With war looming, press coverage of gambling at the
beginning of the 1940s waned. However, gambling operations continued. In
December 1940, Hamilton County Sheriff Fred Sperber’s office destroyed 50 slot
machines they had seized. In early 1942, the Internal Revenue Bureau released a
list of 250 Hamilton County business owners who purchased a tax stamp for slot
machines or other gambling devices. Speculation was that gambling device
owners were under the misapprehension that purchasing a tax stamp might prevent
seizure by local law enforcement. Cincinnati Police said that only 19 of the
machines on the list were located within the city. The Sheriff’s Office said
they had found no devices used for gambling and all were clearly marked “for
amusement only.”
In the spring of 1943, there was renewed interest in
cracking down on gambling in the area. Cincinnati city solicitor John Ellis
and Hamilton County prosecutor Carson Hoy announced that they would work
together to enforce anti-gambling laws, in particular the numbers racket. The
new sheriff, Republican C. Taylor Handman, gave the same tired line that previous sheriffs had given: His deputies would enforce anti-gambling laws if
they found any infractions, but that local authorities were responsible for
enforcing the law in their own municipalities.
A few days later, though, Handman announced an
anti-gambling campaign with a new target – bingo. Was this a genuine attempt to
eradicate the evils of bingo or a ploy to divert citizens, the press, and
politicians from law enforcement's inability to crack down on more serious gambling violations? Archbishop John McNicholas called
out the hypocrisy of officials who were overlooking worse offenses and complained
that no distinction was being made between innocent games of chance and games of chance
that harmed people.
A few days later, the sheriff announced that his
department had found no gambling in unincorporated areas of the county and received
100 percent cooperation with his anti-bingo and anti-gambling campaign. He did
caution, though, that there might be some hidden gambling operations. I believe gamblers would say that he was hedging his bets.
Within three weeks, the Cincinnati Post discovered that
at least three Elmwood Place establishments were taking bets on horse races. Interestingly,
Sheriff Handman said there was no gambling in Elmwood Place and authorities
there concurred.
In June 1944, at the request of the grand jury, Sheriff
Handman and his deputies raided a bookmaking operation in St. Bernard. They
disconnected eight telephone lines there, but no arrests were made because
there was no one on the premises. Cincinnati city councilmen Albert Cash and
Russell Wilson pulled no punches. Cash asked the grand jury to investigate who was
being bribed to protect gambling operations in Hamilton County. Wilson urged
Handman to investigate Elmwood Place and St. Bernard. Handman gave the same old
response that he couldn’t enforce the law in incorporated areas unless local
authorities requested his help. Wilson said that Handman could enforce the law
anywhere in the county, but didn’t do so because his “bosses,” gamblers with
connections to the Republican party, wouldn’t allow him to do so.
The following day, Handman’s deputies seized 50 slot
machines in raids. A day later, he asserted that unincorporated areas of the
county were free from gambling. He also addressed Cash’s and Wilson’s
allegations that someone had tipped off a bookmaking operation of the raid in
St. Bernard. He said he couldn’t have tipped anyone off because he had been
with a grand jury representative from the time of the grand jury’s directive
until the time of the raid.
In July 1944, gambling operations in Fairfax and Elmwood Place
inexplicably shut down. Sheriff Handman said he hadn’t issued any special
orders and was perplexed about the closures. He said that gambling in the
county was “closed down tighter than I ever heard of it being before.” Despite
this statement, Russell Wilson criticized Handman, saying that if he was unable
to control gambling in incorporated areas of the county, he could at least
enforce the law in Fairfax.
Several weeks later, word was out that bookie joints in
Fairfax and Elmwood Place were once again open for business. It had been
expected that the gambling establishments would remain closed until after the
November 1944 election. It wasn’t clear how the bookmaking establishments knew
that “the heat was off.” Cincinnati gambling establishments were also
operating, but on the low down. They wouldn’t take bets from strangers, which
hampered the efforts of Cincinnati undercover police officers.
Russell Wilson continued his attacks on Sheriff Handman
and Prosecutor Hoy, suggesting that they were both under the control of
gamblers. Handman’s position had been that local authorities were responsible for
enforcing the law in their own communities. However, Wilson pointed to a recent
case in Cuyahoga County, Ohio in which the court ruled that county sheriffs
have shared responsibility with municipal authorities for enforcing the law. By
the fall, Sheriff Handman announced that due to his department’s efforts,
gambling was once again shut down in the county, including in hotspots like
Elmwood Place, Norwood, and Fairfax. Prosecutor Hoy said
that he would investigate the allegations of corruption of public officials by
gambling operators.
In a speech, Russell Wilson challenged Handman, Hoy, and
Republican political leadership to permanently shut down gambling in the
county. He again suggested that officials might be on the take. Prosecutor Hoy then announced an “all-out war on
gambling” with the cooperation of Sheriff Handman. He said the intent was to permanently
shut down gambling operations in Hamilton County. Would anyone care to guess
how that worked out?
For the next few years, the pattern seemed to continue.
Authorities would claim that open gambling had ceased, followed shortly
thereafter by reports that it hadn’t. There were allegations of incompetence at
best and corruption at worst of county and local officials.
Things took a turn for the worse in mid to late 1947. In
August, Sheriff Handman reported that he had learned of an armed robbery at the
Lake Louise Tavern in Anderson Township. It wasn’t reported “officially,” but
he learned of it from a press report. Two gunmen lined patrons against a wall
and made off with $2,000 in cash and jewelry. Handman said it was “a sad state
of affairs” when this type of crime wasn’t reported to authorities.
Around the same time, Norwood’s mayor reported that five “hoodlums”
had thrown a 15-pound rock at the front of his house. Prosecutor Hoy had recently
requested that the grand jury conduct an investigation into gambling in Norwood
and subpoenas for 13 witnesses had been issued.
But the most troubling of the incidents occurred November
19, 1947 in Fairfax. One newspaper stated that the robbery was at the Fairfax Tavern (where the pony keg and Baker's Pub once were) and another at the Fairfax Club (which was in a building behind the tavern, where the Church of God was later located). I haven't yet determined the relationship between these two establishments, other than there was gambling at both. Newspaper articles reported on a location "in the rear" of Fairfax Tavern, so it is unclear whether the robbery occurred within the tavern itself or in the building behind the tavern. Although it appears that there was gambling in some form at Fairfax Tavern, that the robbery and a lot of the gambling action were most likely at the Fairfax Club.
In any event, three armed robbers
lined 25 patrons against a wall. The gunmen made off with between $1,500 and
$7,000 in cash and jewelry and a Fairfax man, George Hykle, sustained minor injuries when he attempted to disarm a gunman.
Two Hamilton County deputies responding to a nearby traffic accident received the robbery call. The deputies saw three men running across
the Fairfax Club parking lot, heading toward Lonsdale. The robbers opened
fire on the deputies and the deputies returned fire. The getaway car was parked
on Lonsdale, but the robbers were not able to get to it during the shootout. Instead, they ran
behind the businesses on Wooster Pike, heading toward Watterson, to escape. Two
of the suspects carjacked a Mariemont man at the corner of Wooster and
Watterson and made him drive them to downtown Cincinnati. Prosecutor Hoy and
Sheriff Handman said the Fairfax Club had been under surveillance, but because
their undercover officers were not known in the neighborhood, they weren’t
permitted to place any bets.
After the search for the robbers, police returned to the Fairfax Club and found no one there except a porter. The abandoned getaway car was later determined to have been stolen in Hamilton, Ohio.
The following day, the Cincinnati Post published an
editorial critical of Sheriff Handman, stating that his failure to crack down
on bookmaking operations could cost someone their life in the robbery of a
gambling establishment.
After the robbery at the Fairfax Club, county police
reported that they were told that the Club was run by a man named Edward
Ziegler, but had previously been run by Ike Hyams. This was the first formal
mention of Ike Hyams as being involved in the Fairfax gambling scene.
Ike Hyams was born in the West End in Cincinnati. In 1919
he became a “commission broker” or “sportsman,” as he preferred to be called,
or a bookie, as most other people called him. He was also deeply involved in
Republican politics. He moved to Price Hill, where he and his wife Lena raised
their family. Ike ran the gambling operations in Elmwood Place and was the major player in Hamilton County bookmaking, known as "king of the bookies." One might think that Ike would have
had a lot of unpleasant run-ins with Elmwood Place officials. Run-ins, yes;
unpleasant, apparently not. Here is a picture of a smiling Elmwood Place police chief
serving Ike with a warrant in 1949:
From the Cincinnati Post, April 25, 1984
So, Ike Hyams' involvement in Fairfax
bookmaking operations shows how lucrative gambling was in Fairfax. At the time of the 1947 robbery, Ike didn't own the Fairfax Club property, but his wife Lena later purchased it in December 1950.
A month after the Fairfax Club robbery, Sheriff C. Taylor
Handman announced that he would not be running for reelection the following
year, presumably because of the criticism he received about being unable to
handle the gambling problem in Hamilton County. In an editorial, the Cincinnati
Enquirer stated that they didn’t think Handman had been bribed, but that he
wasn’t thick-skinned enough for the job and would likely be happier out of the
public eye.
Although the Fairfax Tavern and Fairfax Club seemed to receive most
of the gambling news coverage in those days, let us not forget Kruse’s Smoke
Shop less than a block away. In July 1948, Kruse’s proprietor and Fairfax
resident Clarence Kruse had a heart attack at the business he had owned for 18
years and passed away at the age of 53. The news article announcing his death
stated, “he was widely known in sporting circles in the eastern area of the
county.” His son Jim took over the operation.
In addition to bookmaking, slot machines and other
gambling devices were still operating in Fairfax, and not just in the expected
spots. The 1947 and 1948 Internal Revenue tax stamp lists included the Fairfax
Club, Fairfax Pharmacy, Gulf Service Station, Kream Kottage, White’s Restaurant,
and even Frisch’s Mainliner.
In late 1948, state liquor investigators joined the
anti-gambling efforts in Hamilton County. Also, there was a new sheriff in
town. In November, Democrat Dan Tehan was elected. He said that he was against
slot machines and syndicated gambling, but that it would be nearly impossible
to eliminate them.
After being shut down prior to the election, slot
machines made a comeback in the county in late November. Both liquor
enforcement officials and Sheriff Handman expressed their shock, but vowed to
investigate. The Cincinnati Post reported that they had no problem finding a
variety of slot machines and gambling devices. One café owner reported that the
slot machines would be in operation for the next 40 days, until Dan Tehan took
office.
When Tehan took office, he promised to study the gambling
problem and said that his enforcement of anti-gambling laws would “speak for
itself.” Prosecutor Hoy vowed to cooperate with Tehan’s efforts. Tehan didn’t
announce when or if gambling raids would begin, but there was a report that one
Fairfax establishment with an extensive bookmaking operation had inexplicably closed.
Tehan said the closure occurred without his knowledge and that as far as he
knew all slot machines in the county had shut down. Prosecutor Hoy confirmed
this when he announced that an undercover investigation by his office revealed
that slot machines in the county had disappeared.
Moving into the county around this time was a new chief
of the State Liquor Control Department for the Cincinnati area, Frank Acton. Liquor
control agents wasted no time in initiating raids. In late March 1949, the
Sheriff’s Office and state liquor enforcement agents raided several Hamilton
County gambling establishments, including Kruse's Smoke Shop and "the rear of" Fairfax Tavern. 50 people were at the Tavern (or Club) at the time of the raid and
Fairfax resident Clifford Tekulve was cited for operating a game of chance. He
later pleaded guilty and was fined $100 plus costs. There were 25 people at
Kruse’s when they were raided and Jim Kruse was cited.
From the Cincinnati Post, March 29, 1949
It
didn’t take Acton long to accuse the Sheriff’s Office of tipping off gambling
operators to planned raids. The grand jury investigated,
but found no evidence to support this allegation. The grand jury did direct the
Sheriff’s Office and Liquor Control agents to cooperate with one another. Tehan
and Acton met to develop a strategy and vowed to coordinate efforts. Acton even
took on the Elmwood Place gambling establishments and arrested Ike Hyams’ son,
though Elmwood Place officials later dropped the charges against him.
The Sheriff’s Office and Liquor Control agents raided the
Fairfax Tavern twice in May 1949. Officers said that the bookmaking operation
was going “full blast” at the time of the second raid. Cliff Tekulve was again
cited for operating a game of chance. Liquor Control agents cited the owners of
Fairfax Tavern, Susan and Frank Brockamp, for violating their liquor permit by
allowing gambling on the premises.
If the annual tax stamp list was any indication, slot
machines might have been on the downturn. Only 26 tax stamps were purchased in
Hamilton County in 1949. Through the years, though, slot machine owners had
learned that the tax stamps didn’t prevent seizure by law enforcement and may
have just stopped purchasing the stamps. Also, there had been more persistent and
consistent raids that might have forced proprietors to move gambling devices
into hiding.
Liquor Control agents and Sheriff’s deputies continued
raids throughout the county. However, Frank Acton, the aggressive, no-nonsense state
Liquor Control agent who had accused other officials of improprieties, was
transferred from Cincinnati after he was seen at Churchill Downs as the guest
of a local tavern owner.
In the spring of 1950, something happened nationally that
stoked anti-gambling sentiment in citizens who hadn’t previously been
bothered by gambling in their communities. In 1949, the American Municipal
Association had asked the federal government to investigate the growth of organized
crime. Senator Estes Kefauver introduced a resolution to create a special
committee, which became known informally as the Kefauver Committee. The focus
became what Kefauver called “the life blood of organized crime,” gambling. Over
15 months, the committee held hearings in 14 cities and interviewed hundreds of
witnesses. Many of the committee’s proceedings were broadcast live and became
quite popular. The hearings revealed to average Americans the role of organized
crime in gambling operations and the influence crime syndicates and gambling
rings had on elected officials. Though the committee didn’t achieve much in
terms of federal legislation, citizens following the committee’s work began
pressuring their local authorities to crack down on gambling in their communities.
While the Kefauver hearings were going on, gambling
operations and anti-gambling raids continued in Fairfax and Hamilton County.
Frank and Susan Brockamp, owners of the Fairfax Tavern, appeared before the
State Liquor Board to answer a charge that they had gambling devices on
premises. The state suspended their liquor license for 30 days.
A March 1951 article in the Cincinnati Post reported that
there were 200 bookmaking establishments in the county that took in
approximately 10 million dollars a year. Most of these bookie joints weren’t
the “fancy emporia” found in Fairfax and Elmwood Place. (The Cincinnati Times Star said that Fairfax had one of the "swankiest" establishments in the area.) The Post reported that
there were few bookmaking operations in unincorporated areas because the
Sheriff’s Office handled law enforcement there. Fairfax was obviously the exception.
By April, wire and telephone service to bookmaking
operations had been suspended in some major Ohio cities. Wire and telephone
service to the Fairfax bookie joints, though, was still active and in use. Sheriff’s
deputies raided three gambling establishments on April 5, but by the time they got to the Fairfax establishments, the gambling operations were closed down.
By June, Sheriff Tehan said there were reports that
bookies were again operating in Fairfax. He said that deputies were in Fairfax
a few days earlier and didn’t find anything, so if there was gambling it was on
the sly. He said it would be difficult for undercover deputies to place a bet
and make an arrest under those circumstances.
Just as suddenly as Fairfax began making gambling news,
it dropped out of it. June 1951 was the last mention I found in local
newspapers about gambling in Fairfax. In 1953, Ike Hyams was trying to sell or lease his Fairfax property; he was abandoning bookmaking and opening a furniture store. Fairfax became incorporated in 1955 and
the new village formed its own police department, which must have been a huge
relief to the Sheriff’s Department. The new village was seeking a municipal building and briefly considered both the former Kruse's and Fairfax Club locations.
There have been a number of changes in Ohio gambling laws
since those days. Charitable bingo games, raffles, and the like are legal as
long as all profits go to the organization. In 1973, the Ohio Lottery was introduced.
Gambling devices like slot machines are still illegal, except in the four
casinos authorized in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo. Sports
betting was legalized in Ohio in late 2021 and sportsbooks are expected to
launch here on January 1, 2023.
Sources available upon request.
