Lexington, KY - In today's world, it's difficult imagining a culture that openly tolerated, even endorsed prostitution. Welcome to Lexington, circa 1885. The Lexington city directory of 1885 -
'86 includes the listing "Brezing Belle Mad., r 194 N. Upper." The same directory lists "Hill Jenny Mad., r 156 N. Upper." The abbreviation "Mad." stands for Madam. Hill was one of Lexington's more prominent madams, and Brezing would become its most famous: Belle Brezing was the model for the Belle Watling character in Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind." (Her last name is frequently misspelled with "ee" and "ea" - confused by the fact that Belle herself spelled it all three ways.)
Mary Belle Cox was born on June 16, 1860, the younger of two illegitimate daughters of Sarah Ann Cox. The following year Sarah married George Brezing, a local saloon owner. The two Cox girls took his last name. At age 19, Belle made her decision to become a prostitute on Christmas Eve 1879. Destitute and unable to buy firewood or food to warm and nourish Daisy May, her 3-year-old daughter, Belle decided to join the brothel operated by Jenny Hill in the former Robert Todd home on Main Street (today's Mary Todd Lincoln House).
Belle opened her first house as a madam in 1881 in a rented row house on North Upper Street. (Today, the structure serves as the women's field house for Transylvania University.) In 1882, Belle was arrested and charged with "keeping a bawdy house." In January the following year, she was pardoned by Gov. Luke M. Blackburn - perhaps testimony to her rising social and political status. Belle purchased her first house in July 1883. The property was located near Fourth Street on North Upper, just north of her rental.
As public pressure mounted to close the Red Light District on North Upper, in 1889 Belle, with the financial backing of William M. Singerly, a Philadelphia newspaper and railway magnet, bought what would become the famous "House on the Hill" at 153 Megowan Street (today's southwest corner of Eastern Avenue and Wilson Street near Midland Avenue).
Belle did her banking at Lexington City National Bank on Main Street just west of Cheapside. The building still stands with that name over the front door. Her girls shopped at Embry's when it was located on East Main Street. That building no longer stands.
At one time, Belle attempted to "franchise"
into the African-American community on DeWeese Street. She purchased a lot on the west side opposite the current Urban League's restored structure. Belle was subsequently forced out of that enterprise. The structure was torn down in 2003 to make way for the expansion of St. James Place, an affordable housing facility.
Belle always held Christmas as a special time, possibly due to her 1879 decision. Unlike other houses, Belle closed hers on Christmas morning so her girls could celebrate and be entertained. Among the entertainers was a young John Jacob Niles, who later sang at Carnegie Hall and is best-remembered for his haunting Christmas song, "I Wonder as I Wander."
In 1898, before drugs were government-controlled, Heroin was introduced as a non-addictive opiate. (Heroin was a registered trademark of Bayer Pharmaceutical.) When the formula was proven to be highly addictive, addicts such as Belle received legal prescriptions for Heroin for the duration of their lives.
During the Spanish-American War, Army training camps around Lexington experienced problems with recruits frequenting the bawdy houses. As the Army mobilized in 1917 for "The Great War," the Army shut down Lexington's brothels. Although many later reopened, Belle turned off her light for good. The 1918 city directory lists her address as "vacant," but her name reappears in subsequent publications. The same year, the directory noted the street name had been changed to "Grant Street," perhaps in an attempt to eradicate the place name associated with the world's oldest profession.
Lexington remained an open prostitution and gambling venue until the Reform movements in the 1950s, when those activities migrated to Newport, Ky., and Las Vegas.
Belle's financial investments made by Singerly and, later, William "Billy" Mabon of Lexington, supported her comfortable retirement in her home on the hill until her death early Sunday morning, Aug. 11, 1940, from uterine cancer, an occupational disease among prostitutes.
Belle is buried in Calvary Cemetery alongside the grave of her second daughter, an unnamed stillborn. Neither the spelling of Belle's last name nor the date of her birth inscribed on the tombstone is correct. The baby's stone is unmarked.
TIME Magazine ran an obituary noting Belle's death, noting she operated "the most orderly of disorderly houses."
An estate auction on Aug. 22, 1940, dispersed Belle's personal possessions that remain hidden treasures in and about Lexington.
Daisy May, Belle's first daughter, died Aug. 15, 1948, in Dearborn, Mich., where she had been sent when diagnosed as mentally deficient as a child. Belle's attempt to shelter her daughter from her mother's chosen profession resulted in Daisy May's interment in an unmarked, but recorded, grave in St. Hedwig Cemetery in Dearborn.
The "House on the Hill"
was heavily damaged by fire on Dec. 12, 1973. Thompson-Riley Auctioneers administered the final disposition of artifacts from the structure at auction on March 23, 1974. The structure remnants were thereafter razed.
(Editor's Note: The Lexington History Museum's annual fundraising event, "Belle's Birthday Ball -
An Informal Party at the Pavilion," takes place Tuesday, June 15. For information, call (859) 254-0530, or visit www.lexingtonhistorymuseum.org.)