Chicago and its cess-pools of infamyWilson, Samuel Paynter
History
Chicago and its cess-pools of infamy
Wilson, Samuel Paynter
Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions; Prostitution -- Illinois -- Chicago
Loud voices are heard on the station steps as the woman passes out, the
door is thrown open, and six well-dressed men enter, accompanied by
two policemen. They approach the desk, talking excitedly, and charge
and counter-charges, mixed with much slang and profanity, are brought
before the sergeant, who sits steadily gazing at the party, waiting
for a return of something like order. There is a lull in the talking,
and one of the policemen states that two of the men have been engaged
in a drunken assault at a political primary held in the neighborhood,
and that the other two have come to prefer charges against them. The
charges are made and entered in the “Blotter,” and the accused prefer
counter-charges against the other two, but as the policemen do not
sustain them, the accusers are suffered to depart, and the accused are
sent to a cell where they raise a tremendous racket.
As the officers are departing for their beats again, two more enter,
this time having in custody two handsomely dressed, fashionable looking
youths, whose flushed faces show they have been drinking, but not
enough to prevent them from feeling the shame of their position.
“Drunk and disorderly, sir,” says the officer, “Knocked an old woman’s
peanut stand in the street, knocked all her stuff into the mud and then
tried to run away.”
“But, sergeant,” pleads one of the youths, “it was only for a lark, you
see. We will make it all right in the morning with the old woman.”
“Your names and addresses?” asks the sergeant, coldly.
They are given, but are evidently fictitious.
“It was only a lark, sergeant,” begins the young man who spoke before,
“we didn’t mean——.”
“Lock them up,” says the sergeant, cutting him short, “you can state
all that to the court in the morning.”
And they were led away.
The silence that has fallen over the room after the young men have been
led out is rudely broken by the hasty entrance of an officer from the
direction of the cells. He is pale and excited.
“Sergeant,” he exclaims, “the woman in number ten has committed
suicide. She’s hung herself.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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