A Murder in Oregon County

The charred body of Oscar Bushart, a 27-year-old real estate dealer, was found in the backseat of an automobile on Friday, July 13, 1934, in a lonely spot northeast of Thayer (MO), the apparent victim of a torch slaying. 

The coroner examined the body and concluded that Bushart had likely been beaten before he was burned. The car in which the man was found belonged to his father-in-law, 37-year-old R. E. Edwards, also a real estate dealer. Bushart had not been seen since Thursday night and had apparently been dead several hours before he was found early Friday afternoon.

Edwards told reporters he had "no idea" what the motive for the killing might be. Edwards said neither he nor his stepson, who worked in Edwards's agency, had any enemies that he knew about in their real estate dealings. Edwards said that if Bushart had received any threats, he didn't know about them, and he suggested robbery as a possible motive.

Edwards, who'd been married to Bushart's mother since Bushart was a youngster, said he'd practically raised him and that he'd never had any trouble with him. He didn't know why anybody would be after Bushart. 

Edwards talked a good game, but, come to find out, he himself was behind the murder. 

Joe Luck Braden, a 35-year-old Thayer man, was suspected of being involved in the murder from the beginning because he was known to have argued with Bushart shortly before the latter's death. Three months later, authorities linked Braden and Edwards together in the crime after it was learned they'd been prison mates together in Arkansas. 

Both Braden and Edwards were arrested on suspicion. Braden admitted the killing, and Edwards admitted paying him to do the dirty deed. Braden said he'd beaten Bushart to death and then poured gasoline over the body and burned it. He was promised $500 by Edwards but was paid only a small fraction of that amount. Edwards's motive was a $4,000 life insurance policy he had taken out on Bushart. 

A day or two later, Edwards also implicated a third man, saying that Ike Dawson had helped Braden do the actual killing. In addition, Edwards's wife gave police information about two other murders that her husband had previously committed. 

He was charged only for the Bushart murder, however, as were his two co-defendants. Dawson pleaded guilty in early April 1935 to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. In June 1935, Braden also pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, and Edwards was found guilty of the same charge by a jury, which recommended a life sentence. The judge sentenced both to life in prison. 

Edwards was paroled in 1957 after serving 22 years of his supposedly life sentence. No word on what happened to his two co-defendants after they went to prison.

Joplin Bawdy Houses

Two of the past three weeks I've written about bawdy houses and prostitution in Springfield, but Joplin puts Springfield to shame when it comes to a track record of prostitution. I suppose "put to shame" is a poor way to say that prostitution in Joplin has always been more prevalent than in Springfield because a lot of arbiters of morality, I'm sure, would say that Joplin, not Springfield, has the shameful record. Nonetheless, I thought I'd take a look at Joplin prostitution this week. This is a topic that I first tackled in my Wicked Joplin book. https://amzn.to/3X0bd7E

From the time Joplin was first founded in 1873 (very likely even before it was officially founded, when it was nothing but a mining camp) prostitution was prevalent in Joplin. Prostitution was not legal, but city officials tended to look the other way. For many years, the only real effort to control the vice was a fine system that served more or less as a de facto licensing system. Periodically, usually toward the end of each month, police would come around to the various houses of ill repute and collect fines from the madam and the working girls. 

Prostitution continued almost unabated throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, although there were occasional attempts, largely unsuccessful, to crack down on the bawdy houses. Prohibition put a damper on prostitution and other vices in Joplin just as it did almost everywhere else, but it didn't stop it altogether. 

For instance, I recently ran across a September 1928 story in the Joplin Globe about the city health commissioner's campaign to try to rid the city of prostitution. The commissioner especially didn't like the fact that bawdy houses were allowed to operate in Joplin under the guise of rooming houses. He thought the city ought to claim down on the licensing of the rooming houses, but members of the city council were cool to his proposition. They seemed to think there was little they could do legally to deny licenses under the current ordinances.

The commissioner responded that they ought to change the ordinances and that police ought to repeatedly raid every rooming house suspected of being a front for prostitution until the prostitutes were forced either to stop business or leave town. He even made a motion to that effect, but "the motion was apparently forgotten during the discussion that followed." 

More on 1940s Springfield Prostitution

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about bawdy houses in Springfield (MO) during the early 1940s and about the police chief's crackdown on them in 1944. Since then, I ran across an interesting article that sheds additional light on the extent of prostitution in the city in the early 1940s and how prostitutes operated.

In November 1941. a reporter for the Springfield Leader and Press named Tom Tyro decided to look into those very questions. His investigation revealed that Springfield boasted about 150 "regular prostitutes" who worked in 22 houses concentrated in the same small area in downtown Springfield (no doubt the area around College and Campbell streets that I mentioned two weeks ago), although a few worked out of houses scattered in other parts of the town. 

To get a better idea of the living conditions of the prostitutes and how their operation worked, the reporter called on a few of the girls. The first one he visited had her room at the top of a stairs in a boarding house. In the hallway outside the girl's room was a little bell on a table and a sign above the table that read "Ring for landlady." 

Tyro observed that the hallway was not very clean, but, after being let into the girl's room, he found it to be clean with shiny, polished floors and with the bed freshly painted and made up. The girl herself was "scrupulously clean." 

Tyro ended up talking to twenty different young prostitutes, and he learned that they made about $15 to $30 a week on average. "All of them were clean. None of them drank. Some smoked. All of them were well versed in the ways of their profession, all of them knew how to guard themselves and their clients, all of them made a practice of being examined by a physician at least once a month."

One of the landladies explained that the reason the girls didn't drink was that she didn't permit them to do so because they couldn't handle the men as well when they were "tight." Also, if she allowed drinking, the girls would start "hanging around taprooms," and she wouldn't have any girls left. 

Most of the time the girls and their landlords were able to handle their clients and keep rowdiness to a minimum, but occasionally police had to be called. The police did answer such calls, and that was the extent of "police protection" that the prostitutes and landladies received. The girls told Tyro that the police rarely bothered them because they knew the girls were clean and that they tried to hold down rowdiness. 

The doctor who examined and treated most of the girls was city health commissioner Dr. W. E. Handley. One of the girls mentioned him by name and said that he was doing "a wonderful job" keeping the regular prostitutes in Springfield clean. She complained, however, about the "taproom girls," who, she thought, "spread twice as much disease in a week as we do in a year." Why didn't Dr. Handley examine them, she wanted to know. 

Handley told the reporter that he'd like to do something about the "barflies" but that the law didn't give him any authority over them. Another doctor commended Dr. Handley for his work. Handley had "stuck his neck out in examining these girls." As a city official, he wasn't even supposed to know that the houses of prostitution existed. However, the unidentified doctor thought that most of the medical profession was behind Dr. Handley. "We all know that the taproom girls are far worse than the initiated prostitutes, but I don't think there is any way that the situation can be remedied under the present ordinances." 

Those ordinances, though, as we learned two weeks ago, were about to change. In 1944, the chief of police would claim down on prostitution in Springfield.

Called Her a Strumpet

Things used to make newspaper headlines that nowadays wouldn't even be considered newsworthy, or that would be considered nobody's business except the parties involved. Some of those items, though, were quite interesting. Take the July 27, 1897, story in the Springfield (MO) News-Democrat headlined "Called Her a Strumpet," for example.

It seems Mary Cable had filed for divorce from her husband, G. T. Cable, on the grounds that he "was possessed of an ungovernable temper" and that she had "endured its outbursts throughout their married life." Mary further asserted that her husband had called her all sorts of vile names and wrongfully accused her of infidelity. Allegedly, Cable had repeatedly waved his fist in front of Mary's face and called her a "good for nothing strumpet."

He also refused to let Mary use the money that she had made from selling chickens, eggs, and other produce that she had raised herself. In addition, any time Mary would visit friends or relatives, her husband would accuse her when she came home of having "associated with lewd and immoral men." 

One of Mary's specific complaints was that on July 17, just ten days before the article appeared in the paper, Cable had come out to where she was milking a cow, gotten angry for no reason, and abused and kicked her. 

Cable was reportedly a well-known citizen in the Springfield area, and the couple had been married for over twenty years and had seven children together. Mary asked for custody of the youngest one, who was three years old, and for an even split of the family's personal property, which was valued at $3,700. 

Springfield Bawdy Houses

In my book Wicked Springfield (MO) https://amzn.to/3X1Zx4h, I discussed various vices in the city, including prostitution, but the book only covered up through the 1910s. It left off about the time Prohibition took effect, because the new law caused a noticeable drop off in vice in general, not just in alcohol-related offenses.

The lifting of Prohibition in the early 1930s, however, ushered in a new era, and vice, especially prostitution, once again flourished in Springfield. I probably shouldn't use the word "flourish," because Springfield has never been exactly a hotbed of crime, certainly not in the nineteenth century or first half of the twentieth century. But prostitution did revive somewhat in the post-Prohibition era. 

In January of 1942, for instance a husband wife were charged with keeping a bawdy house at the hotel they ran at 427 1/2 S. Campbell. Another couple was charged with a similar offense in conjunction with a hotel they ran at 406 1/2 W. Walnut. Yet another couple were charged with keeping a bawdy house at their hotel at 407 1/2 S. Campbell, and a fourth woman was charged with running a bawdy house out of her hotel at 404 1/2 W. Walnut. 

All of these hotels were in the same immediate vicinity (on or near Campbell Street from two or three blocks south of College to two or three blocks north of College). This was only a few blocks from the railroad depot on North Main, and most of the hotel customers probably were travelers arriving at the depot who wanted a place to stay (and be entertained at the same time). At least this was the case during the aughts and teens, decades I researched and wrote about in Wicked Springfield. 

In early February 1942, yet another couple were charged with running a bawdy house at their hotel at 423 1/2 S. Campbell. About the same time a man named Johnson was convicted of receiving part of the funds from two prostitutes who operated out of his rooming house at 214 1/2 S. Campbell. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, later reduced to five years.

The stiff sentence didn't put much of a damper on prostitution in Springfield, because it continued pretty much unabated over the next couple of years. Mrs. Johnson, for one, took up right where her husband had left off.

Finally, in mid-1944 Springfield police chief Warren Hayes decided to claim down on "the oldest profession." He proposed raising the maximum fine for violating certain ordinances, including keeping a bawdy house, to $500. The proposed law would levy a fine varying from $100 to $500 on anyone "keeping a bawdy house, displaying a sign of honest occupation as a screen for a bawdy house, renting a room to a man and woman knowing they are not man and wife, keeping or permitting a female under 18 to remain in an establishment which is used as a bawdy house."

The penalty for prostitutes loitering in a public place was to be raised to a minimum of $5 and a maximum of $300. Soliciting could cost them from $25 to $300. 

Apparently, the new laws and a determined effort by the police chief did have some effect in curbing prostitution in Springfield, if the number of times terms like "bawdy house" appeared in Springfield newspapers over the next few years is any indication. Or maybe it just went farther underground.

Christmas Revelry

Nowadays we usually think of New Year's Eve as the primary hell-raising holiday of the year. Some of the summer holidays, such as the 4th of July and Labor Day, are also occasions for drinking and carousing for some people. 

However, most people, or at least most people I know, do not think of Christmas as a special time for partying, except maybe the office parties that some businesses hold a few days before the holiday. December 25 itself tends to be more of a solemn occasion, at least for Christians. It is also a joyous occasion, especially for kids, but it's not what most of us think of as a raucous, hell-raising occasion.

Apparently, that has not always been the case in America. In doing historical research, I've run across numerous mentions of men celebrating Christmas by getting drunk and raising hell. 

For instance, in late December of 1901 the Springfield Leader-Democrat lamented the revelry that had taken place in the city on Christmas Day. "Some persons," said the newspaper, "always insist on making Christmas an occasion of riot and debauchery, and they frequently come out of their holiday excesses badly worsted. The city calaboose had its Christmas aftermath last night and this morning Judge Mason inspected a penitent crowd of prisoners who waited for the admonition of the law. There were red eyes, gashed cheeks, muddy hats, tousled locks of dirty hair and other signs of the gross revelry of yesterday." 

The reporter cited several cases in particular.

S. A. Rowden, a Civil War veteran who lived east of town, had come to Springfield in a buggy, bought a bottle of whiskey, and got drunk. He was headed toward his buggy to head back home when he was arrested and put in the pokey. He told the judge the next day that he'd paid two recent fines for drunkenness, not realizing the judge's policy of being lenient on that count toward veterans. So, he thought the judge should let him off without a fine and that one night in jail was sufficient punishment. The judge apparently agreed, remarking that he noticed that Rowden had kept his drunken sprees to only about one every six months. He admonished Rowden not to take more than one or two big sprees between then and the next Christmas and sent him on his way.

Meanwhile, Buck Blades, "a young man well known about Billings and Republic," slept off his jag in the calaboose and paid a fine of one dollar the next day.

Ross Hall and George Williams were arrested for a cutting affray on South Street on Christmas afternoon. "The two young men swung their knives recklessly, and two or three persons were slightly cut." Hall and Williams were scheduled for trial in police court on the afternoon of 26th or 27th (exact date not clear). 

 

An Affray at Potter's Saloon

In my book Wicked Springfield (MO) https://amzn.to/3X1Zx4h, I briefly mentioned a shooting incident that occurred at William Potter's saloon, located just off the square on Boonville, on the evening of August 6, 1880, but today I thought I'd go into a little more detail about the episode.

The 41-year-old Potter had both his residence and his saloon at 221 Boonville. About 10:30 p.m. on Friday the 6th, eight black men came into the saloon and ordered beer. After they'd drunk the beer, they called for a free lunch, which Potter was accustomed to providing for his regular customers. 

Since these men were not regular customers (and probably also because they were black), Potter refused to provide the requested meal, and a fracas broke out. 

Who began the hostilities is not exactly clear, but Potter threw several beer glasses at his unwelcome guests during the melee, and the black men, in return, fired several shots, one of which struck Potter in the hip. The wound was considered serious but not dangerous to the point of being life threatening. 

Several people took part in the shooting, including one white man, it was reported, but the exact identities of the shooters remained unclear several days later. 

All of the black men who'd entered Potter's saloon together were arrested, although three were almost immediately released. The other five were soon released on bail as well and were scheduled for hearings on August 13. The names of those charged were Isaac Sims, Sam Vaughn, Henry Harrington, R. Johnson, and Albert Campbell. The outcome of their hearings is unknown, but apparently no serious charges were brought.