Bawdy Business

Big-city vice investigations commonly rocket up in a splatter of front-page headlines, sputter out on back pages with a few inconsequential arrests and vague generalities which leave decent citizens no better informed about local conditions than they were before. Last week in Manhattan a racket investigation launched by Governor Lehman provided New Yorkers with an astonishingly detailed exposition of the personnel and workings of organized prostitution.

On trial in Supreme Court were swart, droop-eyed Charles Lucania and nine henchmen charged with having put New York City brothels on a big-business basis. Until 1933, explained Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey in his opening address to the jury, the city's prostitution was an individualistic enterprise, with a few "bookers" operating small strings of "houses" (apartments). Then various racketeers decided that a handsome profit could be made by assessing each prostitute $10 per week for bail bond, on a guarantee that she would never be jailed. One autumn day Lucania, a gambler and narcotic seller known as "Lucky Luciano" or "Charlie Lucky,"summoned the bondsmen to conference in a Lower East Side restaurant. After a few words with a lieutenant named "Little Davie" Betillo, he turned to the conferees, barked: "You guys are through. I'm giving the business to Little Davie."

So feared was Lucania, declared tall, handsome young Prosecutor Dewey, that the bondsmen promptly quit their business. Independent bookers were either driven out of the city at gun point or forced to join the syndicate.

System of the syndicate was simple and efficient. Every Sunday or Monday each prostitute would telephone her booker who would tell her at which "house" she was to spend the following week. Girls were shunted from apartment to apartment, said Prosecutor Dewey, "in the manner of an Orpheum circuit," usually spending a week in one place, sometimes two or three if they were popular. Most places were two-girl houses; some had only one, a few three. Each house was run by a madam whose job was to rent the apartment, hire a maid, solicit customers.

Earnings of a syndicate prostitute averaged $300 per week. Of this she paid 50% to her current madam, 10% of the remainder to her booker, $25 to $35 for a week's board, $5 for medical examination and care, $10 to the syndicate for bonding. That left $75 to $100 per week for herself. When a house was raided and a girl arrested, the madam would telephone a man named "Binge," who in turn notified one of the syndicate's bondsmen. The madam had to put up half the girl's bail, usually $300 to $500, did not get it back if the girl was acquitted. Arrested girls were taken to the ring's lawyer, a disbarred attorney named Karp, coached in an alibi. Eight out of ten appeared in court, were freed on their stories. Those who seemed sure to be convicted were told to "take it on the lam" (disappear temporarily) and their bail was forfeited. "We have identified," cried Prosecutor Dewey, "some 170-odd arrests for prostitution in 1935 in which the girls worked for this combination. Not one of these girls ever went to jail."

With some 200 houses and 1,000 girls, said he, the syndicate's profits amounted to about $12,775,000 per year.

Prostitutes and Madams arrested in a series of raids last February were the State's chief witnesses. First on the stand was Renee Gallo, 25, a pert, dark Italian who said she was born in New York, moved to Philadelphia at 8, first surrendered to a man at 18, took to the streets when he deserted her five years later. After six months a madam named Mollie introduced her to a booker named Pete. "Mollie says, 'This is the new girl, Renee.' And I says, 'Hello.' And Pete says, 'Wanna work steady?' And I says, 'Yes, I do.' And he says, 'You know what you hafta wear?' And I says, 'Yeah, evening gowns. I got some.' "

Some of her subsequent madams, testified Renee Gallo, were named Peggy Wild, Gussie, Nigger Ruth, Elsie, Cokey Flo, Jenny Benton, Little Jenny, Jenny the Factory.

Tall, blonde Muriel Ryan, 24, said she had graduated from an Indiana high school at 15, eloped, gone on the streets after her parents had the marriage annulled. After four years in Indianapolis she moved to New York, soon took up with bookers. It was her custom, said she, to work two weeks, then rest two weeks. "What would a man have to pay to take you to bed?" asked a defense attorney.

"Two dollars," replied Muriel Ryan in a precise, bored voice.

Trim, well-groomed Dorothy Arnold, 24, also known as Doris Sherman and Dixie, insisted that she had never prostituted herself. Virginia-born, she left school at 14, eloped at 17 with a carnival man. In New York he made a living sefling gowns and lingerie, then took to opium and retired. Meantime a girl she knew had begun bringing men to her apartment. Soon Dorothy Arnold took up this kind of entertaining as a livelihood. Once she tried to operate without bookers, found she could get no girls. Her girls, she said, charged whatever a man would pay, usually $2 to $4. She kept a running total of each one's earnings by punching neat green cards. "If a customer paid $2," she explained, "I'd punch two. If the next one paid $3, I punched five. If the next one paid $4, I punched nine." A card offered as evidence showed that one of her girls had collected $46 between 2 and 10 p. m. on a Friday, $62 in the same hours next day.

When a defense attorney insinuated that her opium-smoking husband had been intimate with one of her girls, Madam Arnold drew herself up, cried: "I am my husband's wife and his girl friend."

Mary Thomas, apathetic, bespectacled and 27, said she was born in Elizabeth, N. J., left school at 17, did factory and house work for six years, then married and had two children. When her husband died three years ago she went on New York streets to support her children. She earned, she said, $100 to $150 per week. After she went in "houses," however, the various deductions left her only $75 to $125 per week. "Which did you prefer," asked an attorney, "the streets or the houses?"

Mary Thomas tossed her head. "I preferred the streets," said she.

South Carolina-born Sally Osborn, 29, said she had been her booker's girl for some months. He put her in houses just the same, she explained, collected his weekly fee, called for her every night after work and took her to his home.

Mrs. William Garry, 41, a dowdy, Rumanian-born madam who operated in East Side tenements, was hopping mad when she got on the stand. Loudly she shrilled that she had at first refused to pay the syndicate's fees, that its strong-arm men had thereupon successively smashed her furniture, knocked her out with a lead pipe, robbed her. After that she joined up.

Part of her regular expenses, testified Madam Garry, consisted of tips to apartment house superintendents "who always knew why I wanted the place. Every house in town is run like that." Once, said she, she had moved out of a house at Lexington Avenue & 93rd St. because there were 19 competitors in the building.

Touched to the quick was Madam Garry when a defense attorney accused her of running a "$1 house." She admitted, however, that her rates had come down from $3 to $1.50. "That," she explained, "was because of the Depression."

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