Aclergyman, a detective and a society swell walk into a bar. . .
It sounds like a vaudeville routine, but, as Richard Zacks reports in ?Island of Vice,? his jaunty and beautifully researched portrait of New York at the close of the 19th century, it was actually the opening salvo of ?a holy war on vice and government collusion.? The clergyman, the Rev. Charles Parkhurst of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, had delivered a blistering sermon a few days earlier ? on Valentine?s Day, 1892 ? in which he called out the corrupt power brokers of the city?s Tammany Hall political machine. According to Parkhurst, the mayor and his subordinates were a ?lying, perjured, rum-soaked and libidinous lot? growing fat on the city?s houses of sin through an entrenched system of bribes and rake-offs. Something had to be done.
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