The Wild-Goose Chase to the 'Review'
A cruel prank lures the coroner and police to a notorious house of ill-repute, only to find the 'victim' alive and well.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A false report of a suicide at Hyde park, a notorious place of resort near Claassen-Sweeney's brewery, called Coroner Horton with his deputy and two newspaper reporters and a pair of detectives out to that place at 11 o'clock last night on a wild-goose chase. The report came to police headquarters by telephone that a woman of the town by the name of Mattie Metcalfe or Mary Rodgers, indifferently, had been the suicide. A thorough investigation was made, but the proprietors of nearby resorts knew nothing of it. The telephone exchange eventually revealed the call originated from the Review, a house of extremely bad repute kept by Nellie Diaz near the end of the Grant street bridge. The coroner and his procession went to the Review, where they were met by a half-dressed man who denied sending the report. He produced the woman, who was alive and well, to the crowd. It is suspected that a number of young men who had gone out to the Review to have an orgie incited the woman herself to send in the message.
“Everybody was disgusted and vengeance was sworn upon the practical jokers, but it was not found who they were.”
This story highlights the era's preoccupation with policing the 'morals' of sex workers and the spaces they inhabited. It offers a rare, if distorted, window into the social life of a red-light district near what is now the Industrial District, where class tensions often played out in these 'practical jokes' against public authorities.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.