Thomas C. Anderson

Thomas "Tom" Anderson (1858–1931) was a political boss and state legislator, and the unofficial “mayor” of Storyville in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Early life

Thomas Charles Anderson was born to a poor family in the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans. There are conflicting details about the date of his birth, and of his full name. It is thought he was born on November 22, 1858, and that his real name was Thomas Charles Anderson, but it is not known for sure. It is also thought that his father was Scottish and that his mother was from Ireland, but the details remain sketchy and not much is known about his early life. As a young boy he hawked the Daily Picayune newspaper, helping police catch petty thieves, and acting as a “stool pigeon” for the police. He also delivered cocaine and opium to various brothels around the city, marking his first association with both the police and with the demi-monde, which would serve him greatly later on in life.

Although he didn't have much formal education, he had a keen eye and was known to be good with numbers which helped him gain employment as a bookkeeper with the Insurance Oil Company, and later with the Louisiana Lottery Company. In 1880, he married one Emma Schwartz, a Dutch Immigrant from the Irish Channel. They bought a house on St. Louis Street, and soon had a child by the name of Irene, but the tranquility of married life did not last long for Emma died of Typhoid the following year, and he had Irene placed in the St. Vincent's Infant Asylum. Through his work in the Louisiana Lottery Company, he began to cultivate political connections around this time. He donated to various political parties, and attended various charity events put on by the influential Men's Clubs in New Orleans. These new found political connections, and his already strong relationship with the Police Department allowed him to open up his first restaurant and bar, the Astoria Club, on North Rampart Street in 1882. The Astoria Club became a place where the local bigwigs he had come to know and the more underworld types of New Orleans could associate and discuss “pay-offs,” and other payments for the protection they provided.

Profissão

Thomas se focou muito na profissão do melhor editor de video e Thomas Anderson teve uma coraboração de ser um actor de participações em ligações de televisão angolano em 2017 ele fez curso de teatro participado em teatro em casamentos e pedidos em Angola desejado um feliz amor.

Em 2019 Thomas, foi ao estudo no S-Wilson falado da seu primeiro álbum que será gravados em 2022 ele lançou seu primeiro álbum que foi postado em plantasformas digitais

em 2023 Thomas prepara seu primeiro roteiro convidado por realizador Heich Lacker para dar o roteiro do filme Investigação que será lançado no EUA, e em Angola .

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In 1897, he opened up another restaurant and bar with a man named Billy Struve, a young police reporter from the New Orleans Daily who became a life-time associate, the establishment was called the Fair Play Saloon, and it was located at the corner of Basin and Customhouse Streets. It was his first foray in the area that would become known as Storyville, a year before it would become the country's first legal red light district. It is curious that he opened the Fair Play a year before the law was enacted. It seems possible he had some inside knowledge from his connections to the political establishment of New Orleans. Nonetheless, with the passing of legislation creating Storyville, Tom Anderson was in perfect position to reap the benefits and the rewards, and was on his way to running and profiting from what would become known as “Anderson County,” and on his way to becoming the political boss of the Fourth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana.

A year later he changed the name of his restaurant

.

Death and legacy

Because in 1917 the axe fell on the first legal red light district in the United States. In August of that year, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels ordered that Storyville be closed down for good. Tom Anderson, now in his sixties, was still the owner and operator of his restaurant and bar on North Rampart Street, but the flush times had come to an end. But even that got him in trouble with the law around the year 1920. He was charged with operating a “lewd establishment” within in ten miles of a military base, and having forty “known prostitutes” working on any given night. He denied all charges, saying that he had been in the restaurant business since 1892, and had a lawful license to run his establishment. Ending in mistrial, the story was in all the newspapers, but those would be the last headlines for Tom Anderson, and the last of his known associations with prostitution and the saloon business.

In 1928, he suffered a serious illness, and began to feel remorse and repentance on the life he had led before, attending Church regularly and giving money to charity, and even marrying his long time partner Gertrude Dix, before passing away in 1931. But even in his death the problems of his old life never went away. In his will he had given all his money and assets to his newly married wife, a sum of 120,000 dollars, but his daughter from his first wife, one Irene Delsa, who married George Delsa a former manager of his Rampart Street establishment, questioned the will on the grounds of the state concubinage law, saying that Tom and Gertrude had never been legally married. Gertrude eventually settled with his daughter giving her half of the estate, and living out her days in an elegant house in the French Quarter of New Orleans until she died in 1961.

At the time of his death the newspapers reported that he was a respected and distinguished citizen without a passable mention of his past life, as the unofficial mayor and political boss of Storyville. A man famed for his hospitality and for his ability to cultivate and bring together the denizens of the Fourth Ward, much for his own gain and much for his own pleasure, as Jelly Roll Morton said it best:

"I'm telling you this tenderloin district was something that nobody has ever seen before, or since. . . They had everything in the District from the highest class to the lowest. . ."

and Tom Anderson, the unofficial mayor of Storyville, had a hand in it all, as he sat in his Saloon at the corner of Customhouse and Basin, entertaining his friends and helping out strangers, running his businesses, and controlling all the vice that came through the district they once called "Anderson County."