Lizzie Manley Lived A Long And Prosperous Life Of Sin Despite A Wayward Husband

From Illustrated Police News Volume 62, Number 1548, 20 June 1896, Page 13, Digitized by University of Minnesota Libraries

W hat could Lizzie Manley possibly see in George Burgess, alias George Crittenden?

He was a bounder, a cad, a lowlife reprobate of the first water. She was a worldly-wise madam of a very prosperous brothel on Cincinnati’s notorious Longworth Street. Yet Lizzie fell hard for this scoundrel and carried her passion into the spirit realm.

Lizzie and George were married on 2 May 1884. She was 45 years old and he might have been a year younger. Lizzie, despite a string of often abusive paramours, had never married. George had abandoned a wife and three children. Perhaps to keep their nuptials out of the newspaper, Lizzie employed an alias for the marriage license and entered into matrimony as “Elizabeth Brown.”

There was trouble from the get-go. Lizzie’s “resort” kept her in Cincinnati, while George ran a saloon in Williamstown, Kentucky, half-way to Lexington. Although George was out of sight, he was not out of Lizzie’s thoughts and, according to the Cincinnati Post [29 October 1884], she visited Williamstown to check on her husband.

“He went to Williamsburg [sic], Ky., a few days ago, and she, mistrusting he had gone to visit a female, followed, and yesterday cornered him with her little revolver on the streets of Williamsburg, marched him to the hotel, bit a piece out of his arm and ear, and after bringing him to a full realization of the fact that she was boss, led him meekly back home to this city.”

Whatever lesson George might have learned, it didn’t take. Just a few months later, the Enquirer [11 March 1885] reported that Lizzie had once again tracked George to Williamstown and to the arms of another woman, a certain Mrs. Crook. Lizzie barreled into Mrs. Crook’s house, demolished anything in reach and “abused her husband in the most obscene and unbecoming language,” knocking him down and sitting on him until both were arrested. Lizzie appeared in court the next day and paid a $50 fine. George apparently got the worst of the donnybrook:

“George being indisposed from the effects of the encounter, was not able to answer the charges against him. Just how long the quiet and peaceable citizens of Williamstown are going to tolerate such conduct remains to be seen. This is the second time she has waged war in this manner, and our peace-loving citizens are becoming very indignant.”

Five years later, the citizens of Williamstown reached the limits of patience with George Burgess. Once again, he was involved with a woman. Her name was Alice McKinley. She lived a couple of blocks from George’s saloon and, according to the Enquirer [4 December 1890], they had been on “very intimate terms for many months past.” One night, Alice’s neighbors heard a woman’s screams, then a gunshot, and saw a bareheaded man apparently under the influence of liquor, running from her house. A doctor who lived across the street rushed to the McKinley house and found Alice bleeding from a bullet wound, entering just below the left breast and emerging from her back.

Alice’s brothers vowed vengeance and armed themselves, but the doctor advised them to awaken a judge and get a warrant for George’s arrest. They did so, and soon a posse tracked George to his saloon, which the pursuers found locked, bolted and barricaded. A deputy used a beer keg as a battering ram and forced open the back door. In the hallway was George Burgess, unloading his pistol on the lawmen.

“The officers were not idle and were not to be deterred from making the arrest. When Burgess opened fire they immediately followed suit and with terrible execution. Burgess was shot four times in the body before dropping his pistol, having emptied every chamber. He staggered out at the door, and sank to the ground unconscious.”

Distraught at the news, Lizzie immediately hired a Cincinnati hackman to drive her immediately to Williamstown, but George had been declared dead long before she arrived. Lizzie never recovered.  According to the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette [11 October 1891]:

“She began to talk strange and incoherently, and avowed that Burgess . . . came to her in visions every night. Somebody suggested spiritualism, and Liz rushed to a medium. She found out all she wanted to know, and a great deal more. She became infatuated with the belief, and is now an ardent worker in the cause.”

Twice a week, Lizzie visited a spirit medium named Mary Englert on Marshall Avenue in Camp Washington. Mrs. Englert facilitated conversations between Lizzie and George and assisted Lizzie as she found solace communicating with an ever-growing household of spirits.

From Cincinnati Post 19 November 1910, Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand

“Troops of angels visit her every day and advise her about her mundane affairs. Last Saturday as she was sitting quiet and all alone in the darkened parlor a spirit sat on the piano for hours and minutely explained the process by which the soul of the dead becomes transfigured. According to Manley, the soul is composed of a mass of minute silken threads, which are constantly in motion, and which are, after the decease of the earthly tenement, woven by angels into a new candidate for eternal glory.”

The Commercial Gazette said Lizzie had become so enraptured by her new beliefs that she forced all the women working out of her brothel to attend seances in the parlor. Although the newspaper predicted that Lizzie would soon be committed to a mental hospital, that was not the fate that awaited her.

Instead, Lizzie spent a decade in court undoing the scams perpetrated by her spiritualist mentor. Taking advantage of Lizzie’s infatuation with the spirit realm, Mrs. Englert had Lizzie transfer much of her earthly property – even her brothel at 312 Longworth Street – into Mrs. Englert’s possession. The clairvoyant claimed she needed resources to construct a National Hall for Spiritualists. Lizzie wholly supported the project but, when not a brick was laid, sued to recover her property. In the course of the lawsuit, Mrs. Englert died, which only lengthened the proceedings because the medium was unable or unwilling to provide testimony from the beyond.

Lizzie Manley lived to the ripe old age of 78 when diabetes and severe bronchitis did her in. She owned and operated her “house of ill fame” until her death in 1917. Lizzie was quite the survivor in a cutthroat profession. Court records, newspaper accounts and U.S. Censuses attest that she ran her brothel for at least 50 years, from the end of the Civil War to the eve of World War I.

Born in Ireland, Lizzie emigrated to America when she was around 14 years old. Both her parents died when she was quite young, and she was brought up by relatives in the rough and sordid Gas Alley neighborhood along the river in Cincinnati’s far West End. Although it was a Protestant minister who solemnized her marriage to that rascal George Burgess, and although she devoted decades to Spiritualist causes, Lizzie was, at heart, a staunch Catholic colleen and her earthly remains may be found in the New St. Joseph Cemetery in Price Hill.

The whereabouts of her rewoven soul have not been revealed.

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