#billy guthrie

[handeaux]

For More That Twenty Years, Billy Guthrie Fought The Law, But The Law Won

Billy Guthrie built a career flouting the legal authorities. He spent almost as much time in Cincinnati’s courtrooms as he did in his notorious saloons. He died, apparently unrepentant, having created a Cincinnati legend that stretched from the Gay Nineties into Prohibition.

If you had asked William W. Guthrie, he would have claimed to be a put-upon proprietor of some humble cultural establishments. If you asked Cincinnati’s progressive reformers, Guthrie was the devil incarnate, spewing vice and degradation from the noxious hellholes he referred to as “concert halls.”

For the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Guthrie operated a disreputable resort named The Fashion on Opera Place, just off Vine Street below Sixth Street. Allegedly, the building had once housed a synagogue. The Cincinnati Post [16 March 1910] captured the atmosphere and allure of The Fashion:

“The patrons of The Fashion are neither lovers of good music nor dancing, and they do not go there for either. Between the acts at The Fashion the women performers can be found drinking with the men at the tables in the loges. Their value to the house is purely in the drinks that men buy for them. They prefer bottle beer and mixed drinks. They sit at the tables in their short stage skirts and can be seen from the outside.”

While the crusading Cincinnati Post sputtered in indignation, Guthrie operated without any interference from the authorities so long as the city was controlled by George “Boss” Cox and his minions. Guthrie owned a city “concert hall” license and waved it in the face of anyone who suggested that his dive was anything but that.

In 1910, a reform-minded Republican, Henry Hunt, was elected county prosecutor despite Boss Cox’s obstruction. He launched a campaign against gambling and vice and was so successful that he was later elected mayor and even prompted Boss Cox to issue a public statement that he was retiring from politics.

While Hunt may have rattled The Boss, Billy Guthrie shrugged off Hunt’s efforts to shutter The Fashion. Hunt saw to it that Guthrie’s concert hall license was not renewed, but the saloonist quickly adapted. According to the Cincinnati Post [14 August 1911]:

“Guthrie’s place was formerly licensed as a concert hall. The license was taken away from him and now he is running the same kind of hall without a license. Formerly, Guthrie employed singers, who, when they did not sing, ‘sat in’ and promoted the sale of drinks. When his license was revoked Guthrie abolished the singers and installed an orchestra. Presto! It ceased to be a concert hall, but became merely a saloon with a music box.”

This “saloon with a music box” continued to employ women of negotiable affection who greeted their admirers and encouraged them to buy abundant drinks. While they no longer sang on The Fashion’s stage, it was reported that they hummed along with the popular tunes performed by the “orchestra,” which was usually a piano accompanying a violin.

While Guthrie jousted with the Cincinnati reformers, he took out a sort of insurance policy by opening another saloon outside the city limits, almost directly across from the entrance to Chester Park. Chester Park itself usually attracted a mainstream clientele with a variety of rides, a huge lake for swimming and boating and theaters staging opera and musical comedy. On occasion, Chester Park brought in a very different sort of customer when it hosted prize fights that were illegal in Cincinnati. The whole area around Winton Road and Spring Grove Avenue had not yet been annexed to the city and was colonized by saloons eager to escape Cincinnati’s more restrictive regulations. The Post christened that neighborhood “The Wicked Strip” and Billy Guthrie fit right in.

In 1910, motion pictures were still a very new medium, inspiring some legislative reactions we find amusing today. For example, as noted, prize fighting was prohibited within the Cincinnati city limits. Apparently, the city administration saw no difference between real pugilists pounding each other in the ring and cinematic boxers pounding each other on the silver screen. So, indeed, Cincinnati prohibited motion pictures showing prize fights.

Billy Guthrie was happy to provide a venue for a film capturing the highlights of what was then billed as “The Fight of the Century” between the first African American heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and the former heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries. The Post [26 August 1910] went apoplectic:

“The whole country rose in opposition to the Jeffries-Johnson fight pictures. Mayor Schwab prohibited them. The pictures were driven out of Covington. Banished everywhere in the neighborhood, they found a wide-armed welcome in the Wicked Strip that knows no law and doesn’t care. The pictures were placed on exhibition in Guthrie’s Avenue Theater – Guthrie being the man whose disreputable Fashion Concert Hall on Opera-pl. has been driven off the street by the force of public sentiment.”

Billy Guthrie found that the wages of sin provided quite a comfortable income. It’s a toss-up whether his name appears more often in the criminal court logs or the real estate columns of the newspapers. Back then, with banks regularly going insolvent with no deposit insurance, land was where people parked their cash. Guthrie bought or sold a parcel or two almost every week.

Curiously, it seems that Guthrie, an otherwise savvy businessman, was a poor judge of character. On at least two occasions, it was reported that he posted bail for a defendant (presumably one of his customers) who stiffed him by failing to appear in court. In each case, Guthrie forfeited more than a thousand dollars.

What the local constabulary could not do, national legislation achieved. The dawn of Prohibition marked the end of Billy Guthrie’s lucrative saloons. He made a half-hearted attempt to keep a dive bar going in the West End but was busted by federal agents and settled into retirement. Guthrie turned the Avenue Theater over to his son, who operated it as a more-or-less law-abiding café. The location, at the corner of Mitchell and Spring Grove, is now occupied by a car wash.

Billie Guthrie died, aged 66, in 1929 from a heart condition and is buried just down the road from the “Wicked Strip” in Spring Grove Cemetery.

[manabombs]

text free + close ups ✨

[odysseusilver]

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[howlerbat]

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[lumisails]

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[john-silvers]

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