Scandal In Paducah

a brief history of the oldest profession in a town that refuses to acknowledge it even today....

by Bella

     Every little town has its secrets. For as much as

the leaders of Paducah have spent the last 50

years trying to portray our town as a quaint,

conservative yet progressive city that enjoys being

the buckle of the Bible Belt, what they don’t tell you

is that in the early part of the 20th century, there were

rumored to be over 350 prostitutes in the city limits

of Paducah alone.

     After the Civil War, Paducah became a roaring

river town, notorious for its wide open status, and

popular with conventioneers, soldiers, steamboat

crews, and all manner of gamblers and hustlers looking

for a little naughtiness. In the beginning, there

were not so much brothels as bars that had rooms for

rent over the bar. In these rooms of assignation, a

man would actually just pay for a room, and then a

lady would come up and “turn down his bed.” Now,

if he and the lady got a little friendly, that was their

business. One bar at the time was famous for passing

out coins made of metal or wood that were good for

“one whiskey and one lady for one night.” These

rooms in the houses of hospitality were rented by the

half-hour, the hour, and four hours, with rooms so

small that all they could hold was a twin bed and a

nightstand. Well you have to set your beer somewhere.

     The next time you’re downtown, say strolling

down Market Street, check out the little building on

the corner of 2nd and Kentucky. At one point it was a

bridal shop, and the old timers remember it as the old

Marshall’s building. If you look up to the second

floor, you’ll notice that the windows are spaced very

close together. That’s because there was a law that the

lascivious ladies couldn’t be rubbing elbows with the

decent folk on the street, so they had to wave men

down from the upstairs rooms. And if you’ll look at

the metal gutter in the street, placed there by the old

Hoe Supply Company of Paducah, you’ll find something

interesting. They couldn’t fit the whole business

name on there, so it just says “Hoe of Ky.” One local

historian who used to do Civil War walking tours

would say, “Now, just pronounce it in a heavy southern

accent, and it sounds like a genteel lady saying

“Whore of Kentucky.” So though there’s no absolute

proof that it used to be a house of hospitality, it sure

does have the label.

     The newspapers of the day delighted on reporting

of the scandalous doings of these fallen angels. A trip

into the archives and special collections room at the Paducah

 Public Library offered several stories such as

this fight between two local ladies in 1885. “Minnie

Gillette, a young female of extraordinary indiscretion,

who resides at the palatial residence of Fannie Hart,

got mischief in her head last night and went to the

‘summer resort’ of Mrs. Seitz, where the gay and festive

Ella Brown resided. Gillette, learning that Brown

had been interfering with her domestic relations, proceeded

at once to interview Brown. The explanation

of Brown not being entirely satisfactory, Gillette

picked up a bottle of beer and struck her over the eye,

near the temple, making an ugly gash.”

     Also in the news quite often were Sandy Jenkins

and his gaming house, located in the old Louisville

Hotel on the riverfront, and the ladies that frequented

there. From the Daily News: “Sallie McKee, Lucy

Hawkins, Ella Evans, and Martha Jones are a crowd

of young Negro prostitutes who hang around the old

Louisville Hotel on the wharf, when they are not in

the “Blue Eagle” partaking of the hospitality of Mc-

Cracken County. It is only a day or two since a part of

this same gang were released from the jail, and they

immediately proceeded to celebrate the regaining of

their liberty by getting into a big fight, in which they

pummeled each other with whatever they got their

hands on, accompanying their blows with language so

foul that it would make a hog leave his wallow and

run to the river and drown himself.” 

     The Daily News went on to lament “The News,

in the name of the taxpayers

of both the city and county, protests against the

maintenance of these wretched creatures in indolence

at the jail. They should be made to work out there

fines on the streets.” I thought that was what got them

in trouble in the first place.

     Paducah didn’t have one particular section of town

reserved for such activities, like Storyville in New Orleans,

but many of the institutions were located

around the riverfront and Court Street, which is now

Kentucky Avenue. In fact Maiden Alley reportedly

got its name from the cribs of young working ladies

in the second floors of these buildings. A group of religious

reformers claimed in 1903 that there were

over 350 prostitutes in Paducah, and that the lascivious

ladies had “caught” over 90 percent of the young

men in the area.

In 1900, The Paducah Sun listed seven known

houses of ill-repute, including the houses of Minnie

Woods, on Burnett Street, who the Sun claims “keeps

a resort second to none, and is an old offender. Helen

Westlake who resides at the corner of Fifth and Trimble

(now Park Avenue) is...well known to our police

for every night the house is visited by drunken men

and women, and the neighbors are kept awake by

their noise.”

     One of the museums in town has a pump organ

that was supposedly donated by a woman of the time

who would accept chattel goods in return for her services.

She considered herself a lady of favor, and it was

beneath her dignity and pride to accept the usual exchange

of money for her services. She had gentlemen

friends, and in return for her affections, if she needed

a new parlor lamp or wall hanging, they would buy

her what she needed. The pump organ was given to

her by a Jewish gentleman who greatly appreciated

her hospitality.

     There are also a few mysterious references in the

old papers, such as a raid reported by The Paducah

Daily News in 1883 of the “Frenchtown Nymphs”,

with fines of $25 to $40 handed out to the ladies.

Frenchtown was settled in 1836 and the boundaries

were Martin Luther King on the north, Monroe on the

south, 12th on the east, and Harahan on the west.

There was also a mention of the “Gash” district in

John E.L. Robertson’s The Story of Paducah, which

has many of these interesting tales, and is a great read

even if you’re not just looking for dirty stories.

From after the Civil War until the early 1900’s,

these houses operated pretty much with impunity. The

leaders and law of the town claimed that the houses

were a good source of information, and that the

madams had warned them many a time when a notorious

criminal came to town. At one point to please

the more genteel of the town, the houses were forbidden

from having their red lamps hanging outside and

playing pianos on the porches. Now, of course, there

were religious factions who would cause a stir every

now and then, and finally got the institution shut

down, at least to the public eye, around 1913.

But these things never disappear...they simply go

underground.

     Once things had died down, for years

there was a brothel at 808 Washington Street. This

went on through the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. They said that

the schoolboys used to walk by on their way home

from Walter Jetton school and snicker and point and

elbow each other in the ribs. Of course the ladies were

asleep in the daytime, so it’s not like they got a show.

The cook used to pay the young boys a dollar to mow

the lawn, and would invite them back into the kitchen

for a cookie if they did a good job.

     Many have said that the madam of one

particular institution always dressed and

acted like a real lady. There is a story that

she went to a local church, and brought them

a donation of ten thousand dollars. The man

was very grateful, until she said that she

wanted to start attending the church. He

said, “Oh, I’m sorry Ma’m, we just can’t

have that.” So she took the check out of his

hand and said, “Well, I’m sure I can find

someone who needs this more, then.”

     Now of course a lot of this is speculation,

and rumor, they didn’t keep many

records of this sort of thing back then. It simply was

not spoken of in polite company. There used to be a

so-called “Bastard Book” at the courthouse that

recorded all the illegitimate births, many from the

girls in these houses, but some people felt like history

needed to be cleaned up a bit and it was stolen, lost to

history. Lord forbid one of our illustrious residents

found out they had a bastard in the family.

As recently as 10 years ago, this particular dirty

little secret caused quite the scandal in town. Many

of our new residents don’t know the story about

Miz Mary and her girls, and the former city leaders

who tried to extort free sex from said ladies in the

house of ill-repute on South 3rd street. Rumor had it

that Mary was brought here by the some of the

town’s more powerful men in the 1960’s, and girls

were hustled through a circuit run by the Dixie

Mafia, so that the customers had new faces now and

then. Honestly, not only is it hard to find many facts

behind this story, but many of those facts we will

not print because we don’t want to start getting excessive

amounts of speeding tickets or have our

family pets go missing. But one rumor about the

former den in inequity is that once the scandal died

down and the house was sold, the new owners

found a closet inside that was linked to some of the

bedrooms with recording devices. Now that’s what I

call a life insurance policy.

*Bazooka would like to thank the many local historians

and others who contributed to this article, who

for obvious reasons, wish to remain anonymous...