Police docket records for the first decade of existence for Guthrie (Logan County, Oklahoma Territory) reveal that government operations depended heavily on fines levied against prostitutes, those who maintained houses of gambling, and those who disturbed the peace by cursing, fighting, loitering, or other minor offenses. Taxes and licenses supplemented the city’s income. Major crimes such as murder fell under the jurisdiction of the federal court at Fort Smith.
Despite the heavy and persistent fines, gambling and prostitution flourished in this new frontier town. As shown in the following yearly summary of offenses, these activities tapered off slowly. By 1900, less than a third of the number of fines were levied against gamblers and prostitutes than had occurred in the peak year of 1893.
As the city gained its footing, additional laws were passed. For example, in 1891 fines were instituted for failure to license a dog, suggesting that dogs running loose had become a problem. With a continuing influx of people from other more settled places around the nation, greater pressure fell upon town fathers to clean up. Hogs and cattle became the subject of complaints as did the proper maintenance of outdoor privies. However, even by 1900, the number of arrests by Guthrie police for prostitution and gambling still topped any other offense.
As other sections of the former Indian Nations (Oklahoma) opened to white settlement, the front lines of gamblers and prostitutes moved to the newest places where largely male populations could be counted on as eager customers. Further west, mining of precious metals in California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and other areas formed the last frontier of rough and ready places where gamblers and ladies of the night could earn a profitable income.
At the time, journalist Frederick Barde reported on the gambling scene at Guthrie for the Kansas City Star, as recorded by Michael J. Hightower in his 2013 book Banking in Oklahoma Before Statehood:
Those who made it to Guthrie with their wallets intact might have visited the Reeves brothers’ gambling house operated by Dick and Bill Reeves. Opened on the day of the Run of ’89 in a big tent “where there was room enough for 1,500 men and women to gamble and drink and carouse,” the Reeves brothers ran their business in Guthrie for twenty years. Barde’s description of the famed honky-tonk confirms an image of the western saloon that has never yielded its place in our collective memory: “Gamblers from every State tackled the game that ran night and day in that sleepless place. Hundreds of thousands of dollars passed over its tables. The six-shooter and the dirk settled many a dispute, and the dead man was hauled away and the blood scrubbed from the floor as part of the day’s business. Outlaw gangs that infested Oklahoma in those days risked their loot against the faro bank and the roulette wheel—and usually lost.”[1]
As late as 1898, the situation in Guthrie continued to outrage the city’s more upstanding citizenry, as reflected in this editorial in the Guthrie Daily Leader.
Why is not some action taken toward driving out the hundreds of tramps, bums and tinhorn gamblers that infest the city? The streets and alleys fairly swarm with such vermin and with our present small police force the city is not safe. I hear daily of petty thieving done by this gentry. Such characters do a town no good and I think it high time to begin a crusade. Every night the joints on Second street are crowded with bums, who, after the lights go out, enter on a campaign of larceny. If the evil cannot be checked in any other way, then close the joints.[2]
Laws passed in 1893 in Oklahoma Territory allowed cities to levy an occupation tax on gaming tables, among many other activities including but not limited to auctioneers, contractors, druggists, restaurants, butchers, taverns, hawkers, peddlers, bankers, brokers, pawnbrokers, merchants of all kinds, grocers, wagons, carts, furniture dealers, real estate agents, and all kinds of exhibitions for pay.[3] The same 1893 law allowed cities to prohibit houses of gambling as well as prostitution, tippling shops, billiard tables, bowling alleys, etc., and specifically prohibits the granting of license for gambling or prostitution.[4] Observers might conclude that Guthrie’s town fathers deemed these activities too lucrative to completely banish, allowing gambling and prostitution to flourish in order to make the most of the fines they produced.
Also passed that year, a law stated that any officer of the law found to be drinking or gambling could be removed from office upon complaint by any citizen. This law may have been the cause of Bill Tilghman’s sudden change of career. After being appointed deputy marshal in Spring 1893, he gave up ownership of his gambling house.[5] Yet these stringent laws, including those that penalized property owners if their tenants pursued any such forbidden activities, seem to have been largely ignored by boom towns of those lawless years, as Guthrie’s police docket reveals.
Guthrie’s first decade of arrests were as follows:
1889 May thru Dec
Trespass 9
Trespass/Stealing 28
Assault/Fighting 8
Disturb Peace 14
Public Intoxication 1
Conduct Business w/o License 4
Fake Credentials 1 (doctor)
Maintain a House of Gambling 1 (Fine 10.00)
Maintain a Place for Prostitution 2 & Prostitution 46 (Range of fines: 8.50 – 36.00)
1890
Trespass 2
Assault/Fighting: 13
Failure to Pay Business Tax 7
Sell Beverage w/o License 1
Profane Language 6
Disturb Peace 5
Firearm 3
Public Intoxication 13
Maintain Public Nuisance 1
Maintain a House of Gambling 25 (Average fines: 10.75)
Maintain a Place for Prostitution 9 & Prostitution 43 (Average fine: 7.50)
1891
Assault 16 – 1 pitchfork, 1 w/ hoe
Disturb Peace/Fighting/Profanity 128
Discharge Firearm 3
Public Intoxication 30
Failure to Pay Business Tax 9
Maintain a House of Gambling 120 (Range of fines: 15.00 – 35.00)
Maintain a Place for Prostitution 9
Prostitution 148 (Range of fines: 7.50 – 10.00)
Unusual: Unregistered dog: 3
On Street w/o visible means of support 1
Left on ground exposed cow 1
Saloon open on Sunday or after hours: 3
1892
Assault 7
Disturb Peace/Fighting 156
Public Intoxication 52
Failure to Pay Business Tax 14
Maintain Public Nuisance 2 (one charge for hogs)
Maintain a House of Gambling 142 (Range of fines: 10.00 – 40.00)
Prostitution 202 (Range of fines: 7.50 – 10.00)
Unusual: Frequently found in house of prostitution, fined 46.55
Business open earlier than 5 am
Indecent exposure
Not burying dead pony
1893
Assault/Fighting 50
Disturb Peace 244 (many charges for “bad language”)
Loiter/Vagrant 24
Public Intoxication 84
Maintain a House of Gambling 29 (Range of fines: 8.50 – 40.00) (No arrests after March)
Prostitution 337 (Average fine: 10.15 – 13.65)
Unusual: Riding horse on sidewalk
Keep hogs in filthy condition
1894
Assault/Fighting 25
Disturb Peace 96
Loiter/Vagrant 6
Public Intoxication 93
Maintain a House of Gambling 1 arrest* (16.65 only recorded charge/fine, June)
Prostitution 270 (Average fine: 10.15 – 13.65)
(Terms used in booking: Place of Assignation, Bawdy House, Keeper, Inmate, House of Ill Fame)
Unusual: Allow horses to run at large
Carry on sexual intercourse at Arlington Hotel
Slaughter animals
Dress not belonging to his sex
* Mysteriously, arrests for gambling ceased entirely from April 1893 throughout 1894 and remained at a low rate in 1895.
1895
Assault 22
Disturb Peace 62
Loiter/Vagrant 16
Assault/Fighting 22
Public Intoxication 160
Maintain a House of Gambling 35 (Average fine: 16.65 – 31.65)
Prostitution 219 (Average fine: 11.65 – 31.65)
(Includes “occupy room for unlawful sexual activity”; “use room in restaurant for assignation”)
Unusual: Appear on street in lewd manner
Garbage in streets and alley
Allow cow to run at large
Hogs in city
Cow in dirty pen
Fail to close saloon at 12 a.m.
Group assault on John ‘Chinaman’
1896
Assault 30
Disturb Peace 77
Loiter/Vagrant 1
Public Intoxication 66
Maintain a House of Gambling 52 (Average fine: 16.65 – 31.65
Prostitution 152 (Average fine: 11.65 – 31.65)
Unusual: Leaving team of horses unattended
Keep meat market open after 9 a.m. Sunday
1897
Assault/Fighting 23
Disturb Peace 95
Loiter/Vagrant 27
Public Intoxication 147
Maintain a House of Gambling 61
Prostitution 207 (Three women filed physician certificates, assumed to verify state of health); arrests for cohabitation: 23
Unusual: Appear on street in unbecoming dress (female)
1898
Assault/Fighting 21
Disturb Peace 78
Loiter/Vagrant 30
Public Intoxication 95
Maintain a House of Gambling 41
Prostitution 169 (Cohabit: 36)
Unusual: Remove contents of privy without license
Sale of liquor on Sunday
1899
Assault/Fighting 34
Disturb Peace 55
Loiter/Vagrant 32
Public Intoxication 181
Maintain a House of Gambling 64 (Average fine $40)
Prostitution 136 (Cohabit: 28) (Average fine $10)
Unusual: Maintain filthy condition injurious to public health
Overflowing privy vault
Steal 27 hen’s eggs
1900
Assault/Fighting 30
Disturb Peace 73
Loiter/Vagrant 14
Public Intoxication 243
Maintain a House of Gambling 33
Prostitution 142
Unusual: Giving musical concert on the street without a license
~~~
[1] Hightower, Michael J. Banking in Oklahoma Before Statehood. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. 198 For more on Barde, see http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BA019
[2] “Protest Against Bums,” The Guthrie Daily Leader (Guthrie, Oklahoma). March 3, 1898. 4
[3] The Compiled Laws of Oklahoma, 1909. Vol. I. Piper-Reed Book Company, 1909. Chapter 14, Article 3, Section 681
[4] Ibid, Section 683
[5] Ibid, Article 6, Section 753
denelecampbell 