The West Old & New Vol. III Issue I January 2014 | Page 7

At concert saloons, men could eat, listen to music, watch a fight, or pay women for sex. Over 200 brothels existed in lower Manhattan. Prostitution was illegal under the vagrancy laws, but was not well-enforced by police and city officials, who were bribed by
brothel owners and madams.
The gold rush in the west attracted gambling, crime, saloons, and prostitution to the mining towns of the wild west. Widespread media coverage of prostitution occurred in 1836, when famous courtesan Helen Jewett was murdered, allegedly by one of
her customers. The Lorette ordinance of 1857 prohibited prostitution on the first floor of buildings in New Orleans. Nevertheless,
prostitution continued to grow rapidly in the US, becoming a 6.3 million-dollar business in 1858, more than the shipping and
brewing industries combined.
By the US Civil War, Pennsylvania Avenue had become a disreputable slum known as Murder Bay, home to an extensive
criminal underclass and numerous brothels. So many prostitutes took up residence there to serve the needs of General Joseph
Hooker's Army of the Potomac that the area became known as "Hooker's Division." Two blocks between Pennsylvania and Missouri Avenues became home to such expensive brothels that it was known as "Marble Alley."
In 1881, the Bird Cage Theatre opened in Tombstone, Arizona. It included a brothel in the basement and 14 cribs suspended
from the ceiling, called cages. In the late 19th century, newspapers reported that 65,000 white slaves existed. Around 1890, the
term "red-light district" was first recorded in the United States. From 1890 to 1982, the Dumas Brothel in Montana was America's
longest-running house of prostitution.
New Orleans city alderman Sidney Story wrote an ordinance in 1897 to regulate and limit prostitution to one small area of the
city, "The District", where all prostitutes in New Orleans must live and work. The District, or Storyville, became the most famous
area for prostitution in the nation. Storyville at its peak had some 1500 prostitutes and 200 brothels.
In the West, the harsh Puritan sanctions were
not as "practical” as in America’s more conservative
eastern counterpart. Women who plied the trade in
the west were labeled by miners as "ladies of the
line” and "sporting women", while the cowboys
dubbed them "soiled doves.” Common terms included "daughters of sin”, "fallen frails,” "doves of
the roost,” and "nymphs du prairie.” Other nicknames for these women were "scarlet ladies,” fallen
angels,” "frail sisters,” "fair belles,” and "painted
cats.”
Historians have estimated that prostitutes made
up 25% of the population in the west, often outnumbering the "decent” women 25 to 1. Usually, painted
ladies were between the ages of 14 and 30 with the
average age of 23.

Visit this time line for a historic perspective on prostitution in the world.
http://prostitution.procon.org/
view.timeline.php?timelineID=000028
The book on the right by Annie Seagraves is an excellent source of stories
about the early women of the west who
worked as prostitutes.
http://www.amazon.com/SoiledDoves-Prostitution-Early-Women/
dp/096190884X

The West Old & New Page 7