Due to urban renewal in the 1960s, Bradley
Street no longer exists, but during O’Neill’s day it hummed with
activity. At the turn of the last century traveling salesmen reported
that New London had "the liveliest, most wide-open red-light
district between New York and Boston" (Sheaffer, SP, 59). Bradley
Street was the district’s hub, even though the New London Police
Headquarters was located here.
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New
London Police Headquarters on
Bradley Street, c. 1880 |
Jamie O’Neill introduced his younger
brother to the neighborhood’s bars and brothels. Addie Burns’s place
at 41 Bradley Street was a particular favorite with the O’Neill boys
and she was immortalized in Long Day’s Journey into Night as
Mamie Burns. Jamie Tyrone says: "Guess which one of Mamie’s
charmers I picked to bless me with her woman’s love. It’ll hand you
a laugh, Kid. I picked Fat Violet...soon as I got in the door, Mamie
began telling me all her troubles. Beefed how rotten business was, and
she was going to give Fat Violet the gate. Customers didn’t fall for
Vi. One reason she’d kept her was she could play the piano...Well,
that made me feel sorry for Fat Violet, so I squandered two bucks of
your dough to escort her upstairs" (Collected Plays, 1180).
In O’Neill’s youth there actually
was a New London prostitute named Violet who played piano at one of the
Bradley Street whorehouses. When The Great God Brown was first
published in 1926, O’Neill’s New London friends were amused by his
description of Cybel’s brothel parlor, recognizing that it was based
on one of the city’s more popular houses of ill repute.
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