By Michael O’BryantSpecial 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…