In the trial it developed that Billie Cooper, who was sentenced for violation of the narcotics laws, was charging Doris $7 a deck for heroin, which she bought at half that price from Chinese peddlers. The F.B.I. proceeded against Grigsby for white slavery violation and he, too, was convicted.
Doris swore to us that she was off the stuff now. She said she was living with a Chinaman who worked in a gambling house in Chinatown.
The glamorous brothels are no more. Not since the notorious Hopkins Institute was closed by the F.B.I. some years ago has there been anything operating on a lavish scale. Now there are some so-called masseurs who use that classification as a blind, but nothing on the grand scale.
When F.B.I. men raided the Hopkins Institute, an innocuous-looking massage parlor in the 2700 block on Connecticut Ave., they uncovered one of the most sensational call-houses ever in Washington. Not only was the clientele accommodated at the so-called Institute, but a phone call could arrange a date on short notice almost anywhere in the District. The establishment kept a detailed and up-to-date written record on each patron, fees paid, dates of service, and eccentricities. Girls there said this list contained entries that could flabbergast some very prominent persons, in and out of Washington.
The proprietor of the Hopkins Institute was one George Francis Whitehead, who lived in New York and seldom visited the place. Profits were sent to him weekly by the “resident manager,” Diane Carter, who was vice-president in charge of the operation. The Institute was established originally by someone else and was bought by Whitehead in 1941. He ran it for several months, then engaged Diane Carter to manage it at a salary out of earnings. Her principal duties entailed accepting calls, arranging to send girls to answer the calls, and to have girls available on the premises.
Whitehead left Washington in 1941, after the girls began to complain that his presence was hurting business because of his excessive drinking, untidy habits and uncouth deportment. He did not live up to the dignity and spirit of an Institute. The girls threatened to strike.
The record system was originated by the first operator and passed on to Whitehead. In addition to other entries, initials of each girl filling an assignment and the amount of the fee were noted. For the fees a code was used, to conceal the fact that some paid more than others. The word “FITZGERALD” was the key to the code. Each letter stood for a digit, i.e., F was 1, I was 2, T was 3, etc. Thus the symbol “FD” beside the name of a customer meant $10; “TD” meant $30, etc. This method was used also to bamboozle Whitehead, if he checked on his share of the proceeds.
The U.S. Commissioner issued warrants for the arrests of Whitehead, Diane Carter and 13 girls involved, on charges of violations of the White Slave Traffic Act. Whitehead was arrested in New York and extradited. Two indictments were returned against Whitehead, Diane and nine others. Whitehead pleaded guilty to both and was sentenced to one to four years on the Act and to eighteen months on conspiracy. But he was adjudged insane and committed to a mental institution.
Diane Carter pleaded guilty to both indictments and was sentenced to three to nine months on each, the sentences to run concurrently. Seven other defendants were found guilty.
The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the convictions of the seven, held the violations were of legislation of the District of Columbia and not of the White Slave Traffic Act.
But the racket was broken. The place never reopened. The F.B.I. seized the files and never revealed a name, but hundreds of men still tremble when they remember the Hopkins Institute. Some still attempt pressure to try to get their names blacked out. They have no success with the F.B.I.
5. HOBOES WITH NO HORIZON
The pride of the bum, even when he has abandoned the virile vitality to hold out his paw as a panhandler, is a terminal twinkle of consciousness that he is only resting between Election Days, when he is a man. These derelicts have swung cities and states. But in Washington even that last link to a reason for being is lost.
No Hinky Dink, no Pendergast caters to him, gives him free beer and rot-gut or a kip in the flop on the joint. No eager dirty duke stretches forth to greet the floater and the repeater. He can do nothing for anyone.
So he is just a shade lower, lousier and grizzlier than the ones at whom you shudder as you pass them in your own town. Agglomerations of beachcombers vary little, even with differences of climate. Every city has its Skid Row. But Washington has three of them. Like everything else here, they are departmentalized. No alphabetical designations have yet been allocated to them, but don’t despair.
One is for the general riffraff; the second is for old-timers; the third is exclusively for sailors.
But first let us tell you about 9th Street--NW, natch--and specifically where it crosses Pennsylvania Ave.
Stand on one side of the avenue and you are in the shadow of the great marble structure which houses the forces of law and order. This is the Department of Justice Building, and the corner we’re standing on is the entrance to the F.B.I.
Cross Pennsylvania Avenue and walk into 9th Street, and you are an intruder in the most publicized Skid Row of the three--they call it the Bowery here, to distinguish it from the others. As such thoroughfares go, this is pretty classy-looking. It is wide. All Washington streets are kept clean, so neither rubbish nor drunks litter the pavements--anyway not by day. By nightfall, topers rendered hors de combat on smoke and cheap wine pile up in the doorways.
This part of 9th Street is packed solid with “play lands,” featuring pin-ball machines, peep show movies and souvenir stands which sell composition statuettes of the White House and Washington Monument, and embroidered pillows tastefully lettered with “Love to Mom from the Nation’s Capital.”
But this human dump lacks romance and legend. No songs are written about it. There are no grisly tall tales, such as are told about the Barbary Coast, Basin Street and Chicago, much near the Loop and most of the old Levee. This is merely a street of convenience, moved up from around the corner when Pennsylvania Avenue itself was flophouse lane and Al Jolson and Bill Robinson performed on the sidewalk for pennies.
There’s no law agin’ stripping or peeling in Washington, but it doesn’t pay off well enough to build a permanent industry around it. The old Gayety Theatre, which ran pretty high-class traveling burleycue, is now, probably only temporarily, a legit house. Meanwhile, the burlesque fans buy their titillation in the cheap movie houses adjoining the Gayety. Sometimes they amplify their celluloid bills with “living dolls,” at other times the customers have to get their kicks out of sex movies advertised “For Adults Only.” An ad before us, of the Leader Theatre, says, “Burlesque’s brightest stars on screen.” The day’s program provided snake-charming Zorita in “I Married a Savage”; body-peeling Ann Corio in “Call of the Jungle”; and Maggie Hart, the stripper, in “Lure of the Isles,” plus “two more thrills.”
In and in front of cheap saloons, cocktail lounges and lunch rooms, are tarts, reefer-peddlers and novelty salesmen whose chief stock in trade is “sanitary rubber goods.” Pistols are on sale at $20. The local law isn’t tough on gun-toters.
Though Washington’s legal liquor closing on weekdays is 2 A.M., this street, like all in the city, is deserted early. Long before midnight its habitués have already made sleeping arrangements or are snoring in the alleys, cheap overnight lodgings or hallways, paralyzed by alky or cheap domestic red wine.
Crossing 9th Street here, is D Street, known as Pawnbroker’s Row. But get this--hockshops are against the law.
When you see a shop with a sign reading “Pawnbroker’s Exchange,” don’t believe it. The window looks like any “Uncle’s” anywhere in the world, with a profusion of new and used articles ranging from mink coats to tin watches. But that’s the build-up. These exchanges are only second-hand stores which buy and sell uncalled for articles pledged in other jurisdictions, where the three balls of the De Medicis are legal.
The temporarily embarrassed visitor, in need of cash quickly, often gets rooked in one of these pseudo-hock shops. Take the case of the stranger who runs short of petty cash until he can wire home. Suppose he has a $200 watch which he wants to put up for security. Needing only perhaps $25, that’s all he asks for, figuring when he redeems it in a few days he will pay only that, plus accrued interest. Yet when he asks the pawnbroker’s exchange man for $25, he is actually selling the $200 watch for that.
Some of the more legitimate shops get around the law by guaranteeing to sell the article back to the owner at a specified rate after a specified number of days. What usually happens to the unsophisticated is that they have lost their security for a fraction of its value, because it has already been sold.