I doubt any one recognized it at the time. The bartender of time called last round just after five on Monday afternoon, 27 November, 1905. That was the hour when 38 year old Marshall Field Jr, the heir to a great fortune, died at Chicago’s Mercy hospital. He had been admitted five days earlier with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and now he was dead. And there was no good explanation as to just how, where or why he had been shot.
The official story was that while in his bedroom that morning Marshall (above) had been cleaning his gun, dropped it and the gun had gone off.
The papers were afraid of losing advertising from the Marshall Field Department Stores (above), which was then the largest retail chain in America, so the public questions stopped there - for the time being. Around town the often unstated assumption was the heir to one of the largest fortunes in America had shot himself. And then there were rumors, which appear to have originated with the local cab drivers, that Field had actually been shot in one of the houses of ill-repute in The Levee and rushed in a cab back to his own home. The next afternoon, it was from there he had been rushed to the hospital.
The twin Fields' mansions, father’s and son’s (above), stood next to each other along what was called “Millionaires Row” - Prairie Avenue on Chicago’s south side, surrounded by mansions occupied by 70 of the richest families in America. Moral reformer Lincoln Steffens described Chicago at the time as, "...first in violence, deepest in dirt, loud, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new. an overgrown gawk of a village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation". 
After the funeral Marshall Junior’s widow and her three children moved in with his father. But it stood no chance of being a happy home. The very next year the elder Field died of pneumonia, and the widow returned to her native England, leaving behind an open wound - primarily caused, many believed, by a section of Chicago called the Levee, which had somehow, killed her husband.
The Levee District was home to sin and vice of unsurpassed depravity and popularity. It was bordered by 18th street on the north, 23rd street on the south, South Clark on the west and South Wabash Avenue on the east. And at its immoral center was the Everleigh Club.
For eight years Ada and Minna Everleigh (above) were the unofficial “Queens of the Levee”, running one of the most popular upper class brothels in the Chicago. Minna (right) famously greeted each customer with a delightfully wicked, “How’s my boy?”
Their thirty working women catered to an upscale clientele, charging $50 just to get in the front door of 2131-2133 South Dearborn (above).
To the south of the Club was Ed Weiss’s bawdy house, "The Capital", and to the north was "The Sapphro", run by his brother Lou Weiss. All houses of prostitution.
In fact, jammed into the Levee were dozens of houses of prostitution, catering to whatever sin the customers could afford; Dago Franks, French Em’s, the Old 92....
...and in direct cutthroat competition with the Everleigh sisters was Madam Vic Shaw (above), whose house sat at Dearborn and Cullerton. In between the whore houses were opium dens, cocaine factories, gambling joints, peep shows and bars - lots and lots of bars.
Ringmasters of this sin circus, the Princes of the Levee, were two Aldermen who represented the district; the big, blustery John J. Coughlin (right), and his diminutive doppelganger, Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna (left).
The gimlet eyed “Hinky Dink” (above) received his nickname because he stood just 5 feet tall. He was normally “…glum and quietly dressed”, and usually chewing on a cigar. He was a teetotaler, and his wife was a temperance worker.
Hinky Dink Kenna not only had the political connections to protect the Levee, he also owned and operated several bars and gambling houses in the district, the most famous of which was The Workingman’s Exchange on Clark Street, home of "The Big Beer"..
Here barflies, bums, tramps and the homeless could buy a "Big" (20oz) Beer for a nickel, pick up a free lunch and, come election day, get a job as a “repeater”, for this was where, or so Republican legend says, politics and vice crossed paths.
Supposedly after committing voter fraud they would then return to "The Exchange" where they handed in their blanks for a payment of fifty cents each. While they drank a free beer, their new ballots would be marked and the game would go another round. But for all the Republican mythology for such a complicated and convoluted system, no solid evidence of of it has ever surfaced. And it is doubtful the residence of The Levee would have voted against the men who protected the primary industry - sin. Over twenty years neither "Bathhouse" nor Hinky Dink ever even came close to losing an election.
“Bathhouse” John Joseph Coughlin earned his nickname because at one time he had worked as an masseur at a bath house, which was also a Levee euphemism for a gambling joint. Bathhouse claimed "Why, money didn't mean anything to me....I might have been a rich man's son and gone to Yale, and never amounted to nothing!"
Alderman Coughlin (above) was over sized, usually overdressed and prone to outbursts of bad poetry he had written himself, such as his infamous “She sleeps by the Drainage Canal” or “Why did they build the lovely lake so close to the horrible shore?”
Bathouse's typical “Signs of Spring “concluded, “There are many other signs of spring which come by wireless wire; One of which is Yours Sincerely, who is tuning up his lyre. Just to twang a song to nature 'bout the brooks and fields of green; O, I wonder if I'm understood; I wonder, yes, I ween.”
It was said that one of Chicago’s mayors once asked Michael Kenna (above) if Bathhouse was just crazy or a drug addict. Hinky Dink replied, “To tell you the god’s truth, Mayor, they ain’t found a name for it yet.” As for himself, Hinky Dink could not stand to listen to Coughlin's poems unless he was pretty drunk, and he never drank.
These two Aldermen had a genius for skimming protection money from the Levee. Their enforcement arm was the Chicago Police, and in addition to their weekly take of thousands of dollars per establishment, which they used to pay the crooked cops, they sold tickets to the annual First Ward Ball.
In the words of one web site, “Every employee of a house of ill-repute or gambling den, every robber, pickpocket, safe-cracker, and streetwalker, and every bartender, bawdy house entertainer, and low groggery proprietor, all were required to buy tickets…”
Asked what he meant by ‘education’, Hinky got a little testy. “It consists", he snapped, "of hiring good halls and good speakers to teach the people of the First ward to vote the straight Democratic ticket.” And that was the end of that interview.
Each December the First Ward Ball grew in size and sank in reputation. The 1908 festivity attracted “20,000 drunken, yelling, brawling revelers” who spilled out onto the streets around the Coliseum.
When the Law And Order League tried to stop the orgy, they inspired Bathhouse to write, “Strike up the march, professor, and I will lead the way; We'll trip the light fantastic too, until the break of day. Who knows that ere another ball, we'll be outside the city hall; Be gay, but not too gay.”
One newspaper attempted to describe the scene inside the Coliseum. “The crowd was so enormous that when women fainted – a common occurrence – they had to be passed overhead from hand to hand towards the exits. Cigar smoke settled...in such thick fogs that visibility was no greater than 30 feet in any direction. The noise of shuffling feet and murmuring overpowered the sound of the dance band, and fist-fights and shoving erupted in all quarters."
When Lyman Atwell, photographer for the Tribune…began setting up his flash and tripod, security notified (Bathhouse) who…personally jumped on Atwell, breaking his camera and knocking him to the ground…"
"As usual, things started to get interesting at midnight, when the regiments of madams and their inmates showed up, led by the Everleigh Sisters. This caused another influx of thousands of men to attempt to enter the building…” Hinky Dink lorded over the affair from a table off the main floor. Then, at midnight, Bathhouse, wearing a green jacket, a mauve vest, lavender pants and a stove pipe silk hat led a winding Conga Line called The Grand March. Said the newspaper, “The most infamous party in Chicago history lasted until 5 a.m., when the last drunken revelers staggered out…”
But, after the death of the Marshall Field Jr., the millionaires began speaking with their feet, trading their row homes along Prairie Avenue for even larger mansions with extensive grounds along the "Gold Coast" in the northern suburbs along the lake. One newspaper observed that Prairie Avenue had become undesirable to those for whom it was affordable, and unaffordable to those for whom it was desirable.
The conservatives Republicans now abandoned Millionaires Row, convinced it was the debauched Democratic Ward Heelers who had ruined the morals of their city. In fact, the 1908 First Ward Ball would be the last. Not that the drugs, gambling and prostitution were dying out. It was more that the Republican solutions having failed to stamp them out, they gave up and moved away.
The mayor finally ordered the Everleigh club (above) closed in October of 1911.
The sisters said they walked away with $1,000,000 in cash, and their post Levee lifestyle in New York City seemed to support that retirement fund. Minna took the change philosophically. “If it weren't for married men”, she admitted, “we couldn't have carried on at all, and if it weren't for cheating married women we could have made another million.” Minna died in 1948, Ada died in 1960. She was 93.
Then in 1913, in far off Los Angeles, California, a woman appeared who claimed to know the truth concerning the death of Marshall Field Junior. Her name was Mrs. Ver Scott Prosser (above), and she was awaiting trial for having murdered Mister Prosser. But while behind bars she confessed to having used the names Vera Leroy, Viola Gilmore, and Vera Scott. But during her time working at the opulent Everleigh Club, she was known simply as "Vera the French Girl". Except she was from Cleveland.
Said one of the men who worked at the club, "Vera was a wonder at getting the money when she wanted to be, but she was a little devil when she had been drinking. The Everleigh sisters used to have to threaten to throw her out. But...they wouldn’t throw her out because she had too many suckers come there to buy wine." ( above, ballroom in Everleigh Club) She was described as impulsive, neurotic , hot-tempered, jealous, winsome. coquettish and fanciful." To modern ears it sounds as if she was an undiagnosed manic depressive.
Vera said that Marshall Field was well known at the Everleigh Club (above, music room). "Everybody called him by name, and...Emma Everleigh, gave him the courtesy of a private room. We went there...with a girl named Alice." During the sex, the volatile Vera suddenly felt slighted and claimed that Marshall had injured her. "I jumped up," said Vera, "and I remembered he had a gun in his trousers.. I was inflamed with drink and crazy mad. I told him that I would teach him never to do that kind of trick again."
Although Alice tried to talk Vera down, "I aimed the gun at Field and told him to stand aside. He was without clothes. The trigger must have been very finely set, for it pulled before I intended." At the sound of the shot Emma Everleigh rushed into the room (above). According to Vera, even the wounded Field told her, "Don't get excited. I won't tell. Call me a cab, quick, and get me out of this, and don't say anything."
Bathhouse John Coughlin (above) served 46 years as a Chicago Alderman.
“Hinky Dink” Kenna spent his last years (above) alienated from his family, living in a suite in the Blackstone Hotel and cared for only by a male nurse. He died in 1946 and left behind a million dollars…in cash.
His will stipulated that $33,000 of it should be set aside to construct a mausoleum for his grave. His survivors had Hinky’s will set aside. Instead they marked his passing with an $85.00 wooden tombstone, which was later replaced by a simple marble ground level marker, just as if he had been nobody special at all.
In truth it was not the reformers or the Law and Order League that put the Levee out of business, but rather the arrival of Prohibition in 1920, which freed the Levee from its confinement, and let it spread out and multiply.
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