A Lively Case

I recently ran across an article in an 1892 Springfield newspaper entitled "A Lively Case" that I found amusing. It was about a woman named Maggie Langley who was charged with "keeping a bawdy house," with a neighbor named Lucinda King being the complaining witness.
When the case came up in early July, the prosecution brought out the names of a number of men who had allegedly visited the home of the 51-year-old Mrs. Langley at the corner of Lyon and Locust streets. There was "considerable amusement among the crowd when certain names were mentioned," and the judge had to threaten to clear the courtroom unless order was restored.
The 35-year-old complainant, however, proved to be a fairly weak witness for the prosecution. Mrs. King, a near neighbor of Mrs. Langley, admitted that she and the defendant had recently engaged in a dispute, which caused jurors to conclude that her complaint might be little more than a personal vendetta. In an apparent attempt to buttress her own character, Mrs. King also made several "more or less remarkable" statements. She claimed that she always opened the doors and blinds any time a man entered her home, that she'd never seen a married man walking with a girl on the streets, that she'd never seen a young woman "arrange a gentleman's cravat," and that she herself had "received but very little company" when she was young. Whether Mrs. King's own reputation was less than stellar or the jurors simply thought the statements were incredibly naive is not clear, but for whatever reason they found them hard to believe. Mrs. King also added that the property occupied by Mrs. Langley had previously been the domicile of "Madam Bell," whom those in the court remembered as a notorious woman but also a benevolent one.
"The case from start to finish was sensational," according to the newspaper report, "and many men were afraid that allegations would be made which it might be difficult to explain or disprove." However, "the testimony was 'rocky' all the way through," and "was not convincing to the jury," who brought in a verdict of not guilty after a brief deliberation.
In a footnote to this story, Maggie Langley and Lucinda King were still neighbors living near the intersection of Lyon and Locust eight years later, at the time of the 1900 census.