{"id":7484,"date":"2018-10-09T21:08:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/?p=7484"},"modified":"2019-08-15T11:26:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T11:26:12","slug":"wheeling-the-wickedest-city-in-the-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wheeling-the-wickedest-city-in-the-south","title":{"rendered":"Wheeling: the Wickedest City in the South?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Carrie Nation Visits the Friendly City<\/h1>\n
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$\"Wheeling$ <\/a>
Newspaper clipping from the Ohio County Public Library\u2019s online newspaper archive, http:\/\/ohiocountywv.advantage-preservation.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
As we are so often reminded, Wheeling was once a wide open city, chock-full of businesses eager to supply the robust demand for the vices most popular with working men: primarily beer, tobacco, gambling, and prostitutes. At the dawn of the 20th century, hundreds of saloons lined Main and Market Streets, all of whose bars were lined with brass\u00a0spittoons.<\/p>\n
$\"Carrie$ <\/a>
Carrie Nation, courtesy Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Into this den of iniquity descended the famous (or infamous) temperance and anti-tobacco activist from Kansas, Carrie Amelia Nation<\/a>, who visited Wheeling in early October, 1901.<\/p>\n
A physically imposing woman whose first husband \u2018died of the drink,\u2019 inspiring a lifelong crusade, the \u201cKansas Joint Smasher,\u201d was best known for smashing saloons and \u201cgrog shops\u201d with a hatchet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Union$
Union Bar, a typical Wheeling saloon of the early 1900s. From the Joseph Hoffmann Collection<\/a> of the Ohio County Public Library Archives<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Carrie Nation spoke on October 6 at the state fairgrounds on Wheeling Island after promising to \u201cregulate the wickedest city in the south.\u201d<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Carrie Nation at the State Fairgrounds in Wheeling, courtesy Kansas Historical Society. https:\/\/www.kshs.org\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The railroads took advantage of the national celebrity of the \u201cApostle of the hatchet,\u201d advertising her visit and offering special \u201cCarrie Nation Excursions\u201d to bring \u201cimmense crowds\u201d to Wheeling from Pittsburgh and Washington, PA, via the B & O, and from Cleveland and Canton, OH, via the Wheeling and Lake Erie. For its part, the trolley car line from Moundsville lowered its roundtrip rate to 25 cents.<\/p>\n
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An Unmerciful Roasting<\/h2>\n
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$\"\"$ <\/a>
Carrie Nation in 1910 holding her famed hatchet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
En route to her hotel after a second lecture at the First Christian Church<\/a> (where she accused the city\u2019s wealthy brewers and saloon men of \u201cmaking their money at the expense of the home\u201d), Mrs. Nation made a stop to carry out her promised \u201cactive campaign.\u201d Contractually bound to avoid smashing, she nevertheless refused to pass a saloon without at least a word or two.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, she pushed her way into The Senate saloon on the corner of 16th and Market, and was followed by as many of the 300 hundred mostly women followers (members of the \u201cHome Defender Club\u201d) who could squeeze into the saloon\u2019s two entrances. Once inside, she admonished the bartenders to \u201cmend their ways\u201d lest they be damned to hell. Police officer O\u2019Leary, who had been tasked with keeping an eye on Mrs. Nation, followed her into The Senate where he confronted her, accusing her of disturbing the peace and ordering her to return to her hotel. She refused and was arrested, charged with \u201cinciting a riot\u201d and violating a city ordinance that prohibited \u201cloud cries on the Sabbath Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
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[The Senate Saloon stood, ca. 1903~1914, on 16th and Market where WVNCC\u2019s Barnes and Noble\/Starbucks store is now. Harry L. Wheat was the proprietor. It\u2019s the building with the Pabst sign in the above 1907 flood image from the William O\u2019Leary Real Photo Postcard Collection of the Ohio County Public Library Archives<\/a>.]<\/p>\n
At the police station, Mrs. Nation \u201croasted Chief Ritz and Lieut. O\u2019Leary unmercifully,\u201d then fell asleep on a sofa. Meanwhile, Mayor Sweeney was immediately called and, in a highly unusual move, a trial was promptly convened at midnight.<\/p>\n
$\"Wheeling$ <\/a>
Newspaper clipping from the Ohio County Public Library\u2019s online newspaper archive, http:\/\/ohiocountywv.advantage-preservation.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A transcript of this rather odd and impromptu \u201cspecial session of the police court\u201d was included verbatim in the Intelligencer<\/em> on October 8. O\u2019Leary testified that members of Nation\u2019s entourage were \u201cshouting and hooting and acting in a disorderly manner.\u201d He further alleged that Mrs. Nation was \u201cmaking loud remarks on tobacco chewing and designated the saloons as hell holes.\u201d Another witness testified that he heard Mrs. Nation say to O\u2019Leary that \u201che ought to take that chew of tobacco out of his mouth and wash it out with lye.\u201d Representing herself, Mrs. Nation complained that she hadn\u2019t been permitted to call her own witnesses for the defense. The Senate bartenders accused Mrs. Nation of threatening to \u201cclose down this hell joint\u201d and \u201cwhooping and hollering like someone that was drunk\u201d (the irony of this remark caused laughter in the courtroom). A \u201cwordy war\u201d then ensued among Mayor Sweeney, Solicitor Coniff, and Mrs. Nation. The latter testified that she rarely passed a saloon without rebuking the men inside. She felt it was her Christian duty to warn them that \u201chell is being prepared for them; that they are anarchists; [and] that there is no law that will protect them\u2026\u201d Mrs. Nation said \u201cshe had counseled the women of Wheeling to smash the saloons, and save their husbands and sons from ruin.\u201d Coniff countered that she should stay out of the saloons where she could do no good and only bring violence to herself and her women followers. Mayor Sweeney accused her of desecrating the Sabbath by lecturing for an admission fee, which he called \u201ca purely mercenary transaction.\u201d He added that Wheeling felt \u201cinsulted and imposed upon\u201d by her actions. Mrs. Nation was fined $20 and sentenced to thirty days in jail. Refusing to pay bond, she spent the night in the county jail, vowing an appeal.<\/p>\n
As the Intelligencer<\/em> reported a couple of days later, the spectacle of the police, mayor, and city solicitor severely lecturing an \u201cold woman\u201d (Nation was 54 at the time) at midnight did not sit well with a lot of Wheeling citizens who had read the account. She was released from jail after 18 hours. On her way back to her hotel she reportedly opened the doors of a number of saloons on Market Street, shouting, \u201cCome out of there you men! Don\u2019t you know you are going straight to Hell?\u201d<\/p>\n
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But Was Wheeling the Wickedest?<\/h2>\n
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$\"Wheeling$ <\/a>
Newspaper clipping from the Ohio County Public Library\u2019s online newspaper archive, http:\/\/ohiocountywv.advantage-preservation.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
While she was being interviewed later in her room at the McLure, the reporter asked, \u201cIs Wheeling as bad as you have been told it was?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she replied. \u201cWheeling is rum soaked. I never saw so much spit on the streets as here in your town, showing so much tobacco used. Ladies cannot walk along the streets on account of the spit\u2026Shame! Shame!! Shame!!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Meet Carrie Nation in Wheeling This Friday!<\/a><\/h2>\n
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Want to see notorious bootlegger \u201cBig Bill Lias\u201d and hatchet-wielding temperance advocate \u201cCarrie the \u2018Apostle of the Hatchet\u2019 Nation\u201d do battle in the flesh?<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Big Bill (Dave Clutter) vs. Carrie (Judi Hendrickson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Join us at the Francis Pier-Pint Historic Brew-Off: Prohibition Edition this Friday, August 16, 2019 at 5:30 at River City. History and hops will take center stage at the Francis Pier-Pint Historic Brew-Off: Prohibition Edition. The event, which takes guests back to prohibition-era Wheeling, is part beer tasting, part trivia, part interactive history. Big Bill Lias vs Carrie The Kansas Joint Smasher Nation, LIVE! \u00a0 Get a ticket<\/a>\u00a0or call 304-232-0244!!<\/p><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Carrie Nation Visits the Friendly City As we are so often reminded, Wheeling was once a wide open city, chock-full of businesses eager to supply the robust demand for the vices most popular with working men: primarily beer, tobacco, gambling,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40,6,1],"tags":[640,932,939,934,936,727,938,937,933,935,148],"coauthors":[313],"class_list":["post-7484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archiving-wheeling","category-contributor-ocpl","category-uncategorized","tag-beer","tag-carrie-nation","tag-digitized-newspapers","tag-home-defender-club","tag-mayor-sweeney","tag-mclure","tag-newspaper-database","tag-state-fair-grounds","tag-temperance-movement","tag-the-senate-saloon","tag-tobacco"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/AW-FI_Carrie-Nation.jpg?fit=738%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pkc7-1WI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7484"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8043,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions\/8043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7484"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}