Thomas C. Anderson

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.

[5] 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.

[7] He seems to have taken an interest and became business partners with one Josie Arlington, the notorious madam who had run a brothel at 172 Customhouse Street just around the corner from his Fair Play Saloon.

In 1910, he met Gertrude Dix, an attractive and cultured 29-year-old woman, and she became the de facto manager for many of his properties and businesses, and his partner for most of the remainder of his life.

Then in 1904, Tom Anderson went even further, seeking to legitimize himself by getting elected to the State Legislator in Baton Rouge, and although the opposition was fierce especially from the more conservative factions in the city, he won election on the Republican ticket, serving for 16 years as a member of the influential House and Ways committee, and also on the Committee on the Affairs of the city of New Orleans, but through all his success the winds of change were blowing.

[12] 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.

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.

[12] 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.