SIN IN THE SECOND CITY: MADAMS, MINISTERS, PLAYBOYS, AND THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA'S SOUL
By KAREN ABBOTT

Random House, 2007
ISBN 9781400065301
384 pages; Hardcover
GENRE(S): Nonfiction, History

Reviewed by Bri Lafond

Contemporary conservative reformers bemoan the "good old days" when everyone was upright and moral. Silly reformers...when are they going to learn that people were always as debauched and shameful as they are now? Perhaps Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City, which details the rise and fall of the infamous Everleigh Sisters in Chicago at the opening of the Twentieth Century, will finally enlighten them.

Though that's not likely to happen, Abbott's debut is a sweeping and engaging read for the rest of us. Sin opens with the details of the shooting of Marshall Field, Jr., sole son and heir to the eponymous department store mogul's fortune. Shrouded in conjecture and outright lies, the site of Field's shooting is shakily traced to the Everleigh Club, Chicago's most exclusive brothel—devoted to serving only the rich and famous—run by sisters Minna and Ada Everleigh. Though Field eventually died of his wounds and most of Chicago didn't buy the official "accidental shooting" story, Minna and Ada continued their unchallenged reign over the Levee District. However, jealous potential rivals like madam Vic Shaw tucked the story away in hopes of one day being able to use it—and any other evidence they were able to gather—as ammunition against the sisters. The story unfolds from there, taking the reader along for a fun and sexy ride through Chicago at the turn of the century, complete with government bank-rolled gangsters and conniving whores.

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The Everleigh sisters were clever entrepreneurs who made their fortunes servicing visitors to Omaha's Trans-Mississippi Exposition in 1898. As the new century dawned, they decided to move out and up to a new city where they would build the most lavish and exclusive brothel in history. Abbott details their exhaustive search of America's whorehouses, giving the reader glimpses at the by turns lavish and filthy state of U.S. whoredom and its environs. The sisters Everleigh decided to settle in Chicago's Levee District, where there was a lack of class but no lack of serviceable women. At the same time, perennial ministers and reformers were up in arms about the influx of "sinful" immigrants into the country, who were allegedly capturing good girls and forcing them into "white slavery"—the polite intimation for whoredom.

The sinners and the saints clashed on the streets of Chicago with gains and losses alternating between the two groups. As the quintessential madams of the Levee District, Minna and Ada came under heavy fire from the reformers, as well as from Vic Shaw and others. They eventually succumbed to the pressure in 1911 with the close of the club, but not before turning the Everleigh Club into the most infamous whorehouse in history.

Abbott handles the cast of characters adeptly as she navigates the complex history of the Everleigh sisters and their club, as well as the countless nuances of the Chicago political and moral climate. She frames the story around the Everleigh sisters, but this is really the history of Chicago at the turn of the Twentieth Century and, by extension, part of America's history. Many big cities in the U.S. were experiencing similar conflicts between morality and modernity, immigration and isolationism during this time and the case of the Everleigh Club in Chicago is a sort of microcosm for the general conflicts taking place elsewhere during the same time period. Moreover, it's the study of a conflict that still rages in today's battles between pro-choice advocates and pro-lifers, between ACLU members and Minutemen Occasionally, Abbott falls into problems when she tries to create narrative and dialogue from historical record, but these issues are relatively minor in comparison with the engaging drive of the story itself.

For those who loved The Devil in the White City, Sin in the Second City is a surefire hit. This is also a choice read for fans of history and nonfiction of any sort.

(December, 2007)