Chicago's aldermen of 1908 make the aldermen of 2008 look like alter boys.

Meet John "Bathhouse" Coughlin. He is one of the aldermen from Chicago's notorious First Ward. Along with his partner in crime (literally), Hinky Dink Kenna, Bathhouse protects Chicago's thriving vice trade in the Levee district. He acts as the middle man for his "constituents" (the madames, the pimps, and the drug dealers) in their "transactions" with the police. Naturally, he takes his share right off the top. In the process, he becomes a very wealthy man.

He does his business in the most brazen way imaginable. Every year he throws a huge party called the First Ward Ball, to which he invites all the other politicians from Illinois. He stocks the joint to the gills with hookers and booze and promises a "good time for all." It's so popular that the event is held at the largest venue in town, the Chicago Coliseum--which will hold the Republican Convention later this year.

Coughlin wasn't born into the political world or the vice business. He was a self-made man. His father's business, a grocery store, was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire. Bathhouse used to say: "If not for that bonfire, I might have been a rich man's son and gone to Yale, and never amounted to much."

Elsewhere in the news this week...

Lawrence Welk turns 5 years old (March 11). He and his German-speaking immigrant family are living in Strasburg, North Dakota. Welk won't learn English until he turns 21 and will always speak it with an accent.

VIDEO: Lawrence Welk Show Open from 1974

Albert Einstein turns 28 (March 14). He is the privatdozent at Bern University in Bern, Switzerland and is working on a paper explaining why the sky is blue.

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