SLUMMING.
_Depravity of Life in Billy McGlory's--A Three Hours' Visit to the
Place--Degraded Men and Lost Women Who are Nightly in This Criminal
Whirlpool._
The following from the Cincinnati _Enquirer_ tells its own story:
"Slumming in New York always begins with a trip to Billy McGlory's. It
is a Hester street dive. What The. Allen was thought to be in the days
when he was paraded as 'the wickedest man in New York,' and what Harry
Hill was thought to be in the days when the good old deacons from the
West used to frequent his dance hall, Billy McGlory is in New York
to-day. The. Allen and Harry Hill are both alive, but Billy McGlory
bears off the palm of wickedness amid the wickedest of Gotham. If you
want to see his place, two things are necessary, a prize-fighter for a
protector and a late start. I had both when I went there the other
night. My companions were half a dozen Western men, stopping at an
up-town hotel, and our guide was a little 'tough' who has fought half a
dozen prize fights and would fight at the drop of the hat. We had pooled
issues and one man had all the money in the party. Our wallets and
watches and jewelry were left behind. It was nearly midnight when we
started, and half an hour later when the carriage drove us up in front
of a dingy-looking double doorway, from which the light was streaming.
The walls around were black; no light anywhere except that which came
out of the open door. The entrance was a long hall, with nothing visible
at the further end from the outside. It might have served for a picture
of Milton's description of the 'Cavernous Entrance to Hell.'
"There was a policeman outside, and down the street a score of shadowy
forms flitted in and out of the shadows--prostitutes lying in wait for
victims, our guide told us. McGlory's place is a huge dance hall, which
is approached by devious ways through a bar-room. There is a balcony
fitted up with tables and seats. There are tables and seats under the
balcony. There are little boxes partitioned off in the balcony for the
best customers--that is the sight-seers--and we got one of them. A piano
is being vigorously thumped by a black-haired genius, who is accompanied
by a violinist and a cornet player. 'Don't shoot the pianist; he is
doing his best,' the motto a Western theater man hung up in his place,
would be a good thing here. Yet the pianist of one of these dance halls
is by no means to be despised. It was from a position like this that
Counselor Disbecker rose within a few years to a legal standing that
enabled him to get $70,000 out of Jake Sharpe for lawyer's fees.
Transpositions are rapid in New York, and Billy McGlory, who was on the
Island a few months ago for selling liquor without license, may be an
excise commissioner himself before he dies.
"These side thoughts have crowded in while we are looking around. There
are five hundred men in the immense hall. There are a hundred
females--it would be mockery to call them women. The first we hear from
them is when half a dozen invade our box, plump themselves in our laps,
and begin to beg that we put quarters in their stockings for luck. There
are some shapely limbs generously and immodestly shown in connection
with this invitation. One young woman startles the crowd by announcing
that she will dance the cancan for half a dollar. The music starts up
just then, and she determines to do the cancan and risk the collection
afterward. She seizes her skirts between her limbs with one hand, kicks
away a chair or two, and is soon throwing her feet in the air in a way
that endangers every hat in the box. The men about the hall are all
craning their necks to get a sight of what is going on in the box, as
they hear the cries of 'Hoop-la' from the girls there. There is a waltz
going on down on the floor. I look over the female faces. There is one
little girl, who looks as innocent as a babe. She has a pretty face, and
I remark to a companion that she seems out of place among the other poor
wretches--for there is not an honest woman in the hall. Before we leave
the place it has been demonstrated that the little girl with the
innocent face is one of the most depraved of all the habitues of the
place.
"The dance is over, and a song is being sung by a man on crutches with
only one leg. 'He is an honest fellow, is the Major,' says one of the
girls. 'Poor fellow, he has a wife and six children. He sticks to them
like a good fellow and works hard to get a living. He sells pencils in
the day-time and works here at night.' A generous shower of coin goes on
to the floor when the Major finishes. I begin to notice the atmosphere
of tobacco smoke. It is frightfully oppressive. The 'champagne' that it
has been necessary to order so as to retain the box has not been drank
very freely. The girls have been welcome to it the visitors having
discovered that it is bottled cider, with a treatment of whisky to give
it a biting tang and taste. It costs three dollars a bottle. It would
cost a man more to drink it. There was a young business man of
Cincinnati here three or four weeks ago who filled himself up on it at a
cost of $300. He had been foolish enough to go to McGlory's alone. He
was found on the Bowery at five o'clock the next morning without any hat
or overcoat. His pocket-book, watch and jewelry were gone. His only
recollection was that he had taken three or four drinks of McGlory's
'champagne.' He went to the hotel where he was a guest and was wise
enough to take the advice of the clerk. By paying $100 and no questions
asked he got back his watch and jewelry. He also got his pocket-book and
papers, but not the $200 that was in the book when he started out on his
spree. In the intervals of the dance his story has been told me as a
sample of the nightly occurrence.
"What is this that has come out for a song? It has the form of a young
man, but the simpering silliness of a school girl. Half idiot, it
jabbers out a lot of words that can not be understood, but which are
wildly applauded by the crowd on the floor, who 'pat juba' while the
creature dances. The girl who has been hanging around me to get a
quarter, whispers something like 'Oh, the beast!' in my ear. I hear the
other girls uttering similar remarks and epithets. So I look closer at
the young man on the floor--for young man it is. He has a long head and
smooth face, with a deathly white pallor over it, big mouth and lips as
thick as a negro, a conical shaped forehead, and eyes that glitter with
excitement like a courtesan's, but from which at times all signs of
intelligence have apparently fled. He has a companion whose general
appearance is like his own, but whose head is large and round, with a
high forehead and full moon face. Who are they? Well, they are part of
Billy McGlory's outfit, and that is all I can say about them. There are
four more of them in female dress, who have been serving drinks to the
customers at the tables, all the while leering at the men and practicing
the arts of the basest of women.
"Some of my companions have been drawn into one of the little boxes
adjoining ours. They come back now to tell of what depravity was
exhibited to them for a fee. 'Great heavens!' exclaims one of them. 'I
feel sick. Get me out of this if you can. It is damnable.' No wonder
they are sick. The sights they have seen would sicken all humanity.
Editor Stead, of London, could find a bonanza every night for a week
right here in New-York City at Billy McGlory's Assembly Hall. 'Hist!'
says our guide. We look up and find three or four toughs around. They do
not allow any adverse criticisms to be passed aloud at Billy's. If you
begin to talk aloud what you think, out you go. There have been more
round dances. There has been more indifferent singing and some clog
dancing. It is getting late. The fumes of tobacco and of stale beer are
stifling. Four-fifths of the men have not moved from the tables since we
came in. Here and there one is lopped over asleep. But the waiter in
female clothing comes along to wake him up and induce him to order more
beer. Your glass must always be before you if you want to stay at
McGlory's.
"'What are they all waiting for?' I ask. But no one will tell me. Across
the balcony a girl is hugging her fellow in a maudlin and hysterical
manner. Another girl is hanging with her arms around the neck of one of
the creatures I described some time ago. She is pressing her lips to his
as if in ecstasy. He takes it all as a matter of course, like an
indifferent young husband after the honeymoon is over. His companion
joins him--the moon-faced fellow--and they come around to our box and
ogle us. They talk in simpering, dudish tones, and bestow the most
lackadaisical glances on different members of our party. The girls
shrink back as if contamination itself had come among them. 'We are
pretty hard,' says one of them, 'but not so hard as they.'
"The piano gives a bang and a crash. The gray light is beginning to
stream through the windows. There is a hurrying and a scurrying among
the females, and there are a precious lot of young fellows, with low
brows and plug-ugly looks gathering on the floor. There are twenty odd
women with them, mostly young, none good-looking, all bearing marks of a
life that kill. The band strikes up a fantastic air. The whole place is
attention at once. The sleepy beer-bummers rouse up. The persons on the
balcony hang over the railings. The figures on the floor go reeling off
in a mixture of dancing and by-play as fantastic as the music. The
pianist seems to get excited and to want to prove himself a Hans von
Bulow of rapid execution. The fiddler weaves excitedly over his fiddle.
The cornetist toots in a screech like a car-engine whistle. The
movements of the dancers grow licentious and more and more rapid. They
have begun the Cancan. Feet go up. Legs are exhibited in wild abandon.
Hats fly off. There are occasional exhibitions of nature that would put
Adam and Eve to shame. The draperies of modern costumes for a time
covers the wanton forms, but as the performers grow heated wraps are
thrown off. The music assumes a hideous wildness. The hangers-on about
the place pat their hands and stamp and shout. The females on the floor
are excited to the wildest movements. They no longer make any attempt to
conceal their persons. Their action is shameful beyond relation. It is
climaxed by the sudden movement of eight or ten of them. As if by
concerted arrangement they denude their lower limbs and raising their
skirts in their hands above their waists go whirling round and round in
a lascivious mixture of bullet and cancan. It is all done in an instant,
and with a bang the music stops. Several of the girls have already
fallen exhausted on the floor. The lights go out in a twinkling. In the
smoky cloud we have just enough daylight to grope our way out. The big
policeman stands in the doorway. Billy McGlory himself is at the bar, to
the left of the entrance, and we go and take a look at the man. He is a
typical New York saloon-keeper--nothing more, and nothing less. A
medium-sized man, neither fleshy nor spare; he has black hair and
mustache, and a piercing black eye. He shakes hands around as if we were
obedient subjects come to pay homage to a king. He evidently enjoys his
notoriety.
"I had a chat with an old detective, who says to me about McGlory: 'He
is a Fourth-warder by birth. He has a big pull in politics, but takes no
direct part himself. He pays his way with the police, and that ends it.
I have known him for years, and 'tough' as he is, I would take his word
as quick as I would take the note of half the bank presidents of New
York. His place is in the heart of a tenement region, where there are a
great many unmarried men. Grouped around him are the rooms and haunts of
hundreds of prostitutes, with their pimps, thieves and pick-pockets who
thrive in such atmosphere. His place is head-quarters for them. These
can not be suppressed, and it is part of the police policy to leave a
few places like McGlory's where you can lay your hands on a man at any
time, rather than scatter them indiscriminately over the city.'
"We go out on Hester street. It is a narrow, dirty, filthy street. It is
the early morning--five o'clock. We had spent nearly five hours in the
den. The air was reeking with the filthy odors of the night, but it was
refreshing compared with the atmosphere we had left.
"We get in our carriage to go home.
"Three or four blocks up-town we pass Cooper Institute and the old
Mercantile Library. A stone's throw from McGlory's are the great
thoroughfares of the Bowery and Broadway. You could stand on his
house-top and shoot a bullet into the City of Churches. I have not told
the half, no, nor the tenth, of what we saw at his place. It can not be
told. There is no newspaper would dare print it. There is no writer who
could present it in shape for publication. It can only be hinted at.
There is beastliness and depravity under his roof compared with which no
chapter in the world's history is equal.
"Involuntarily, when I reached my apartment, I turned into the bath-room
and bathed my face and hands. It was like getting a breath of heaven
after experiencing a foretaste of sheol."