AN ODD COUPLE?

How did a literary giant get mixed up with a River City brothel queen?  The wordsmith in question was Stephen Crane, the highly influential writer of "The Open Boat" and The Red Badge of Courage.  And proving a most interesting character in her own right was a Jax madam often considered to have been his common-law wife.  She was Cora Crane, also known as Cora Taylor or Cora Howarth Stewart. 

Her biography should be made into a movie.  Cora hailed from a proper Boston family, but her life's story included arms smuggling, a murder case, marriage to an English baronet's son, the operation of a swank bordello, hobnobbing with literary luminaries, and reporting on a foreign war during a era when women were usually expected to be seen, but not really heard.     

Cora and Stephen Crane loved to party.  Not surprisingly, the picture above was taken during a benefit bash on August 23, 1899.  It depicts the couple at Brede Place, a medieval estate they rented in England.  The manor featured a dungeon, a gallows room, and the wailing ghosts of children who were supposedly eaten for supper several hundred years ago by "The Brede Giant," Sir Goddard Oxenbridge. 

There's another portrait of Cora a few inches below on this webpage.  It dates from about 1902, according to the Florida State Archives.  Or it may come from around 1886, as indicated in the fascinating book Cora Crane: The Biography of Mrs. Stephen Crane, by the late Riverside native Lillian Barnard Gilkes. 

CLICK HERE for a possible Cora picture

For additional photos, see the many links below. 

~ These include a look inside a local house of ill repute, 100 years ago!

GUNRUNNING

Cora Crane was a person of ability:  She built and managed Jacksonville's largest bordello, she published short stories in several of the nation's leading magazines, and she has been called the world's first female war correspondent.  Cora proved a sophisticated conversationalist with immense personal magnetism.  She was also considered a gifted cook, and she enjoyed drawing.  She even designed an improved filter for water canteens after reporting on the Greco-Turkish wars.  And to top all of this off, she attracted a renowned young author as the love of her life. 

It was unrest in Cuba that set the stage for the romance between Stephen and Cora Crane.  These military difficulties later culminated in the Spanish American War and the acquisition of the island by the U.S.  Also owing to the Cuban troubles, Stephen penned "The Open Boat," a tale from 1897 that has been called the finest short story in the English language. 

Fighting raged in Cuba as it tried to break away from Spain.  Most Americans supported the rebels, and gunrunners illegally shipped arms & supplies to them.  Jacksonville served as the center for the smuggling.  Well remembered, for example, are the tugboats the Dauntless and the Three Friends, with its mournful nighttime whistle.  The latter vessel was operated by a Duval County sheriff and future Florida governor, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward.  The authorities usually winked at the unlawful activity. 

Stephen Crane came to the River City in 1896 to cover the action.  The New Jersey native was only in his mid 20s but already a celebrated author and newspaper correspondent.  Befitting his station, he lodged at the best local hotel, the St. James, which stood where City Hall (the St. James Building) is located today.  Jacksonville offered Stephen a much needed break from problems he had recently experienced in New York City.  He landed in hot water there when he vigorously supported in court a young woman harassed by the police.  Stephen had interviewed several chorus girls one night for a series of articles about the metropolis.  After leaving a restaurant at 2 a.m., he and his party were stopped by an officer, Charles Becker, who arrested a lady in the group on a charge of soliciting.  Indeed, she was a prostitute, but she actually hadn't been plying her trade when nabbed.  Local papers had a field day with Stephen's denouncement of the cop and defense of the defendant.  A police disciplinary committee finally exonerated Officer Becker, while the media still debated Stephen's character.  The episode spelled the end of the writer as a working reporter in New York City.  He literally couldn't set foot there without facing bogus police charges, according to a "Booknotes" interview with Linda Davis, author of the acclaimed work Badge of Courage: The Life of Stephen Crane. 

(Years later, in 1915, Charles Becker distinguished himself in a most notorious way:  He became one of the very few law enforcement officers in America history who has been executed for murder.  Witnesses fainted as his death in the electric chair required three separate jolts over eight minutes.  Lieutenant Becker had been convicted of complicity in the killing of his gambling partner.  His court trials proved the most sensational in New York City's history and garnered worldwide attention, according to CrimeLibrary.com.  The case also left the police department a mess.)

Jacksonville figured heavily in Stephen Crane's life.  One evening in the St. James dining room, the author encountered the captain of the Commodore.  This was a ocean-going steam tug that illegally shipped weapons, clothing, and medicine from Jax to Cuba.  Stephen quickly signed on as a seaman.  He had recently completed The Red Badge of Courage, a brutally realistic account that is sometimes considered the greatest novel ever written about the Civil War.  Stephen, however, had never seen war in real life.  The Commodore might give him his first chance.  With financial support from New York newspapers, he chartered and outfitted the vessel in Jacksonville.  He hoped to make a quick run to the Caribbean island, but fate would intervene in the form of mudflats and sandbars. 

 SOMETHING ABOUT CORA

Not long after Stephen came to the River City, he met Cora Taylor under rather unusual circumstances: Using an alias, the writer visited her brothel with two friends.  The proprietress initially didn't know the true identity of the boyish-looking man with piercing eyes.  When it was revealed later that night, Cora was thrilled!  She had read The Red Badge, as well as Stephen's novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.  Gritty and controversial, Maggie told of a girl who "blossomed in a mud puddle," only to have urban poverty force her into prostitution and eventual suicide. 

Cora jumped at the opportunity for the author to sign George's Mother, another of his books that she had just finished.  Stephen penned in her volume, "To an unnamed sweetheart." This meeting bloomed into the most important romance of their lives.  Within a week, Stephen moved out of the St. James and in with Cora, six years his senior.  Twice-married and once divorced, Cora owned the Hotel de Dreme, a classy bordello in La Villa.  This name conjures up steamy, fantasy-filled nights, but the moniker actually originated with a previous proprietress, Ethel Dreme.

Born in 1865, Cora hailed from a polished, well-to-do Boston family, headed by an artist, her father.  However, the young lady grew alienated from her relatives.  Intensely curious about things, she exhibited a craving to escape from the commonplace, according to author Lillian Barnard Gilkes.  In other words, Cora felt an almost maddening desire to test all aspects of living.  During an age when few women owned a business of any kind, for instance, she possessed one that most people considered outside the bounds of decent society.  Earlier, she had also served as a hostess at a gambling house.  On the coin's flip side, she had shopped for clothes in Paris and journeyed to Constantinople on the Orient Express, as noted by Linda Davis, the Stephen Crane chronicler.  Through thick and thin, Cora stuck to her guns.  She proved poised and resolute, condemning pessimism as "the religion of the unsuccessful."  She observed, "I am a strange woman to whom fear of many kinds is unknown.  I could dare, or do, some strange things without flinching if I were driven." And she often seemed driven.      

Boasting an ample figure and long, reddish-gold hair (its natural color), Cora arrived in Jacksonville in 1895.  No doubt townsmen took quick notice of this short, pretty lady with soft, blue-gray eyes.  Cora was the estranged wife of an English military officer, Donald Stewart, whose father, a baronet, had commanded all of the British forces in India.  What drew Cora to the Gateway to Florida?  There were a variety of rumors:  She may have come as the traveling companion of English investors in the orange industry, or she might have accompanied wealthy capitalists who abandoned her here, but not before endowing her with generous parting gifts.  Then again, perhaps she was intended as the mistress for a Jax politician.  In any case, Cora picked up the name "Taylor" during this time.  According to gossip, she was possibly the common-law wife of a local man named Allen Taylor.  The 1895 city directory does show a person by this name, living in East Jacksonville and working for the railroad.  He might have been a short-term resident, for he doesn't appear in any of the other directories from 1893 to 1898.

 THE HOTEL de DREME

Cora embarked on a new life in the River City, but the change meant severe repercussions for her.  As the Jacksonville Metropolis later noted in her obituary, "She plunged into the life with a restlessness that would ostracize her from society and forever banish her from her relatives in the North."  Striking out on her own, Cora opened the Hotel de Dreme in a refurbished old building.  Its neighborhood, La Villa, consisted primarily of African Americans, along with some Hispanics and whites.  (A Caucasian ancestor of the JacksonvilleStory.com manager lived there during the time of the Great Fire, working in the Florida Times-Union production room.) 

Cora's establishment dispensed its pleasures at the southwest corner of Ashley and Jefferson (then called Hawk Street).  Both locals and visitors made tracks to this upscale enterprise, which trumpeted its name in large, gleaming gold letters on a semi-circular sign over the front door.  The business operated as a combination of an inn, nightclub, and bordello that offered beer & champagne, but no hard liquor.  Back at the St. James Hotel, the head clerk handed out a list of local brothels to visitors, and this guide gave the Hotel de Dreme a class-A rating.  

Click here for Cora's hotspot! 

Sporting houses traditionally provided a pianist called the "Professor," and the Hotel de Dreme proved no exception.  Although history doesn't record whether Cora's musician was white or African American, the Professor tickled the ivories night and day, providing mood music and entertaining guests with song & dance routines.  However, Cora herself served as the brightest attraction.  Exhibiting a sharp wit and luminous smile, she charmed the men while they played at the roulette wheel or socialized with the ladies of the evening.  The madam quickly became known about town.  Women used parasols to hide her from their view as she glided past in a handsome carriage.  Her conveyance featured a stately black horse, a uniformed African American coachman, and seat dusters that were changed daily in order to match the owner's elegant fashions. 

 THE ORDEAL AT SEA

After Stephen Crane's ugly experiences with the Commodore, he would convalesce at the Hotel de Dreme.  His first journey aboard the tug ended in catastrophe.  But as Stephen wrote later, though, things looked good at the very outset of the trip on December 31, 1896: 

"It was the afternoon of New Year's. The Commodore lay at her dock in Jacksonville and negro stevedores processioned steadily toward her with box after box of ammunition and bundle after bundle of rifles. Her hatch, like the mouth of a monster, engulfed them. It might have been the feeding time of some legendary creature of the sea.  It was in broad daylight and the crowd of gleeful Cubans on the pier did not forbear to sing the strange patriotic ballads of their island.  Everything was perfectly open...  She loaded up as placidly as if she were going to carry oranges to New York, instead of Remingtons to Cuba." 

The Commodore was crammed with rifles, bullets, dynamite, black powder, razor-sharp machetes, and 23 Cuban soldiers.  After leaving its downtown mooring, the vessel quickly got stuck in the St. Johns River.  It grounded on mudflats at Commodore's Point, an ironically-named spot that lies at the north end of the present-day Hart Bridge.  A U. S. Customs cutter, the Boutwell, finally pulled the Commodore free, yet it damaged the tug in the process.

The vessel continued its journey but ran aground again, this time on or near the St. Johns River bar, not far from the jetties.  When Cora heard about the mishap, she caught a train to Mayport and then rented a boat to visit the stranded craft -- all to spend a few more hours with her heartthrob.  Although the Boutwell reappeared, the Commodore was able to refloat itself.  The tug then headed into seas that may've been too rough and stormy for a safe passage.  Leaking through broken seams, the vessel foundered a number of miles off the coast of Daytona Beach.  Nine men eventually lost their lives, and all of the rest suffered injuries. 

Stephen drifted in a tiny, open dinghy for 30 hours, along with with the injured captain and two other sailors.  Listen to how he described the miserable affair in "The Open Boat":

"Many a man ought to have a bathtub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea.  These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat navigation.  The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean.  His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat.  Often he said: 'Gawd! That was a narrow clip.'  As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the broken sea.  The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern.  It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.  The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered why he was there."

A monstrous shark kept nudging the puny craft, reminding the haggard sailors that death hovered close by.  Just when the ordeal's end was in sight, one of the mariners did meet his fate.  He went under as the men began a swim through treacherous breakers to shore.  The survivors finally crawled out of the sea within several miles of today's Daytona Beach Boardwalk and Pier.  Not long afterwards, Stephen wrote "The Open Boat" about the misadventure.  (Researchers are now surveying and studying what are believed to be the Commodore's remains.  They lie under 80 feet of water, twelve miles from Daytona.) 

 BECOMING AN ITEM

Stephen returned to the River City in ragged shape, having suffered from exposure, exhaustion, and a near drowning.  Cora got him back on his feet though, treating him to such meals as watercress salad, quail on toast, and champagne.  Unlike many authors, Stephen proved a wonderfully charismatic talker.  He was often full of life and humor, savoring other people's company.  Charmed, his lover smothered him with attention, so much so that he found it difficult to concentrate on the preparation of "The Open Boat." Stephen couldn't escape Cora even when he hid in a local bar to write.  He began the masterpiece in Jacksonville, but went north to complete it. 

After his return to Florida, Stephen and Cora grew even closer.  He composed love poems for her, while she stuffed her diary with sweet nothings about her "guiding star."  Something that endeared his partner to him was Cora's interest in literature & authorship.  In later years, in fact, she contributed to several national publications like Smart Set and Harper's Weekly.  

Cora eventually closed the Hotel de Dreme, and the couple moved north and to Europe, with Stephen introducing Cora as his wife.  Unfortunately for the Cranes, ugly rumors about them began to fly.  Talk buzzed about drug addiction, alcoholism, rampant promiscuity, and even Satanism.  None of this proved true.  The scandalous gossip, nevertheless, is what drove the pair to relocate to England.  And that nation also proved more accepting of their kind of relationship, for one of Cora's previous husbands, Donald Stewart,  wouldn't grant her a divorce, according to a "Booknotes" interview with researcher Linda Davis.

Stephen did indulge in interests that could set rumor mills churning.  Interestingly, he had grown up in a religious atmosphere.  His father, a minister, penned many popular church tracts, while his mother wrote for the temperance movement (which advocated moderation or abstinence in regard to liquor).  Yet Stephen's passions proved to be the forbidden fruits of his parents.  His father had preached that novels were a filthy vice, but his son became one of the preeminent authors in American history.  Although Stephen wasn't a drunkard, moreover, he enjoyed drinking.  He also liked to womanize, proving a loyal customer to hookers.  And his parents would not have approved of his high regard for cigarettes and baseball.  The chain smoker had even served as the captain of the Syracuse University baseball team. 

In spite of his background, Stephen didn't care much for religion.  He focused a great deal of his attention on such underdogs as the fearful and the outcast, for he identified with them.  His writing reflected this outlook.  It radiated an unyielding defiance of smugness, complacency, hypocrisy, and intolerance.  In the novel Maggie, the forlorn streetwalker wanders aimlessly, finding rejection even from a minister:

"Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a chaste black coat whose decorous row of buttons reached from his chin to his knees.  The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she decided to approach this man.  His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and kind-heartedness.  His eyes shone good-will.  But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step.  He did not risk it to save a soul.  For how was he to know that there was a soul before him that needed saving?"
 

Whether describing a slum or a military incident, Stephen depicted the most repulsive of life situations in stark realism.  Consider The Monster, a grim novella from 1899 that is lauded as one of the best short stories in English, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia.  The tale describes how an African American saved the child of a white doctor from a fire, but the rescuer, badly burned, then lives the rest of his life without a face.  His small-town neighbors ostracize him, and the story ponders the physician's obligation to support the disfigured man.  (The Monster was later made into a 1959 movie called "Face of Fire," with James Whitmore and Cameron Mitchell.)  Pithy, dramatic, and down to earth, Stephen Crane's writing helped set the course of American fiction and poetry during the twentieth century.

The celebrated author often used his literary skills in news reporting.  Stephen finally did get into Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War and Teddy Roosevelt's famed Rough Riders.  And he frequently flirted with disaster.  When the Rough Riders stormed San Juan Hill in 100 degree weather, the writer traipsed around in a white raincoat, drawing Spanish fire on himself and those nearby.  Along with Cora, Stephen later visited Greece to file reports on its conflict with Turkey.  He arranged a job for Cora with the New York Journal, and so his consort joined into the journalistic endeavors.  She was billed as the first female war correspondent, publishing in various papers under the penname “Imogene Carter.”  Cora sent dispatches that, according to the era's newspapers, showed the fighting from a woman's perspective.

 AN EARLY DEATH

Back in England, the Cranes tried to surround themselves with merriment at Brede Place, the manor they rented.  Stephen delighted in hearing voices chatting and laughing, and he relished boisterous pastimes like blind man's bluff and animal grab.  The latter game involved playing cards with fauna printed on them.  As each card was turned over, a player won by being the first to snatch it up and make the appropriate animal sound for it.  The large manor hall would echo with Stephen roaring like a lion, Cora twittering like a canary, and H. G. Wells, the author of The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds, barking like a dog.  Late at night, the Cranes and their guests would hop out of bed and raid the pantry.  An impromptu jam session might result, with Stephen using a tuning fork to conduct such literary masters as H. G. Wells, AEW Mason (The Four Feathers), and Joseph Conrad (Nostromo, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness).  The little band played kazoo-type instruments, fashioned from toilet paper stuck to their combs.

Unfortunately, though, things weren't all fun and games for the Cranes.  Theirs was a tumultuous relationship, and Stephen even appears to have abandoned Cora at one point, much to her dismay.  The couple also lived large and suffered deep debts.  They paid for such extravagances as lavish soirees for sixty houseguests, who brought their own bedding to Brede Place.  To make matters worse, numerous people sponged off them, yet Stephen earned more fame than cash.   

Stressed out and surviving mostly on credit and from the generosity of friends, Stephen wrote like a maniac, trying to earn as much as possible.  He would seclude himself for many hours, sliding completed pages under the door for Cora to type. 

Ill health further complicated matters.  During his sickly childhood, Stephen may very well have been inflicted with tuberculosis, the great death sentence of the nineteenth century.  Like AIDS today, TB nearly always took its victim's life.  If a young Stephen had been infected with tuberculosis, then it went into remission.  In most cases, however, the fatal disease would recur later in life.  And there's no doubt Stephen suffered TB as an adult.  Perhaps since childhood, the author probably knew that he lived on borrowed time, and so he lived on the edge, according to Linda Davis in Badge of Courage.  His testing of life's bounds often proved similar to the risk-taking of his common-law wife. 

Stephen caught malarial fever in fever in Cuba, and this had worsened his condition.  He also compounded problems by a senseless disregard for his health.  On June 5, 1900, the 28-year-old author died of tuberculosis at a spa in Germany.  His last thoughts, before slipping into a coma, were nightmarish memories of the Commodore.  Although a heartbroken Cora waited nearby, Stephen's final deathbed companion was his favorite pet, a black dog named Sponge.

FOR THE DISCRIMINATING

What does it mean when a brothel publishes a tasteful, refined souvenir booklet?  The enterprise is probably aspiring for a high-class clientele, and Cora Crane's new bordello did just that.  Following the Great Fire of 1901, Jacksonville flourished as money & newcomers flowed in.  The time was ripe for its top madam to make a reappearance.  Cora came back to Jax after recovering from a nervous breakdown.  She resumed her former career with gusto!  Using borrowed funds in 1903, she built the Court, the River City's most popular and palatial sporting house.  The establishment stood in the heart of the red-light district, attracting hordes of patrons to its La Villa location, two blocks northeast of today's Prime Osborn Convention Center. 

The Court was Cora's baby.  She tried to maintain a proper decorum there, and she could prove hard as nails.  The proprietress would discontinue the liquor to a customer, for example, if he began to grow drunk.  Her diligence paid off, for the police arrested few, if any, people at the Court.  Its record looked good considering the numerous incidents at neighboring brothels.  Cora's business also catered to better-heeled men, another reason that it didn't suffer a rowdy reputation.

Would you like to see the ritzy digs at the Court?  Dating from about 1903, here are the photos from its souvenir booklet! 

CLICK HERE to view the Court from outside

CLICK HERE to climb its grand stairway

1

CLICK HERE to peek into a bedroom

CLICK HERE for additional bedchambers

CLICK HERE to sit in a parlor

CLICK HERE to dance in the ballroom

CLICK HERE to rest in a rocker

The Court proved a hit in Jacksonville.  And so, according to its owner, why not branch out and try to replicate its success elsewhere?  Cora sought to take advantage of the booming Beaches area.  Thus, Palmetto Lodge was born.

CLICK HERE to travel to the Court's seaside branch

During the era, many men preferred women who were Rubenesque, that is, pleasingly plump.  The bountiful meals that Cora fed her female staff helped them to retain these types of measurements.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the Court's personnel!

Controversy, or at least tongue clucking, seemed to accompany Cora & her ladies wherever they went.  But many townspeople had mixed feelings about the scarlet women from La Villa.

PUBLIC NUISANCES?

Cora Crane served as a queen "of the painted cohorts of the city," to borrow Stephen's words from Maggie.  Local women labeled her a jezebel, threatening family life with drink, neglect, and infidelity.  During the early 1900s, moreover, Jacksonville's African American church leaders denounced bawdyhouses as harmful to their communities.  Across America, crackdowns on prostitution did gain momentum after about 1890. 

Most River City whites, however, seem to have tolerated the world's oldest profession.  Simply put, money talked.  The issue had to do with the local economy, as indicated in James B. Crooks' book Jacksonville After the Fire, 1901-1909.  Many residents believed that bordellos proved a necessary evil in a town that profited from its seaport and railroads, as well as from some tourist traffic.  Sailors could visit Jax brothels for R & R, while businessmen could leave their wives at downtown hotels and partake of the illicit pleasures too, according to Dwight Wilson, the Curator for the Beaches Area Historical Society Archives. 

According to Cora herself, the Court fulfilled a mission: It enabled lonely and frustrated men to better continue with life's struggle.  She wrote in her journal, "I wonder if husbands are so often unfaithful because their wives are good?  I think so.  They cannot stand the dreary monotonies and certainties."  You could say that -- in the owner's opinion -- Jax's best bordello operated for the good of mankind.

Others felt otherwise.  If the Court was Cora's baby, then some believed that she begat a demon seed.  Carry Nation once raided the Court and its neighboring brothels, and she described them as a "demonocracy," held under the sway of evil spirits.  Mrs. Nation proved to be "the irrepressible disciple of the hatchet," boasted the Florida Times-Union at the time.  Born in Kentucky in 1846 and later based in Kansas, the temperance champion traveled throughout America, smashing up saloons and preaching in houses of ill repute.  Mrs. Nation did employ an offbeat publicity approach, according to a Milwaukee paper in 1998.  Her publicist used to tell the media that, even though the famed crusader looked "homelier than a mud fence," she wielded "a most powerful arm for swinging a hatch ax." 

On Valentine's Eve, 1908, Mrs. Nation targeted her sights on Jacksonville.  Several reporters met her at the Windle Hotel, where she lodged.  (These accommodations partly stood at the site of today's Florida Collection at the Main Public Library, that is, next to the 11 East Forsyth Apartments.)  Mrs. Nation's little group included the future widow of Robert Bateman, a popular Jax minister who would die on the Titanic four years later.  (According to some accounts, he asked the ship's band to play his favorite hymn, "Nearer My God to Thee," after the liner struck the iceberg.  The musicians may've done so as their final song before going down with the vessel.)

The first bordello into which Mrs. Nation swooped was "the notorious Court," as the Times-Union explained the next day. "The public had evidently got wind of the visit, for when the vehicles came to a halt in front of the resort, there were at least a couple of hundred boys and men, with gaping mouths, eager to see Carry Nation and what they thought would prove a knock-down and drag out raid."  The sheriff and other officers stood in the background, but Cora herself wasn't present, probably staying at her Pablo Beach brothel instead.  The Times-Union continued, "The doorbell was rung and when the door was opened Mrs. Nation followed the newspaper men inside.  The inmates (prostitutes) were taken unawares, and Mrs. Nation's reception at first was just the adverse from cordial.  However, Carry, not to be outdone, ascended the stairs to the upper floor, where she lectured as she went from room to room.  As egress was made from the resort, Mrs. Nation and party had to find their way through an even larger number of curiosity seekers than upon entering."

After stopping at several neighboring dens of iniquity, Mrs. Nation headed back towards the Court.  She spotted a saloon across from Cora's establishment, so she barged in and upbraided the barkeep.  The manager "tried his best to remonstrate with Mrs. Nation, and to impress upon her that she was not on his visiting lists, but this proved of no avail." Although she didn't trash any bottles or furniture that night, she did condemn the drinkery as "a breathing hole of hell."  In the Times-Union's opinion, Mrs. Nation would find her Jax visit "a treasured asset to her list of experiences."   

CLICK HERE for more about Carry Nation & the River City

It would've been most interesting to see how the sharp-witted Cora might have handled this unusual visitor.  Would she have confronted her?  Or would she have let the intrusion slide, perhaps even humoring the melodramatic reformer?

 TONGUES FLAP

Cora and her good-time girls proved a favorite topic of River City conversation, albeit usually in hushed tones.  They would set off whispers as they made way to their theater boxes. They also caused ripples in the audience at the Grand Theatre, a Forsyth Street movie house.  The madam and her ladies attended afternoon films, but she agreed to try not to distract other patrons.  Her group wouldn't come in as a bunch, nor would they all sit together. 

No doubt Cora turned heads during her outings to a park in Riverside, where she walked her dogs Hatson, Bon-Bon, Pill-Box, Lamb Chops, and Sponge, which Stephen had adored.  Another favorite jaunt was to St. Augustine.  Along with a small bevy of her ladies and their young male friends, Cora would enjoy dinner on the train, patronize the Turkish baths, and pose in an automobile for a photo in front of the Old City Gates.  This excursion served a double purpose:  Not only did it provide a fun day, but it also promoted the Court, with men gawking at the women and the proprietress passing out the establishment's souvenir booklets. 

Cora impressed many as being cultivated in manner and speech, evincing an air of affluence.  Her reputation did precede her, nevertheless.  As her local death notice remarked, "Toward the end of her career..., she became restless and plunged into the Bohemian life, several of her escapades in Jacksonville still being vivid in the minds of the populace."  Just her presence alone could make people nervous.  Consider the meetings with her attorney, D. C. Campbell, who maintained a practice at the old Law Exchange Building on Forsyth Street.  (The Yates Building, which houses the Property Appraiser's Office, sits at the location now.)  His neighboring lawyers took offense at these regular visits from such a woman of ill fame.  Going against the customs of the time, she even smoked in Mr. Campbell's office.  They bluntly told him to either get rid of the madam or to relocate.  Mr. Campbell's reply?  He blandly told them that Cora wouldn't go, since she was worth $1,000 a year to him.  (This translates into roughly $20,000 in current currency). 

Few things excite the public as much as murder.  Regrettably for Cora, this cloud further darkened her reputation.  A frequent Court patron was a railroad conductor, Hammond P. McNeil, the 25-year-old son of a prominent family in Waycross, Georgia.  Fifteen years younger than Cora, Hammond was a charming, good-looking fellow, but he also proved to be a short-fused hothead frequently made more combustible by alcohol.  In 1905, Cora married him.  Soon afterwards, it was probably she who set him up as the owner of a local saloon called The Annex.  It operated at the Everett Hotel, a large hostelry situated where the eighteen-story SunTrust Building is today.

CLICK HERE for the Everett 

Only a couple of years into the marriage, Hammond grabbed headlines by fatally shooting a man in Mayport.  He suspected the nineteen-year-old railroad employee of being his spouse's lover.  Although Cora saw the killing, she refused to testify against Hammond at his trial.  Indeed, her father-in-law sent Cora and another witness, her housekeeper, to Europe during the legal proceedings. The jury acquitted Hammond, excusing a crime that involved someone's wife.  Nevertheless, newspapers took potshots at Cora, characterizing her as a "keeper of a disorderly house," a "woman of the underworld," and an "alleged wife."

Following his release from jail, Hammond quickly divorced his wife and got hitched up with a much younger woman.  With witnesses backing him, the medium-built man accused Cora of smacking him in the head with a shoe (resulting in three stitches), as well as physically assaulting him on numerous other occasions.  Cora is alleged to have said, "Yes, I did it, I would do it again, and I only wish I had beaten him to death."  Hammond's end came in 1913.  He scuffled with his later wife at their Pablo Beach home, threatening to shoot her.  However, the gun went off in his direction, blasting a bullet into his brain.  He died soon afterwards at a hospital.   

It was an act of kindness that hastened Cora's demise at an early age, only forty-six years old.  Her final day occurred at Palmetto Lodge, the former Pablo Beach bordello.  The weather prove ideal on Sunday, September 4, 1910, according to the Times-Union at the time.  Jax residents flocked to the Beaches area, with "hundreds of automobiles" chugging east on the new Atlantic Boulevard and passengers crowding aboard the coast-bound trains, one of which contained fourteen coaches that still couldn't seat everyone comfortably.  The paper remarked the next day, "The surf was rolling as if made to order, and the bathers were plentiful and in high glee as they rode or also plunged through the restless billows."  At about noon, a car became stuck in the sand along the shore at Palmetto Lodge.  Cora helped push it free, but she then felt dizzy.  She had already suffered a light stroke a few months before, so she went inside to lie down.  She never regained consciousness, dying alone from a cerebral hemorrhage.      

Her services were held in the chapel of Marcus Conant Funeral Directors & Embalmers, located at 16 East Forsyth Street in downtown Jax.  (This site is now occupied by a parking garage across from the Main Library's Florida Collection.)  Cora's burial took place at Evergreen Cemetery on North Main Street.  Her grave is set off by itself, for she has no spouse or relatives interned nearby. 

CLICK HERE to visit the final resting place

The madam had given instructions earlier in regard to her tombstone, and they were carried out.  Thus, her little marble marker reminds the world of "Cora E. Crane."

Source of photographs on this webpage: Florida State Archives

Source of clipart: J.O.D.'s Old Fashioned B & W Clip Art Collection, at http://www.oldfashionedclipart.com (The lantern was tinted red by the website manager of JacksonvilleStory.com.)

Sources for quotes: CLICK HERE

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