THE BLOCK OF SIN

In today's blog, I let you in on some of the latest quirky finds in my research of the times and places surrounding my fictional character, Madam Emeline Cummings. 

This week, as I manufactured the slivers and flecks of Emeline Cummings' life, I began discovering social engineering escapades left and right that were actually occurring in 1890-1908 western US.  I found two in particular to be of great interest, and I hope you will take an interest as well. 

One such effort of social engineering over a hundred years ago happened in Salt Lake City.  The mayor and some of the councilmen invented a novel way to corral all purveyors of flesh into a "block of sin" as it was sometimes called.  It ultimately became known as "The Stockade", technically Block 64 of downtown, between 1st and 2nd Street South and 5th and 6th Street West.

The block of sin actually led to the greater proliferation of prostitution -- the exact opposite of what was desired, or expected.  It was no half-hearted effort -- but it bombed, nevertheless. 

Wealthy and Respected

Madam Dora Topham

The city wanted to crack down on prostitution, once and for all.  Enter the famous-in-her-time Madam Dora Topham, one of the most successful madams of the west.  She considered herself a reformer.  She operated in Ogden and had invested her money wisely.  When Mayor Bramsford of Salt Lake City came to call, she was worth a half-million dollars. That used to be a lot of money!   He recruited her to bring the "Stockade" to life and manage it prudently.

She purchased the land herself, started a corporation called "the Citizens Investment Company" and sold shares to finance the construction of what amounted to a humongous brothel with one hundred brick cribs from which prostitutes could conduct their business, paying up to $4 per day for rent.  The block of sin was a business, run like a business by Madam Topham.

"Stockade" Final Day of Construction

Meanwhile, in my Emeline's neck of the woods....

The Equality Colony 1898

Skagit County, WA

In my book, The Boardinghouse Journals of Madam Emeline Cummings, Emeline's property abuts the Equality Colony in Skagit Valley. 
In actual history, The Equality Colony existed in the Bow-Edison area through the 1880's and '90s and into the first decade of the twentieth century, disbanding in 1904.  It was a socialist colony that grew and prospered under a national organization, The Brotherhood of Co-operative Commonwealth, headquartered in Warren, Maine. 

The colony expanded several times and wound up with 600 acres, a printery, creamery, lumber operaton and many buildings including "apartment dwellings for inhabitants of the colony, kitchen, dining hall and so forth.  Their expansion will play a role in my fictional Emeline's early history. 

Children of Equality Colony 1889

The purpose of the Equalty Colony was to nudge the state of Washington toward Socialism, with the national intention of a Socialist continent.  They disbanded in 1904 without having been successful.  I find it interesting that some of the principles of the colony are being debated nationally today, well over a hundred years later. 


Now ---  Back to Salt Lake City ---

I must tell you that the Stockade fared no better at its mission than the Equality Colony of Skagit County, Washington.  But, failure was for a very different reason.  Prostitution, being the oldest profession, doesn't like to be corralled.  Some prostitutes did move into the Stockade, but only half the cribs were rented.  Madam Topham, being a chief investor, didn't want to lose.  She recruited prostitutes from out of town to fill the Stockade.  Salt Lake City prostitutes who had stayed unaffiliated with the Stockade were still doing business as usual in Salt Lake City. 

The net result was increased prostitution in Salt Lake City -- the opposite of what the mayor and council wanted.  Red faced and scandalized, the City eventually plowed over the entire operation -- literally -- and everyone pretended it never happened.

Whatever happened to Madam Dora Tophem?  She was convicted and sentenced to eighteen years in prison when a minor boy was discovered with a prostitute at the Stockade.  The governor eventually commuted her sentence. 

I can't help but notice that successful madams generally know men in high places. 

Dora Tophem, convict, was freed.  She moved to California to raise a daughter and conduct various successful businesses there.  In 1925, she was helping an employee with a car when she was crushed between two cars, and died. 

Dora Topham in California

Is it just me or does she look happier?

THE BIRTH OF A MADAM

This faded photo is what I have of my  maternal great-grandmother, Mary Emeline Cummings. 

Mary Emeline Cummings 1867-1917

In fact, until recently, I didn't even know who she was.  I didn't know that she was rumored in the family to be "an entertainer" before she married Isadore Benoit, my maternal great-grandfather, in 1889.

It all came out on a lovely fall day in 2016 while I visited with my cousin, Margo and her mother, my aunt, Carol.  Carol is my mother, Ruth's, sister.  My mother died more than thirty years ago. 

Margo and Aunt Carol generously shared family pictures I had never seen before, and some new-to-me stories.  Aunt Carol told me that her father's mother worked as a prostitute, commonly referred to in the family as an entertainer.  The veil was thin, as everyone knew she worked as a prostitute and she was looked down upon because of it.   That is all that is known.  

Mary Emeline Cummings Benoit died in 1917.    

Mary E. Cummings Benoit married in 1889

The picture to the right is Mary Benoit, as she was known after she married Isadore Benoit. 


Our visit was wonderful, as we don't see each other often.  And on the forty-five minute or so trip home, my mind was fixed on a new version of great-grandmother.  In my imagination, I called her Emeline Cummings -- prostitute in the old west.  

By the time I got home, she was a madam, living where I live, in Edmonds, Washington.

I decided right then and there -- on I-5 and 196th in Lynnwood -- to write a book about Emeline Cummings, her life as a madam, and to start it when the real Mary Emeline Cummings got married:  1889. 

"The Boardinghouse Journals of Madam Emeline Cummings" is the title of my book in progress.

Because I have a ground zero starting point, much research lies ahead.  Follow this blog to take that journey with me, won't you?  I'm tippy toeing through unknown territory, and I could use some travelling companions.

I'm trying to persuade my Aunt Carol and my cousin Margo to let me post their pictures here.  If and when they agree, I will add them.  They started my wheels turning to raise the imaginary Madam Emeline Cummings, and tell her story.  Until then,

Thank you for joining me!    Author Bridget Clawson

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Little known about madams is that the most successful were wealthy and prominent (sort of) members of their community through charitable donations and public works funding.  Madam Dora DuFran was one such madam, operating in Dakota Territory.  She ran respectable houses and made significant donations to the community as it was developing.  She called her places "Parlor Houses", while some madams preferred the term "Boarding House" -- as will Emeline Cummings --- but only when she gets her own place!