Skiddy Street: A Nasty Stain in Denison's Story

 "Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice." -Lyman Abbott

I always stress in my classes that history has never been the story of just daffodils and daises. History is also an ugly, evil, and disgusting story. In this blog post, I am going to give you a brief history on a dark vignette in Denison's story. Like its regional counterparts, Dallas (Frog Town) and Fort Worth (Hell's Half Acre), Denison also had its own red light district (Skiddy Street). At the start of the 1870s, Judge Christopher Columbus Binkley of the 12th Judicial District in Texas approached the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway Company and suggested they create a new depot north of Sherman. The railway board were impressed at the plans and opened the Katy Depot in a small community named Denison. Binkley used his genial connections with Governor Edmund J. Davis to accelerate the town's incorporation process, and Denison was officially created a city on February 8, 1873. Owing to the railway, Denison's population skyrocketed between 2,000-3,000 inhabitants in a span of 4 months. The North Texas region was sprawling with a mixture of Anglos from the South, European immigrants, and Native Americans at the start of the Gilded Age.

A saloon on Skiddy Street at the end of the Reconstruction Era. In a January 1873 edition of the Scribner's Magazine, Edward King noted that "every third building in the place [Denison] was a drinking saloon with gambling apprentices... men drunk and sober danced to rude music... and did not lack female partners."

The Denison Town Company, which had been established on September 20, 1872 by Colonel Robert Smith Stevens, seized the chance to profit from the community's sudden growth and sold over $90,000 worth of building lots in the first four months of 1873. The Denison News reported the stiff competition new residents faced when they moved to Denison and hoped to immediately buy a plot: "A great many families in Denison are still residing in tents. There are no dwellings to rent, as they are occupied as fast as the mechanics can finish them." Several greedy businessmen acquired plots on the unpaved road next to the Main Street (later named Skiddy Street after Commodore Francis Skiddy, a Denison railroad official), and built 20 saloons and 10 brothels in the first six months. These dirty facilities were very popular as they appeased to the weary, sex-hungry commuters who traveled from Dallas to Oklahoma and stopped at the Katy Depot en route. In its existence, Skiddy Street had 52 saloons; the alcohol-serving establishments were the most lucrative shops in the city. Historian V.V. Masterson's description of Denison's sin center is precise: "Here, crowding each other into the befouled former watercourse, were the tented gambling halls, the hurdy-gurdy joints, lowest-class saloons, cockfighting pits, variety houses, and the deadly 'dovecotes' that served as houses of prostitution for all races, colors, and creeds."

A map of Denison in 1873. Main Street is located in the center and is highly populated with offices and residences. Skiddy Street, Denison's red light district, is one street over on the left.

Since alcohol intake was often abused in the frequented saloons, violence and crime were common on Skiddy Street. Texas scholar Jack Maguire once wrote that Denison was the perfect squatting grounds for hardened men: "Denison, four miles as the crow flies from the sluggish river that separated Texas from the Indian Territory, became a kind of unofficial headquarters for a variety of criminals. It was a local brag that at least half of the almost 4,000 residents were 'ruffians' and other scourings of society." Travelers who a large appetite for beer and whisky would often engage in fist-fights with colleagues and local law enforcement. The first recorded death on Skiddy Street was policeman John Shannon on February 5, 1874; Shannon was hit by a fat slug when he attempted to arrest a boisterous group outside the El Dorado Saloon. Starting in April 1875, the Denison Daily Cresset reported weekly criminal notes on prostitutes. Once, "two notorious negro prostitutes" named Amelia and Emma Brown were charged with "stripping a colored girl, tying her to a bedpost and whipping her with a broom." The next week, Sallie Miller, a white sex worker hailing from San Antonio, plunged a knife in Ed Killian's cheek and hair-pulled Louise Duvall over a disagreement. The Dallas Morning News voted that if they "could pick the place in Texas where crime and vice flourished with least restraint," it would be Denison.

Another saloon on Skiddy Street. Note how the road is soiled and unpaved.

The main attraction on Skiddy Street, aka Rat Alley, were the brothels. Madame Millie Hipps and her soiled 'doves', who came from Mollie Andrews' sickening incubator in Sedalia, Missouri, set up camp on Skiddy Street and attracted the high-paying customers from Sherman. The undesired women, who were between the ages of 15 and 28, used pseudonyms to hide their real identities; these included Effie Cregier, Minnie Lee, Bellie Ward, Irene Donaldson, Amanda Hudson, "Irish Mag", and Lizzie Woods. "Rowdy" Kate Lowe, the flirtatious proprietor of the Sazerac Saloon, was known to serve cold drinks and sexual favors to customers. Prostitutes would dance with potential sober and drunk customers before enticing the clientele to an array of services. The young women would "work" in crude rooms above the saloons, singular cribs, or as a final resort, in the streets. On Sundays, "the frail daughters of Skid Row donned their finest plumage and paraded through town," where they would scream and laugh at passerbys from borrowed automobiles in hopes to attract more customers. At the end of the day, the prostitutes would have to give up most of their wages by paying rent to the Madame. Prostitutes in Denison were also subject to harsh treatment from their customers, resulting in bruising. Money was made in the bedroom, however, the profession also had a dark side. Several prostitutes came face-to-face with their grim reality and committed suicide; for example, a popular sex worker at the Crystal Palace brothel named "Maud" unexpectedly took morphine after a day's work and died-- she was 18 years-old.

Denison's Main Street at the turn of the twentieth century. Only a handful of saloons and brothels existed on Main Street (because of their specific licenses and zoning restrictions). The bulk of the city's vice facilities were located one street over on Skiddy Row.

Although Denison's red light district was enjoyed by many travelers, a growing number of community folk opposed the wretched establishments. The City Council passed Section 55 in the late 1870s, which gave them the power to license and regulate Skiddy Street businesses; the Council charged each entity $5 per week to operate, as well as an additional $1 fee per "inmate" they employed. Section 80 was also passed, which gave the City Council power to regularly inspect Skiddy Street facilities; some report that the prostitutes were probably in better health than the regular Denison residents because of their frequent doctors' visits. Despite these preventative measures, the vice continued to soar because alcohol and prostitution were economically important to the city's coffers. Lee Hall, a former city marshal in Sherman, became Denison's police chief in the mid-1870s and started to punish the bad men who "were 'thick as fiddlers in hell'." He was considered fearless; once, he was shot five times while on duty yet shrugged off the bullets and continued his street rounds. In two years, Officer Hall had made 1,060 arrests. Efforts to remove Skiddy Street's brothels were further encouraged when the road was officially renamed to Chestnut Street in the 1880s. Local industries slowly replaced the unsanitary facilities at the turn of the twentieth century, and the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which prohibited the sale of alcohol, damaged the saloons that remained on the former Skiddy Street. Following a well-reported railroad strike in Denison in 1922, where 500 National Guard soldiers were called in to clear the mess and the Katy Depot was relocated to Waco, the saucy activities on old Skiddy Street virtually ceased.

Denison was established at the end of the Reconstruction Era as a promising commercial hub, however, the shady activities which greedy, sex-hungry, adventure-craving, alcohol-yearning men enjoyed prospered and altered the town's identity. Today, Denison is a friendly, genuine community which is beautiful and vibrant. We are fortunate that the colorful bandits, violence, and vice have disappeared and are only a ugly stamp on the city's past. 

Sources:

Bridges, Jennifer, "The Katy's Ladies: Prostitution in Early Denison, Texas, 1872-1880," East Texas Historical Journal 53, no. 1 (2015). 

Cranfill, Leslie, "The Early History of Denison, Texas," M.A. Thesis, Hardin-Simmons University, 1951.

Maguire, Jack, Katy's Baby: The Story of Denison, Texas (Austin: Nortex Press, 1991).

Masterson, V.V., The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1952).