I came across this great event in history while reading the ‘Sunday Gentleman’ of celebrated writer Irving Wallace. Hence, I decided to pen down few lines about this greatest business.
A new business opened at the Dearborn Street on 1 st February, 1900. Within a few years it became world famous – the Everleigh Club—a brothel. Ada and Minna Everleigh’s sisters came to Chicago to seek fortune in prostitution business as Madams. They were determined to go for the very high-end trade.
The interior of the Everleigh Club had the look and feel of a private club – leather chairs, mahogany tables, silk curtains, and a gold-leaf piano. Three string musicians joined the piano player in providing music. Gourmet meals were served, along with the finest wines and champagnes. The prostitutes were known for their beauty, fashionably attired, and acted like refined society ladies.
At the Club, dinner was $50, champagne $12 a bottle. Private time with one of the ladies cost a minimum of $50. If the patron did not spend at least $200 for the evening, he was told not to return. From opening day, the club was enormously successful. Stories of the brothel spread. When Prince Henry of Germany visited America in 1905, he said the one place he wanted to see was the Everleigh Club!
Other brothel operators grew jealous. Once there was an attempt to plant a dead body on the Everleigh premises. Reformers attacked the club on moral grounds. Political clout and payoffs kept Ada and Minna in business.
The end came in 1911, when the sisters published a tastefully-illustrated advertising brochure. Seeing this the Mayor Carter Harrison Jr ordered the club’s closure. Ada and Minna retired without excuses or regrets. They had performed a public service. “If it weren’t for married men, we couldn’t have carried on at all.” “And if it weren’t for cheating married women, we could have made another million.” Minna.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional.
What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
