SALOONS AND BAWDY HOUSES POPULATED CITY 135 YEARS AGO

On this date in 1887 a reporter for The San Diego Union wrote an expose on San Diego’s vice that catalogued some 50 licensed saloons, 35 bawdy houses, three opium joints and a mysterious fortuneteller called Madam Coara.

San Diego had boomed after the railroad connected the city to the rest of the nation in the 1880s. The town’s prosperity attracted prostitutes, gamblers and capitalists.

The boom—if not the vice— was cut short by a national economic depression in the 1890s. But it wasn’t until 25 years later in 1912 that police cracked down in the downtown district then known as the Stingaree and rounded up 138 women accused of prostitution.

From The San Diego Union, Sunday, April 3, 1887

SAN DIEGO’S VICE.

A Union Reporter’s Revelations of Iniquity — The Gray-haired fortune-teller — Bawdy Houses and Opium Dens.

Beneath the window of a cottage near the foot of Seventh street appears in prominent characters the mysterious inscription

“FORTUNE TELLER.”

A reporter of THE UNION being willing even to look back into the sorrows of the past, and forward into the mysteries of the future for the sake of an item, was moved to enter and consult the oracle of fate. Stepping in upon the opening of the door, which responded to his knock, he found himself in the presence of an elderly lady, with silvered locks, benignant countenance and pious manner. Seated at her table, with spectacles and kindly smile, she seemed the personification of motherly goodness, charity and virtue. This was the sibyl who was to unravel the tangled meshes of his destiny, and extending his right hand, bronzed with honest toil, he awaited the awful verdict. But the oracle with her tender motherly smile, exclaimed, “Not that, not that; give me the hand nearest to the heart, for my prophetic eye would look into the very soul.” Taking the left hand of the reporter in her own, the old lady carefully scanned the palm, and tracing the lines with her finger, said:

“I see for you a long life, future greatness, money, ambition gratified, and pleasure—yes, much pleasure. Whatever you aspire to will be attained. What do you most desire now—a bottle of beer?”

The reporter, being a prohibitionist, disclaimed such desire, and suggested that a cigar would do. From the recesses of a secret box the oracle produced the desired article and when the innocent reporter raised is eyes after lighting the weed he was astonished and shocked to see the silverhaired matron, with feet cocked up on the table, calmly smoking the stub of a vile smelling cigar. At the same time the opening of door at the side of the room attracted his attention, and turning his eyes thither he beheld a female form somewhat scantily appareled. By this time the innate modesty of the journalist was so overcome that he stammered himself out of the door and beat a hurried retreat. He resolved, however, to inquire into the affair and to know the moral status of the place he had visited. He found that the silver-haired woman, with the placid countenance of a nun and the tender eyes of a mother, was a whited sepulcher, a moral leper. She is known as Madam Coara, the fortuneteller, and as she is well-calculated, by her immaculate exterior, to prey upon the suspected, her victims are not a few...