Twenty Tales by Twenty Women: From Real Life in Chicago by Anonymous

Twenty Tales by Twenty Women: From Real Life in Chicago

ANONYMOUS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

FOR SALE ONLY
BY
NOVELTY PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO, ILL.

[2]

COPYRIGHT, 1903
BY
NOVELTY PUBLISHING CO.

---

[3]

CONTENTS.

Preface    3
Introduction    5
A Woman’s Anguish    13
Tale One—The Diary of a Chicago Girl    17
Tale Two—The Life Story of a Southern Widow    33
Tale Three—A Story of the Chicago Ghetto    53
Tale Four—A Woman of Thirty-eight    71
Tale Five—A Forecast    89
Tale Six—A Daughter of Proud Kentucky    103
Tale Seven—My Lover’s Bequest    129
Tale Eight—The Victim of a Drug    145
Tale Nine—What Happened to a Girl Who Flirted    163
Tale Ten—Sold at a Fixed Price    173
Tale Eleven—A Story of Suicide Bridge    181
Tale Twelve—Two Babes and Two Mothers    193
Tale Thirteen—Not Guilty    205
Tale Fourteen—My Lover’s Daughter    215
Tale Fifteen—As Told to a Clergyman    221
Tale Sixteen—A Story of Stage Life    231
Tale Seventeen—A Trip Across the Lake    261
Tale Eighteen—One Woman’s Way    269
Tale Nineteen—A Story of the Levee    291
Tale Twenty—A Scientific Phenomenon    305

---

[4]

PREFACE.

“It may be weeds I’ve gathered, too;

But even weeds may be as fragrant,

With some sweet memory.

As the fairest flower.”

Without apology this book goes forth. If it is productive of some good, it will have fulfilled its mission.

In presenting this work it is with a feeling of restitution. If I have digressed from, or stormed the barricaded citadel of formal literature, I have done so without hesitation, simply complying with an obeisance to civility toward my fellow men. I have pictured life as a man of the world is sometimes forced to see it, and not altogether as angels would transcribe it.

If the manner in which the subjects are hereinafter treated and woven into stories, meets the approval of the public, the work will have served to indicate the power and simplicity of truth.—The Author.

“All truth is precious, if not divine,

And what dilates the pow’rs must needs refine.”

---

[5]

INTRODUCTION.

“Without women, the beginning of our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure, and the end of consolation.”

“The very first

Of human life must spring from woman’s breast,

Your first small words are taught you from her lips,

Your first tears quench’d by her, and your last sighs

Too often breathed out in a woman’s hearing,

When men have shrunk from the ignoble care

Of watching the last hour of him who led them.”

In London alone there are eighty thousand fallen women, and, while the number is infinitely smaller in Chicago, they all have a history, an excuse to offer, and a tale to tell.

We have resided upon this terrestrial sphere just long enough to know that the reformation of a fallen woman rivals the labors of Hercules. All men have a physical nature and must meet people who appeal to it.

The conditions are such that there has arisen in society, a figure that is certainly the most mournful, and, in some respects, the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being, whose very name it is a shame to speak; who counterfeits, with a cold heart, the transports of affection and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of[6] her sex, and doomed, for the most part, to disease and abject wretchedness of men, then death.

Who will pity her? A poor unknown, who shall be lowered into a grave of cold clay (and possibly in the potter’s field), among slimy, creeping things that feed on foul air and putrid masses. Not even a slab to say, “Here lies.”

With dreamy eyes and rum dulled brain, her companions take in the scene without warning. They shrink not from the horrors of the charnel house or the maggot filled grave; sin fascinates them as the cursed death giving flame does the foolish moth. They continue to cultivate avarice, defy all laws of nature and modesty, all rules of etiquette, and break down all barriers which ordinarily defend pure womanhood.

“She is a rag and a bone and a hank of hair.”

Women of this class feel that they are social outcasts, that their sins are as scarlet; they believe that they are past reform.

Herself, the supreme type of vice, she is usually the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless homes would be polluted, and not a few, who, in the pride of their untested chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair.

On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame.

She remains while creeds and civilization rise[7] and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the world.

It is not our intention to perorate and dissertate on a theory calculated to turn the world into a miniature heaven, for we don’t believe for the fractional part of a moment that a general reformation of the fallen is practicable or possible. It is not unusual that the men who deplore so loudly the existence of soiled doves are the very men who are responsible for their existence.

The only practicable solution that we may be tempted to offer, would be for society to brand the men with the stigma of its contempt, the same as it does the women, when he sinks himself below her level in an attempt to pervert her purity.

If the immoral men were ostracized from polite society with the same despatch that a weak woman is, society would be composed almost entirely of women.

The world’s fallen women are divided into two classes:

The woman whose nature is depraved, who is too coarse to realize or heed the depth of her own infamy, and the woman whose circumstances have forced her to a life of shame. Of the former, it is useless to take heed for she understands nothing outside of her own depravity, and looks upon reformation as a thing to be avoided. Fortunately she constitutes but a small percentage of the half-world.

The reclamation of the other woman is almost as utterly impossible for the reason that she has realized and suffered too much. We have homes of refuge for the friendless, retreats for the fallen, and hospitals for[8] the poor, but after all the red tape formula for admittance has been complied with, they dispense only the cold crusts of charity.

Where can a woman turn, whose suffering soul is tottering on the brink of the world’s damnation? To whom shall she turn for the tender touch of Christian pity, the charity of a human undertaking half divine? Surely, not to the church that “Bows the knee to pomp that loves to varnish guilt;” not to the women of merciless hearts and useless lives who boast of chastity because of frozen veins; not to public charities who advertise her squalor and her shame; not to the worldly man, whose aid is; almost invariably extended in return for favors their families know not of, but she turns to the hell of the world’s lost souls when men no longer find her a convenience.

The modest woman of mental refinement finds a rival in the person with a good figure (no matter how blatant), who is able to set the pace that lures the men.

Whatever her personal merits may be, her position precludes the possibility of her re-entering social circles that would be agreeable to her. She sees the girls about her who have smothered their moral scruples, wearing good clothes, going to entertainments and receiving the attentions of gentlemen who have no hesitancy in being parted from their money, if value is received, and it is small wonder if she, too, takes the initial step that leads to the “crib” in the “tenderloin.”

After having established the reputation of being “game,” there is no dearth of so called respectable[9] men who are willing to be “kind” to her. The men who are responsible for these conditions are not the rough men of the lower classes, but the professional men, the men in business; many with families and nice homes, who represent the respectable element in the community.

If all the ancient prudes and wind-jammers, who are so intensely interested in the fallen, would give their support to the decent men who give their employes living wages, instead of straining their corsets to wedge in next to the bargain counter in the department stores, whose scale of wages breeds prostitution and moral depravity, they might discover in the next decade, more self-supporting, decent women, and less fair faces flushed with lust in the glare of the red light “brothel.”

In presenting this work to the public it is not the intention of the author to bruise the hearts of fond parents, who may be able to recall sad occurrences, after having read the following chapters; nor to censure the subjects, whose life stories are told in the following narrations; not to bring down unjust criticism on the head of any class; but rather to point out in a measure, the reasons most apparent to a man of the world, for licentious crime.

If asked why I have chosen Chicago as the field from which to gather data for this volume, my answer would be, “because of its great population”; because to it visitors flock from every part of; the United States and many foreign countries; because it is nearer to the center of population than any other large city, hence more often sought by wayward girls from the[10] surrounding territory, and the inducements which are held out to the pleasure-loving public, whether those in quest of enjoyment be saint or sinner, wolf or lamb, in gay Chicago are conducive to the character of amusement and excitement necessary to the life of those whose stories are herein told.

This book will claim its right to life by detailing the life story of each one of these children of God, from the child-life in a quiet, peaceful home in some rural hamlet, through the trials and vicissitudes of unfortunate or misspent life.

This book, unlike the Bible, is all written in Chicago. The twenty disciples come from twenty different places. They, endeavoring to lose their identity in the whirl of racy life and excitement, seek the phantom happiness in this great city. For a time all goes well. Gaiety and mirth mingle, and fortune conspires with pleasure to mislead the novice; then the scenes grow old; happiness eludes the grasp; tawdry garments no longer please the eye; the tinsel tarnishes; disappointed hope begets despair, and then a few grains of a friendly drug or the cold waves, of the lake offer rest and relief. The city becomes pregnant with these poor unfortunates, tortured by regret and shame, goaded down by necessity and the scorn of former friends. Then there is birth—this book is born. It goes out into the world to tell the naked truth for the good of mankind.

While this work is prepared from a truly moral standpoint, let it be known that it is the intention to entertain as well as to instruct, to deal with bare[11] facts in order that the reader will thoroughly understand the situation as it exists.

Should the reader, while in the act of drinking in the words of these crushed flowers, find an instance wherein, by the recital of her story, by sheer accident or otherwise, recognize the possessor of that story, do not, for the love of humanity, be so unkind as to say, “I told you so.”

You may know, aye adore, some man whose fault it is that that particular girl was placed in the position which makes the tale of her life so miserably sad to some and yet so racy and full of color to others. If, after having read the story of his wrong-doing, together with the pain he has caused, he does not develop into a different sort of a man, put him down as an iniquitous night-bird, fit to flit and hoot by night in search of prey; one in whom a spark of manhood never glows and whose crimes and abominations are myriad, marking him as a loathsome creature, who fears the truth and shuns the light of day; one whose conscience is seared beyond redemption and who possesses no conception of charity, pity, sorrow or regret.

It is a pitiable and cruel fact that the great source from which the ranks of scarlet are replenished, are young women from the country, who, disgraced in their own community, fly from home to escape the infamy and rush to the city with anger, desperation and revolt in their hearts. Oh, that society would punish more severely the respectable seducers and destroyers of innocent women.

Another lamentable fact is that those who enter into this diabolical traffic, are seldom saved. We have[12] avoided no labor or pains in our researches on this subject, and we wish all who read this to mark well our words.

When a woman once enters a house of prostitution and leads the life of those who dwell there, it is too late for redemption and there is no hope for her. When a woman once nerves herself for the fatal plunge, a change comes over her whole character and, sustained by outraged love, transformed into hate by miscalculating but indomitable pride, revenge and the excitement of her new environments, her fate is fixed, her doom is sealed.

Hence this book, “TWENTY TALES BY TWENTY WOMEN.”

---

[13]

The PDF might take a minute to load. Or, click to download PDF.

If your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file.