Minneapolis Madams: The Lost History of Prostitution on the Riverfront

Notes

175 NOTES PREFACE 1. Minneapolis Department of Inspections, building permit index card for 212–214 Eleventh Avenue South. Both “sporting house” and “house of ill fame” were common nineteenth-century euphemisms for brothels. INTRODUCTION 1. “The ‘Social Evil,’” Minneapolis Chronicle, April 30, 1867. 2. Ibid. 3. “City Ordinances,” St. Anthony Express, May 26, 1855; “The Cyprians Routed,” St. Anthony Evening News, October 2, 1857; “City and State,” Minnesota Republican (St. Anthony), July 9, 1858; and “Three Men Shot!—Attempt to Take Prisoners out of Jail!” Minnesota Republican (St. Anthony), July 23, 1858. 4. For examples of the term “public women” in local newspapers, see “Her Column,” Minneapolis Tribune, November 12, 1873, and “Painted Women,” Minneapolis Tribune, December 9, 1878. When Kate Hutton, a St. Paul prostitute , died, her coffin was “followed to Oakland [Cemetery] by most of the public women of her class in the city,” according to one newspaper (“St. Paul,” Minneapolis Tribune, August 28, 1881). 5. For a more complete account of the founding of St. Anthony and Minneapolis , see Lucile M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall That Built Minneapolis (1966; repr., St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987); and William W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, 4 vols. (1921–30; repr., St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1956), 1:431–32. 6. Agnes M. Larson, The White Pine Industry in Minnesota: A History (1949; repr., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 243, 246. 7. Kane, Falls of St. Anthony, 28. 176 Notes to Introduction 8. “Wholesale Trade: How It Has Grown Up in Minneapolis from Small Beginnings,” Minneapolis Journal, November 26, 1903. 9. Saint Anthony Falls Rediscovered (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Riverfront Development Coordination Board, 1980), 15, 29; Norman Francis Thomas, Minneapolis–Moline: A History of Its Formation (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 47–48; Horace B. Hudson, A Half Century of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Hudson Publishing Company, 1908), 432; John M. Wickre, “Farm Implements and Tractors,” in A Guide to the Industrial Archeology of the Twin Cities, ed. Nicholas Westbrook (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1983), 90. 10. Minneapolis City Charter reprinted in the Minneapolis Chronicle, January 15, 1867, chapter IV, section 31. The first Minneapolis city ordinance that refers to prostitution that I have been able to find is dated February 20, 1868. The Minneapolis Municipal Library has a box of old ordinances, although most of the original documents, such as the 1868 prostitution ordinance, are missing. Fortunately, each missing ordinance has a “Missing” card that gives the date of the ordinance and a brief description. Another such card refers to an ordinance dated July 15, 1869, to amend section 2 of an ordinance relating to disorderly houses, houses of ill fame, and common prostitutes. The earliest Minneapolis ordinance in written form is dated April 12, 1873. This ordinance prohibited brothels and prostitution in general, and set fines for violators: brothel keepers faced fines of $25–$100; visitors (usually the male customers), $5–$10; landlords who leased to known prostitutes, $50–$100; and ordinary prostitutes, $10–$50. “A Fallen Angel,” Minneapolis Tribune, March 4, 1868. See also “Police Court,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 13, May 16, and July 21, 1868. 11. “Police Court,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 14, 1872. 12. Hennepin County Criminal Index, November 25, 1869; “District Court,” Minneapolis Tribune, June 21, 1870, and June 22, 1870. Stillwater convict records describe Sullivan as a Minnesota native, five feet tall, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion that was slightly pockmarked. She began serving her sentence on June 23, 1870. 13. “Police Courts,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 22, 1872. 14. “Governor Pillsbury,” Hennepin County Mirror, February 26, 1881. 15. The Pillsburys were natives of New Hampshire, while the Washburns and Prays hailed from Maine. To name only two examples of prominent nineteenth-century Minneapolis families: the Pillsburys traced their first American ancestor to William Pillsbury, who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1640; the Washburns’ first American ancestor was John Washburn, secretary of the Plymouth Colony in England, who immigrated to Massachusetts and married into a Mayflower family. See Isaac Atwater, History of the City of Minneapolis , Minnesota (New York: Munsell, 1893), 591, 545. Notes to Chapter 1 177 16. Merlin Stonehouse, John Wesley North and the Reform Frontier (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1965), 39. This quote is from a letter to the editor of the Washington, D.C., National Era, January 24, 1850. 17. Stonehouse, John Wesley North...