Soon another man enters very drunk, and, seating himself, is soon similarly surrounded. In about a minute one of the girls leaves and whispers to the proprietor, who, emerging from behind his rampart, catches the unlucky visitor by the collar, and with the aid of a club compels him to ascend the steps again to the street. The man not having any money was an unwelcome guest, and they had no use for him.
Several others now enter, many of whom are personally known to the girls, and mutual glances of recognition pass between them. These pass on down to the further and privileged part of the place and are lost to view. The den is now pretty full and business is brisk. The bartender and proprietor are hurriedly passing out ordered drinks. The girls are flying around, executing orders and pocketing change. The piano-player bangs and thumps his hideously-wiry instrument. Glasses are clinking, chairs and tables moving, and altogether there is a discordant tumult well calculated to bewilder the coolest kind of a head.
Suddenly there is a scream—a piercing scream. Everybody starts and looks towards the spot from whence it proceeded. One of the girls quickly says, "Oh, it's nothing, Jimmy is only licking Hattie." The lover has only beaten the poor creature who is supporting him, and, strange as it may appear, she will think all the more of him for this brutality. It is a pretty generally known fact, so far as females of this class are concerned, that if a man occasionally severely beats his mistress, she regards it as a proof that he entertains for her an ardent affection. It is now getting late, and several of the girls are leaving for home with their new-made male friends, and indications point towards the place being closed for the night. The butcher comes forth from his "private room," followed by a number of the girls who have been his companions, and is led to the door and assisted out. We leave also, and as we ascend the steps to the street we discover our butcher in the hands of a policeman who is dragging him off to the station, where we shall leave him for the night.
Now, most of these girls live in what are called furnished rooms, and it is to those that they take their male friends when they leave the saloon, stopping on the way, of course, for "supper." In some cases the girls are panel thieves—but that is rare. In nearly all cases they have lovers and generally provide home comforts for their masters, but in all cases they are for hire. The nature of the business they follow demands their attention at night, so that they sleep nearly all the day. The great majority of them are veritable thieves. To drug a man who carries money, or ply him with liquor until he is unconscious and then rob him of all he has, is a very common proceeding, particularly when afterwards he is put out on the street and left, when the chances are more than a hundred to one that he neither recollects the place where he was nor the girl who stole his money or his valuables. The proprietor, if he can, divides the stolen amount with the girl—with the lover always. Many instances are known of half-intoxicated men leaving valuables with the bar-tender of some of these places, for supposed security, but when requested to be returned were met with a denial that the valuables were ever intrusted to him. With an air of insulted innocence the bartender declares that he never saw the articles or the man before.
We shall now return to our butcher acquaintance, and follow the incident to its ending. So we proceed to the Tombs the next morning, and there in the pen with the other prisoners we find our man. Upon his arraignment in court he tells the following story, which is the truth verbatim:
"I was wandering through Chatham street, when my attention became attracted by a bevy of gaudily-dressed girls, who asked me to while away my spare hours in a concert saloon. Smitten with the charms of the tempters I was loth to part with them, and after some preliminary conversation they enticed me to their lair. I had at this time about five hundred dollars in my possession, and after some hours carousal, they robbed and sent me away penniless. This is how it was done: I entered the saloon and was taken to a private room, when I called for some wine, of which we all partook. I may say here that the wine, so called, was really nothing but cider. The girls sat on the sofa in this room with me. We continued to drink and I was the recipient of more caresses than I ever was before in my life. After the lapse of perhaps three hours, some of the girls left me, and when I called for more wine, I found that my money was gone. I was not so drunk at this time that I could not understand that I had been robbed. I asked for the girls that had left, and was told that they had gone home. I paid ninety dollars for wine in this room, but they gave me sometimes cider and whisky mixed, and then when I became really unconsciously intoxicated they put me out, after having taken all my money from my clothes.
"I had made an arrangement to go home with two of the girls, but I suppose when they saw that some of their number had taken all my money, they left me. There was a sofa in this room and one of the girls intimated to me that I had assaulted her and wanted some money. Another said she could not afford to spend her time there unless she was paid. Another induced me to give her money to buy a hat, and then when I lost consciousness they robbed me of all I had, my watch and chain, scarf-pin, ring and the remainder of my money. Many times during the hours I was there, drinks and wine were brought in that I did not order, but the girls would insist that I had ordered it. Once in a while the 'madame' of the place would call in the room, and coming up to me would embrace me and tell me I was a jolly fellow. I could not now recognize any of the girls and do not know which saloon I went into. I live in this city."
As a matter of custom, detectives were placed upon the case after the discharge of the prisoner, but that was the last ever heard of the matter, as he was unable to identify any of the parties arrested.
The foregoing is only a sample of hundreds of similar cases constantly taking place, in some of which the sufferer, if he is a stranger, and has no friends, is oftentimes sent to the Island for ten days for being drunk, while the pretty waiter girl who has drugged, robbed and finally discarded him is never even arrested. There are many other cases, however, in which the pretty waiter girl does not fare so well, and after conviction has to serve out her time, thereby losing her lover and her liberty.
What has been written applies more especially to the concert-saloon waiter girl, and does not in the least pertain to that other class of girls who are found in what are called dance houses, of which latter there are not a few in this city. There are some very peculiar kinds of females to be found in dance houses and not to be met with outside the abodes of Terpsichore. The term, dance house, itself, is susceptible of various interpretations. It may mean anything from Harry Hill's, at Crosby and Houston streets, to an Italian gathering in Mott or Mulberry street. But the performances carried on are precisely alike in all. In the sporting dance house, a series of boxing matches, small theatrical sketches may be acted, a song or two interspersed, and some piano playing, winding up afterwards with a dance, in which all so inclined may indulge, taking either the regular girls employed in the house as partners, or others who have strayed in from the streets.