Batavia's most famous madam

Edna Miller stands beside her grandmother's gravestone in Batavia's St. Joseph's Cemetery.

Edna Miller married Alfred Panepinto in 1950 when she was 18 and moved out of the Palace Hotel. By that time, Gruber had not been in good health for quite a while, having had her first heart attack at age 55.

“She had a very bad heart,” Miller said. “I took her to a cardiologist who said, 'Don't let her get in a strong wind. She's a wreck.'” Of course, Gruber insisted on going shopping immediately after her doctor's appointment, Miller said.

Six weeks later, on Oct. 10, 1953, Miller, now 20 years old, found her grandmother slumped over in a chair in the living room, dead.

Gruber left the Palace Hotel to her grandchildren. Miller and her husband moved into the Palace for one year, and were joined by Bill and his wife, Ann. The two young couples lived there together for one year until Edna and Alfred moved out. Bill and Ann remained at 101 Jackson St., for 30 years, remodeling and updating the house.

Today, it is semi-occupied and for sale by a new owner. Miller hates to go inside. The immaculate house she knew as home for most of her formative years is rundown and oozing with memories.

As an adolescent and teenager, Miller deeply resented her father's abandonment, although, after Gruber died in 1953, Miller reestablished contact with Charles.

“How could you leave your kids in a house of prostitution?” the adult Miller asked her father years later, after she and Bill had brought an ailing Charles to Batavia to care for him.

Miller still struggles between anger and forgiveness. “I sincerely tried to overcome resentment and anger toward him,” she said. “But that's my own failing. It's not my place to forgive.” Bill, she added, established a positive relationship with his father, who died in 1973.

Edna Gruber's story has run on for nearly 2,000 words, but not one word about her customers. Who were they? “Everyone and everybody,”Miller said. “The so-called respectable people of Batavia.”

Les Wright, who worked at a newsstand frequented by Gruber, had a few tales to tell about the notorious madam (see sidebar), but as Les puts it, “Most of the old timers aren't talkin'.”

Edna goes to jail

It's been said that Batavia madam Edna Gruber retained the best legal counsel and paid for it well. Her establishment was raided regularly during Prohibition and Edna was fined and released regularly. But would she ever be brought to trial? The Batavia Daily News commented after her February 1931 arrest for “keeping a disorderly house” that, quite possibly, she would never be tried because of what she might reveal.

Batavia Police Chief John J. Casey, however, was determined to close Edna's Palace Hotel before he retired. Two officers were sent to watch the Jackson Street house from midnight to 3 a.m. to assess the visitors. They occasionally stopped someone for questioning and eventually found several men—none of them local—who agreed to testify against Gruber. By now, she was actually known as Edna Gruber Reeves, having married David Reeves in 1930.

Edna was brought before Judge Newell K. Cone in February 1941 and found guilty by a jury of six men and six women of keeping an establishment harmful to public morals. Judge Cone fined her $500, sentenced her to one year in the Monroe County Penitentiary and ordered her not to return to Batavia.

“When she realized she was going to jail, she asked the police what they would do with us,” granddaughter Edna Miller said. “The police said Bill and I would be put in a foster home. She said 'absolutely not' and called my father to come take care of us. He came and ran the house wide open for the year she was in jail.”

Despite Judge Cone's warning, when her year was up Gruber returned to Batavia and her son-in-law Charles promptly left town.

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