When fortune tellers were Public Enemy No. 1

Telling fortunes is still illegal in most states — but you'll never see police raids on your friendly neighborhood new age shop.

Fortune teller's cubicle, state fair, Donaldsonville, Louisiana, 1938. (Library of Congress)

Before mug shots, there were rogues’ galleries — a practice invented by the St. Louis City Police Depatment. In 1931, the SLPD tacked up photos of 34-year-old housewife Golda Obert next to head shots of pickpockets, burglars and stick-up artists.

The crime? Employing fortune tellers at her business, the Egyptian Tea Room, located on the second floor of 312 N. Sixth Street (now a bit of downtown nowheresville).

In December of 1931, police raided the tea room, citing Section 625 of the Revised Code of 1914, which stated that the mayor and board of aldermen had the power to “license, tax, regulate and suppress ordinaries, money brokers, money changers, intelligence and employment offices and agencies, public masquerades, balls, street exhibitions, dance houses, fortune tellers, pistol galleries, corn doctors, private venereal hospitals, museums, menageries, equestrian performances, horoscopic views, telescopic views, lung testers, muscle developers, magnifying glasses, ten pin alleys, ball alleys, billiard tables, pool tables and other tables, theatrical or other exhibitions, boxing and sparring exhibitions, shows and amusements, tippling houses, and sales of unclaimed goods by express companies or common carriers, auto wrecking shops and junk dealers.”

It’s hard to say if the police brought down the boom this hard on corn doctors, lung testers and equestrian performers, but they definitely had it out for fortune tellers. Because tea rooms attracted an almost exclusively female clientele, policewomen were the ones doing the stings:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 31, 1931

The Egyptian Tea Room opened in June of 1930, as a wave of similar spots opened all over the country. The Depression was taking hold, and fortune telling was booming, just as it had during the collective trauma and uncertainty of World War I. As Restaurant-ing Through History notes, readings offered a diversion, and sometimes more:

..an advertisement suggested that patrons’ reasons for having their tea leaves read were not so happy. A 1930 advertisement for the Mystic Tea Room, in Kansas City MO, asked “Have You Worries? Financial, domestic or otherwise? Our gifted readers will help you solve your problems.”

As RTH also notes, tea rooms were often located on the second floor of a building because the rent was cheaper, and perhaps also allowed them to fly a bit more under the radar. Fortunetelling was illegal in most cities during the 20th century, including New York City, which took a particularly aggressive stance against it.

Fortune telling is still not quite 100 percent legal — readers must tell clients it’s “for entertainment purposes only.” That was the case in the 1930s as well. Tea rooms skirted legal troubles selling cheap lunches, which came with a free reading, though you could always tip your reader.

The Egyptian employed a rotating cast of readers, including Don Luis, "the boy who saw tomorrow"; Carlita the Mystery Girl; Effendi the Mental Marvel; and Hondorus, "internationally known character analyst and psychic reader."

Its star psychic was Madame Zonola, “international psychic wonder and radio star,” who appeared on WIL between the fix-it shows and live jazz orchestra performances.

Advertisement, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 1931

The Egyptian Tea Room, like many businesses of its ilk, encouraged people to send their questions to the cafe as a way of getting its name on the air at WIL. But it was caught in a tricky place between advertising its services and drawing the attention of the police. Which it did, of course.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December, 1931

Eventually, the case against the tea room was thrown out of court for lack of evidence, but it’s hard to find any trace of the Egyptian Tea Room after their legal woes wrapped up. Apparently they shuttered after the police raid, and perhaps running the place just felt like too much of a hassle after that.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 1932

Atlas Obscura observes that New York’s “fortune-teller vendetta had classist and paternalistic undertones. Jan Whitaker, in her book Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn: A Social History of The Tea Room Craze in America, writes that fortune-telling tea rooms were entertainment for working-class women. As the trend gained steam, in 1931, the New York Times accused fortune tellers operating out of tea rooms of causing ‘a wave of melancholia among women’ because of their frightening prophecies. Since a number of fortune tellers were of Romani heritage, much of the media furor was also racially motivated.”

And indeed, if you skim the STL society pages in the early 1930s, you’ll see there was a fad for fortunetelling among the deb set, too — the St. Louis Women’s Club regularly held “Fortune Teas,” where young women dressed up in scarves and heavy gold jewelry and had horoscopes cast or cards read. The food section ran recipes for “fortune cakes,” an orange zest confection with a tiny fortune scroll hidden inside it. And there were zero police raids on ladies’ lunches in Ladue.

The proprietor of the nifty-cool Lucky Mojo Curio Co., Catherine Yronwode, also operates an online museum dedicated to the history of tea rooms. She writes that traditional tearooms were hotbeds of progressive political activity:

…in the late 19th and early 20th century, tea rooms were far more than places to sit down for a light lunch or a spot of afternoon tea. They were intimately entwined with some of the major progressive political campaigns of their era, namely, the abolition of slavery; the rights of women to own property, drive vehicles, and vote; the rise of Spiritualism and metaphysics as women-led religious movements; the rights of gay and lesbian people to exist; and the temperance plan to outlaw alcohol as a scourge whose victims were most often women and children abused by violent men.

She adds:

The story of tea leaf fortune telling in tea rooms and tea shops begins with the connection between tea rooms and the female suffrage movement. As restaurant dining became more common in the mid to late 19th century, growing right beside it were the intertwined women’s movements that led to the establishment of public education, divorce laws that permitted women to escape abusive marriages, inheritance laws that allowed women to own and manage businesses, and the long, hard fight for female suffrage.

Yronwode mentions an important topic in this whole discussion, deconstructing an offensive word for the Roma people often used in tea room names during that era. The 2022 AP stylebook says that word shouldn’t be used in any sense, which is why this moth received a new name two years ago.

But tea rooms were also world-changing places for a lot of women. They currently have a reputation as dowdy spots where you go to eat scones with your grandma, but there was a time when they were as radical as a punk house was in the 1980s — which made them a target by the powers that be.

Fortune teller, state fair, Donaldsville, Louisiansa, 1938 (Library of Congress)

Though the practice of fortunetelling is protected by the first amendment, it’s still viewed as a shady activity by the police and local governments; in some cases it is, in fact, a shady activitiy. Twenty-first century psychics have certainly landed in jail, including this one in Kenner, Louisiana.

That’s because people still want their fortunes told. A lot of folks go the free, easy and digital route. But other people still want a real, live tea leaf, palm or card reader.

New Orleans’ Bottom of the Cup, which opened in 1920, is an authentic surviving fortunetelling tea room. These days, you don’t have to buy tea, cake, or snowflake potatoes to have your fortune told. You can pay your reader directly, and your palmist doesn’t have to fear being thrown in the pokey after a police raid.

As always, though, it’s for entertainment purposes only.