The Madam and the Millionaires: Oil, Sex and Religion in Tulsa's Early Years

By Leo Schneider

Pauline Lambert was born Clarey Gillion on a Tennessee cotton farm and subsequently lived a dizzying variety of livesSunday school teacher, wife to first a coal miner and later a hard-luck alcoholic, mother of two sons, rooming-house operator, and madam of Tulsas longest-lasting brothel. How these experiences suited Pauline for her final unlikely role as assistant to St. Peter in screening applicants for admission into heaven is the subject of this book.

When Pauline arrived at heavens waiting room, she was only one of billions who, owing to of St. Peters antiquated bookkeeping, had clogged the admissions process. After a long, heavenly negotiation, Pauline was appointed as one of two committee persons to streamline the procedure using modern techniques of digital data entry, storage, retrieval, and evaluation. Heavens residents and administrators were rightfully surprised at Paulines appointment until it was explained that half the applicants were women. Sexual relationships were common sources of sin, and her wide experiences would provide unusual insight. Her fellow committeeman, Henry Vernon Foster, was her polar oppositea rich, educated white male and privileged Quaker who had made his fortune in the Osage oil fields. How well they worked together is a testimony to the similarities between human beings.

The action is focused around two aspects of Tulsas early historythe oil boom kicked off by the Glenn Pool discovery and the Tulsa race riot. The lives of early-day millionaires and significant actors in the riot were scrutinized in a series of interviews whose results are not revealed. The modern dispute of whether redemption should be exclusive (restricting admission to the selected few) or inclusive (more widespread admission) is investigated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543419238

Leo Schneider

The author, Leo Schneider, is a reader and amateur historian of Oklahoma, the Old West and the United States. He was educated as an engineer in Oklahoma and Texas and worked in oil fields throughout the world. His writing began as technical presentations for these petroleum developments and as the experiences accumulated, opportunities to write about them increased. The family lived on a small farm, raising fruit trees, running a cow-and-calf operation and exploring large-scale composting. Their children now grown, Molly and Leo live in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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I

PAULINE LAMBERT

Buddy was standing at the foot of the stairs, scared. Not scared like sitting around a camp-fire telling ghost stories, but scared like when last season he’d seen his best friend Tom tackled helmet-to-helmet and laying unconscious on the football field. Now, like then, his sphincter muscle tightened up and he had a funny feeling in his stomach.

Buddy had left his snickering friends behind in their car, walked across the street, ignored the number 326 which was the address of the ground-level shop and opened the door on 326-1/2 East First. All he saw was a stairway leading up. At the top there was a glow from a light, but he couldn’t tell where the light was coming from. Climbing the stairs he thought back on how it had come to this: After spring practice he was talking with some of his senior friends about their sexual experiences. On a dare, they bought Buddy downtown that Friday night and now he was going upstairs to get laid. The higher he walked the stronger the light got, until he saw the transom the light was coming through, and then he saw the lamp shining through the open door. Up two more steps, and just as he spotted the person in the room, the step gave under his weight, a red light came on, a buzzer went off, Billy jumped and a harsh female voice called What are you looking for?

The woman was in front of the lamp so he saw her only in silhouette—in his first clear impression, the symmetry of her being framed in the door with the light behind her—was like a giant spider in the middle of her web. Buddy had taken his girl friend to the movie last weekend—it was the first re-release of Gone with the Wind since its debut in 1939. Bud had been too young for the original, so he had been looking forward to the re-release and it had made a strong impression on him. For some reason he had especially remembered Mammy berating Scarlett for going to Atlanta with the firm intention of meeting with Ashley Wilkes who was betrothed to Melanie.

You be settin’ there waitin’ for him—jus’ like a big spidah. A big spider— that was the thought that jumped into Buddy’s mind as he spotted Pauline Lambert, long-standing proprietress of the May Rooms, later to be known as the oldest business operating in Tulsa—a big spider just waiting for him.

Pauline Lambert first appeared in the Tennessee census of 1900 under her birth name of Clarey Gillion, ten years old, fourth child and first daughter of William and Mildard Gillion. We don’t know what life on the Opior County farm was like, but it was probably precarious. We do know that by the 1910 census William Gillian (census enumerators were notorious for their bad penmanship and spelling), subsequently blessed with four more daughters and possibly realizing all those girls weren’t going to be much help in getting in a cotton crop, had traded in his farm for a camera and was in the photography business in Henryetta, Oklahoma.

Clarey (now Clara) had a life no better or worse than her siblings, other than being first in line for all the clothes soon to be handed down and also first in line for all the household chores. Dropping out of school at nine years old, and a child of the Great Awakening, she joined the Methodist Church and even taught Sunday School. She was ready for something better so when George Stenhouse, an itinerant Scottish miner, showed up they married on March 6, 1911. Not interested in oil, the Stenhouses stayed in Henryetta for the coal, whose primitive mining conditions included being exposed to breathing coal-laden air. Some stories are that he contracted the black lung disease, but in the 1920 Census Record, George was still alive living with Clara and their two boys in Henryetta. The Henryetta City Directories have Clara Stenhouse living in Henryetta in 1920 and 1924, George having taken off for California and a new family.

In the 1930 Census she was married to Jimmie W. Palmer, still living in Henryetta with her two sons, George Jr. (1912) and John E. Stenhouse (1915). Jimmie himself was born in Henryetta around statehood to David and Eliza. David was from Arkansas and Eliza was from Oklahoma and had Creek Indian blood. Jimmie began working as an oil broker, which in those days probably meant brokering oil leases rather than oil. Since so much of the land was owned by Creek Indians his Indian heritage would have been advantageous in his brokering business. Sometime after 1930 (when her sons were able to fend for themselves), Jimmie and Clara moved to Tulsa, first showing up in 1936 at 5-1/2 West First (K.C. Hotel #2); Clara had taken the surname Lambert, which she would use until 1979. Mr. Lambert has left no trace; it’s like he never existed, if he did. Through 1941 Mrs. Lambert, sometimes with Jimmie, sometimes not, appeared in the City Directory in the 300 block of East First, sometimes as manager or proprietress of the K Rooms, Dixie Rooms or May Rooms—incorporated into a single address 326-1/2 East First. At the time the all-including building had been built, it was common to give the ground-floor addresses the whole numbers; for example, 322, 324, 326. The second-floor premises were given their own individual outside entrances and matching half-numbers, e.g. 322-1/2, 324-1/2,326-1/2 and so on. Over the years the downstairs premises came to be occupied by retail businesses and the upstairs by living quarters. The upstairs apartments were separated only by flimsy plaster-and-lath interior walls, making it easy to knock a door through them and connect the adjoining apartments. Under Clara Palmer these doors connected as many as five rooming houses into a single proprietorship. (Presumably by this time Clara Palmer had learned it was easier to rent rooms with women in them, and turned them into a bawdy house). The second floor was surrounded by a kind of veranda, partly for exterior maintenance and partly so the residents could escape the summer heat by going outside onto their balconies. Mrs. Palmer had converted this space to her own use by sealing all exterior doors (except hers) so she had exclusive use of this porch which ran outside all individual rooms, allowing her to preserve some control by walking around to observe the goings-on in the rooms.

By 1941, Jimmie’s appearances were intermittent; in 1944 he was living at 222-1/2 N. Main and apparently out of Pauline’s life, but still with a Tulsa presence. From the mid-30s to the mid-50’s, Jimmie was arrested a number of times, usually for alcohol-related offenses, with gambling and bogus checks thrown in. In the same approximate time-span Pauline Lambert accumulated an unknown number of charges adjudicated in the Tulsa Police court and a dozen or so Court of Common Pleas charges—bawdy house, house of ill repute, vagrancy—(all euphemisms for brothel-operating). One might ask whether Jimmie took up drinking because his wife was running whore houses or whether Jimmie’s drinking expenses necessitated Clara’s opening a brothel to support herself.

According to Tulsa World reports (February 15, 1978), Pauline ran afoul of Federal law enforcement at least three times, maybe more. Preceding the 1978 conviction for pandering ($10 to $1000 fine, 2 to 10 years probation) that brought Pauline down and put her out of business, there was a nolo contendere conviction in 1969 for using the telephone to bring prostitutes to Tulsa ($1500, 2 years probation) and a 1952 conviction for income tax evasion (3000, 5 years probation).

The income tax evasion charge is interesting. According to the head of Tulsa’s vice squad in the late 50’s, Mrs. Lambert collected the money from the johns, kept her share, and then paid her girls. For a 6 to 8 girl house, each turning half-a-dozen tricks, a lot of cash could be generated. Coincidentally (or not), a West Tulsa resident in that same era remembers Mrs. Lambert as the woman who visited her relatives next door with sacks of money. That next door house was occupied by George Stenhouse, Pauline Lambert’s son.

II

THE OIL BUSINESS

The oil business got off to a bad start. When Colonel Edwin Drake (an honorary title, applied to a man whose only uniform had been that of a railroad conductor) arrived in Titusville, Pennsylvania to drill for oil, it was on a slim chance. Although oil had been found in wells before, it was in wells that were drilled for either for fresh or salt water; so such oil as was produced was a contaminant, to be avoided rather than desired. Drake’s well would be the first ever completed that was drilled specifically to produce oil. Oil in the second half of the 19th century was use mostly for medicinal purposes, often sold in medicine shows as snake oil. It was coming into use for illumination, replacing the whale oil that was becoming scarce and expensive. Drake’s well-drilling apparatus (what would come to be known as a rig) was a steam-powered contraption put together by Uncle Billy Smith—a big wheel with rope rolled around it and a heavy bit attached at the end. When the bit was released it would fall and bite into the earth. It was a slow and arduous process, helped along by pouring water into the hole for lubrication and to make the earth softer. At about 60 feet Drake’s hole penetrated a water-bearing sand, filling the hole with water and preventing further progress. Colonel Drake ordered pipe lowered into the bore-hole to seal off the intruding water, inadvertently inventing the technique of casing the hole, a technique used universally today. After drilling only ten more feet, a small amount of oil came into the well bore, soon increasing to 25 barrels per day. Drake collected this oil and sold it for 40 dollars a barrel, setting off what became the first oil boom. Those who could assembled rigs like Uncle Billy’s and those couldn’t went back to the old-fashioned spring-pole method, bending a resilient sapling tree to kick down the bit and allow the bent tree to lift it back for another kick. It was slow, but worth it for a thousand-dollar-a-day pay-off for something which could be found, literally, in one’s own backyard.

With Drake’s discovery and the ensuing rush, the first of the oil boom-towns blossomed along Oil Creek in Pennsylvania. Blossom is the wrong word; does a toadstool blossom? Or a stinkweed? Do bars and whore-houses make a landscape pretty? Within a year the forty-dollar barrel of oil was worth only ten cents, requiring the producers to make more and more oil to realize as much income as possible. Lack of a ready market meant the surplus