Four Candy Counters and a Prostitution Charge
Police called the fruit-and-candy stands on Third and Front streets a front. The women who kept them, and the men who lived with them, stood in police court and pleaded not guilty.
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.
Father Blate, who guards the fruit and candy shop on Third street between Spring and Seneca streets; Rose Zetler, who runs the stand at the northwest corner of Third and University streets; her husband, Harry Zetler, who presides over the second-hand store diagonally across the street; Alice Zetler, who runs a shop on Front street between Union and Pike, and her husband, Solomon, were all in the police court yesterday afternoon to answer the charges that the chief's detectives have made against them.
The women are charged with being prostitutes who practice their vocation under the guise of keeping candy and fruit shops. The men are charged with living off the earnings of the women.
The defendants all pleaded not guilty, and as City Attorney Winstock was sick, the cases were continued until Monday afternoon, January 7, at 2 o'clock. The prisoners were released on their personal recognizance.
“The women are charged with being prostitutes who practice their vocation under the guise of keeping candy and fruit shops. The men are charged with living off the earnings of the women.”
Then as now, police built vice cases around the storefront rather than the act, and the men in a woman's life were charged with a separate offense for the money. The little shops clustered around Third and University — a block from today's central library and courthouse — were the era's version of the "massage parlor" front, and the women caught in them carried the charge while the landlords and customers mostly did not.
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