From "Cincinnati Post," July 21, 1898
Walking down Vine Street one morning, Cincinnati Police Chief Phillip P. Deitsch erupted in rage. Stretched across the façade of Heck and Avery’s New Museum was a painted canvas banner depicting a policeman kissing and hugging an alluring young lady. Not just any policeman, but Grant Thomas himself—the very policeman Colonel Deitsch had just personally dismissed from the Cincinnati police force for indulging in exactly that unseemly behavior. The Chief fairly sprinted back to his office at City Hall intent on shredding the humiliating display.
What was former Officer Thomas, fired in disgrace, doing at the Dime Museum anyway? That institution was a disreputable emporium of bizarre curiosities and freakshow entertainments. A promotional squib in the Cincinnati Enquirer [April 12, 1896] provides the gist:
“A few weeks ago Mr. Thomas was only an ordinary policeman. Quite a great deal of credit was attached to this, because he was not a New York or Philadelphia policeman, but one of Cincinnati’s finest. Mr. Thomas was always considered one of the most efficient officers, but he was burdened by a deep sense of his duties. He was always afraid that he would leave something undone. He labored under the impression that the Mayor, Chief of Police and the Board of Police Commissioners would unitedly condemn him, if he did not attempt to kiss every pretty woman on his beat. This is just what got him into trouble. While Mr. Thomas is a man of magnificent presence and handsome features, yet all his victims did not seem to appreciate the honor bestowed and some of them kicked. The matter came to the attention of the Police Commissioners, and they released him from his duties. Mr. Thomas now can devote his entire time to osculatory pursuits, if he so desires. He has not decided yet what he intends to do, but knowing that thousands of people want to see him inasmuch as he has won the sobriquet of ‘The Kissing Copper,’ he will exhibit himself at the museum this week.”
Dime museums like Heck & Avery’s were a primitive form of what would later become vaudeville. Such venues very often allowed transient celebrities to monetize their fifteen minutes of fame by sitting them in a corner to answer questions and sell photographic postcards, autographed for a fee. That is what Grant Thomas, the Kissing Copper, did for a week until the crowds thinned, the novelty wore off, and fresher freaks emerged, like “The Man Who Talks Backwards” or “Jo Jo The Dog Face Boy.”
Meanwhile, Chief Deitsch fulminated at City Hall, berating the legal staff who assured him there was not the slightest prohibition in all of the city, state or federal ordinances, against a former officer sitting in the Dime Museum peddling souvenirs. The chief was on the verge of charging Thomas with that catch-all municipal offense, loitering, until the City Solicitor talked him out of embarrassing himself.
The Kissing Copper himself had his own difficulties. Among the throngs who trundled through the turnstiles at Heck & Avery’s was his primary accuser, the redoubtable Maggie Luker, wife of a West End blacksmith. It was Mrs. Luker who first raised the alarm about Officer Thomas’ outrageous behavior and encouraged nearly a dozen other women, who had been too embarrassed at the prospect of publicly attracting attention to such humiliating incidents, to speak up and file official complaints. Their stories were often shocking. Officer Thomas, they said, would talk his way into their homes or businesses and fondle and kiss them without consent.
From "Cincinnati Enquirer," April 8, 1896
The very idea of her assailant enjoying any acclaim, however dubious, of a spotlight at the Dime Museum, incensed Mrs. Luker. Accompanied by a couple of friends, she stomped into the exhibition hall to catcall Mr. Thomas during his appearances. When he did nothing to acknowledge her presence, Mrs. Luker escalated her attack, according to the Enquirer [April 17, 1896]:
“Finally in her exasperation Mrs. Luker seized a number of photographs of Thomas and scattered them over the floor. She then further vented her fury by stamping on the photographs and delivering herself of a few more remarks on the ‘Kissing Copper.’ Mrs. Luker and her companions then left the Museum in anything but an amiable mood.”
It is interesting that Mrs. Luker, after succeeding in having Thomas fired, continued to pester him. Credible witnesses at Thomas’ trial paint Mrs. Luker as a bit of a stalker, herself. One witness claimed Mrs. Luker frequented shops on Thomas’ beat, hoping to see him as he made his rounds. She confessed to peculiar incidents like dropping gravel on the officer when he walked by her house “just for fun,” for befriending women who knew Thomas and his wife so she might meet the officer socially, inviting the officer to have ice cream with her and, on at least one occasion, having to be turned away by the officer’s wife when she showed up at his home demanding to see him privately.
Contributing to Thomas’ woes was his own quest for retribution. Convinced that his fellow officers failed to support him in the face of accusations, Thomas turned whistle-blower, accusing many of his former colleagues of malfeasance ranging from petty theft to drinking on the job. Thomas filed so many groundless accusations against Cincinnati officers that the Chief threw him out of his office.
These bureaucratic temper tantrums resulted in Thomas being an easy target once he launched the next phase of his career as a private policeman. Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, private police officers were fairly common in Cincinnati. Where today, citizens might invest in burglar alarms or surveillance cameras, our ancestors chipped in to subsidize private policemen who would monitor their properties. Armed with a license from City Hall, such officers had full arrest powers. Private police were, however, considered second-class operatives by the “real” police, who retained exclusive rights to certain mannerisms, such as tapping their billy clubs as they patrolled their beats. It seems such a small thing, but Thomas was hauled into police headquarters in 1897 by Sergeant August Keidel on charges he was “in the habit of rapping his club on posts as if he were a policeman.” Chief Deitsch ordered him to cease and desist with the forbidden whacking.
Once he got his private beat established, Thomas discovered that civilians had as little respect for private cops as did the professionals. One payday at the Fairmount wire factory, the workers gathered at Frank Schnetzer’s saloon on Beekman Street. Things got a tad lively and Thomas was summoned to maintain order. That didn’t go well, according to the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune [March 30, 1898]:
“Private Policeman Grant Thomas, better known as the ‘Kissing Copper,’ interfered, but the men took his club away and beat him with it, after which they threw him out of the window.”
To add insult to injury, Thomas’ own fraternal lodge, the Ancient Essenic Order, stripped him of membership and expelled him because of his scandalous reputation.
It appears that Thomas ended his days running a junk shop on Queen City Avenue, all alone after his long-suffering wife abandoned him, taking their young daughter with her.
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