The Barbary Coast - Chapters 11-12



Chapter 11. Slummer's Paradise 

At twelve minutes and six seconds past five o'clock on the morning of 
April 18, 1906, the San Francisco peninsula began to shiver in the grip of 
an earthquake which, when its ultimate consequences are considered, was 
the most disastrous in the recorded history of the North American 
continent. The shocks continued for one minute and five seconds, and while 
the actual damage done to property by the temblor was comparatively 
slight, it made possible the greater calamity of fire by shaking down 
chimneys and breaking water-mains and electrical connections throughout 
San Francisco. Within a few minutes after the earth had ceased to rock, 
sixteen fires were throwing their menacing glare against the morning sky 
from as many sections of the city south of Market Street. No water was 
available except a relatively small quantity found in a few abandoned 
cisterns, and the Fire Department was practically helpless. By noon a 
square mile had been devastated, and during the early afternoon the 
conflagration crossed Market Street at Third and Kearny Streets. Driven by 
a strong southeast wind, it spread rapidly northward and westward, through 
the business and financial districts, the Barbary Coast, and Chinatown. 
For two days the holocaust raged unchecked, while the trains and ferries, 
and the roads throughout the countryside, were crowded with frightened and 
unhappy refugees. The fire finally burned itself out, but not until it had 
destroyed 28,188 buildings in 522 blocks, covering an area of more than 
four square miles, or 2,593 acres, of which 1,088 acres were north of 
Market Street. The property loss was estimated at about four hundred 
million dollars, while 315 persons were known to have lost their lives, 
and 352 had been reported to the police as missing. Only a few were ever 
found. 

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimstone from heaven 
was scarcely more complete than the devastation of Chinatown and the 
Barbary Coast by fire and earthquake from, perhaps, the same source. On 
the morning of April 20, 1906, the opium dives and slave dens, the cow-
yards and parlor houses, the cribs and deadfalls, the dance-halls and bar-
rooms, the melodeons and concert saloons--all the abode and paraphernalia 
of vice, from the waterfront to Grant Avenue and from Morton Street to 
Telegraph Hill, lay a mass of smoking ruins. Only an occasional dive or 
brothel remained, looming stark and solitary in the cloud of murky smoke 
which overhung the whole of San Francisco, and they were immediately 
closed by the police and the troops of the United States Army, who 
patrolled the burned area to protect the city from looters. At the request 
of the San Francisco authorities, the bagnios in Oakland, across the Bay, 
were likewise compelled to shut their doors. But they were reopened almost 
at once. As Walter J. Peterson, Chief of the Oakland Police Department, 
told Pauline Jacobson of the San Francisco Bulletin in an interview seven 
years later: 

"San Francisco was still smoldering, the earth still rocking, and we 
didn't know when the Almighty might send another visitation, yet on the 
incessant demand the authorities [of Oakland] had to open up the houses of 
prostitution. All day long and at night men were lined up for blocks 
waiting in front of the houses, like at a box office at a theatre on a 
popular night." 

As an organized center of vice and crime Chinatown virtually came to an 
end on that catastrophic spring day; the underworld of the Oriental 
quarter was never able fully to overcome the cleansing effect of the fire 
and earthquake, and very few of the opium resorts and slave cribs were 
rebuilt. But unlike Chinatown and its own Biblical prototypes, the Barbary 
Coast immediately rose, phoenix-like, from its ashes. While the municipal 
and military authorities, aided by committees of reputable citizens, 
struggled with the vast problems of reconstruction and rehabilitation 
which the disaster had created, the overlords of vice loosened their purse-
strings and devoted their ill-gotten treasure to the erection of a new and 
bigger Barbary Coast upon the ruins of the old. Within three months after 
the flames had subsided, half a dozen brothels and as many deadfalls and 
dance-halls were in prosperous operation in Pacific and adjacent streets, 
and by the beginning of 1907 the Barbary Coast was once more roaring in 
full blast. The final cycle of its career of vice and crime had begun. 

The distinction of being the first important resort to flaunt its 
iniquities after the fire--and the further glory of being perhaps the 
lowest dive in all the post-earthquake period--belongs to the Seattle 
Saloon and Dance Hall, which was opened in Pacific Street, near Kearny 
Street, during the early summer of 1906 by Ed Pincus and Tom Magee, with 
Billy Harrington as manager. The Seattle was not as pretentious a place as 
the old Bull Run of more or less hallowed memory, but otherwise it 
suffered little by comparison with that celebrated dive of an earlier day. 
The Pincus-Magee enterprise was housed in a large, two-storey frame 
building, with a U-shaped entrance lobby decorated by framed panels 
containing gaudy paintings of women in varying stages of undress. The 
upper floor was occupied by an assignation house, and the saloon and dance-
hall were downstairs in a long, rectangular room, at one end of which was 
a small stage whereon bawdy shows and hoochy-coochy dances were presented. 
Behind the stage were a few small dressing-rooms hung with curtains, where 
the performers changed their costumes and into which drunken men were 
enticed and robbed. Rough tables, chairs and benches were scattered about 
the dance-floor. 

Pincus and Magee employed twenty girls, who were paid, as wages, from 
fifteen to twenty dollars a week, according to their beauty and 
popularity. They wore thin blouses cut very low, skirts cut very high, and 
black silk stockings held in place by fancy garters. Mindful of the 
success of the notorious deadfall and dance house at Kearny and California 
streets, which in pre-earthquake days had aroused a considerable commotion 
throughout the Barbary Coast by its rule forbidding underwear, Pincus and 
Magee enforced a similar fashion in their establishment and advertised the 
fact by cards discreetly distributed in saloons and other places where men 
were wont to gather. In general, duties of the women employed in the 
Seattle were the same as those of the pretty waiter girls, but in one 
respect Pincus and Magee introduced an innovation which was soon adopted 
by most of the other Barbary Coast resorts. They employed men to serve 
drinks to customers at the tables and benches on the dance-floor and thus 
gave their girls more time to dance with and otherwise entertain the men 
who succumbed to their charms. Drinks could be purchased over the bar of 
the Seattle at the prices which prevailed in ordinary saloons, but if a 
man seated himself at a bench or table with one of the dive's female 
attachées and ordered liquor, he paid a dollar for a pony of whisky, the 
same for a pint of beer, three dollars for a small bottle of bitter wine 
known as Dago red, and five dollars a bottle for a beverage labeled 
champagne, which was in reality aerated cider. The girls were paid a small 
percentage on drinks sold in the dance-hall and were also entitled to half 
of whatever they managed to abstract from their partners' pockets during 
the close contact of the dance. Pincus often complained, however, that 
most of his female employees were dishonest and failed to render true 
accounts of their stealings. 

Another and even more important source of income was developed by the 
girls in the Seattle and was their own particular racket; it was 
practically the only activity of which they were not supposed to share the 
proceeds with their employers. A woman employed in the dive was not 
permitted to leave the premises for purposes of prostitution, but if a man 
expressed a desire for her company in ways other than dancing, she would 
immediately promise so to arrange matters that she might spend the night 
with him, or rather what remained of the night after the Seattle had 
closed its doors, which was usually about three o'clock in the morning. 
She would point out, however, that there were great difficulties to 
overcome, and that they must proceed shrewdly and with caution. It was 
impossible, she would explain, for her to meet him anywhere or for him to 
wait for her at the back door of the resort, for her lover was extremely 
jealous and always walked home with her to make certain she didn't get 
into mischief. But after much discussion and many drinks she would evolve 
a plan whereby they might hope to circumvent the watchful sweetheart. She 
offered to sell, for a dollar or two dollars or whatever she thought the 
traffic would bear, a key to her room, so that the enamored visitor might 
join her there an hour or so after she had finished her work at the dance-
hall. If he objected to thus buying a pig in a poke, she would indignantly 
retort that, after all, she didn't know him, and that if he failed to 
appear with the key she would have to employ a locksmith to make another. 
To a man befogged by bad liquor and confused by the joys of propinquity, 
all this sounded very reasonable. Nearly always he bought the key and 
carefully noted the address she gave him, which was usually a street 
number of a near-by tenement, but never that of the house where she 
actually lived. Some of the more popular girls sometimes sold as many as a 
dozen keys a night, at prices ranging from one to five dollars each, and 
for several hours after the Seattle had closed, furtive figures could be 
seen flitting through the streets searching hopelessly for doors which 
their keys would open. This lucrative scheme was practiced for more than a 
year, not only by the girls of the Seattle, but by those of other dives 
also. It was finally stopped by the police. They received too many 
complaints from honest householders who had been annoyed by drunken men 
trying to unlock their doors. 

Pincus and Magee operated the Seattle until the early spring of 1908, when 
they sold the property to a syndicate headed by their manager, Billy 
Harrington, and thereafter confined their activities to brothels, in 
several of which they owned large interests. The names of Harrington's 
partners were not generally known until October 1908, when the San 
Francisco Call, during one of its periodic crusades against Judge Carroll 
Cook, revealed that they were two officers of Judge Cook's branch of the 
Superior Court. Harrington and his associates changed the name of the 
resort to the Dash, and remodeled the interior, installing a row of 
curtained booths on either side of the dance-floor. They also discharged 
most of the dancing girls and in their places employed male degenerates 
who wore women's clothing. From one to three of these creatures were 
always to be found sitting in each of the booths, and for a dollar they 
would perform in a manner which may be imagined, but which may not be 
described. It was with good reason that the Call described the Dash as one 
of the vilest saloons and dance halls ever maintained in San Francisco. 
"The place was not very successful under the new régime, however, and was 
closed late in 1908, soon after Judge Cook had been defeated for re-
election by the narrow margin of two thousand votes. 

* * * *

The most vicious dives of the new Barbary Coast were the wine dumps--
dismal cellar dens in the alleys and along the waterfront which catered to 
the very dregs of Barbary Coast humanity, where the floors were covered 
with damp sawdust, where wine was sold for five cents a pint, and where 
the bars were rough boards laid atop kegs. They provided neither dancing 
nor entertainment--nothing but a few hard benches on which men and women 
sat and guzzled wine. And the wine, as often as not, was simply raw 
alcohol colored and flavored. These places were the particular rendezvous 
of the bums, the oldest and most hopeless of the streetwalkers, the sneak-
thieves and pickpockets, and the many Fagins who took street boys and 
girls under their wings and taught them to steal. Most of the wine dumps 
had been closed by the middle of 1913, principally because of the 
viciousness of their habitués--who, of course, were utterly without 
political or other influence--and the innumerable serious brawls which 
occurred in them. In one place known as the Morgue (no connection with the 
saloon of that name in the old Devil's Acre) the police averaged twenty-
seven arrests a night over a period of almost a year. 

The early traditions of the Barbary Coast were effectively maintained by 
the wine dumps, by the Seattle and similar establishments, and by the 
houses of prostitution; but as a whole the district underwent a radical 
change after the earthquake and fire. The decade that followed the 
rebuilding and reopening of the Barbary Coast was an era of glamour and 
spectacularity, of hullabaloo and ballyhoo, of bright lights and feverish 
gayety, of synthetic sin and imitation iniquity. Practically everything 
that occurred in the dives of this period was deliberately planned to 
startle and impress, and if possible to shock, the tourist and sightseer; 
in its last incarnation, particularly from about 1910 to the end of its 
existence, the Barbary Coast was a veritable slummers' paradise, although 
underneath there still flowed the same old current of vice and corruption 
which had been the life-blood of the quarter since the days of the Sydney 
Ducks. In earlier years visitors from the upper strata of society had been 
both infrequent and unwelcome, but virtually every dance-hall on the new 
Barbary Coast provided, as a special and very remunerative feature, a 
"slummers' balcony," which was filled each night by palpitant, wide-eyed 
spectators. They were firmly convinced that they were watching the 
underworld at its revels, and seeing life stripped to its elementals, and 
so they submitted meekly to exorbitant charges for admission and liquor. 
Beer was never less than a dollar a pint in the sightseeing galleries, and 
a highball, which might or might not contain a trace of whisky, was 
likewise a dollar, and sometimes even more. During this same period the 
maximum price of any mixed drink at the best bars in San Francisco was 
twenty-five cents, and of beer, except the finest imported brews, a dime. 
In the manner of the modern moving-picture cathedral, most of the better-
known resorts on the Barbary Coast employed gaudily uniformed sidewalk 
barkers and doormen, who bellowed the glad tidings of glamour and 
excitement almost without cessation from early afternoon until long past 
midnight. They were usually fellows of little or no imagination, and their 
patter was fairly well standardized after this fashion: 

"Right this way to the visitors' gallery, folks! Everybody happy! 
Everybody welcome! Everybody safe! The hottest show and the prettiest 
girls on the Coast! Watch 'em wiggle, gents; watch 'em wiggle! Don't talk 
about what you see in here, folks! It'll shock you, but it's worth 
seeing!" 

While most of San Francisco's reputable citizens publicly bemoaned the 
iniquities of the Barbary Coast and performed lip-service in the many 
campaigns designed to eliminate its more objectionable features, secretly 
they were, for the most part, enormously proud of their city's reputation 
as the Paris of America and the wickedest town on the continent. A tour of 
the district, under proper police supervision, was usually a part of the 
itinerary of the distinguished visitor to San Francisco, and if through 
some oversight it wasn't, the distinguished visitor very frequently 
included it on his own account, for no area of similar size in the Western 
Hemisphere had been so widely publicized or was so universally known. And 
since comment upon the evils of the quarter was eagerly sought by the 
newspapers, few celebrities set foot in San Francisco without seeing it. 
Sarah Bernhardt always visited the Barbary Coast when she played in San 
Francisco on her frequent tours, and pleased local journalists immensely 
by declaring that she had found it more fascinatingly wicked than 
Montmartre. Anna PavIowa, the famous dancer, often visited the dance-
halls, and avowed that she had obtained many ideas for her own dance 
creations by watching the gyrations of the light-footed Barbary Coasters. 
And when John Masefield, now Poet Laureate of England, arrived in San 
Francisco some sixteen years ago, the first thing he said when he 
disembarked from a ferry-boat at Market Street was: "Take me to see the 
Barbary Coast." 

Although prostitution and robbery remained the basic industries of the 
Barbary Coast, the resort features which brought thousands of sightseers 
into the district after the earthquake and fire were the dance-floors and 
the low variety shows. The latter usually consisted in skits, songs, and 
exhibition dancing, all carefully designed to shock, but not disgust. They 
were undeniably bawdy, coarse, and vulgar, for otherwise they would not 
have interested the slummers; but they were not nearly so obscene as the 
shows which were given as a matter of course in the old-time concert 
saloons. And, of course, in comparison with the peep-shows which were 
extremely popular features of San Francisco's brothels until the red-light 
district was abolished, they were as innocuous as so many Sunday-school 
tableaux. The pièce de résistance of a Barbary Coast variety program was 
the lewd cavorting of a hoochy-coochy artiste, or the Dance of the Seven 
Veils as interpreted by a fat and clumsy Salome dancer, who simply wiggled 
a muscle dance to semi-classical music. Occasionally a few of the veils 
were omitted, and the dancer squirmed and twisted in very scanty raiment 
indeed. For some curious reason, perhaps to show that her strength and 
agility were not confined entirely to her abdominal muscles, the Salome 
dancer almost invariably concluded her performance by gripping a chair 
between her teeth and swinging it about her head. 

The variety shows, particularly those which included hoochy-coochy or 
Salome dancing, were very well liked, but it is doubtful if they alone 
could have made the Barbary Coast the extraordinarily popular place that 
it became during the last ten years of its existence. The principal 
attraction was dancing. The whole Barbary Coast was dance-crazy, and 
practically every dive of any pretentiousness was a combination dance-hall 
and concert saloon, offering both theatrical entertainment and an 
opportunity to trip the light fantastic or to watch it being tripped. The 
number of resorts which sprang up after the earthquake and fire and 
enjoyed their comparatively brief flurries of success and prosperity was 
really extraordinary--by 1910, four years after the disaster, there were 
no fewer than three hundred saloons and dance-halls crowded into six 
blocks, centering, of course, in Pacific Street, which was more than ever 
intrenched in its position as the main thoroughfare of the Barbary Coast. 
Throughout the quarter, rentals soared to amazing heights; basement and 
street-level store-rooms, which if rented to legitimate businesses would 
never have brought more than thirty to a hundred dollars a month, were let 
for ten times those amounts to be used as saloons and dance-halls--one 
dive-operator paid nine hundred dollars a month on a ten-year lease for a 
cellar about sixty feet long and thirty feet wide. Many of these places 
were still in operation, though the names of some had been changed and 
they were under different managements, when the Barbary Coast was finally 
closed in 1917. The most important, or at any rate the best-known, were 
the Hippodrome, the U. S. Café, the Jupiter, Coppa's, the Golden City, the 
Folies Cabaret, the White House, the House of All Nations, the Dragon, the 
Bella Union, the Thalia, the Cave, the Comstock, the Golden Star, the 
Turkish Café, the 0. K. Café, the Ivy Café, the Moulin Rouge; the 
California Dance Hall, which was the first place in San Francisco where 
Filipinos were permitted to dance with white girls; Spider Kelly's, the 
Red Mill, the Bohemian Café, the Dance Hall, the Bear, the Manila, the 
Queen Dance Hall, the So Different, the Olympia Café, the Frisco, the Old 
California, the Scandinavian Dance Hall, Thorne's, the Criterion, the 
Headlight; the Belvidere, also called the Old Ladies' Home because it 
employed women who were more than thirty-five years old; Lombardi's, Dew 
Drop Inn, Purcell's, Dutch Emma's, Squeeze Inn, the Owl Dance Hall; the 
Admiral, owned by Billy Finnegan of Municipal Crib fame; the Cascade, 
Menio's, the Palms, Marconi's, the Elko, and the Neptune Palace. 

The House of All Nations was operated by a Portuguese named Louis Gomez, 
who boasted that among his dancing girls were to be found women of all 
civilized nations. Purcell's, the Dew Drop Inn, the Squeeze Inn, and the 
So Different were Negro places, employing Negro women, but catering to 
white men and particularly to white slummers. For a year or so the Owl 
Dance Hall was the property of one of the Barbary Coast's most celebrated 
characters, Black Tony Parmagin. As a boy Black Tony learned the ways of 
crime under the tutelage of Buzzard Maloney, a well-known sneak-thief and 
lush-worker of the eighteen-nineties. Later he left the protecting wing of 
the Buzzard and organized a gang of juvenile pickpockets, who varied their 
arduous labors in this field by robbing drunken men as they staggered from 
the dives in the early hours of the morning. In the late autumn of 1906 
Black Tony acquired control of the Owl Dance Hall, but the venture was not 
very successful, and a year or so later he sold the property to Irish 
Annie Davis. Black Tony joined the bunco gang headed by Mike Gallo and is 
said to have acted as a go-between in the payment of graft to the police 
and politicians. Another of Gallo's workers was Jim Le Strange, who was 
interested in the Cave, the Cascade, Menio's, and the Bella Union. When 
Gallo's gang was finally smashed, Black Tony Parmagin entered the bail-
bond business, but this was a comparatively honest occupation and held 
little attraction for him. He soon abandoned it to sell dope and operated 
with fair success until 1931, when he was arrested and sent to prison for 
seventeen years. 

The number of girls employed in the dives during the final ten years of 
the Barbary Coast varied as the tide of prosperity ebbed and flowed, but 
ranged from about eight hundred to three thousand. Their principal duties 
were to dance and drink with the customers and to appear in the ensemble 
and chorus numbers of the shows. They received as wages from twelve to 
twenty-five dollars a week and were also paid a small commission on all 
liquor sold through their efforts. Many of the girls took beer when their 
dancing partners bought them a drink, but most of them ordered whisky--and 
were served the usual jigger of cold tea or colored water, called in this 
period a Kelly. It is doubtful if there were as many prostitutes in the 
dance-halls as in the early days of the Barbary Coast, and most of those 
who dabbled in the ancient profession of harlotry did so after they had 
finished their work in the dives. They were required to remain on or near 
the dance-floor during their hours of duty, from about one o'clock in the 
afternoon until closing-time. Legally this was one a.m., for the law 
prohibited music and dancing in saloons and public dance-halls between 
that hour and six a.m., but actually it depended upon the temper of the 
police, the political influence of the dive-keeper, and, to some extent, 
whether the city's reform element was quiescent or on a rampage. In many 
of the resorts the girls wore their regular street dresses, and in others 
evening gowns were compulsory, while in a few, notably the Midway, the 
Turkish Café, the Cave, and the Tivoli, they were clad in silk stockings, 
short skirts, and low-necked blouses or shirt-waists. The manager of the 
Tivoli prescribed blue skirts and black stockings, but the operators of 
the other places permitted their girls to wear whatever color they 
preferred. Even these special costumes, however, do not appear to have 
been particularly seductive. The San Francisco Call described them in the 
summer of 1911 as "of the cheapest fabric, many of them torn and stained, 
none reaching below the knees, and here and there hooks missing and 
bodices yawning in the back, but always the silk stockings as the 
inevitable mark of caste." 

During this period the Midway, on the south side of Pacific Street near 
Montgomery Street, was one of the shabbiest dives on the Barbary Coast, 
but early in 1913 it came under the management of George Kelley, better 
known as Red Kelley, and for several years thereafter it was one of the 
most pretentious resorts in the district. It was also a favorite haunt of 
the sightseers, for Kelley was an accomplished showman and could always be 
depended upon to provide entertainment calculated to thrill and to shock 
the outlander. For a considerable period the bright particular star of his 
variety programs was a fat Salome dancer appropriately called Gyp. She 
performed the sensual twistings and writhings of a muscle dance in a very 
lascivious manner, but the effect of her contortions was less exhilarating 
than it might have been because from start to finish of the dance her face 
was wreathed in a sweet, infantile smile. In later years the name of the 
Midway was changed to Hippodrome, and finally it was called the U. S. 
Café, while another Hippodrome was opened directly across the street by 
Frank Scivio. It was during the Midway's days as the Hippodrome that new 
decorations, by far the finest and most celebrated ever seen on the 
Barbary Coast, were installed in its entrance lobby--six bas-relief panels 
in plaster, depicting a group of satyrs happily and purposefully pursuing 
as many nymphs, with anatomical details all complete. These details, 
however, aroused such a storm of shocked comment that they were eventually 
removed, and the areas in dispute were covered by bands of ribbon, done in 
reddish plaster, which trailed upward over the shoulders of both nymphs 
and satyrs. The figures were the work of Arthur Putnam, who later became 
one of America's most noted sculptors. According to one story, his only 
compensation was a few drinks, but according to another--and probably the 
correct one--he was paid $175 for the job.(*)

(* Putnam died in Paris in 1930. Enmples of his later work may be seen in 
the Paris Salon, the Boston Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 
New York. He was awarded a gold medal at the Panama Pacific Exposition in 
San Francisco in 1915. He also designed the Sloat monument at Monterey, 
California.)

The operators of most of the large resorts of the post-earthquake period, 
in direct violation of the ancient code of the Barbary Coast, did their 
best to protect their sightseeing customers, and casual visitors were 
safer than at any other time in the history of the quarter, as long as 
they kept out of the alleys and avoided the wine dumps, the deadfalls, and 
the brothels. Thieves and other criminals continued to frequent the dance-
halls and, as of old, made them their headquarters, wherein they planned 
their depredations and spent their gains on wine and women; but actual 
robbery on the premises was frowned upon as tending to frighten away the 
slummers and so kill the geese that laid so many golden eggs. The revenue 
of the better-known places was derived almost entirely from the dancing 
(for a dance of two minutes they charged from ten to twenty-five cents) 
and from the sales of liquor and tickets of admission. The prices of the 
latter ranged from a quarter to a dollar, although sometimes on gala 
nights the tariff was boosted to two dollars. For the benefit of the 
sightseers, who looked on from the slummers' balconies, fake fights were 
staged on the dance-floors, with occasionally the flash of a knife-blade 
or the dull gleam of a pistol-barrel; and each night several couples were 
ceremoniously ejected for indecent dancing. In many of the dives, of 
course, especially the Negro joints, it was seldom necessary to fake a 
row, for plenty of real fracases occurred in the natural course of events. 
And as far as indecent dancing was concerned, if a man bought a dance 
ticket and ventured upon the floor with one of the high yallers employed 
in these places, his conduct was determined only by his conscience and the 
amiability of his partner. The best-known of the Negro dance-halls, and 
the most turbulent, was Purcell's, which occupied a long, narrow room on 
the north side of Pacific Street between Montgomery and Kearny streets. It 
was furnished only with a bar, a few rough tables and chairs, and a score 
or more of wooden benches which faced a splintery dance-floor. No nonsense 
about buying liquor was permitted in Purcell's; a visitor either drank, 
and drank frequently, or he was thrown into the street by several husky 
bouncers who patrolled the dive. The bar in Purcell's was at the left of 
the entrance and was set against a thin wooden partition which separated 
the resort from the saloon and dance-hall operated by Spider Kelly, who in 
his earlier years had acquired considerable renown as a light-weight 
prizefighter. Kelly's bar was also against the partition, at the right of 
his entrance. Shooting affrays were of frequent occurrence in Purcell's, 
and bullets often ripped through the flimsy wall and endangered Kelly's 
bar-tenders. To protect them Kelly lined his "back-bar" and mirror with 
sheet-iron boiler plate. And to safeguard them against stray bullets in 
his own place, where life was also uncertain and filled with surprises, he 
likewise covered the front of his bar. Captain Meagher of the Chicago 
Police Department, who made a tour of the Barbary Coast in December 1912, 
described Spider Kelly's saloon and dance-hall as "undoubtedly the worst 
dive in the world." Captain Meagher also expressed his dismay at the great 
number of young girls whom he found in the Coast resorts as members of 
slumming parties, and declared that "compared to San Francisco, Chicago's 
vice districts are as nothing." 

* * * *

Not only did the dance-halls of the Barbary Coast attract enormous crowds, 
but they exercised a tremendous influence upon the dancing habits of the 
whole United States. In these dives originated dance steps which 
practically every dancing young man and woman in America strove to master. 
For the turkey trot, the bunny hug, the chicken glide, the Texas Tommy, 
the pony prance, the grizzly bear, and many other varieties of close and 
semi-acrobatic dancing, which swept the country during the half-dozen 
years that preceded the World War despite the scandalized roaring of the 
nation's pastors, were first performed in the dance-halls of San 
Francisco's Barbary Coast for the delectation of the slummer. The 
birthplace of the best-known of these terpsichorean masterpieces--the 
turkey trot and the Texas Tommy--and of several others also, was the 
Thalia, which for many years was the largest dance-hall on the Pacific 
Coast. From eighty to one hundred girls were employed there during its 
heyday, and double shifts of bar-tenders, with from four to six men in a 
shift, worked like beavers behind the long bar. The original dive of that 
name was a cheap saloon and dance-hall in the Uptown Tenderloin at Mason 
and Turk streets, about where both thoroughfares run into Market Street. 
It catered particularly to sailors and was a worthy rival of the Midway 
Plaisance, a few blocks farther east. But the old Thalia fell on evil days 
a few years before the earthquake and fire of 1906 and passed out of 
existence. When the Barbary Coast was rebuilt, a new Thalia was erected on 
the north side of Pacific Street, about half-way between Kearny and 
Montgomery streets. Throughout its existence the new Thalia always seemed 
to be especially favored by the police and the political powers and almost 
invariably led the way in tilting the lid which, for various reasons, was 
occasionally clapped upon the Barbary Coast. Such a period of comparative 
quietude was imposed upon the district in the late spring of 1911, during 
a reorganization of the police force undertaken, as the Police Commission 
announced, "for the good of the department." Early in July, however, the 
Thalia came under the management of Eddie Englehart and Louis Parente, who 
was one of the owners of Parente Brothers' Saloon on the northeast corner 
of Kearny and Pacific streets. They immediately made the necessary 
political arrangements for removing the disabilities under which the 
Barbary Coast was then languishing, and distributed handbills announcing 
the "grand opening" of the Thalia on Thursday, July 6, 1911, with 
"entertainment and dancing all night." All the other resorts, the 
disgruntled managers of which had been reluctantly closing their doors at 
one a.m., followed the Thalia's example and arranged special all-night 
programs. But by far the most important of the "grand openings" was that 
of the Thalia, for the guests of honor were Joseph Sullivan, president of 
the Board of Police Commissioners, and Chief Jailer Walter McCauley of the 
county jail. The San Francisco Call thus described the dive on this 
memorable occasion: 

"Different from all the others is the Thalia, where early Thursday evening 
the president of the police commission and a party of friends were made 
guests of honor at the 'opening.' It is a great barnlike structure, with 
the dance floor in the center fenced off at each end, and at either side 
the drinking places raised in double tiers of low balconies. To the 
extreme right from the entrance lobby is the higher section whither the 
'slumming' parties are directed and where the habitués of the place are 
scarce. Below, on the same side, are the tables for the dancers and their 
companions. Opposite, in the lower balcony, just a few feet from the dance 
floor, are long rows of wooden benches, where beer may be had for five 
cents a glass, and where women of the place seldom go. 

"Above the 'nickel a glass' section is the real money getting section of 
the hall. Here, in half open booths, the women of the dance hall ply their 
trade. Here are invited the sailors who drift into the place. Here men are 
plied with liquor and urged to part with their cash. In these booths 
Thursday night were many sailors, drunk or nearly drunk, each with a woman 
at his elbow. Others were there, too--men showing signs of labor and young 
fellows in good clothing and bearing evidence of coming from decent homes. 
Below, in the cheaper section, were many men sprawled asleep or in a 
drunken stupor. On the dance hall floor a few couples cavorted and 
displayed the fancy steps of the newest tenderloin dances. 

"The lobby of the Thalia is a great open space before the bar, and here 
the women congregate and attempt to entrap every patron who enters. 
Hesitation means a dozen groping hands and a dozen voices clamoring for 
drinks. 'Be a sport; buy just one.'. . .The Thalia provided a 'Salome 
dance' just before one o'clock as the final 'big' attraction of the night. 
The 'Salomes' danced and strained and twisted, received a faint spattering 
of applause, and then, throwing coats or loose gowns over their scant 
costumes, joined the throngs of dancers in the comparatively conservative 
steps of the Grizzly Bear, the Bunny Hug, and the Texas Tommy. 

"Three o'clock in the morning, and the dancing at the Thalia was beginning 
to lag. An hour later, and the place was half deserted. The few remaining 
were men and women listless in appearance, with bloodshot eyes and pasty 
faces. Still the piano strummed on for an hour." 

Red Kelley acquired control of the Thalia about a year or so after the 
president of the Board of Police Commissioners had honored it with his 
presence, but after operating the dive successfully for a few years, he 
transferred it to his floor manager, Terry Mustain, a former pugilist. 
During the Mustain régime a frequent visitor to the Thalia was an old man 
of whom attachés of the resort knew nothing except that his name was Frank 
Mulkey and that he lived in Portland, Oregon. Every few weeks Mulkey spent 
several evenings at the Thalia, sitting always in the same corner, buying 
many drinks, which he never touched, watching the shows, and talking to 
the girls and waiters. When he was especially pleased with one of the 
girls, or when a waiter showed unusual courtesy, he entered his or her 
name in a note-book and said, benignly: "I'll remember you in my will. I'm 
a rich man, you know." 

The employees of the Thalia regarded Mulkey as a harmless old coot, and 
not until he died in Portland, in 1927, did they learn that he was a 
lumber and real-estate operator and as wealthy as he had claimed to be. He 
was as good as his word and bequeathed a considerable sum of money to 
Terry Mustain and to each Thalia girl and waiter whom he had promised to 
remember. 

* * * *

Besides the Thalia, the Midway, and other elaborate dance-halls on the 
Barbary Coast property, there were at least fifty cheap resorts on the 
outskirts of the quarter, principally toward North Beach, where five 
minutes of dancing cost only five cents. These places sold no liquor, 
provided no entertainment, and employed no women, depending entirely upon 
those who came in from the streets, most of whom were of the factory-girl 
class. Admission was free to the women, but men paid a nickel each. The 
managers of the five-cent dance-halls professed to require very 
circumspect conduct from their customers, and the walls of most of the 
resorts of this type bore large signs thus inscribed:
ADMISSION 
ONLY ON THE FOLLOWING 
RULES AND CONDITIONS: 
Turkey Trots, Couples 
With Their Heads 
Together, Walking, 
Bowerying, Dipping, 
Or Gentlemen Introducing 
Themselves to Ladies in the Hall 

STRICTLY 
PROHIBITED! 
Introducers on the Floor.
 
Under proper supervision the nickel dance-halls might have filled a very 
real need in San Francisco and provided opportunities for amusement and 
recreation to hundreds of poor but honest working girls. But all of the 
elaborate rules in which the operators of the resorts took such apparent 
pride were more honored in the breach than in the observance. No man, 
regardless of his appearance or what might be known of his character, was 
denied admittance, and the doors were likewise flung wide to young girls 
scarcely in their teens, who were easily led astray by the experienced 
pimps and recruiting agents for the dives and brothels of the Barbary 
Coast. In consequence, these dance-halls soon became little more than 
supply depots for the red-light district. Nevertheless, they were 
permitted to operate without effective interference for several years. But 
late in 1908 the Reverend Terence Caraher, unfavorably known to the 
Barbary Coast as Terrible Terry, turned his attention to them and began an 
energetic campaign to drive them out of existence, complaining that the 
children of the parish had to pass many of them on their way to church. He 
was supported in his crusade by Charles F. Skelly, secretary of the Board 
of Police Commissioners, who on February 9, 1909 told the Downtown 
Association that the nickel dance-halls should be abolished as soon as 
possible. 

"Little girls fifteen and sixteen years old frequent these places," said 
Mr. Skelly, "and often it leads to their ruin. Unfortunately these nickel 
dance halls do not come under the jurisdiction of the Police Commission, 
and we are powerless to prevent the spread of these dens of vice." 

Under pressure exerted by the Reverend Father Caraher and several business 
men whom he and Mr. Skelly had interested, the Board of Supervisors 
finally enacted regulations which enabled the police to proceed against 
the nickel dance-establishments. Within another year or so the last of 
them had been closed. 



Chapter 12. The End of The Barbary Coast 

The handwriting on the wall for the Barbary Coast, though dim and almost 
undecipherable for several years, was the decisive defeat of the remnants 
of Abe Ruef's Workingmen's party in the autumn of 1911, when James Rolph, 
Jr., was elected to the first of his ten terms as Mayor of San Francisco. 
Rolph's impressive triumph, which was followed immediately by the election 
of a Board of Supervisors committed to his policies and leadership, was 
the first actual repudiation by the voters of the evils which had marked 
the conduct of municipal affairs during the Ruef-Schmitz régime and, to a 
lesser extent, throughout the administration of Mayor P. H. McCarthy. But, 
even more important to the Barbary Coast, the downfall of the Ruef machine 
presaged the eventual abandonment of the gold-rush tradition which decreed 
that San Francisco must be a wide-open town. From the fall elections of 
1911 until it was abolished half a dozen years later, the Barbary Coast 
was on the defensive and waged a losing fight for existence; it faced an 
unfriendly if not actively hostile administration, and also arrayed 
against it was a rapidly growing sentiment, even among those who professed 
to take great pride in the city's reputation for wickedness, that there 
was no place for mining-camp amusement features in the new and greater San 
Francisco which had arisen from the devastation wrought by the earthquake 
and fire of 1906. Business men, especially, were beginning to realize that 
obtrusive and spectacular vice was more likely to harm than to benefit an 
American city. 

The first intimation that a new order of things impended came late in 
January 1912, when Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook, who as Chief of 
Police a few years before had risked his official head by interfering with 
the schemes of the underworld, publicly complained of conditions in 
Pacific Street and in other thoroughfares of the Barbary Coast. He 
intimated that unless the dive-keepers cleaned their own Augean stables, 
the city authorities would eventually be compelled to undertake the task. 
A few weeks later, on February 12, 1912, before the Barbary Coast had 
recovered from the astonishment caused by Commissioner Cook's attack, the 
Police Commission announced to the newspapers that the following plans 
were under consideration for the ultimate cleansing and better regulation 
of the district: 

1. All dance-halls and resorts patronized by women in Montgomery Avenue 
(now Columbus Avenue) west of Kearny Street, and on both sides of Kearny 
Street, to be abolished. 

2. Barkers in front of the dance-halls in Pacific Street to be done away 
with and glaring electric signs forbidden. 

3. No new saloon licenses to be issued until the number had been reduced 
to 1,500, which was to be the limit in future. There were more than 2,800 
places in San Francisco where liquor was legally sold. 

4. Raids to be made against the blind pigs. It was estimated that more 
than 2,500 were in operation throughout the city. 

Not until a year after the announcement of these plans did the Police 
Commissioners cast another straw into the wind and throw another scare 
into the ranks of the dive-keepers. Then, in February 1913, they adopted a 
resolution aimed to discourage slumming, which had grown to such 
proportions that most of the dance-halls and other resorts depended upon 
it for a large part of their revenues: 

"Resolved, That no female shall be employed to sell or solicit the sale of 
liquor in any premises where liquor is sold at retail to which female 
visitors or patrons are allowed admittance." 

If this resolution had been enforced and if the announced plans of the 
Police Commission had been carried out, the Barbary Coast would have been 
dealt a blow from which it would never have recovered; ninety per cent of 
the dance-halls and other resorts would have been compelled to close their 
doors immediately, and the remainder would have been concentrated in the 
two blocks of Pacific Street between Kearny and Sansome streets. And most 
of the glamour of the quarter would have been dissipated, for it was born 
of the union of bright lights and noise. But while Mayor Rolph's election 
had deprived the dive-keepers of much of the political power which for 
more than sixty years had enabled them to operate their places without 
regard for public decency and the law, they retained enough influence to 
combat successfully the anti-slumming resolution and to prevent the 
transformation of the Commission's plans into enforceable regulations. 
Consequently both resolution and plans were, so far as immediate and 
visible effect were concerned, futile gestures which hampered the Barbary 
Coast not at all. Nevertheless, they were extremely significant, for the 
mere fact that such radical measures had even been considered showed that 
the city government no longer looked upon the district with a paternal and 
indulgent eye. A further indication of this change of attitude appeared in 
June 1913, when the Police Commission suspended the license of the Moulin 
Rouge for three weeks and found the manager guilty of contributing to the 
delinquency of two young girls whom he had employed to dance and entertain 
his customers. Hitherto the authorities had, except on rare occasions, 
ignored the well-known and obvious fact that scores of the girls who 
worked in the dives of the Barbary Coast were scarcely more than children. 

* * * *

To William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner goes the distinction 
of starting the first crusade which really succeeded in making any 
considerable headway against the political and other intrenchments of the 
Barbary Coast. On September 12, 1913, only a few weeks before James Rolph, 
Jr, was elected to his second term as Mayor, the Examiner launched its 
campaign with the fanfare of furious excitement which has always 
characterized Hearst's journalistic wars--a full-page editorial demanded 
that the district be wiped out, and carefully prepared news stories 
vividly described the wickedness to be found within its borders. The 
newspaper's attack came at the psychological moment toward which San 
Francisco had been slowly progressing since the Reverend William Taylor 
had preached against the iniquities of the city from the steps of the old 
adobe house in Portsmouth Square in the fall of 1849. Many churches, and 
practically every civic and social welfare organization of importance in 
San Francisco, immediately endorsed the Examiner's righteous warfare and 
offered their services. Within a week, one of the most formidable packs of 
reformers that ever hunted sin on the Pacific Coast was in full cry at the 
heels of the Barbary Coast and was, in particular, harrying the dive-
keepers. And on September 22, 1913, ten days after the Examiner had loosed 
its first editorial blast, the Police Commission rang the death-knell of 
the quarter with this resolution: 

"Resolved, That after September 30, 1913, no dancing shall be permitted in 
any café, restaurant, or saloon where liquor is sold within the district 
bounded on the north and east by the Bay, on the south by Clay Street, and 
on the west by Stockton Street. 

"Further Resolved, That no women patrons or women employees shall be 
permitted in any saloon in the said district. 

"Further Resolved, That no license shall hereafter be renewed upon Pacific 
Street between Kearny and Sansome Streets, excepting for a straight 
saloon." 

The Examiner, which had entered the fight with very exalted ideas as to 
the future of the Barbary Coast, gave due credit to the Police Commission 
for promulgating the resolution, which was by far the most drastic measure 
ever enacted against the district, but declared vigorously that the 
crusade must not end with the elimination of dancing and the barring of 
women employees and visitors from the resorts. To make its meaning clearer 
and indicate the nature of its plans, the newspaper published a large 
cartoon which showed a dainty feminine figure, labeled "Spirit of 
Wholesome Fun," rising happily and proudly into the heavens from a smoking 
quagmire of corruption labeled "The Barbary Coast." Editorially the 
Examiner said in its issue of September 23, 1913: "If the campaign against 
the Barbary Coast ends with the destruction of the open market for 
commercialized vice, the good done will not be permanent. Because the 
purposes of this campaign are constructive as well as destructive. The 
purpose is to shut up the market of immoral and vulgar pleasure, and to 
replace that market with a great market for the sale of wholesome and 
decent fun." 

The action of the Police Commission aroused nothing less than 
consternation throughout the Barbary Coast, for not even the traditional 
stupidity of the habitués and dive-keepers of the district could prevent 
them from realizing that here at last was an enactment which would be 
devastating in its effects. Moreover, it was quite obvious that the 
Commission was prepared to enforce its decrees, and that the resolution 
was not, like so many measures of similar import in the past, designed 
merely as a temporary stop to the reformers. The owners of several resorts 
immediately discharged their dancing girls and female entertainers and 
turned their properties into straight saloons, while others said gloomily 
that they would have to go out of business when the new ordinance went 
into effect.(*) Forty dance-hall proprietors, however, formed an 
association and announced that they would obey the orders of the Police 
Commission to the letter by serving nothing but soft drinks. This plan was 
strenuously opposed by Frank Scivio, of the Hippodrome, who proposed that 
each dive be divided into two sections, one to be devoted to dancing and 
the consumption of non-intoxicating beverages, and the other to the sale 
of liquor, without dancing, entertaining, or the uplifting cajolery of the 
ladies. Scivio's scheme, however, was not only rejected by the Police 
Commission as impracticable, but an audible snickering arose when it was 
read to them. Apparently they did not feel that the business men of the 
Barbary Coast could be relied on to prevent the mingling of the virtuous 
and sinful sections. The Thalia, then the largest and most popular dance-
hall in the district, sought to ward off the inevitable by protestations 
of purity. On the night of September 30, 1913 this unusual sign appeared 
over the entrance to the dive:
THIS IS A CLEAN PLACE FOR CLEAN PEOPLE. 
NO MINORS ALLOWED. 

(* On September 26, 1913 the police issued a report on the results of a 
questionnaire which had been submitted to 303 dance-haIl women. Most of 
them gave their ages as between twenty-one and twenty-nine, although a few 
confessed to being forty and said they had been on the Barbary Coast for 
twenty years. One hundred and sixty-one wanted respectable work if the 
dance-halls were closed, twenty-nine said they would enter houses of 
prostitution, and eleven said they wanted no work at all. The remainder 
either refused to answer the questions, or were non-committal. It is 
interesting to note that only one--a former chorus girl--had ever been on 
the stage.)

A few days after the new regulations had become effective the police added 
to the troubles of the Barbary Coast by ordering the elimination of the 
sidewalk barkers and the glaring electric signs. Thereupon the district 
became, almost immediately, what it had been before the slumming era--a 
region of dark and dangerous streets frequented principally by habitués of 
the quarter, with no visible gayety or excitement to attract sightseers 
from the upper ranks of society. By the middle of October the Barbary 
Coast lay, as the San Francisco Bulletin said, "harmless as a serpent 
bereft of its fangs." In most of the dance-halls, even in such well-known 
resorts as the Thalia and the Midway, scarcely a dozen dancing girls or 
entertainers remained, while the ancient traditions of the Bella Union, 
the oldest and most famous of all the Barbary Coast dives, were sturdily 
upheld by an old-time dance-hall woman known as Steam-Schooner Ruby, who 
was so called because of her extraordinary capacity for steam beer. Within 
another month the dive-keepers had become so desperate that they resorted 
to advertising--an aged and decrepit horse plodded painfully through the 
downtown business section drawing a wagon on which was mounted a four-
sided sign, thus inscribed:
BARBARY COAST STILL OPEN 
OPENED IN '49 
DANCING AT THE COAST 
EVERYBODY WELCOME. 

But this pathetic appeal failed to bring back the vanished crowds or to 
revive the ancient glories of the district, for not even the most naïve 
slummer could thrill to the spectacle of the denizens of the underworld 
gloomily and distastefully imbibing soda pop. By occasionally presenting 
obscene entertainments, by selling bootleg liquor whenever the opportunity 
occurred, and by closing and reopening with such rapidity that even the 
police could scarcely keep account of their changes in management and 
ownership, a few of the larger dance-halls managed to survive for several 
years; but they never regained their lost privileges and powers, and gave 
the authorities comparatively little trouble. The Grand Jury of San 
Francisco County, indeed, after an exhaustive survey of the resorts in 
April 1915, insulted the memory of the quarter by describing them as law-
abiding and harmless to morals. The backbone of the Barbary Coast had been 
broken by the Examiner's crusade and the action of the Police Commission 
in the autumn of 1913. In the language of the prize-ring, the Coast was 
punch-drunk; it could do nothing but wait hopelessly for the knock-out 
blow. 

* * * *

The final attack upon the Barbary Coast, directed principally against the 
traffic which had always been the life-blood of the district, was begun in 
the late winter of 1914, when the California Legislature enacted the Red-
light Abatement Act, which empowered the San Francisco authorities to 
proceed in the civil courts against the owners of any property which was 
used for the purposes of prostitution. The law became effective on 
December 18, 1914, and three days later the police raided a building at 
Grant Avenue and Bartlett Alley, which they alleged was occupied by 
Chinese harlots, while the District Attorney began a test case against the 
owner of the property, a Chinaman named Woo Sam. Supported by a hastily 
formed organization called the Property Owners' Protective Association, 
which had raised a fund of $37,500 by assessing each madame in the red-
light district three hundred dollars and each prostitute five dollars, Woo 
Sam applied to the United States District Court for an injunction 
restraining the police from interfering with his tenants. In refusing to 
grant the writ the District Court held that while the city's procedure 
under the Red-light Abatement Act was limited to civil actions against 
property-owners, the police possessed the power under existing state and 
municipal statutes to make raids and arrest inmates of brothels. The test 
suit brought by the District Attorney had been appealed to the California 
Supreme Court, but not until early in 1917 did that tribunal hand down an 
opinion. It then decided unanimously that the Abatement Act was 
constitutional, and so put into the hands of San Francisco's reform 
element their first really effective weapon against open prostitution. 
Under its provisions property-owners could be held liable if their 
premises were used for prostitution or for other immoral purposes. And a 
great many of the buildings used by harlots were owned by very prominent 
citizens. 

Meanwhile there had come to San Francisco, by way of Iowa and Los Angeles, 
a young Methodist clergyman, the Rev. Paul Smith, who combined an 
extraordinarily developed sense of the dramatic with a passion for reform. 
He became pastor of the Central Methodist Church and later president of 
the Federation of Churches, and after that an automobile salesman, but he 
made his mark in San Francisco as the instrument chosen by Providence to 
deliver the coup de grâce not only to the Barbary Coast, but to the Uptown 
Tenderloin as well. The Reverend Mr. Smith had no sooner assumed the 
duties of his pastorate than he launched into a crusade against vice in 
all of its innumerable forms and manifestations; whenever sin appeared, he 
deluged it with a flood of denunciation and expository facts. He began his 
campaign by giving to the newspapers copies of a letter to the president 
of the Police Commission, in which he declared that twenty-five thousand 
persons made a livelihood from vice in San Francisco, that brothels were 
in operation throughout the Barbary Coast and within a stone's throw of 
his church at O'Farrell and Leavenworth streets, and that streetwalkers 
made overtures to men on the very steps of the edifice. "Young men have 
told me," he wrote, "that they have been approached by women while on 
their way to church from the Y.M.C.A. Others have been approached almost 
before they left the doorsteps of the church after Sunday evening 
services." Reporters assigned by the Examiner to inquire into these 
charges were told by friendly streetwalkers that what the minister had 
said about them was quite true. They were, indeed, rather grateful to the 
Reverend Mr. Smith for coming to San Francisco; he preached such racy 
sermons that the vicinity of his church after services was one of the best 
places in the city in which to ply their trade. 

On the Sunday following his letter to the head of the Police Commission, 
the Reverend Mr. Smith delivered a rousing sermon against prostitution, 
and next day the newspapers began the publication of a series of 
interviews in which he amplified his accusation that San Francisco was a 
moral cesspool, divulging information which he had obtained by venturing 
incognito into brothels, dance-halls, cafés, restaurants, and other 
resorts. He described a café in Ellis Street which with every private 
dining-room provided an equally private bedchamber, and told of visiting 
the Mason Street parlor house operated by Pearl Morton, one of the many 
aspirants to the title of "Queen of the Underworld." There a dozen 
handsome girls were paraded for his inspection, and when he declined to 
purchase, he was told that any type of woman he desired could be obtained 
within a few hours. He was also offered a fifteen-year-old girl at 
slightly higher than the usual rate. On the Barbary Coast, the Reverend 
Mr. Smith declared, conditions in the cribs, the cow-yards, and the parlor 
houses were so bad as to defy description. Again the Examiner sent its 
investigators into the field, and their reports more than verified the 
Reverend Mr. Smith's statements, as, of course, everyone who was at all 
familiar with San Francisco had known they would. The adventures of the 
investigators included being accosted by streetwalkers and dancing with 
strange women in cafés; they appeared to have been very much impressed by 
the fact that most of the café girls were young, and that they all smoked 
cigarettes and told dirty stories. One of the investigating parties went 
to a café at Mason and Geary streets and arranged with the manager of the 
floor show to meet a few girls in one of the curtained booths which lined 
each side of the room. In a few minutes the manager appeared with six 
girls who wore short skirts and sleeveless blouses cut very low at the 
throat. 

"Here, boys," he said, "is a fine flock of chickens." 

No further details of the investigators' experiences in this resort were 
given, but it was intimated that the girls displayed an embarrassing 
willingness to conduct themselves in a very improper manner. 

The Reverend Mr. Smith's disclosures, together with the vivid reports of 
the newspaper investigators, aroused an even greater sensation than had 
been created by the Examiner's campaign against the Barbary Coast in 1913. 
The Chamber of Commerce officially demanded a thorough clean-up of the 
city, as did a group of influential citizens headed by Rudolph Spreckels, 
while clergymen, religious and civic organizations, and all of the 
newspapers announced that they would support the Reverend Mr. Smith's 
crusade. On January 15, 1917 Mayor Rolph said that he would order an 
inquiry and promised to close every brothel and disreputable resort in San 
Francisco. Six days later, on Sunday, January 21, thirty-nine clergymen 
delivered sermons against open prostitution and other forms of vice, and 
that afternoon committees of citizens assembled in various parts of the 
city to make arrangements for a mass meeting which had been called for 
January 25 at Dreamland Rink. On the appointed day seven thousand persons 
crowded into the Rink, where they listened to speeches and then adopted 
resolutions demanding that the city government proceed immediately against 
all places of ill repute. 

On the morning of January 25, only a few hours before the great mass 
meeting was called to order, occurred the most dramatic incident of the 
entire crusade. More than three hundred prostitutes, dressed in their 
gayest finery and reeking with the noisome perfume so beloved of the 
harlot, left their quarters in the cribs, the cow-yards, and the parlor 
houses and, escorted by two policemen, marched to the Central Methodist 
Church to call upon the Reverend Mr. Smith. Although most of the women 
were from the alleys of the Barbary Coast, they were under the command of 
Mrs. M. R. Gamble, better known as Reggie Gamble, who with Maude Spencer 
operated a parlor house in Mason Street, in the heart of the Uptown 
Tenderloin. The prostitutes were admitted to the church by the pastor, who 
had been notified by newspaper reporters that the women were on their way. 
A dozen men who followed them inside were ejected by the police escort, 
but otherwise there was no disorder. The harlots sat quietly in the pews, 
hitherto occupied only by virtuous worshippers of the Christian God, until 
the Reverend Mr. Smith stepped into the pulpit and faced them. Then they 
rose and shouted as one woman: 

"What are you going to do with us?" 
The clergyman was nonplussed, but only for a moment. He urged them to seek 
refuge in the church. 
"Can we eat that?" asked one woman. 
"Will your congregation let us sit among their daughters?" asked another. 
"Come and see," invited the Reverend Mr. Smith. 
"You mean come and be snubbed." 
"I've been running a house in San Francisco for eight years," said Mrs. 
Gamble, "and I know something about women. And about men, too. How many 
patrons of your church would accept a woman out of this life into their 
homes? You would cast these women out of the city. Where to? Where would 
they drift?"(*) 
"Can't they establish homes?" asked the Reverend Mr. Smith. "How many have 
children?" 
By actual count, three-fourths of the harlots raised their hands. 
"There isn't a woman here," said Mrs. Gamble, "who would be a prostitute 
if she could make a decent living in any other way. They've all tried it, 
and none could earn more than eight dollars a week. They became 
prostitutes because they didn't have enough to live on." 

(* Where they did go remains one of the mysteries of the crusade. The San 
Francisco Federation of Women's Clubs opened a rehabilitation office in 
Montgomery Street and offered to provide assistance and, if possible, a 
job for every prostitute who applied. But only five appeared, although 
more than a thousand women were turned out of the brothels.)

The Reverend Mr. Smith said that he would pledge himself to work for the 
enactment of a minimum-wage law, and that arrangements were already being 
made to assist the women after the brothels had been closed. A great shout 
of derisive laughter went up from the harlots when he declared that a 
woman could remain virtuous on an income of ten dollars a week. Several 
shouted that the minimum weekly wage should not be less than twenty 
dollars. 

"Statistics show," said the Reverend Mr. Smith, "that families all over 
the country receive less." 
"That's why there's prostitution," retorted Mrs. Gamble. "Come on, girls, 
there's nothing for us here." 

As quietly as they had come, the harlots left the church. 

* * * *

The climax of the warfare against the Barbary Coast and the Uptown 
Tenderloin, which by this time had become city-wide, came during the last 
week in January 1917, when the Supreme Court made public its decision on 
the Red-light Abatement Act. On January 30 James F. Brennan, assistant 
District Attorney, announced that he was preparing to file civil actions 
under the Act against every brothel in the city, and at the same time the 
Police Commission issued new regulations for the control of the Uptown 
Tenderloin and warned the few remaining Barbary Coast dive-keepers that 
any violation of the law would be severely punished. Dancing was 
prohibited in all cafés, restaurants, and other resorts in the area 
bounded by Larkin, O'Farrell, Mason, and Market streets; managers of the 
places were instructed to bar unescorted women from the premises; all 
curtains, boxes, and booths were ordered removed from all places wherein 
liquor was sold, and the license of the Lambs Club, a notorious café in 
Ellis Street, was revoked. Chief of Police David A. White formed a special 
squad, consisting of a sergeant and three policemen, to patrol the 
district and see that the orders were obeyed. These regulations 
effectually disposed of the Uptown Tenderloin, and within a week 
practically every resort in the district either had been turned into a 
straight restaurant or saloon or had closed its doors. Among the famous 
places which thus passed from the San Francisco scene were the Black Cat, 
the Panama, the Pup, Stack's, Maxim's, the Portola, the Louvre, the Odeon, 
and the Bucket of Blood. 

Early in February 1917 the police raided and closed every brothel in the 
uptown area, and on February 14 a blockade was instituted against the 
Barbary Coast. The entire quarter was surrounded by policemen, no man was 
permitted to enter unless he could prove that he was engaged in legitimate 
business, and the prostitutes were ordered to vacate the cribs, cow-yards, 
and parlor houses. They were allowed a few hours in which to pack and 
remove their belongings, but by midnight the red-light district was 
deserted; eighty-three brothels had been closed and 1,073 women had been 
driven from their quarters. A hundred Chinese girls were evicted from the 
few bagnios which remained in operation on Grant Avenue. Two days later 
forty Barbary Coast saloons and dives closed their doors through lack of 
business, and within a week the remainder of the resorts had likewise 
abandoned the field. 

The Barbary Coast was as dead as the proverbial doornail until the summer 
of 1921, when a resurrection was attempted with the opening of the Thalia, 
the Neptune Palace, the Elko, and the Olympia. They sold near beer, 
employed a few dancing girls, and offered bawdy theatrical entertainment, 
the degree of obscenity depending upon whether or not the audience was 
composed of tourists. But the serpent of vice had scarcely reared its 
venomous head when it was scotched by Mrs. W. B. Hamilton, chairman of the 
Clubwomen's Vigilance Committee. Having heard rumors that immoral 
exhibitions were on display at the Barbary Coast, Mrs. Hamilton gathered a 
group of her friends and visited the district in a sightseeing bus, which 
they boarded at Market Street. The driver was told that the party was from 
out of town. When the bus stopped in front of the Neptune Palace, he said: 
"Now, ladies, if you are squeamish about entering this place, stay 
outside. But if you are good sports and want to see the sights, go in and 
keep your mouths shut afterwards." 

Mrs. Hamilton went in, but immediately afterwards she called upon the 
police and the newspapers. In an interview she said: 

"I have visited dancing places in Honolulu, Tahiti and various islands of 
the South Pacific, but I saw nothing in those places more obscene and 
morally degrading than I saw at the Neptune Palace." 

The police took immediate action upon Mrs. Hamilton's complaint. They 
ordered the owners of sightseeing buses not to send their vehicles into 
the Barbary Coast and notified the dance-hall proprietors that not even 
the slightest infraction of the law would be tolerated. Within a week the 
dives were closed. 

And that was the end of the Barbary Coast. Of its ancient glories nothing 
remains excepting a few battered façades, the tattered remains of signs, 
and the plaster nymphs and satyrs in the entrance lobby of the old 
Hippodrome, now befouled by dirt and penciled obscenities.