of Police Gibson.

The farmer came into town Friday from Albany, having $600 in gold on his person. He had a few drinks and was taken in town by McGinnis one of the birds of prey who lie in wait for the unwary.

He was finally steered into the back room of a saloon, a couple of females were summoned from Peppermint Flat, and the farmer, minus his money, was soon afterward found by night officer Smith raising a disturbance in the hallway up-stairs in the Turner block.

Saturday morning he made his loss known, and Chief Gibson started on the trial with very slight clews to go on, the farmer's mind being in a very hazy condition.

But the chief soon traced the matter immistakably to the McGinnis woman and one of her girls. He called at their place of business and gave them a short time in which to show up with the money at his office. The woman reached the city hall nearly as soon as the chief did, with voluminous explanations of how she came to have the money, and she counted out $525 in gold, claiming that was all she got out of the agriculturalist.

Chief of Police Gibson had spotted the gold German as easy game for the tenderloin gang before he fell into their hands. In fact he had a complete history of every movement of the victim and of every movement of those who deliberately plotted to get his cash. McGinnis had him in tow from 9:30 a.m. First he was taken through one saloon and then another, and at each step Chief Gibson had eye witnesses to the unfolding of the scheme. He even has the telephone message that was sent to call the vultures to their prey.

This morning the farmer called upon Chief Gibson and got his money or $525 of it. He was overjoyed to receive it, and well may be for he was exceedingly fortunate that his case fell into the hands of an officer as energetic and as free from "entangling alliances" as is Chief [Gibson.]