With its ever increasing network of railroads, great fairs and expositions in 1881, 1887 and 1895, often raucous legislative sessions as the state capital after 1868, and a reputation as the southeast's foremost entertainment Mecca, people of all kinds and both races descended on the Gate City of the South seeking fun and a large dose of debauchery. Not surprisingly, where a need existed and there was money to be made, plenty of enterprising men and women arose to satisfy a huge public demand for liquor, cheap playhouses, drugs and sex. Although these products and services could be found at various city locales, the epicenter of vice in turn-of-the-century Atlanta was the intersection of Collins and Decatur streets, just steps from the Union Passenger Depot and the elegant salons and ballrooms of the city's leading hotels. This area was so notorious that the respectable citizens on the northern blocks of Collins St. successfully lobbied to have the street name changed to Courtland in 1886. (1)
Householders on the newly named Courtland shuddered at the thought of once having to say that they lived on Collins St., so well known for its vice industries, especially its houses of prostitution. The tiny section just south of Decatur St. kept its disreputable name and associations. The street's name came from James D. Collins, one of Atlanta's leading citizens and major property holder on his namesake avenue. Collins served as a Fulton County Commissioner as well as president of the Atlanta Exchange and Banking Co. and vice-president of the Collins Brick Co. Another prominent Atlantan named J. Perry Chisolm also owned houses on Collins, almost all of which were bordellos. (2)
As the city's elite and upper middle class built their homes northward along Peachtree [James Collins lived at 296 Peachtree] Street, Courtland and other roads in that area, the entrepreneurs of vice remained on Decatur and Collins streets. Even when, in 1893, the city relocated its police department and jail to a massive new facility on Decatur Street, there was little change in the adjacent "tenderloin" district surrounding it. Between 1892 and 1899, the number of "madames" listed in city directories for the tiny block-long Collins increased from six to nine [one of these was actually on the first block of Courtland]. In 1899, clustered between #'s 3 through 23 on Collins were madames Josie Lovell, Willie Burton, Fannie Price, Madge Burdette, M. Davidson, Nettie McKinley, Blanche Wentworth and Annie Morgan. Just across Decatur on Courtland Ave. was Madame M. Johnson. By 1908, the number had increased to ten -- a very crowded little block. (3)
Although these women were the top dealers in flesh with their "girls" securely ensconced in houses, many prostitutes undoubtedly worked the streets and alleys around the area. There were also large numbers of "single women" along Decatur Street who operated small businesses as dressmakers and lunchroom owners. (4) It was generally implied that these women offered more than their skills with a needle or an iron skillet which may have been a case of guilt by geographical association. Arrests records for the 1890s help flesh out the story. For 1892, the police department reported 79 arrests for individuals "keeping a house of ill fame" along with 16 for "immoral conduct," 25 for "public indecency," and 13 for being a "lewd woman on the streets." The increase in several of those categories was significant by the 1899 report. In that year, there were 129 arrests for those "keeping a house of ill fame" and 53 for being a "lewd woman on the streets." (5) The actual locations for these arrests are not give in the raw, composite numbers reported but the widely known activities around the Decatur and Collins streets intersection leave little room for doubt that many, if not most, were here, just steps outside the doors of the new police department.
As the Victorian Age was drawing to a close in the first decade of the twentieth century and as prohibition seemed more and more likely for Atlanta [it arrived on Jan. 1, 1908], ten "single women" were listed as residents of Collins Street in 1906, two of these being Madge Burdette at # 21 Collins and Lillian Jacobs. Sadly the city directory for that year no longer specified these "single women" as "madames," but Burdette and Jacobs had already claimed that title in previous directories. There was one African-American woman in 1906 named Millie Edwards as well but she might have been a servant rather than a madame. The 1907 and 1908 directories did list the "madames" and there were ten on Collins Street for both years. Curiously, the names of these women varied greatly from year to year during these decades which indicates a fairly high turnover with a few constants like the Burtons and Burdette. (6)
Before jumping to the conclusion, however, that these unattached women with some kind of business along both Decatur and Collins were innocent of vice, it is important to see the true nature of their surroundings. While there were elegant saloons for the upper crust just next door at the Kimball House Hotel, the city's worst dives, bucket shops and barrooms surrounded the police department at 171-179 Decatur Street. In a photograph from that era, a saloon is clearly seen directly adjacent. In 1895, 26 saloons are listed in the
i
Atlanta Police Dept., circa 1895
immediate area. By 1905 and 1906, this number had jumped to 39 and 38 respectively. Twelve of Atlanta's sixteen pawn shops were also on Decatur. (7) While saloons were in other areas as well, Atlanta's finest needed only to walk a block or two from their jail doorway to find people to arrest. In 1892 just before the new headquarters opened, there were 6,554 arrests for being drunk and/or disorderly on the streets. Six years later with the new headquarters in full operation, the number was 9,407. (8)
Other possible sources for data on vice are public medical reports for the era. They are only marginally helpful but do give some insights into what must have been a huge problem with alcohol and drugs like opium, morphine and papine. It was reported in 1907 that opium dens were not unknown in Atlanta. The Board of Health data only showed three deaths from "alcoholism" for 1893 and only four in 1900. However, Grady Hospital stated that it treated 24 for "acute or chronic alcoholism" in the latter year. There were also other addictions for Atlantans to pursue in these years. City statistics for 1893 and 1900 show ten and 3 deaths respectively from morphine and opium. Grady treated 15 patients for various forms of non-alcoholic addiction as the twentieth century dawned. (9)
It is doubtful that most addicts received any treatment at all and thus went unreported in any way. While some obviously were treated at the public hospital which was just one block north of the plentiful saloons and probable "opium dens" of Decatur Street, those persons with money sought cures elsewhere. Between 1899 and 1905, the number of private sanatoriums discernibly devoted to opium and "whiskey" cures doubled from two to four. (10) Few of the denizens of Decatur Street's "palaces of sin," however, could afford treatment of any kind and probably died miserable [and unreported] deaths in an age completely devoid of a public safety net.
Even prohibition seems to have failed to blight the vice on Decatur Street. In a 1909 city council debate over changing the street's name, one councilman said the street was still full of "low near-beer dives," squalid hovels, and "foul fish stalls whose filthy stench is an offense against high heaven . . . ." Furthermore, Decatur Street was an "eyesore, an unclean and leprous spot upon the face of our fair city . . . ." (11) This was more than a year after the advent of prohibition when a low alcoholic "near beer" was still allowed.
One final and very interesting aspect of Atlanta's vice business in the last decades of the Victorian Age centers on race. In a time when segregation was entering its strictest period, Decatur Street appears to have been very fluid racially. City directories like that of 1899 show a mixture of white and black women, for instance, as having small businesses in the area. (12) Also, it is clear from newspaper reports that the blocks surrounding the police headquarters attracted many out-of-town visitors [and surely just as many locals] to its revelries. According to Franklin Garrett, this had been the case since the 1880s. An 1896 newspaper article reported that huge crowds of African-Americans descended on Decatur Street for the Fourth of July. "All early morning trains were well filled with a throng of blacks from different towns about Atlanta," including Griffin, West Point, Marietta, Rome, Macon and Jonesboro. They "hung about the carshed" [Union Passenger Depot] and feasted on watermelon and "red lemonade" [apparently a cheap alcoholic brew] at "improvised booths" there and along Decatur Street, where "Decatur Street whiskey was as plentiful as water." The entire police force was kept on duty and at least 80 arrests were made. (13) Although the Collins Street madames were white, this part of town was clearly one which invited both races to celebrate and party in an atmosphere where race was not so stratified. For those who might want to escape the highly repressive racial separation of the age, this area of Atlanta obviously provided a welcome safety valve.
Economic factors also were important. Through licensing fees, taxes, arrest fines, revenues from "vice tourism" like the African-Americans celebrating the Fourth, rental income for buildings, and probably kickbacks and protection money from those illegal "keepers of houses of ill fame" and similar businesses, the city and its elites surely made a lot of money. When a huge fire destroyed the Markham House Block and its backdoor neighbor, Belle Burton's bordello at # 4 Collins Street and several similar houses nearby, in 1896, a clean-up was suggested. It was surmised that "Lights From Many Prominent Palaces of Sin May Cease To Twinkle In The Thoroughfare" [Collins Street, that is]. Perry Chisolm and James Collins both said that they might sell their properties but Chisolm hastily added, "It may be, however, that I will be compelled to rebuild houses to be occupied by tenants like those who occupied the old buildings. It would be impossible to use it for anything else unless the character of the whole street is changed by the removal of the present occupants to some other locality." (14) As already shown above by the 1899 statistics on the number of bordellos along Collins Street [nine were operating on the block in 1899], the self-policing efforts suggested by the wealthy property owners were either a sham or impossible to fulfill.
By the second decade of the twentieth century, however, other factors were impacting the dens of iniquity in this part of town. Prohibition and the politics of progressivism aimed, in part at least, at "cleaning up" cities had a dramatic effect on Decatur and Collins streets. Naturally, all the saloons and other purveyors of alcohol had disappeared in 1908. The madames remained for a while but historian Harvey Newman states that all the "girls" and their managers had left town by 1913. (15) The final blow came in 1912 with a new police chief James Beavers and with a report by a formal Vice Commission for the City of Atlanta which condemned the city's "houses of assignation" and urged their repression. The report concluded that prostitutes were often driven or enticed into "white slavery" by financial need as well as by evil men and women [the madames] in the business. Perhaps surprisingly for the time, the report deplored the double standard whereby the women were brought down to a "life of shame" and are destroyed while the men who use them "escape" punishment. "It is not just and this type of man should be severely punished," the authors stated. Chief Beavers took such reports to heart and inaugurated massive arrests and raids to end prostitution, starting with arrest sweeps of all male and female "loiterers" on late night streets. (16)
Of course, prostitution and other forms of vice did not suddenly disappear from Atlanta. They did seem to leave Decatur and Collins streets and became less visible or underground. The madames can no longer be found in city directories, including such well-known ones as Belle Burton and Madge Burdette. Most probably moved out of town. At least one madame named Nellie Busbee on Magnolia Street [just off Marietta near Five Points] committed suicide by "thrusting a dagger through her heart," leaving a note blaming Chief Beavers whom she told to "go to hell" since he had closed her "resort" and "there was nothing left for her in life." There was another report in 1912 that Atlanta's prostitutes were moving to Savannah, Macon, Memphis, New Orleans and other cities. (17)
Both Decatur and Collins streets remain today. The intersection lies at the heart of the burgeoning Georgia State University with the South Tower of the library replacing the haunts and houses of Victorian Atlanta's famous "mistresses of illicit sex." Belle and Willie Burton, Madge Burnette, Fannie Price, Lillian Jacobs and the other madames were successful businesswomen but they have largely vanished from city histories despite their notoriety in those last decades of the Victorian Age.
Richard Dees Funderburke, Phd. Decatur, Georgia
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(1) Franklin Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 127.
(2) Atlanta City Directory 1896 (hereafter ACD), pp. 576 and 560; "Collins Street May Go Dark," Atlanta Journal (hereafter AJ), 5/21/1896, 3.
(3) ACD 1892, p. 155; ACD 1895, pp. 487 and 161; ACD 1899, p. 154 and p. 115; ACD 1907, p.145; ACD 1908, p. 71. The cast of madames in 1907 included long time residents Madge Burdette and Lilly Jacobs along with Helen Bertram, Lula Bell, Belle Summers, Gertrude Cartwright, Viola Mayfield, Mamie Leroy, and Effie Dudley. These were just the managers/owners so there was probably a substantial number of workers in the houses on the block as well.
(4) ACD 1899, p. 1372.
(5) Annual Reports, City of Atlanta, Report of the Police Dept. (hereafter Annual Reports), pp. 571-577;
Annual Reports 1898 (Atlanta 1899), pp. 344-345. It should be noted that corresponding arrests for "being with a lewd woman on the streets" were only 3 and 12 respectively.
(6) ACD 1906, pp. 145-146; ACD 1907, p. 145; ACD 1908, p 71.
(7) ACD 1895, pp. 1336-1337; ACD 1905, pp. 1283-1285; ACD 1906, p. 1440; ACD 1907, p 1511.
(8) Annual Reports 1892, p. 577; Annual Reports 1898, p. 345.
(9) Harvey Newman, "Decatur Street, Atlanta's African-American Paradise Lost," Atlanta History (Vol. XLIV # 2), Summer 2000, p. 9; Annual Reports 1893, pp. 520-533; Annual Reports 1900, pp. 320-323; Report of the Grady Hospital in the Annual Reports 1893, p. 361.
(10) ACD 1899, p. 1358; ACD 1905, p. 1273.
(11) Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 574.
(12) ACD 1899, p. 1372; Newman, "Decatur Street . . .," pp. 8-9.
(13) Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 127; "Day of Glory Was the Fourth," Atlanta Constitution (hereafter AC), 7/5/1896, p. 17.
(14) "Collins Street May Go Dark," AJ, 5/21/1896, p. 3.
(15) ACD's, 1908-1913; Newman, "Decatur Street . . .," p. 9.
(16) "Moral Clean-Up Urged For City," AC, 10/8/1912, p. 5; "Vice Crusade Turned On Street Loiterers," AJ, 10/3/1912, p. 7; Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, Vol. II, p. 574.
(17) "Savannah May Abolish Vice," AC, 10/8/1912, p 7; Newman, "Decatur Street . . . ," p. 9; "Resort Keeper Takes Her Life," AC, 9/24/1912, p. 9.
