Free Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott

is a secret the sisters took literally to the grave.
    In bold lettering, their markers read:

     

    MINNA LESTER SIMMS
    1866–1948
    AIDA LESTER SIMMS
    1864–1960

     

    I n Omaha by 1895, the sisters were ready to invest their $35,000 “inheritance.” Most likely they convinced a powerful acquaintance—a cattle baron, maybe, or a railroad mogul—to back their burgeoning enterprise. “It is hardly conceivable,” wrote Real West magazine, “that a couple of amateurs could break in without proper connections and set up an elaborate brothel in competition with existing houses at any time.”
    They found a run-down parlor house at 12th and Jackson streets, a shabby, fraying part of town, and began renovations. Ada sent notice to their old actress friends who sought work, promising good money and clean quarters. The sisters sat for painted portraits, Victorian-style glamour shots more suggestive of European royalty than the proprietors of a whorehouse. Ada donned a hat topped with a sprig of flowers and a lacy-sleeved, swollen gown so tightly corseted that her breasts seemed to beg for emancipation. Minna wore a bonnet and a dress layered with frothy ruffles. She reclined on a velvet chaise longue, one leg extended, a high-heeled foot pointed daintily.
    Business was steady, but Omaha had seen better days. The financial panic of 1893 had ravaged the town, but its leaders—mindful of how expositions had benefited other cities like Louisville, Cincinnati, and, most notably, Chicago—had a solution. The town’s Trans-Mississippi Exposition was to run for five months, from June 1 to November 1, 1898.
    The sisters sensed an opportunity to corner the market on exposition visitors, and rented a building in the downtown business district at 14th and Dodge streets. Such an optimum locale was bound to lure fairgoers who tired of the usual attractions and sought bawdy midnight indiscretions.
    The exposition grounds were laid out in a fashion similar to those of the Mall in Washington, D.C., covering 108 city blocks. Myriad recent inventions were among the 4,062 exhibits—flushing toilets, faucets, X-ray machines, incandescent light bulbs, and an incubator for premature infants—all of which consistently drew large, drop-jawed crowds. Visitors tasted Jell-O and Boston baked beans for the first time. They saw Buffalo Bill Cody, by this time one of the most famous men in the world, and the same cast of scouts, cowboys, rough riders, and crack shots that had awed the crowds at the Chicago World’s Fair.
    More than 2.6 million people passed through Omaha during the exposition, and the sisters welcomed their share of the visitors. Though mentioned only in prudent, late night whispers, Minna and Ada made a lasting impression on the locals. A Mr. Tom Knapp, who grew up to be the Omaha city welfare director, delivered telegrams as a young boy to the Everleighs at their place of business.
    “They were some punkins,” he recalled seventy years later, in 1968. “They were some lookers.”
    By the time the exposition closed in the fall, the sisters had doubled their initial investment. What should they do with $70,000, and where could they go? The moneyed crowd fled as soon as the fair displays were hauled away, and Omaha’s native population—a blue-collar mix of Germans, Swedes, and Danes—was not interested in champagne and $10 admission fees.
    There was nothing left for them there.

     

    W hile dives across the country specialized in the defloration of young virgins, beatings, bondage, and daisy chains—a continuous line of girls pleasuring one another with fingers and mouths—the Everleighs proved that madams could conduct business with decency and class. Some situations couldn’t be helped. Many courtesans suffered from chronic pelvic congestion, a dull, persistent pain caused by continuous sex without orgasm. The latest medical books described a woman’s most fertile period as during and after menstruation, but working girls