Inside his brick colonial home just west of Carytown, author Harry Ward sits surrounded by herons. Not live ones, mind you, but colorful portraits of the majestic, long-beaked birds crowding his living-room walls. He’s collected more than 30 of them, including a limited-edition print by famed naturalist John James Audubon.

Ward is a tall, 86-year-old former American history professor who taught at the University of Richmond from the mid-1960s until his retirement in 1999. He has a doctorate from Columbia and has written more than 20 books. The best-selling one was 1985’s “Richmond: An Illustrated History,” he says.

His latest book, “Children of the Streets of Richmond, 1865-1920,” came out last month. It uses newspaper accounts of court sessions to reveal a grim, matter-of-fact picture of local street life back when gritty couldn’t begin to describe it. This was a time when newspapers occasionally reported that an infant had been eaten overnight by rats — rodents that also liked to visit funeral homes and devour dead bodies. The U.S. Department of Justice of that day called Richmond’s legalized prostitution area on Mayo Street “the best in the United States.”

“The most redeeming characteristic of Richmonders in the late-19th and early-20th centuries was an avid sense of humor,” Ward writes in the preface.

His book is concerned with detailing the justice being delivered, or withheld as the case may be, to street kids and young adults in what was then known as Police Court.

“Little kids, 5-, 6-, 7-year-olds, would go before the judge with other adults,” he says. “The exchanges were very funny. Court reporters, including James Branch Cabell, the famous author, vied with each other to come up with the most amusing reports.”

In person, Ward comes off as defiantly old-school. We’re all too politically correct these days, he says, and he isn’t into the whole computer thing. Physically, he has trouble getting around, but that hasn’t stopped him from spending much of his time in the Richmond Public Library, researching for his books. Then he returns to his beat-up, old, yellow Deville Deluxe manual typewriter at home and starts cranking out pages.

One of his favorite lines from his new book sounds like a demented take on Garrison Keillor in its depiction of Richmond: “All the women were fine talkers, the men were hard workers and the boys made their living by throwing rocks.”

Ward says he was most surprised by the court’s ongoing use of corporal punishment. Whippings were meted out by the judge until around 1920, he notes: “I didn’t know Richmond was such a badass city.”

Edited excerpts from one chapter of Ward’s new book reveal details about newsies — the kids selling papers on street corners. Others focus on local prostitutes and Richmond’s former “legalized sin” district — which Ward may expand into another book, he says, after he writes about local buncos, or grifters, from the era.

It’s enough to make you thankful to live in more comfortable times, when a cellphone that runs out of juice is enough to set somebody off. Nor do you have to constantly duck rocks thrown from members of youth gangs with names like the Belle Isle Cats, Oregon Hill Cats (or the Terribles), or my favorite, the Male Orphan Asylum Cats.
— Brent Baldwin

Newsies

Newsboys and messenger boys formed a kind of subculture. They mostly came from poor families or were orphans. On the street with daily morning and afternoon editions, they sold the papers for a penny each, sharing the profits with a newspaper company or distributor. Both newsboys and messengers performed with a high sense of urgency, to make delivery as quickly as possible. Many of the newsboys were very young children, sometimes out on the street at ages 5 or 6.

Richmond’s newsboys (newsies) had much in common with their counterparts in New York or other large cities. They had to stand their own from harassment by officialdom or the public. Amidst the swarm of boys vying for the selling of papers, they had to defend their turf. “No Feudal Baron Ever Fought Harder for Lands and Title,” rang a headline in a newspaper on Dec, 21, 1906. The ensuing article noted:

They stood on the corner and glared at each other. Both had bundles of the last edition under their arms. One boy was in his own territory, the other strictly out of his. The newcomer knew perfectly well that he had no business on that side of the street, but he was the bigger, and bigness often counts — but not always.

“Whatcher doin’ on my corner,” yelled the smaller boy, furiously.

“Taint yourn.”

“Tis.”

“Taint.”

“Youse —.” But just then a prospective customer loomed up on the horizon, and both boys were off immediately. The gentleman shook his head, and passed between them, leaving the boys face to face, trying, in their enthusiasm, to sell papers to each other.

There was but one thing to be done, and the smaller newsy did it.

“Gwan off my corner,” he cried fiercely, and planted his hard little fist exactly between the larger boy’s eyes. Then things began to happen.

Throwing his papers away, the big boy naturally lit into the kid, first administering a severe kick, then, giving him a terrible blow on the side of the face with his open hand, he smacked him down in the street, the little boy falling full on his face on the hard pavement.
But far from taking the count, the kid was up in a second, then there was a blur of boys and newspapers. They resembled a flying wind-mill wheel throwing out newspapers in every direction.

“I’ll fix-grr-grr-you-grr-gwan-grr — off-smack-me-grr-did-you-grr-grr.”

Biff, bang! Then the wheel started on new revolutions, and the remaining papers sailed out into the air.

At this junction a passing gentleman interfered.

“There is a policeman coming up the street,” he said, smiling.

The big boy espied a customer way back across the street. He gathered up some of the scattered papers and ran off.

The little boy picked up his wares, rubbed his face with the back of his hand, and gazed triumphantly around upon his recovered territory.

“Last edition,” he shouted. “Last edition.”

The stentorian yells of some newsies led to complaints by citizens. In November 1910 the police accosted Harry Shatz, a small boy, for exerting “extraordinary lung power” that drowned out all other sounds at First and Broad streets. Shatz refused to be ordered away. “I’m out to sell papers, and I’m going to stick on this corner. You can’t pinch me because I ain’t done nothing.” The problem with Shatz wound up in Police Court, and Justice [John] Crutchfield rendered his decision:

“Newsboys are in their somewhat obscure, but none the less earnest, way, public benefactors. I’ve seen all varieties of them in travelling about the country, and it is their universal privilege to use the streets of a city as a trading place.

“In my opinion it would be the rankest kind of injustice to decide that newsboys could not stand on any street corner they might select and dispose of their papers. Some cities even extend the boys the privilege of boarding street cars. The kids engaged in this business in Richmond are a well-behaved, gentlemanly lot and I rule that just as long as they are orderly the streets are open to them. Regarding Shatz I can only say that I have seen him at work. He will never die with tuberculosis. His lungs are too all fired good. Case dismissed. …”

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Red Light District

The Civil War had greatly increased the number of prostitutes in the city. Thousands of soldiers provided an ample clientele, and for some residents the harsh economic situation compelled residents to turn to prostitution. As a result of the war, prostitutes (sometimes called cyprians) were visible in all parts of the city, applying their trade as streetwalkers as well as bordello employees. …

By 1900 some 500 harlots were plying their trade in Richmond. Most were in their late teens to mid 20s in age. “Common street walkers” held their own. More visible than the brothel employees they usually lacked police protection. Typical penalties for streetwalking in the late-19th century called for $2.50-$3 in fines, and often also surety at $100, ranging from 60 days to one year. By 1905 the streetwalker problem had become so troublesome that on several streets the harlots would “obstruct sidewalks and interfere with people going to church.” …

Richmond became notorious for prostitution. Even when rescued a problem existed of young girls returning to houses of ill-fame, from the lack of having known any other life. One solution was for authorities to send a girl to an institution at some distant city, usually Atlanta or Baltimore. …

From the end of the Civil War until the creation of an official red light district in 1905, brothels underwent sporadic raids. Mayor William Mayo in August 1867 declared that the black and white prostitutes that were brought to his Mayor’s Court were of “the vilest and lowest description,” and he was “determined that Richmond should be no Sodom and Gomorrah.” Those arraigned usually wound up immediately in jail for failure to meet a high bail requirement. …

At last, a bold social experiment, designed to put wraps around prostitution, was given trial in the city. In the end, however, the necessitated concessions afforded the prostitution trade only made matters worse. On Nov. 8, 1905, Mayor Carlton McCarthy, Chief of Police Louis Werner, and the Board of Public Commissioners agreed to set up “segregated districts” where prostitution, gambling, and illegal drinking would be tolerated. This decision was implemented without any formal enabling process. The main official red light district consisted of the whole of Mayo Street (no longer in existence today), extending for only three blocks, from Broad to Main Street. Alleys and pieces of adjacent streets were also included as part of the district. After a while Red Light District Number 2 on lower Eighth Street was added to the mix.

Initially about 200 prostitutes resided in the segregated district on Mayo Street. By 1915 there were 400 women in this situation. …

It seemed that harmony generally prevailed in the legalized sin district. In 1910, the girls on the average paid only $15 a week for board and room, but made $180 a week. The proprietress (or proprietor) turned in $810 a month. Besides the sex trade there was money to be made selling liquor without a license, especially at night and on Sundays when regular places selling whiskey were closed. At election time and during the Christmas holiday especially policemen loaded up with gifts from the establishments in the Red Light District, ranging from expensive jewelry to cigars. Moreover, it was presumed that graft prevailed. In 1912, after conducting a study, the U.S. Department of Justice referred to Richmond’s Red Light District as “the best in the United States.” …

On March 17, 1914, Mayor George Ainslie appointed a vice commission to make recommendations regarding the Red Light District. … The first report of the vice commission, submitted to the mayor on Feb. 5, recommended:

“That the law forbidding assignation-houses, places of commercial vice, including the so-called segregated district and all other places used for immoral purposes, be at once rigidly enforced, looking to the close at once of all such places as provided by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the city of Richmond.”

The Times-Dispatch reported that by nightfall of Feb. 9, the day that the mayor issued a ban according to the recommendation, “Richmond, as far as was known to the police, was without a single house of ill fame ….”

Alleged police collusion with the brothels spread out through Richmond made law enforcement against these houses difficult. Investigations ensued, resulting with the Council in July 1916 dissolving the Board of Police Commissioners and placing the mayor at the head of the police department. Efforts to curtail prostitution by arresting the involved women as vagrants failed completely. About the only effective control of the houses of ill fame was to make arrests for selling liquor illegally.

To crack down on vice in general for about two years Richmond had a “purity squad.” In March 1917 it was replaced by a squad of four plainclothesmen. The chief of police disbanded the purity squad because it was not considered a good idea for the same group to continue to perform morals investigation “for an indefinite period.”

Boy Gangs

Gangs among Richmond’s youth flourished from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. The gangs may be put into two categories: those organized and those spontaneous to address some provocation and quick to disband. Besides protecting their turfs, doing battle, engaging in mischief, and intimidating members of the community, gang members also had a creative side, such as holding ball games and staging improvised theatricals.

At least 43 organized boy gangs threaded Richmond’s landscape, 12 of them from South Side (across the river at Manchester). [Among them were the]: Gamble’s Hill Cats, Oregon Hill Cats (also Terribles), Shockoe Hill Gang, Rocketts Gang, Church Hill Gang, Hobo Gang, West End Gang, and Male Orphan Asylum Cats; from Manchester — Terrapin Hill Cats, Swampoodle Cats, Belle Isle Cats and Swansboro Gang.

Richmond’s boy gang members, as one observer noted, did not “need to look with yearning inferiority to Chicago and New York for criminal nomenclature.” Among the Richmonders were: “Do Dirty” Baskins; “Pretty Papa” Hudgins; “Gin Baby”; “Ball of Fire”; “Louse Level”; “Bay Buck”; “Sun Man”; “High Pockets”; and “Bubba.” Two of the Butchertown Gang were known as “Hoppy-go-Fetchit” (a cripple with one leg shorter than the other) and “Snowflake.” …

Most feared of the Richmond boy gangs were the Butchertown Cats. Butchertown consisted of poor working class people, and also was the site of brothels and stench-laden tanning and butcher establishments. Its boundaries stretched, so to speak, from the plains to the mountains — from Seventeenth and Venable streets in Shockoe Bottom to the western rim of Church Hill. Their pockets filled with rocks and some firearms, the Butchertown Cats were adept in the use of slingshots and gravel shooters.

An archenemy of the Butchertown Cats were the Shockoe Hill Cats. As one commentator noted, these two gangs “used to fight for the possession of the flats at the foot of the hill. The Butchertown boys said it was theirs, because the territory was not on the hill; while the Shockoe Hill boys contended that it was theirs because it was on their side of the creek.” Such arguments were “as sound as those that are used by the most powerful nations of Europe.” …

Richmond gang members, much like a teenage gang in New York City, the Baxter Street Dudes, tried their hands in presenting theatricals. … In Richmond at the northwest corner of Seventh and Clark streets, an enterprising group of youngsters of the densely populated neighborhood created the Coalshed Grand Comique, a theater in a backyard coalshed. The programming did not quite replicate that which adults favored, but did appeal to the disoriented whims of the local children. Most popular were productions simulating scenes of famous persons, such as Buffalo Bill and Jesse James. One scene produced involved the children disguising themselves as Indians, “being mostly red paint and leggings — and binding their victims to a stake.” …

Once the First Street Gang put on a circus in a backyard. … The Second Street Gang had its own circus too. Held in Anthony Robinson’s backyard at Second and Franklin streets, admission was 5 cents. This circus had a ring filled with sawdust from a sawmill at Sixth and Canal streets. In the “Grand Entry” boys led goats around the ring. As the bareback act, Robert Hicks rode a large goat around. Clowns performed, and John Atkins, imported from the neighboring First Street Gang, worked the horizontal and handsprings and somersaults. The “Grand Circus” concluded “in a blaze of glory, with all the gang eating coconut taffy, both white and pink, and molasses taffy as well, with the proceeds of the ‘gate.’” …

Despite the occasional display of creativity in imitation of the dramatic arts, the boy gangs kept to their priority of protecting their local domain. Virginia’s Labor Commissioner, in 1900, recalled of the “fine old days” the thrill of having “a gang of brave boys behind me.” His gang “would sail into the Navy Hill Cats and make them think that there was never such a thing as a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals … the boys knew what fighting meant.” S

“Children of the Streets of Richmond, 1865-1920,” by Harry M. Ward is published by McFarland and Co. Excerpts reprinted with permission. Available locally at Chop Suey Books and Barnes & Noble. Ward will read and sign books at Book People on July 18 from 2 to 4 p.m. and at the Chesterfield Barnes & Noble on July 25 also from 2 to 4 p.m.