The Bowry Boys Episode 355, the midnight adventures of Dr. Parkhurst.

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Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.

And this is Tom Myers with a story of law and order and upright citizens and good Christian morals.

Or perhaps a lack thereof.

Because we are going to Sin City, the New York Underworld, the 1890s, the saloons, the dance halls, the opium dens, prostitution houses and groggories of Old New York.

Depicted in the sensationalist media of the day is sort of an urban haze, a hellish landscape of vice and debauchery.

Yes, a hellish landscape that had had been set in the 1990s, not the 1890s.

Greg, we probably would have been part of this story is all about, you know, fabulous music on a crowded dance floor, cocktails, cocktails of dubious quality.

Boys with pretty faces and rouged cheeks.

Well, our tour guides into this underworld aren't famous DJs or nightlife celebrities.

It's a private detective and one of New York's most respected ministers.

Dr. Charles Parkerst of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.

But Dr. Parkerst journey into New York nightlife in early March of 1892 wasn't necessarily intended to castigate the party goers.

In fact, quite incredibly, as you'll see, he joined right in.

The point was to expose police corruption and New York law enforcement's willingness to look the other way at illegal behavior and decrepit social situations.

This two week dive into New York's most sinful establishments was actually meant to expose the hold of corrupt law enforcement over the powerless.

And along the way, Parkerst and his detective companion Charles Gardner would document many aspects of New York after dark, which would culminate in a truly bizarre literary document of their journey.

The 1894 book, The Doctor and the Devil, The Midnight Adventures of Dr. Parkerst.

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