Vice Districts
By 1918, Chicago already had a long history as one of the nation’s most vice-ridden towns. The Levee district, near 22nd Street on the South Side, was world-renowned for its many brothels, saloons and gambling-houses, and the city’s early development was marked by a back-and-forth between crusaders who sought to stamp out Chicago’s moral laxity and a population that generally accepted vice as necessary.
Chicago had last undergone a convulsion of morality in the early 1910s, when Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. and what was known as the Vice Commission loudly began cracking down on areas known for prostitution. That didn’t last. Harrison was followed into office in 1915 by Mayor William Thompson, who believed in the “wide-open town” philosophy of governance. A little more than a year after Thompson took office, his chief of police, Charles Healey, fired seven of the city’s eight morals inspectors. Healey himself, shortly thereafter, was brought up on charges of corruption, 
Chicago Mayor William H. Thompson (in the car) shakes hands with veterans of the Civil War. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) facing allegations that he peddled protection to lawbreaking businesses. (One captain testifying against him complained that because of Healey’s influence, “he had not been allowed to interfere with all-night cafes in which whites and blacks danced and drank together.”)
Still, Thompson and his allies kept up the pressure on foes of vice, and in late May 1918, new police chief John Alcock suspended tough-minded, conservative morals inspector Maj. M.L.C. Funkhouser, eventually bringing him up on charges that included conduct unbecoming a police officer, neglect of duty, insubordination and disobedience of orders. In truth, Funkhouser was simply too strict and principled for Thompson’s loose-minded approach, and the charges were trumped up. One concerned citizen told the Chicago Daily News: “We know that he had been a thorn in the side of the vice districts and these interests would do everything in their power and make every effort to get rid of him. … I think this might be fairly considered a possible preliminary for a wide open city.”
After Funkhouser was found guilty and removed from office in August, the Tribune editorialized, “We are certain that the observing and thinking people of the city feel with regard to the Funkhouser case that political and police stratagem have been successful in removing a man against whom the real charge was that he did too well something that was not really wanted done.”
Removing Funkhouser, though, did not necessarily make Chicago a vice-happy town again. Thompson and his allies were up against something much bigger than a mere morals inspector. They were up against the U.S. government, in wartime.
One of the offshoots of the army draft was the dragging of many young American men away from their families to cantonments. Far from home and mostly anonymous, temptation—in the form of alcohol and prostitution—hit soldiers and became a real problem for the army. Nationally, the sale of liquor to soldiers was banned. The army confronted venereal disease, and went to great lengths to ensure its men stayed clean, either by keeping the soldiers clean themselves with extensive prophylaxis inspections or by hitting them with propaganda, like camp posters that read, “A German Bullet is Cleaner than a Whore,” and pamphlets that wondered, “How could you look the flag in the face if you were dirty with gonorrhea?”
Worse for advocates of a wide-open Chicago, the federal government began cracking down on vice at its source, taking a keen interest in the operation of vice districts in major cities with nearby training facilities. This was handled by the war department, and in May, a Chicagoan who had helped battle vice in the city, Lieut. George J. Anderson, was put in charge. The Chicago city council tried several half-measures to satisfy the war department—including having only instrumental music played in places where alcohol was served, under the belief that it was lyrics and dancing that drove drinkers to sin—but the police rarely enforced the rules. And the feds were not happy.
By mid-August, Judge Harry Fisher warned the city’s aldermen that the problem of vice in Chicago had gotten so bad that, “Chicago’s police department is in danger of being taken over by the government.”
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- Getting Around Chicago Automobiles, Streetcars & the L
- The IWW Trial Industrial Workers of the World
- Labor The Growth of Unions
- Loyalty Pro-American Sentiment
- Prohibition Chicago & the Ban on Alcohol
- Terrorism Dynamite Girl and Other Bombings
- Vice Districts The "Wide-Open Town" Philosophy
