#cincinnati women

[handeaux]

A Cincinnati Housewife’s Career As A Novelist Was Cut Short By Censorship

As near as I can tell, not a single copy of Jean Randolph Searle’s novels is to be found in any Tri-State library, unless you count the book stacks at Anderson University, 88 miles away in Indiana.

It is ironic that many of the libraries holding Miss Searles’ books today are conservative Christian schools like Anderson, affiliated with the Church of God, Roman Catholic Carlow University in Pittsburgh, and “non-denominational conservative Christian” Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia. The irony lies in the reception her books detonated in 1912 when they were condemned by the national and local branches of the Society for the Suppression of Vice as “too utterly indecent for our young to see.”

Jean Randolph Searles was a most unlikely pornographer. In fact, Jean Randolph Searles did not exist. That was merely the pen name of Adah Viola Benz of Price Hill, aka Mrs. George Benz, mother of two daughters and wife of an apparently quite successful real estate developer.

One might assume that Mrs. Benz, married to an established businessman, had the money to pay for the publication of her two 1912 novels herself – a practice known as vanity publishing. The books credit the “Press of Jennings & Graham,” a printer affiliated with Cincinnati’s Methodist Book Concern, a publishing house and bookstore located on West Fourth Street. The wording implies that Jennings & Graham published the books, but it is likely they only printed and bound them.

The books in question are “The Girl In The Slumber Boots” and its simultaneously published sequel, “Further Annals of the Girl In The Slumber Boots.” Although the books deal with marital infidelity and its consequences the (shall we say) “mechanics” of this infidelity are buried in baroque prose that relies ponderously on innuendo and not at all on forthright exposition.

In brief, Nell, the titular girl in the slumber boots (heavy knit slippers made to wear to bed) is unhappily married and walks in her sleep. One morning, she finds herself in the bed of an unhappily married doctor who leaves his apartment door unlocked. When Nell enters his darkened room in the wee hours, he thinks she is his wife and has his way with her. Somehow, this activity does not rouse the somnambulist and it is only when she awakens hours later that the full import of her transgression inspires her to action. Drama and trauma ensue, involving British gentry, ruined damsels, misadventures out West and the shenanigans of high society.

According to Alfred Segal at the Cincinnati Post [26 November 1929], the Society for the Suppression of Vice may not have even read the book. Their censorious ire may have been directed toward the illustration opposite the title page:

“It showed a woman in a nightgown confronting a man in a bathrobe. Her hand seemed to flutter towards her face in fear. He stared at her with the glum expression which men on old-fashioned posters frequently had. That was too much for the purity of the day. The book officially was ruled out of the stalls and sent back to the author.”

None of the Cincinnati newspapers reviewed “The Girl In The Slumber Boots.” One of the few published reviews, from the Monroe City, Missouri, Democrat [12 December 1912] is more than a little vague in its appraisal:

“It is too bad that anyone capable of writing as interesting a story as this one spoils it by taking the wrong view of what is right and what wrong. To be sure she straightens out matters in the second volume, Further Annals of the Girl In The Slumber Boots, but she doesn’t look at life right. The books are not wholesome – are not what we would want our young people to read.”

Well, that was in 1912. By 1929 – only 17 years later! – when the Post’s Segal interviewed the author, times had changed. Hemlines had skyrocketed from floor-length to knee-length. Women now smoked in public, for goodness’ sake. The new morality was reflected in the racy novels of the Roaring Twenties. As Segal explained:

“Words that would have been strange to the Slumber Boot Girl were sprinkled all over the pages. Details which she would have locked forever in her heart were shouted in black type. The erstwhile author thought perhaps her hour had struck. If she had written naughty things (with indecent pictures) too early in the century, she now could make up for it.”

Mrs. Benz, by now living on Shiloh Avenue in Clifton, took copies of her books downtown to Fourth Street, to Bertrand L. Smith, proprietor of the Traveler’s Book Shop, later to be known as Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books.

“Smith glanced at the ‘indecent’ pictures and smiled sadly. He skipped through a few lines of the intimate passages and smiled still more sadly. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘this ain’t nuthin’.’”

Smith accepted Mrs. Benz’s books and put them on sale. Buyers told Smith it was a relief to find decent books still for sale in Cincinnati. Still, Mrs. Benz would not allow Al Segal to print her real name for fear the taint of prior condemnation might still adhere to it.

George Benz died in 1937. A couple years later, Adah Benz revived her pen name and published another novel, “Only A Substitute Wife.” This time, the book was actually accepted by a legitimate publisher, Ruter Press, who also issued books of Caroline Williams’ artwork. Adah’s third novel appears not to have sold well and copies are hard to locate.

Adah Viola Rohrer was born in Elkhart, Indiana, in 1872 and married George Benz, a young and ambitious carpenter, in 1896. The young couple moved to Cincinnati in 1906, where George, in partnership with Sherman Weigold, built and sold a good number of houses in the northeast portion of Northside. Both George and Adah, aka Jean Randolph Searles, are buried in Goshen, near Elkhart, Indiana.

Adah’s books, while not preserved in Cincinnati, are on file in the Library of Congress and perhaps a dozen other libraries. They can be located online, where original editions fetch $70 or more.

[ivorygoal]

Paige😭😭

[proofinggentlewoman]

The Glade (1775) - Hubert Robert

[caitlinclarkismakingmeweak]

Omg GABBIE!!! This is literally my brand.

[bruiserdarula]

[evanmcpherson]

the same joe mixon that punched a woman in the face and broke bones? the one that also pointed a gun at a different woman and said “I should shoot you”? okay joe

[sincerelyjanai]

Mornings. 🌅 she’s mine. 🤞🏾

[love-pinups]

Carol Bruce

[historybizarre]

A century before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama, Sarah Mayrant Fossett – business woman, church founder, civil rights activist, participant in the Underground Railroad – successfully integrated the Cincinnati streetcar system.

[jerikajerika]

Girl Gordon - Bellevue Pavilion Cincinnati, OH (2023)

Photo: Brenna Nicole

[handeaux]

Cincinnati Women Who Smoked Endured Disdain, Harassment And Even Divorce

Back in the 1970s, with the tagline “You’ve come a long way, baby,” the Virginia Slims cigarette brand published a series of humorous advertisements linking a woman’s right to smoke with women’s liberation in general. A typical ad portrayed a sepia-toned damsel sneaking a smoke in the basement, with the caption:

“In 1915, Mrs. Cynthia Robinson was caught smoking in the cellar behind the preserves. Although she was 34, her husband sent her straight to her room.”

Boffo yucks, no? But did those advertisements really reflect reality? In Cincinnati, at least, that was very much the way things were. Queen City women who smoked faced all sorts of harassment. Lighting up a cigarette was not only grounds for divorce, but evidence that a woman hankered for the louche life of a prostitute.

The Cincinnati Enquirer [13 November 1900] related the sad tale of Arthur Graham and his newlywed wife, Viola:

“Arthur Graham, a young shoemaker who is employed in a big factory on West Fourth street, between Main and Sycamore streets, believed that he was the happiest fellow on earth, and that his wife was the soul of honor, until she began to spend his wages for cigarettes. That set him to thinking, and he was not at all surprised when she left him. He heard that she had entered a house on Longworth street, and yesterday afternoon he called Patrol 1 and had her removed from the place to Central Station, where the mismatched couple told their troubles to Lieutenant Geist. She was released on her promise to return home.”

It appears that the Grahams patched things up despite her sojourn on Longworth Street. Although that infamous avenue was the very heart of Cincinnati’s red-light district, it might be uncharitable to imagine Viola engaging in naughty behavior. Maybe she sought employment in a brothel as a maid or a cook. Maybe. In any event, the couple remained together until Arthur died in 1966. Perhaps they learned to share an ash tray.

Not so George Osgood of 256 Butler Street. He was granted a divorce in 1902 from Mary “Millie” Osgood. George told the judge that Millie started on a “faithless career” by smoking cigarettes and had even adopted an alias as “Kate Keller,” a typical practice by prostitutes at the time.

In 1914, truck driver William Middaugh of West Fourth Street filed for divorce from his wife, Cassie, because she smoked cigarettes in front of company. Apparently, sneaking a smoke behind the preserves was okay by him.

The situation was somewhat more complicated when Charles W. Mangan’s wife filed for divorce in 1917. Mangan, employed by the Central Railway and Hotel Distributing Company on Reading Road, responded that Nettie Mangan not only smoked, but drank and threw furniture at him.

Similarly, John H. Gardner of 1036 Findlay Street had more than tobacco on his mind when he filed for divorce in 1922. His wife, Nellie, he alleged, not only smoked cigarettes, but spent his money at the racetrack and absconded to Phoenix with another man.

When she lit up a smoke on their 1925 honeymoon, Mabel Collinsworth Kopp “shattered the ideals” of her groom, Melville Kopp. Asserting that she also read “questionable” magazines, Melville, who made his living playing the organ at movie theaters, filed for divorce. Mabel responded that Melville had only married her to escape the affections of another young lady and that Melville’s parents never liked her. Melville told the court that his mother objected to Mabel’s smoking.

As early as 1885, cigarette smoking raised serious questions about a woman’s morals. The Cincinnati Post [3 November 1885] interviewed a dealer in second-hand books at his stall on Fifth Street near Mound. That neighborhood included several elementary schools and the reporter, noticing that the book monger offered several brands of cigarettes for sale, assumed that his customers were school children. Not so. It was women who bought the smokes. The dealer told the Post:

“I believe there are more women than men who smoke in this part of town – and drink – if you could see as much of it as I do. I believe there are five women to one man in this locality who drink.”

This led the Post reporter, it appears, to reconsider his entire opinion of the fairer sex.

“The old gentleman placed the smoking and drinking by women in juxtaposition and the Post realized that the woman who stimulates with a cigarette will soon not object to a fluid stimulant.”

That is just the opinion, nearly 35 years later, expressed by Rabbi David Philipson of Rockdale Temple, who in a 1919 sermon, excoriated “slaves to fashion” who smoke, drink, “emulate chorus girls” and regard as old fogies those decent folks who try to abide by “laws of decency and reverence.

The rabbi was strongly seconded by famed evangelist William Ashley "Billy" Sunday, who blew into Cincinnati on a 1921 crusade. After blasting a veritable menagerie of modern wickedness, Sunday zeroed in on one particular target: the “damphool woman” who smokes cigarettes. “She’s skating on thin ice,” he thundered as his audience at the First Presbyterian Church shouted “Amen.”

Having none of this was Allene Sumner, author of the “Woman’s Day” column in the Cincinnati Post. When the National Fire Protection Association proclaimed that incendiary hazards had increased astronomically since women took up smoking, Ms. Sumner was roused [9 June 1927] to feminist ardor:

“They say sarcastic things about ‘the natural refinement of women rapidly succumbing to this habit.’ Wonder just how many generations it will be before human minds will function sufficiently rationally to have shed tradition and prejudice and do enough straight thinking to see that there is little or no connection between ‘a woman’s refinement’ and whether she smokes or not, any more than whether or not she can be refined and eat chocolates or drink coffee?”

[licoroscura]

📆

Happy American New Year Everyone! 💗 be blessed and stay nasty 😉

[freesiahubiga]

markéta vondroušová

[uptospeed]

I’ve gone from going to bed saying “What the…” to “Namaste All Day” quotes.

Yes, my last name is Speed, yes my kids run (Fast, very fast. For pleasure), and yes, sometimes it takes a spreadsheet to keep everything going.

I have lots of hustle. From keeping up with my adult and teen kids, keeping up in life with a small business, keeping up with society, health, friends, advice and all the creative random ideas that goes through my mind, all while practicing mindfulness and keeping my sense of humor… my hustle is a lot to keep up with. But don’t worry, keeping things Up To Speed is never not insightful or ridiculous. Maybe both at the same time?

Watch, listen, read about how things are on pointe and up to me.

[seven-saffodils]

.

[sincerelyjanai]

If you’re in the Cincinnati area, I’m doing $50, 1 hour shoots! Just to open up fall then back to regular prices. Let’s work! Starting in October for a short time. Email me for serious inquiries only. See you soon. Please share!

E: sincerelyjanai@gmail.com

IG: sincerely_janai