Birmingham Babylon The City That Dares Not Speak its Name - For Good Reason by Jerry Brown Black & White Magazine, August, 1992 It's living on this damn mountain that makes us so peculiar, something in the way the iron ore deposits react with the earth's magnetic field. It probably creates some kind of bizarre ionization effect in our brains. Like some kind of aurora borealis of the emotions. I say this because no other urban population on earth is as squirrely, as equally savage and sweet as the people of Birmingham. That's what makes our scandals so unique, because here, the worst things are done by the nicest people. It's always the upstanding and respectable folks who get caught with their pants down, their privates exposed and their fists up the till, often simultaneously. Then again, maybe that's why we're so tolerant of the weird stuff that goes on here. We'll forgive almost anything, especially if we hear first-hand from a relative that a perpetrator is "good to his mama." Prior to shooting her, of course. Praise the Lord What better way to start than with a man of the cloth. One of the most quickly hushed-up scandals ever concerned someone we will call Father X. He was well-liked around town and highly respected, especially for his work with the homeless, particularly -- I was told by one of my sources, a minister of another faith -- the young homeless. It seems the better-looking and more beefy a young homeless man was, the greater the good Father's efforts toward salvation. All this good work came to an abrupt end when Father X's Higher-Up came calling one evening and walked in on an all-male orgy, which he was invited to join by the naked young man who answered the door. He discovered the good Father blissfully on the top of the pile -- or bottom, depending on who's telling the story -- merrily evoking the ways of the faith. The party was broken up and the young men sternly dispersed. It was all hushed up tighter than a tomb, and Father X was quickly shipped off to other parts. One wonders how often that became necessary. Then there was Father Coyle. Here we have a Catholic priest who was sitting on the porch of St. Paul's rectory one afternoon in 1921, when a Methodist minister, Rev. Edwin Stephenson, walked up to him, said something no one could hear, pulled out a gun and promptly put a bullet through his head. Reverend Stephenson then walked to the courthouse, which was next door, and turned himself in, saying the shooting was "self-defense." It turned out that Father Coyle had married Rev. Stephenson's daughter to a young man of Puerto-Rican distraction. In those days, anyone with a suntan was considered a Negro, but what had driven Stephenson to murder was the fact that his new son-in-law was a "Pope-lover." Catholics were the homosexuals of the twenties and were intensely hated in many parts of the country, especially here. More to the point, Rev. Stephenson belonged to a certain, shall we say hooded, fraternal organization where that kind of mixed-marriage is considered a mortal no-no. Naturally, this being Birmingham, the reverend was acquitted -- LA still can't hold a candle to this town, folks. He was represented by local attorney Hugo Black -- yes, that Hugo Black -- who shamelessly pandered to the bigotry of the jurors, which is shocking in light of his later libertarian career on the US Supreme Court. Before Black brought the Puerto-Rican son-in-law in to show to the jury, he had pre-arranged for the lights in the courtroom to be lowered so that the young would appear to be even darker than he was. The effect achieved the desired result. In his final plea, Black urged the jury to acquit his client in order to "protect the homes of Alabama" from the this dangerous Negro and Catholic scourge. The paper said he had the whole courtroom "in tears." The all-Protestant jury deliberated for two hours and returned a "Not Guilty" verdict, but after much "honest thought and prayer," according to foreman T.A. Lappage. I bet. The verdict set off a nasty period of Protestant-Catholic tension in Birmingham that was not effectively resolved until Jack Kennedy became President and it finally became clear, even here, that the Pope was not plotting to convert the country and tithe the treasury. Besides being squirrely, we can also be a little slow. But while we're on the subject of murder, the grisliest one took place in the late 1880's. Robert Hawes, a railroad engineer, brutally butchered his wife and two daughters, dumped their bodies in a Birmingham lake, then high-tailed it to Mississippi to marry a young woman he'd recently met. He was brazen enough to bring her back through Birmingham on the way to Atlanta, where the police boarded the train and arrested him in front of his bride. "Shaken beyond measure," to quote a reporter of the period, the second Mrs. Hawes took the next train home, presumably to file for divorce. Birmingham citizens were outraged by the murders and formed an angry, shouting mob -- a frequent exercise of our First Amendment rights in those days. The mob was so rowdy, police and guardsmen had to be called to defend the jail where Hawes was being held. The Sheriff repeatedly called for the mob to disperse, and when someone in the crowd fired a shot, the Sheriff ordered the police and guardsmen to open fire. Forty Winchesters and other shotguns were fired into the mob at close range. Three men were killed instantly, seven more mortally wounded, and thirty serious wounded. The mob dispersed, in fear for their lives. The sheriff was arrested, but made his $25,000 bail and assumed his job again as the Governor congratulated him "upon the faithful manner in which he had upheld the law," to quote the same reporter. Hawes was brought to trial, convicted, appealed the conviction, lost and was hanged a year and a half later. The Sheriff attended the hanging. The mob didn't. Southern justice. Street of Dreams Until quite recently, Birmingham enjoyed a reputation as one of the great hooker capitals of the Southeast. Considering our wild and wooly mining town background, it's probably to be expected -- the boys always liked to have a little fun before they descended into the bowels of the earth, many never to return, at least alive -- but surprisingly, no one would comment, even off the record, on what's going on today, which must mean there's some heavy duty action going on somewhere, probably controlled by you-know-who. But you didn't hear it from me. Birmingham's top madames before the twenties were Blanche Bernard -- Miss Blanch -- and F.J. Barfield - Old Lady Barfield -- who operated in neighboring townhouses on Avenue A. Both madames kept elegant carriages which they used to drive up and down Twentieth Street to advertise their girls, who were sternly instructed never to acknowledge their customers if they saw them on the street. To her surprise, Madame Barfield was visited one night by the famous axe-toting Carrie Nation, who had come to town after a nasty shooting at Roscoe McConnel's Public Dance Hall, billed as "Birmingham's Leading Emporium for Higher Expression of Terpsichorean Arts." Ms. Barfield, as might be expected, was not pleased to see her visitor, who had arrived with a bevy of expensively bought-off policemen. Barfield flew into one of her formidable rages, blew her police whistle -- which quickly assembled the girls and their clients in the front parlor, in various states of undress -- and yelled, "Get that woman out of here!" Ms. Nation was non-plussed and took a position in the center of the parlor. She read a few psalms from her Bible, told the story of Mary Magdalen, and sang a few inspirational songs. By the time she finished, she had a few of the girls in tears, but most just wanted to get back to work. Her axe, which she kept hidden under her dress, was not withdrawn, and Madame's Barfield's antiques, if not her composure, were left intact. Nobody was arrested and the next day Ms. Nation left for Detroit, while in Birmingham, business continued as usual. Many of our beloved town fathers tried to clean things up over the years, and one of the most surprising was Eugene "Bull" Conner. Hookers were still thriving in the fifties, especially around Fourth Avenue, so Conner got an ordinance passed which made it illegal for a man to occupy a hotel room with any woman who was not his wife. At the same time, Conner was also in the process of trying to fire a detective he didn't like, a man named Darnell. Darnell, of course, didn't want to be fired, and began planing an elaborate sting operation to catch Conner with his pants down. Literally. He, and everyone else in the department, knew that Conner would slip away with his secretary, a Miss Brown, after the annual Christmas party and go to a local hotel. He still had some allies in the force, so he planted his men around the hotel. They gave Conner and Miss Brown sufficient time to get with it, then burst through the door and arrested them, citing the ordinance. When Darnell strolled in the hotel room after the bust, smirking, Conner yelled, "They're crucifying me." But, as usual, Conner had the last word. Before his case could come to trial, he had the ordinance declared unconstitutional on the theory that a criminal law can be declared "fatally indefinite" if it is so broad as to cover a lot of innocent conduct along with the questionable conduct. In other words, a man could innocently occupy a hotel room with his mother. Conner won the day. It isn't clear what happened to Darnell. The hookers, however, were right back in business. Interestingly, one of our most expensive call girl rings operated right out of Five-Points South. It was run under the cover of a modeling agency and was located near the present-day Highlands Grill. The Madame was a stunningly beautiful socialite who had formerly been married into one of our wealthy industrial families. As sharp as she was beautiful, she also ran a dress shop in Homewood, and both concerns, from what I was told, were highly profitable. Curiously, just about everybody in town knew whatt she was up to except her second husband, naturally, who came from the Middle East and owned a big hotel in town. It's not clear whether or not he ever did find out, but she eventually closed up shop and went through her second divorce. A breath-taking beauty right up to the end, she later died of cancer. One of the most famous hookers in town was a big media star who was most closely associated -- how can I say this? -- with post-adolescents and changing atmospheric conditions. (Sorry, that's as close as I can get on this one.) Rumors about her have circulated for years, but a man who worked as a bellman at the Mountain Brook hotel where she used to work -- not in the same medium, one assumes -- verified the story. It was common knowledge among the hotel staff, he said, and no one ever attempted to stop her. When I asked why, all I got was big grin. Anyway, I understand she is now living out of state and has found religion. Don't they all. And while we're on the subject on sexual peccadilloes, there is a very prominent Southern politician who was shot while on the campaign trail. He was brought to a major Birmingham hospital, where he took over a whole floor to recuperate. I was told -- by the daughter of one of the nurses who attended him -- that when he wanted to clear the room, he'd take his you-know-what out and wave it in the air. How prominently he was able to do that, of course, and to what lengths, is not something that I can comment on. The Corporate Life Those of you who study manhole covers have probably noticed that most of the ones in Fairfield all say Corey on them. They were not bought at a fire sale, that was the original name of the town. This story begins in 1907, when US Steel took over TCI, one of Birmingham's biggest concerns, in a shady stock deal initiated by some of our town fathers, who had suddenly found themselves over-leveraged. (Sound familiar?) The deal ultimately involved such luminaries as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and Teddy Roosevelt, and resulted in a full-blown Congressional investigation. When the smoke cleared, the company decided to build a model city for the workers here to clean up its image. A site in Opposum Valley was chosen and it was decided to name the town for a member of US Steel's board, a Mr. Corey. Everything was in high gear when Mr. Corey was caught en flagrante with a New York show girl by agents who were probably acting on behalf of Mrs. Corey. It all became very public and very nasty, and US Steel decided it might be smart to change the name of the town. When the company asked another board member if he wanted the town named after him, he quickly said no, but advised them to call it Fairfield, after Fairfield County, Connecticut, where he lived with his family. The reason? Nothing ever happens there, he said. That may have cleaned up the name, but it didn't hide the fact that they built the whole town over a swamp. Soon after the workers and their families had moved into their utopian bungalows and set up housekeeping, there was a virulent outbreak of malaria. To its credit, the company brought in Dr. Lloyd Nolan to head an emergency medical team. Dr. Nolan had gained an international reputation treating malaria during the construction of the Panama Canal. Under his direction, the swamps were drained, proper sanitary facilities were constructed, health guidelines were instituted, and the outbreak was stemmed. A large hospital was built to Dr. Nolan's specifications to provide on-going and low-cost care to US Steel employees and their families. When he died many years later, in 1950, the hospital was renamed in his honor, thus Lloyd Nolan Hospital. Curiously, the following year, the company suddenly gave the hospital to "the people of western Jefferson County." They donated it lock, stock and ICU, and even included a small endowment. What's odd about this sudden generosity is that it came at precisely the same time the union started stirring up trouble. You can draw your own conclusions on this one -- no way am I taking on US Steel -- but considering the high cost of health care, the motivation here should be fairly obvious. Ain't it insightful. Another institution with curious origins is the exclusive Indian Springs School. It began simply enough in 1930 with a $7-million trust established by the will of a local real estate tycoon, whose initials were H.W. His will was very specific about the type of school that was to be created and included 100 pages of bizarre directives, including the proviso that only white, male, protestant students be accepted. It would have ended there except for the tycoon's widow, A.W, who was surprised to discover she had been left a mere pittance -- an annuity of only a few thousand per year. A.L. was accustomed to a great deal more than that and took enormous exception to her dead husband's educational concerns. A lengthy court battle ensued between the widow and the bank that held the trust, but the tycoon's will seemed iron-clad. Then one of the A.L.'s attorneys found an old Alabama law which states that if a widow goes to court and says, "I dissent," then the dispersal provisions of her husband's will are invalidated and she automatically receives the full widow's share of the estate. Two little words and she could be back in the saddle. Naturally, A.L. went for it. And didn't stop there. No sooner had she collected her millions than she married her 28-year-old male secretary, a good-looking young man whom the Associated Press described as having previously been "variously employed." A.L. announced that they would be setting up housekeeping in Maine, and, according to my source, promptly sailed for the South of France. Naturally, that took a big chunk out of the trust, and the bank -- which had endured heavy legal costs during the trials -- sat on the money that was left for almost twenty years, collecting fees, until the Attorney General brought a suit against them to force them to carry out the provisions of the will. The bank claimed it couldn't comply with provisions of the will on the money that was left, but the court told them to get with the program and do the best they could. What resulted was Indian Springs School, which is not in the least the racist, sexist, and probably fascist educational venture envisioned by its benefactor. For which we can all be thankful. If you like a little sex in your estate matters, few cases can top that of a high-powered, high-flying female attorney, R.R., who claimed she was secretly married to another attorney, J.T., after his sudden death. J.T. had been head of a big law firm and a widower -- or so everyone thought -- and was immensely wealthy, thus the claim. He was also a notorious womanizer, thus his relationship with R.R. R.R. went to court and filed a claim against the estate, saying that she and J.T. had been legally married in Mississippi, but that the courthouse which contained the records had, unfortunately, burned down. She was very convincing and told the court that J.T. had insisted on keeping the marriage secret until the appropriate time came to reveal it. She was about to walk off with the bucks when someone discovered a slight discrepancy in the dates. The courthouse had burned down before R.R. claimed she and J.T. had been married in it. So close, yet so far away. Untimely Ends An unusually tragic end came to a prominant local man several years ago. He was a well-known attorney and acknowledged prescription pill-popper, the result of a painful war injury. A gung-ho military type, he had been one of the first paratroopers to land during the invasion of Normandy, where he'd been discovered by the Germans when his chute got tangled in a tree. He got shot up pretty badly, but survived, barely, with the knowledge that he would live in pain for the rest of his life. When he returned from the war, he went to law school, a tradition in his family since both his grandfathers had been on the Alabama Supreme Court. Once in practice, however, he began to gravitate toward the more unsavory criminal cases and associated with some highly questionable elements. He began to have financial problems, as might be expected in these circumstances, and started borrowing heavily. He then proceeded to discard his first wife, marry a second -- somewhat of a "floozy," I was told -- divorce her, and then remarry his first. He became more and more dependent on prescription drugs and more and more unbalanced as a result, which played havoc on his enormous ego. He was well-known for coming on like gangbusters and for being one of the town's biggest bullshitters. However, for all this display of prowess, he knew, as did everyone else, that his success as an attorney was marginal, at best. To a man with his ego, combined with drugs, it was lethal. In his first suicide attempt, under melodramatic conditions which no one was willing to reveal, he was discovered and rushed to a hospital where his life was saved. His second attempt came shortly thereafter and was more successful. He dressed in military fatigues and combat boots and spread several army maps of Normandy across the library table in his law office. He had drawn little crosses on the maps, with markings that read "five died here," "ten died here," and had marked the spot where he got shot in the tree. When he was discovered, he was laying on top of the table, spread across the maps, with his wrists slashed. Unfortunately for his family, it didn't end there. Because of an error in his insurance policy -- the wrong sticker had inadvertently been attached to it by the insurance company -- his ex-wife (number two) sued the insurance company for the benefits, forcing the widow (wife number one and three) to go to court and fight for what was rightfully hers. No one would tell me who got what, but I did find out that the insurance company slipped out of it by handing the money over to the court and saying, "Here, you decide." Another death with its own commentary was the shotgun murder of Ms. Sid, a hairdresser with a popular shop at Five Points South. By any account, Ms. Sid, whose legal name was Jody Suzanne Ford, was not your usual hairdresser. She was six-foot-three, weighed over 240 pounds, and was a former semiprofessional football player. More to the point, she was Birmingham's first bomb-shell transsexual. She'd been married to several women before her sex change, and was still very muscular and powerful, with enormous hands, a booming voice and a penchant for long, blond wigs. She was definitely a good-time girl, and she didn't give a flying-who-know-what for other people thought about her. You would think, because of her size and power, than any harassment would be at a minimum. Not in Birmingham. After all, this was during the seventies and we had only just started to accept Catholics. None of which is to sugest that Ms. Sid took any of it sitting down. One night some local rednecks -- who later claimed they would never think of making a derogatory remark -- found themselves being pursued in a high-speed car case down down Highway 31 toward Vestavia, where they did squeelies into the parking lot of the local Travel Lodge. There was a melee, and stories vary from this point on. Prosecution witnesses claimed that a man from the other car, 26-year-old Larry Madox, came at Ms. Sid with a shotgun, that Ms. Sid raised her arms in the air as he approached, and that Maddox fired into her chest at point blank range. The defense claimed quite the contrary, that Ms. Sid had violently lunged at Maddox, that her body had hit the muzzle and the shotgun had gone off accidently. The defense further claimed that Maddox, surprised by this unprovoked attack, had innocently been trying to defend his "home, a man's highest ground." Maddox was assistant manager of the motel and had the use of a room upstairs. A man's right to defend his turf, however transitory, worked as well with Maddox' jury as it had for Reverend Stevenson's, and he was acquitted after only five hours of deliberation. On his way out of the courtroom, he told reporters he just wanted to "go home and get to work." Which is a good reason to try to Holiday Inn down the street. High Life Low Down There is no story more typically Birmingham, however, than the one about the prominent industrial family who made it big and blew it, all within three generations. True, there's the story about the boy from one of our oldest families -- they once lived in what is now Arlington Cemetery -- who is said to have nearly bankrupted the family he married into through a stock swindle. And there's the tale of the two formidable Grande Dames, each filthy rich from by-product money, both of whom tried to break up their daughter's romances, one because the man was a homosexual -- the daughter married him anyway when he told her he was only AC/DC -- and the other because the man "kicked" a Pekinese who defecated on the carpet -- he had, in fact, lifted it off the floor with his boot as it was about to defecate and had taken it outside. Still, in terms of scale, they can't begin to compare to the following saga. This family was BIG money. The father had built the business from scratch and was grooming his son to take over. The son, however, was given too much power too soon and began a bid to kick his father out and take over the whole thing. Ten years of expensive litigation followed, during which many of the company's more profitable assets had to sold off, seriously reducing the company's value. A settlement was finally reached, but the son tried to repudiate it and the whole thing started all over again. Finally, control of the company was handed over to the two daughters. By this point, the family fortune had been heavily dented. Further drains continued. The son divorced his wife -- another big settlement, so I was told -- and married his secretary. One of the daughters, who was quite beautiful -- and by all accounts, the most respectable member of the family -- married a member of the local social set who quickly turned out to be a drunkard and a heavy gambler, which also had it's effect. A notorious womanizer as well, and brazenly indiscrete about it, he was inevitably caught at it, screwing some woman in a public phone booth near Eastlake Mall. The daughter divorced him and later remarried a much more respectable fellow. But just when it looked like everything might turn out well for her, she was struck with a serious illness and lost a leg through amputation. However, due to of her personal courage during these ordeals and because of her notable and charitable civic duties, she has become one of the most popular and admired women in Birmingham. The same cannot be said about her sister, about whom I was given descriptions of the type that cannot be repeated, even here. She married a man who valiantly tried to straighten out the company and get everything back it working order. He might have succeded had she not tired of him, dumped him, and moved on to Palm Beach. She took over one of the big ocean-front palais in Palm Beach and began to demand more and more money out of the company for her enormous personal expenses. I was told she now associates with "the worse sort," including a few of the Kennedy's, and has remarried, to a "piece of scum," and is presently living off the crumbs of the family fortune. From everything to nothing. In a sense, that's a remarkably fitting conclusion to this piece. These two sisters represent the polar aspects of Birmingham's dual personality, our eerie Jeckell and Hydeness, the unique way we can be so equally savage and sweet. Quicker than any other people on earth, we can turn on a dime, from Madonna to Medusa and right back again, and confound even the most savy vistors. But it's the way we are. And the way we're likely to stay. ‹back to top›‹close window›