Leon Metz Southwest Chronicle Edu©Educational.Dual Language Leon Metz 3rd Quarter 2014 | Page 5

NO TALK. PAY UP!
A STUDY OF HISTORY & HERITAGE

“My services are always in high demand, dear”

-EP PROSTITUES 1800s

WE ARE WOMEN OF ACTION

IF YOU COME TO PLAY - PAY YOUR DEBT!
By Leon Claire Metz / Travel The Pass Mass Media Pinnacle featured Historian & Author Since 1991
The Southwest Chronicle©TTPMMP EST. 1991

EL PASO -If there was
no demand or need for
their services, the prostitute would not exist.
It’s as simple as that.
Brendan Francis once
wrote, “Since time immemorial,
prostitutes
have been the reward of
men of action -soldiers,
cowboys, gangsters- because whores are, above
all else, are women of
action. Talk is not their
stock in trade.” And so it
was in old El Paso. The
problem was that arguments over prostitution
so divided the community that men of goodwill
could not always come
together and settle other
long term burning issues.
According to Gordon
Frost’s book, The Gentlemen’s Club The Story Of
Prostitution In El Paso,

lady to reach town was
Sarah Borginnis, better known as the “Great
Western.” This attractive amazon arrived in
El Paso shortly after the
Mexican War and operated a small “hotel” near
what is now the Plaza
Theatre.
El Paso Prostitution
the city controlled it with
month, a form of licensPowers collected.
It wasn’t until 1937 that

both the desire and the
police enforcement to
eradicate the practice almost completely.
The shift away from legalized prostitution was
the most wrenching and
controversial
turning
point in El Paso’s fourhundred-year old history.
The practice prevailed
for half century, and although the city took a giant stride toward respectability with its demise,
much of El Paso’s color,
tion. The town would
never again be the same.
riod prostitutes arriving
in El Paso were femmes
-perhaps accompanied by
pimps- it wasn’t until
Madame Alice A b b o t t
appeared
on the
great southwestern scene
in the summer of 1881
that the classic bordello
made its presence known
great city fathers allowed
unchecked, but in the
spring of 1882 began enforcing sections 49 and
73 of the City Charter,
ordering the arrest of all
wanton women and their
employers.
Actually, the word “arrest” used here is a misnomer. By an unwritten
mutual understanding, it
was agreed on by leaders on both sides of the
moral fence that a police-

lector” be appointed. His
sole duty would be to
visit the cribs and brothels weekly and collect a
girl engaged in the venereal vice. This obviated
the necessity of the girls
having to physically appear in court for a trial,
thus saving time and effort for all. It worked out
quite well, court dockets were uncrowded and
valuable time was saved
by the girls who would
normally have to neglect
their business in order to
appear before the magiswas actually a license to
practice their tolerated
trade. Eventually, this
was extended to gambling houses, dance halls
and saloons. All money
gathered in this manner was used to pay the
salaries and expenses of
the Police Department, a
practice lasting well into
the 1920s. Always on
the lookout for sale-able
news, El Paso’s newspapers were quick to tattle
on the tenderloin -one of
many synonyms for the
controlled or tolerated
area of prostitution in a
city. The word, tenderloin, had its beginning in
the 1880s. A New York
reporter asked a city