Quick answer: Ida Bailey was one of the best-known madams of San Diego’s Stingaree, the red-light district that filled the blocks of today’s southern Gaslamp Quarter in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She is linked to the Canary Cottage, a pale-yellow house on Fourth Avenue that local historians later called part of the “aristocracy of the Stingaree.” Much of her life is poorly documented, but you can still stand where the Canary Cottage was, behind the 1903 Cotheret Building at 536 Fourth Avenue.
The Stingaree is the heart of our Gaslamp ghosts and crime tour, and Ida Bailey is one of its most intriguing figures and one of the hardest to pin down. Here’s what the record actually says, what’s legend, and where to find her old haunt today.
What was the Stingaree?
The Stingaree was San Diego’s waterfront vice district. Historians place it roughly south of Market Street (then H Street) down to the bay, between about Second and Sixth Avenues. By the 1880s and 1890s it was packed with saloons, gambling halls, opium dens and brothels. The name is usually traced to the stingray: locals joked you could get “stung” as badly in the Stingaree as by the rays in the bay.
For more on the neighborhood’s rough early years, including the lawman who ran gambling halls here, read Wyatt Earp in San Diego and our Gaslamp Quarter history guide.
Who was Ida Bailey?
Ida Bailey ran one of the Stingaree’s most established “parlor houses,” the Canary Cottage. A 2009 San Diego Reader history describes it as a pale-yellow house at 530 Fourth, and quotes historian Henry Schwartz grouping it with Madame Goldstein’s Turf as “the aristocracy of the Stingaree.” Unlike the cheap cribs a few blocks away, the Canary Cottage was known for its parlor: women dressed as if for the opera and entertained “gentlemen callers” in conversation before business.
Bailey was also famous for advertising in the boldest way possible. According to local historian Jerry MacMullen, she hired an open carriage from the Diamond Carriage Company for Sunday drives through respectable residential San Diego, showing off her women to the city. MacMullen wrote that the outings horrified the town’s “decent housewives” while their husbands found them hilarious.
Why was the Canary Cottage rarely raided?
The Canary Cottage reportedly rarely got raided, and when police did come, the house usually had advance warning, which tells you something about who its customers were. One often-repeated story says that during one raid, two prominent men escaped by climbing down a rubber tree out back and over a six-foot fence. Their names, conveniently, never made it into the record.
The 1912 Stingaree raid
The Stingaree’s run ended in a single night. On November 10, 1912, police swept the district and arrested 138 women. According to the Journal of San Diego History, Judge George Puterbaugh fined each of them $100, then suspended the fines on the condition that they leave town. Only two accepted help from the city’s Vice Suppression Committee. A reporter noticed that most of the women leaving by train bought round-trip tickets.
Over the next few years, much of the old district was torn down in a citywide cleanup ahead of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.
What we know vs. what’s legend
Ida Bailey is a great example of how Gaslamp history and tour lore get blended. Here’s how we separate them on our tours:
| Documented | Uncertain or legend |
|---|---|
| The Stingaree was a real vice district raided on November 10, 1912, with 138 women arrested. | Exact dates of Ida Bailey’s birth, career and death. No confirmed portrait or personal papers are known to survive. |
| The Canary Cottage operated on Fourth Avenue, behind the site of today’s Cotheret Building. | Whether Bailey still ran it at the end. One 1912 police report names a different woman, Julia Barton, as the Canary Cottage’s landlady. |
| Local historians described it as one of the district’s more refined houses. | Specific clients, rivalries with other madams, and the rubber-tree escape, which are passed down without names or dates. |
Where was the Canary Cottage?
The cottage itself is gone, but its location isn’t. Stand in front of the Cotheret Building at 536 Fourth Avenue, built in 1903 and marked as Gaslamp Quarter historic building No. 8. The Canary Cottage sat behind it, and the narrow alley just to the right once led patrons back to the cottage and to a neighboring fan-tan gambling house. It’s a short walk from the Horton Grand Hotel and the Gaslamp Museum at the Davis-Horton House.
Is the Canary Cottage haunted?
We’re not aware of any documented haunting tied to Ida Bailey or the Canary Cottage. If a guide or website tells you her ghost walks Fourth Avenue, treat it as folklore. The real story, about money, police payoffs and a city deciding what kind of place it wanted to be, is strange enough on its own. For the Gaslamp’s best-known ghost tales, see our guide to San Diego ghost stories in the Gaslamp.
Hear the story where it happened
Our San Diego Gaslamp Ghosts and Crime Walking Tour ($29 per person, 90 minutes) walks the old Stingaree after dark, covering the murders, vice and police payoffs of the district, with stops at the Balboa Theatre, the Horton Grand Hotel and the Gaslamp Museum. We tell you what’s documented and what’s legend, so you leave knowing the difference.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Ida Bailey in San Diego?
Ida Bailey was one of the best-known madams of the Stingaree, San Diego’s red-light district in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She is linked to the Canary Cottage, a parlor house on Fourth Avenue in what is now the Gaslamp Quarter.
Where was the Canary Cottage in San Diego?
The Canary Cottage stood behind the 1903 Cotheret Building at 536 Fourth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. A narrow alley beside the building once led to the cottage. The cottage itself no longer exists.
What happened in the 1912 Stingaree raid?
On November 10, 1912, San Diego police arrested 138 women in the Stingaree. Their $100 fines were suspended on the condition that they leave town, and much of the district was demolished in the following years.
Is Ida Bailey’s ghost said to haunt the Gaslamp?
There is no documented haunting tied to Ida Bailey or the Canary Cottage. Stories about her ghost should be treated as folklore.
