Babe at Camden Yards
The 400 block of Camden Street
differed greatly from the working class residential environment of Woodyear
Street. Retail, residential,
manufacturing and transportation uses stood side-by-side on a busy downtown street. Streetcars ran directly in front of the
saloon connecting southwest Baltimore with downtown and other neighborhoods.
The block was bounded by Eutaw
Street on the east and Paca Street on the west.
On Camden and Eutaw streets, meat packing and cold storage warehouses
located in close proximity to Camden Station.
Swift & Company and Armour Packing Company were at the southwest
corner of Camden and Eutaw streets. Three
additional cold storage warehouses stood on Eutaw Street. Other businesses on 400 block of Camden
Street included the Crescent Chemical Company, Charles J. Summers canned goods,
Citizens’ Express package deliveries and William J. Tickner and Sons,
undertakers.1
George Ruth’s saloon stood at the
northeast corner of Camden and Paca streets. Seven doors away was the Baltimore Branch of
Jacob Ruppert’s Brewery headquartered in New York. When Jacob Ruppert died in 1915, his son,
Jacob Ruppert, Jr. took over the family business. Babe Ruth would become well acquainted with the
younger Ruppert nearly twenty years later. In addition to the brewery, he would own a professional
baseball team – the New York Yankees.
Sanborn
maps show two saloons in the 400 block of Camden Street. Twice during one week in March 1902, the
owner of the saloon at 402 West Camden Street was cited by the police for
selling liquor on Sundays.2 Another
bar around the corner on Eutaw Street was raided at the same time on the same
charge.3 In 1908, the Colored Law and Order League, an early
twentieth century African-American citizen’s group that pressured the city government
to enforce liquor laws, conducted a study in the vicinity of Ruth’s
establishment.4 In a two block area that took in both sides of
streets from Pratt Street to Camden Street and Paca Street to Howard Street, the
group identified 36 saloons!
In 1900, residents on and near the
400 block of Camden Street included recent immigrants from Germany, Russia, and
Italy. A Chinese resident operated a
laundry around the corner on Eutaw Street.
Although the area was described as a poor, white neighborhood in the
Colored Law and Order League study, many African Americans lived in small alley
streets. The Ruppert Brewery extended
north to a narrow alley, Dover Street. A three-story house, 413 Dover Street, also
included a stable and wagon shed for the brewery. In October 1899, the building collapsed,
possibly due to the kicking of horses in the stable.5 An African-American family that lived above
the stable had to be rescued by the Fire Department. Although family members were in a state of
shock and suffered severe cuts and bruises as a result of the collapse, miraculously
the eight residents from age 3 to 65 survived.
Dover Street to the north of Camden Street and Perry Street to the south
were predominately African-American.
In the mid-nineteenth century, a
slave jail was located at the southwest corner of Eutaw and Camden streets (near
the site of today’s Babe Ruth statue).6 Slaves were held in several
private jails in the immediate vicinity of the railroad station prior to being
sold further south. The infamous slave jails
were finally closed by Union Army forces during the summer of 1863. For a time during the Civil War, the former slave
jail on Camden Street was converted into the office of the Army provost.
In July 1900, a strange incident took
place one-half block north of 426 West Camden Street. The telephone company was attempting to
install a pole at the corner of Paca and Dover streets, when residents
complained that it would block the sidewalk forcing people to walk in the
street. A saloon owner at this location
attempted to stop the work and was manhandled by telephone company
workers. Later neighborhood women stood
in the hole dug by workers to prevent them from erecting the pole. During the commotion, a twelve year old boy
from the neighborhood, Benjamin Sipes, was allegedly kicked in the face by one
of the workers.7 Police
officers were called out to restore calm in the neighborhood. An injunction was filed to prohibit the
erection of the pole and court hearings held to settle the dispute.8
The Ruth family would not arrive in the neighborhood until nearly a year later,
but Benjamin Sipes and his family would later impact Babe Ruth’s family.
The building at the northwest
corner of Camden and Eutaw streets was a tenement house, known as the “Black
Rabbit.” In 1902, the fire escapes attached
to the front and side of the building were cited by the Building Inspector as
being in an unsafe condition.9 Most residents were made to leave,
but a newspaper article of August 8, 1902 describes a fight among the last
residents, “Sgt. Harry Hopwood and Patrolman Edward Lucke were attracted
yesterday afternoon by a great commotion in front of the ‘Rabbit.’ Screams
and curses were mingled with blows as the two officers charged upon some ragged
men and women who were fighting furiously at the entrance. All hands were arrested.” 10
Pig Alley which ran from Dover
Street to Camden Street directly west of Eutaw Street was infamous for a crime
that took place 15 years prior to the arrival of Babe Ruth on Camden Street.11
In 1886, an elderly white woman, Emily
Brown, who had fallen on hard times due to drinking and drug abuse rented a
room from an African-American resident of Pig Alley. Brown had once been a seamstress, but later resorted
to begging. Most of the money she
received went to her drinking and drug habit and she fell behind on her
rent. Another border of the house,
Anderson Perry, was a janitor at the University of Maryland medical
school. He conceived a plan to kill
Emily Brown and sell her body to the medical school for $15 (the going rate for
cadavers needed by medical students for dissection). Perry convinced two associates, John Thomas
Ross and Albert Hawkins, to commit the murder while he was on hand to receive
the body at the medical school. In her
room on Pig Alley, Ross struck Emily Brown in the head with a brick and stabbed
her. Hawkins helped deliver her body to
Perry at the medical school. The nature
of her injuries aroused suspicion and the police were contacted. Soon the plot unraveled, and all three were
arrested. Only Ross was convicted and
executed for the crime. The horrendous
nature of the murder made it one of the most infamous of its time.
Such was the neighborhood, where Babe
Ruth’s father decided to operate a saloon and raise his two young
children. A liquor license application for
Ruth’s saloon at 426 West Camden Street was recorded in a Baltimore Sun advertisement
of April 13, 1901.12 Two years prior to Ruth’s ownership of the
saloon on Camden Street, a trustee’s sale of saloon fixtures took place. The notice of the sale on March 24, 1899 provides
the following description of items to be sold:
one bar counter and rail, one beer pump and fixtures, one bar buffet,
six tables and set of chairs, one kitchen range and utensils, one furnace heater,
and all the glassware, and stock of wines, liquors and cigars contained in and
upon the premises.13 It is likely that the Ruth saloon was similarly
equipped.
Eleven days after Ruth’s liquor
license application was advertised, a local brief appeared in the Baltimore
Sun: “George H. Ruth, who keeps a saloon
at 426 West Camden Street, was fined $10 and costs yesterday by Justice Poe,
charged with allowing minors to play pool and billiards in his place.”14
Was that Babe playing pool in his Dad’s saloon?
It didn’t take long for Babe’s family to get into trouble in their new
Camden Yards neighborhood.
In addition to running the bar, Babe’s father also carried on an active social life. He was a member of a Bohemian Social Club, Spolek Veselych Hochu or Jolly Brothers Club.15 At the third annual ball which took place November 11, 1901 at the Germania Maennerchor Hall (a few blocks to the north at Lombard Street near Eutaw Street) George H. Ruth was on the dance committee.16 Perhaps the reason he left his brother and the lightning rod business to start a bar was because George was a “Jolly Brother.” He just wanted to have fun serving up drinks and good times at this own place instead of climbing up on other people’s buildings to install lightning rods. His family would just have to adjust to their new surroundings.
1 Baltimore Sun, April 26, 1899, p. 7
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2 Baltimore Sun, March 11, 1902, p. 7
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3 Baltimore Sun, March 3, 1902, p. 10
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4 Work of the Colored Law and Order League by James H. N.
Waring, 1908.
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5 Baltimore Sun, October 23, 1899, p. 10
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6 "A Bitter Inner Harbor
Legacy: The Slave Trade" by Ralph Clayton, Baltimore Sun, July 12, 2000
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7 Baltimore Sun, July 25, 1900, p. 10
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8 Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1900, p. 7
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9 Baltimore Sun, May 3,
1902, P. 9
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10 Baltimore Sun, August 8,
1902, p. 7
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11 "Blood Money" by Bremmer Jensen, Baltimore City Paper,
March 18, 1898
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12 Baltimore Sun, April 13,
1901, p. 11
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13 Baltimore Sun, March 18,
1899, p. 11
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14 Baltimore Sun, April 24,
1901, p. 6
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15 Baltimore Sun, December
26, 1901, p. 6
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16 Baltimore Sun, November
12, 1901, p. 7
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