By Michael O’Bryant
Special to NKyTribune
In the late 1800s, the area around George Street and Central Avenue in Cincinnati was a notorious red-light district. Many of the neighborhood’s houses of ill repute came with a saloon on the street level. Women lived upstairs, where they entertained their clients.
Some madams operated more than one house. Few were as notorious as Hester Clark. Her establishments developed several inventive ways to separate visiting men from their money. One of her favored schemes was the “panel game.” A patron would be slipped a drug at the bar and, growing drowsy, encouraged to rent a room upstairs. Believing himself safely locked in for the night, he would fall asleep—at which point an associate of Clark’s would quietly open a concealed door panel, slip inside, and rob the unconscious victim.
One of Hester’s bartenders — and her sometimes lover — was an Italian immigrant named Nick Delmore, who had been banished from his native country for being complicit in crimes involving the mafia. With raven black hair and a face sporting a heavy mustache, he was described as having a cruel look. When he first arrived in Cincinnati, Delmore engaged in counterfeiting. The gang he organized used the city’s Italian peddlers of bananas to dispense the fake currency. Eventually caught, he spent a few years in the Ohio penitentiary. After his release, he took up with Hester Clark but eventually began to operate saloons and houses on his own.
Delmore’s preferred tactic for fleecing an unsuspecting stranger who wandered into — or was enticed into — one of his saloons was to doctor the man’s wine or beer with morphine or an extra dose of whisky. The goal was simple: make the victim groggy enough to fall asleep right there in the bar. Once he did, Delmore’s crew would quietly strip him of his valuables and then haul him outside, leaving him in the street or depositing him at another saloon to sleep it off.
This was the method Delmore used on John Hicks, a Mount Healthy, Ohio, farmer. In September 1891, Hicks made his way to Cincinnati, sold some goods, and—flush with money—went looking to spend it. It was still morning when Hicks found his way to Delmore’s saloon at 253 West Sixth Street, across from the Sixth Street Market House. Nick, having told his bartender Johnny Ryan that he would handle any strangers coming into the saloon, attended to the farmer himself. After getting a drink, Hicks told Nick that he wanted to see some women. Nick then arranged for Annie Griffin to be brought down. She was a young and attractive twenty-two-year-old native of Tennessee. Hicks took an immediate liking to her.
While Hicks drank wine, Annie had non-alcoholic sarsaparilla. At one point, Hicks tried to get Annie to take a sip of wine. As Hicks pressed the issue, Annie caught the eye of Nick who was watching from behind a curtain. He shook his head, and Annie handed the drink back. The old man had two more glasses before being invited up to Annie’s room. He wasn’t up there long before he returned downstairs and complained that he was feeling sick. Ryan suggested another glass of wine would help him feel better. Hicks downed three more drinks before announcing that he needed to lie down, handing Annie a dollar for the use of her room. It was still only ten or eleven o’clock in the morning.
Four hours later, Annie came downstairs and told Nick that it looked like Hicks was about to die. All afternoon Hicks lay in Annie’s room. His groans were such that Nick was worried that they would be heard by someone passing by on the street. So, after supper, Nick had him carried downstairs and into a small room that opened onto an alley. Hicks died there at eleven o’clock in the evening.
After Hicks’ death, Johnny Ryan called the women downstairs and warned them if they ever divulged what happened, he would kill them. Then, he and brothel worker Josie Bruce carried the corpse out into the alley. There they set him against a wall in a sitting position, appearing to be asleep. Nick then sent Josie to a brothel on George Street operated by Hester Clark.
When Hicks’s body surfaced, it looked at first as though the ruse had succeeded, his death neatly written off as natural causes. But the street had its own version of events. Whispers of foul play circulated fast, and one name rose immediately to the top of everyone’s list — Nick Delmore.
Still, nothing much would have happened with the case if it were not for Ed Witz. Witz was the son of a neighboring fish market owner and was drinking in Delmore’s saloon when he began to feel sick. He had earlier displayed a “flash roll” that seem to have much more alcohol than the fifteen dollars it allegedly contained. The last thing Witz remembered was being given a seat in the saloon’s backroom until he awoke at Belle Riley’s, another George Street house of ill fame.
When Witz was brought to Riley’s by Ed Goulo, he was in such a bad condition that it was thought he might die. They called a doctor, and after being treated, Witz recovered consciousness. The doctor was puzzled by Witz’s symptoms, believing that they could not be caused by excessive drinking alone. When Witz discovered that his money was gone, he was convinced that he had been drugged and then robbed at Delmore’s saloon. Like many people in Cincinnati, Witz surmised what had happened to Hicks and believed that he had barely survived a similar fate. He became determined to prove that Delmore was drugging his customers and then robbing them.
Months went by and despite his efforts, Witz was unable to find any evidence to incriminate Nick Delmore. Then chance intervened. Witz was dining at the Peacock restaurant at Fifth and Plum Streets when Jose Bruce recognized Witz and asked him if he worked at the fish house on Sixth Street.
“Yes,” replied Witz, “What about it?”
“Have you seen any ghosts around there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you remember that old farmer that was found dead out in the alley back of Nick Delmore’s saloon. They say his ghost haunts the alley now.”
“How do you know about that?” asked a suddenly interested Witz.
“Oh, I was living at Nick Delmore’s when the farmer died there.”
“I thought he died in the alley.”
“I meant in the alley.”
This was his first lead and Witz took Josie back to a room on West Sixth Street and provided her with a little money. He then became a frequent visitor to her. While Josie believed it was her charms that attracted Witz, what he was after was information. Whenever the two were together, Witz always brought their conversation back to Delmore’s saloon. Finally, one evening, while they were drinking together, Josie told him the story of the murder of Farmer Hicks.
Josie explained how Nick targeted anyone rumored to have money, luring them into his saloon. She described how, whenever a stranger walked in, Nick insisted on pouring the drinks himself. And she told him about the two bottles of wine kept behind the bar—one of them laced with morphine.
Believing that he now had the evidence he needed, Witz informed Cincinnati police officer Sergeant Casey. Nick Delmore, Johnny Ryan, and Josie Bruce were all arrested. When the testimony of Bruce and another woman was made public, a crowd collected in front of Delmore’s now empty saloon, breaking a few windows and doors before police dispersed them. Before the trial, the charges against Bruce and Ryan were dismissed. On April 23, 1892, newspaper accounts reported that the grand jury found the testimony insufficient and dismissed the charges against Delmore.
The Delmore murder case was obviously weakened by the fact that Ed Witz was a well-known police snitch, arrested by Cincinnati Police on April 12, 1892, on charges of fencing stolen goods. His accomplice was James Clark. The following month, in another trial, the defendant testified that he had witnessed Delmore—then in jail for murder charges—giving Clark a bribe “to testify strong against Witz. . . . Delmore wanted to get even with Witz by having him sent to the penitentiary” (“A Bribe Given to a Witness to Testify. Nick Delmore Said to Have Done It,” “Cincinnati Enquirer. May 22, 1892, p. 16).
Delmore soon left town and tried setting up business in Dayton and Hamilton, Ohio, then again in Cincinnati. Each time the police intervened and convinced him to leave town. Nothing is further known of his eventual whereabouts.
Michael O’Bryant was born in Dayton, but grew up in Mason, Ohio, when it was still a farming community and the first day of rabbit hunting season was an unofficial local holiday. Earning his undergraduate degree in Education from the University of Cincinnati, he taught at Mason Public Schools, where he was asked to inaugurate their junior high football program. He later moved to the high school level, teaching English and Social Studies. O’Bryant took temporary leave to attend Morehead State University where he served as an assistant track coach and earned his MA. Returning to Mason, he taught and served as an administrative assistant and Social Studies Curriculum Leader. For more than twenty years, he has worked in publishing, including Orange Frazer Press in Wilmington, Ohio, as well as the textbook company Cengage Publishing.
Paul A. Tenkotte, PhD is editor of the “Our Rich History” weekly series and Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University (NKU). To browse more than ten years of past columns, click here. Tenkotte also serves as Director of the ORVILLE Project (Ohio River Valley Innovation Library and Learning Engagement). For more information see orvillelearning.org. He can be contacted at tenkottep@nku.edu .