Metro Pulse/Secret History/Victorian Christmas

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Tales of the last Victorian Christmas

by Jack Neely

Knoxvillians of the Victorian era probably never thought of their Christmas celebrations as especially "Victorian." America didn't have a queen; Victoria was way over in England.

Still, she had ruled over the development of a holiday. When Victoria had become queen, in 1837, Knoxville and much of Protestant America hardly celebrated Christmas at all. Now, at the end of her reign, Christmas was the biggest, noisiest, most extravagant event of the year. By 1900, it seemed as if it had been that way forever.

Even if they did somehow connect the queen to the American Christmas, those of one century ago probably didn't know that they were celebrating the very last Victorian Christmas. But the queen was 81, and not feeling well. One century ago, the whole grand, extravagant Victorian era had only a few weeks left in it.

If they had known it was their last Victorian Christmas, some might have been relieved. In Knoxville, Victorian Christmases had always been a troublesome prospect, especially for the police.

Christmas always made Police Chief J.J. Atkin nervous, and with good reason. Seven years ago, idle men with too much time on their hands and too much booze in their bellies let the traditional holiday fireworks get out of hand, resulting in a three-day Christmas riot, resulting in serious injuries and thousands of dollars in property damage. After that, the city banned Christmas fireworks, but the holiday remained a serious law-enforcement problem. Problems with gambling, prostitution, booze, drugs, and general mayhem always peaked in late December, when millworkers and railroad men roamed the streets looking for something to do with their bonuses. During Christmas season, it wasn't unusual to see one or more murders every day, especially down in the vicinity of South Central known as the Bowery.

Atkin announced there'd be no Christmas holidays for cops. In fact they'd be working double duty on Christmas Eve and Christmas, just to keep the revelry under control. He beefed up patrols all over downtown, placed eight patrolmen on one short downtown stretch of Central alone, more than one patrolman per block.

Atkin was also happy that after some argument, the city had banned the open sale of cocaine and morphine in local drugstores—some of which operated as cocaine bars—to allow the popular drugs to be dispensed only by prescription. It happened at the Dec. 21 meeting—"the last council meeting of the century."

Things were changing. If it wasn't known as the last Victorian Christmas, by the thinking of the day, Christmas of 1900 was the last Christmas of the 19th century. Everywhere was a strong sense of anticipation of a new era, the Twentieth Century, which would begin on Jan. 1, 1901.

For whatever reason, Christmas of 1900 was indeed different. Sure, back on Dec. 8, popular saloonkeeper Frank DeArmond had shot a patron, but the almost daily murders that characterized Yuletide in Knoxville in the latter 1800s just weren't happening in 1900. Knoxville was usually treated to at least one sordid real-life murder mystery at Christmastime. This year, there was only one, and it was more poignant than mysterious.

Eliza Brookins was a 40-year-old single mother who lived in White's Alley, a couple blocks east of Central near Patton Street, with her 12-year-old daughter, Hattie. They were a little better off than most black families, because they rented part of their house to another couple. On one chilly Saturday evening, Eliza sent her daughter out to get some heating oil. When the girl got home a few minutes later, she found her mother dead in the alley, her skull fractured. A fire poker lay nearby.

Police could find no witnesses to the killing. But the girl said her mom had been seeing a newcomer to town, a man named Sam Young, who had been jealous about her mother's other gentleman callers. Just before she found her mother's body, Hattie had caught a glimpse of a man who looked like Young slipping between a couple of houses as she walked home with the heating oil that night. After a daylong search, police arrested the man and charged him with murder.

There were other unexplained deaths. At Brabson's Ferry, on the Holston just three miles east of downtown, ferryman William Cunningham found the body of an elderly black man in the icy river. He had with him a cloth sack full of bark. Though he was dressed for the cold, still wearing a brown felt hat and several layers of pants and shirts, the coroner speculated that he had died of exposure.

He was later identified as Joe Monroe; he'd lived on Boyd Street, near Knoxville College, several miles away. His acquaintances remarked that the man they called "Old Uncle Joe" had been "somewhat demented" recently. Where he was found, they said, was near where he had lived many years ago, and perhaps he thought he was going home.

On Saturday night, a patrolman Johnson arrested two young black men in a barroom in "Skuff"—short for Skuffletown, the industrial area along Second Creek. The policeman said they were both drunk, but one of them was also disorderly. The fine for drunk was $3.50; the fine for disorderly was $7.50. But when he got them back before the night judge, he couldn't remember which was which. "All 'coons look alike to me," he shrugged—a surprising statement in light of the fact that some of his colleagues in 1900 were black. The judge, no Solomon, split the difference and fined both the men $5.

The police posted around the Bowery stayed busy. Rosa Garner sliced up Lizzie Winstead with a knife down there, and, to make it worse, apparently used profanity while doing so. Arrested, she was fined $7.40 for the knife attack and another $7.40 for the profanity.

At old Sullivan's Saloon, police arrested a man named Gallaher, who was "proud to be the most unruly fellow caught in some time"; one policeman tried to throttle him with his stout dogwood nightstick, which splintered on Gallaher's skull with no obvious effect. It took three officers to wrestle him into the wagon, and six firemen to force him into a cell. "He was much of a man," assessed the Journal.

On the evening of Dec. 17, Knoxvillians hopped off of their barstools. At approximately 9:40 p.m., houses rattled and dishware clattered. They felt it strongly at the old school for the deaf, in the northeast corner of downtown, up on Reservoir Hill, several blocks east, and everywhere in between. The rumble lasted for 30 or 45 seconds.

When all the reports came in, reporters noticed that Vine Avenue, downtown, appeared to be the epicenter of the quake, along a band that stretched from east to west on the north side of downtown. It was felt for four blocks to the north of Vine and four blocks to the south, and nowhere else in the county.

Weston Fulton, the young weatherman who manned the station on UT's Hill, said his delicate seismographic equipment there had registered nothing at all. It couldn't have been an earthquake, he said; he'd make no report of one. The shocks were caused by "other disturbances wholly independent of any terrestrial disorder."

It wasn't necessarily the strangest thing that happened that week.

For Christmas, kids were asking for footballs, Kodak's Brownie camera, air guns. Newcomer's on Gay Street advertised its Children's Fairy Toyland: its basement, fitted out for a display of nearly every sort of toy, including "French Rubber Pigs" and "the Largest Doll In the City."

Nearly every big store downtown advertised Christmas dolls. Most, that is, except for Doll and Co. They specialized in books. The hot sellers that year included L. Frank Baum's latest, A New Wonderland; Kipling's Tales; and the wacky cartoon book Folks In Funnyville.

On the same block as Doll's was Henry Curtis's jewelry store. On the Tuesday evening before Christmas, Mrs. W.J. Williams walked in and asked to look at some diamonds. She wasn't very well known around town; she was from out west somewhere, and had moved here with her husband seven or eight years ago. He'd been a grocer; they didn't live in one of the more fashionable neighborhoods in town, but they did all right.

When Mr. Curtis offered to show her his line of diamond rings, she insisted on seeing only unset diamonds, not attached to rings or necklaces. Obliging the unusual request, Curtis went back to his safe and returned with a leather pouch with several diamonds. Mrs. Williams had a good look at one 8-carat diamond, and asked to see another. When Curtis dug into his pouch and looked up again, he noticed that the diamond Mrs. Williams had just been examining looked different. Picking it up, he recognized it as a glass counterfeit, and not a very good one. Confronting Mrs. Williams, he said, "You have made way with the diamond," a polite way of suggesting this Victorian lady somehow swiped it.

She replied, Curtis couldn't help but notice, with her lips tightly together, as if she had a mouthful of something. "I have not stolen the diamond," she said.

Curtis wasn't born yesterday. That diamond was worth more than $100. He telephoned the police, who were just around the corner. In four minutes, Patrolman McIntyre picked up Mrs. Williams. Taken to jail, she was searched by the police matron, who found nothing.

Mr. Williams bailed his wife out with $1,000, and the lawyer he retained was no other than Mayor Sam Heiskell. Curtis announced that if Mrs. Williams would simply return the diamond, he would not prosecute her for theft.

On the morning after her release, Mrs. Williams reported that a mysterious stranger, "a lady unknown to me," had come to her house on McKee Street, on the east side of town, and promised to return with the diamond within 24 hours.

At 9 Wednesday night, a little more than 24 hours after her arrest, a courier—an unnamed "prominent businessman" returned the diamond to Henry Curtis, with a note: "This is the diamond of which Mr. Curtis accused poor Mrs. Williams of stealing." There was no signature.

"No questions were asked," concluded the Journal, "and none answered."

Many wandering downtown were reportedly "astonished and disgusted" that, in break with Victorian tradition, Gay Street's saloons had closed early, at 3 p.m., on Christmas Day. As inconvenient as that was, saloongoers could still walk two blocks down to Central, where some saloons never closed.

Atkin's men in blue did their job downtown. Nashville was awash with Christmas blood that year, and there were also killings in Newport, Ducktown, LaFollette, other places—just not in Knoxville. Here, probably thanks to Atkin's beefed-up patrols, it was the least violent Christmas in memory. But maybe the chief concentrated too many cops downtown. Just after Christmas dinner, eight prisoners at the prison workhouse east of the city, led by William "Egghead" Hanes, used a large auger to bore out of their cells. Bloodhounds couldn't pick up the scent.

At least Knoxville proper was quiet, or would have been quiet if it weren't so close to South Knoxville. In 1900, South Knoxville wasn't Knoxville; there were no policemen across the river, and no oppressive anti-fireworks laws. Beginning on Christmas Eve, and continuing until midnight Christmas night, folks on that side made the riverbanks thunder with all manner of fireworks, as if jeering at the prissy urbanites to the north. Some fireworks landed on the home of streetcar motorman Mel Henderson on the hill above the south end of the Gay Street Bridge, starting a fire that burned it to the ground.

Things returned to normal on the 26th. But on Gay Street, jeweler Henry Curtis had one 8-carat diamond he couldn't have been quite sure what to do with. He likely put it in somebody's engagement ring. Maybe it's still around, in some new incarnation. Diamonds last a long time.