Review Tuesday: Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott #History #Prostitution #ReviewTuesday

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul by Karen Abbott

Random House, 2007

A formula for popular history: find an interesting but obscure historical figure, research their life and times, then weave a story around them. Karen Abbott adopts this strategy in Sin in the Second City, with mixed success. At the center of her narrative are the Everleigh sisters, Minna and Ada, who owned the most exclusive and outrageous brothel in Chicago during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Elegant and expensive, Everleigh House catered to the wealthy and influential men of the Second City: celebrities, tycoons, playboys, politicians and racketeers. The women who worked there - Minna's and Ada's "butterflies" - were not just beautiful but also cultured (educated by their employers in many circumstances), and earned a fortune compared to the harlots in other houses. Indeed, Minna and Ada had a waiting list of women who wanted to join their enterprise.

The descriptions of Everleigh House, the excesses it saw and the scandals it suffered, would be fascinating in their own right. Ms. Abbott tries to expand the scope and impact of her tale by chronicling the long campaign by religious fanatics and puritanical officials to combat "white slavery" and shut down all of Chicago's bawdy houses, including Minna's and Ada's establishment. Somehow, this made the story feel scattered and unfocused. 

The book contains long sections about the individual men involved in the anti-vice movement - their lives, their foibles, their successes and failures. For me, this was just distracting. I really didn't care about them. I wanted to read more about the goings on at Everleigh House: the wild doings at the Ward Ball where the sinners of Chicago thumbed their noses at the law; the gracious manner in which the sisters dealt with their opponents; the incredibly enlightened treatment of the "butterflies", even when they violated the sisters' rules. This seemed to me to be the heart of this history, not the hysterical polemics and dirty dealings of the do-gooders. “The Battle for America’s Soul” referenced in the sub-title seems like an overstatement. In fact, Minna and Ada possessed more soul than all their opponents put together.

As I read this book, I also found myself wishing I was more familiar with Chicago. I think someone who knew the city well would find special pleasure in this book.

I enjoyed Sin in the Second City, largely because of the original, boldly unapologetic pair of women whose lives it chronicles.