Abstract
On today’s episode of Fallen Women, we will dive into America’s Golden Age of the late 19th century, a time of rapid expansion and industrialization and, for our purposes, prostitution. This podcast will lay bare the intricacies of the world of female prostitution and, more specifically, the world of brothels. Our podcast operates on two levels – firstly as an exposé into the lives and motivations of prostitutes at the time and, secondly, as a critique of the prevailing historiographical binary of the prostitute as either agent or victim. Our ultimate goal is to reframe the historical narrative of prostitution and encourage historiographical flexibility in order to ensure that we, and future historians, advance the most holistic image possible of late 19th century American female prostitutes.
Our podcast strives to accomplish this goal in multiple ways. To begin, we dive into the history of the period, focusing much of our attention on the role of the brothel. We evaluate brothels in terms of comparison to saloons and as safe spaces. Furthermore, we investigate how economic considerations influenced the choices and actions of female prostitutes and examine the relationship between money and labels of agency. Finally, our podcast takes a step back to consider the historiographical binary of agent vs. victim, questioning if our own narrative of female prostitution adheres to or strays from this binary. Our podcast concludes by advocating for a break from this historiography while simultaneously pointing out our own work’s historiographical flaws.
It is our hope that today’s podcast will nuance the listener’s perception of the prostitute – in regards to both historic and contemporary forms of prostitution. We believe in the importance of pointing out gaps and flaws in historical narratives, no matter how established they are. The Fallen Women series aims to do just this. Please enjoy today’s episode on prostitution and tune in next time!
Bios
Maddie Birchfield is 20 years old and from Lawrence, Kansas. She is a rising third year at Grinnell College where she is majoring in English. Her interests are TV writing and studies, feminist literature, and contemporary and classic fiction. She will be studying abroad in Belfast, Ireland the spring semester of 2018.
Sophia DeLeonibus is 19 years old and from Portland, Oregon. She is a rising third year at Grinnell College where she is majoring in History and Political Science. Her interests are international human rights, policy studies, and queer history. She will be studying abroad in London in the fall semester of 2017.
Sophia Gates Stern is 20 years old and from Brooklyn, New York. She is a rising third year at Grinnell College where she is majoring in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, and History. Her interests are women’s history, pop culture studies, and creative writing. She will be studying abroad in Amsterdam in the fall semester of 2017.
Credits
We would like to thank Carolyn Lewis, our professor; Gina Donovan, our technical adviser; our peers for their advice and input; as well as everyone in the AV center for answering any and all of our questions.
Bibliography
Addams, Jane. A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. New York: Macmillan, 1923. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:436848.
A Sketch of the Life of Miss Ellen Jewett, who was Murdered in the City of New York on Saturday Evening, April 9, 1836. Boston: Printed for the Publisher, 1836. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:650155.
Best, Joel. “Careers in Brothel Prostitution: St. Paul, 1865-1883.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12, no. 4 (1982): 597-619. doi:10.2307/203547.
Brents, Barbara G., Crystal A. Jackson, and Kathryn M. Hausbeck. The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin in the New American Heartland. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Cohen, Patricia Cline Cohen. “The Mystery of Helen Jewett: Romantic Fiction and the Eroticization of Violence.” Legal Studies Forum 17, no. 2 (1993): 133-145.
Collins, Jan MacKell. Brothels, Bordellos & Bad Girls: Prostitution in Colorado, 1860-1930. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.
Fuentes, Marisa J. “Power and Historical Figuring: Rachael Pringle Polgreen’s Troubled Archive.” In Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America, ed. Jennifer Brier, Jim Downs, and Jennifer L. Morgan (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 143-168.
Holsopple, Frances Quinter. “Social Non-Conformity: An Analysis of Four Hundred and Twenty Cases of Delinquent Girls and Women.” Doctorate thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1919. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:370925.
Landau, Emily Epstein. Spectacular Wickedness: Sex, Race, and Memory in Storyville, New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.
Long, Alecia P. The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004.
Rutter, Michael. Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West. Helena, MT: Farcountry Press, 2005.
Schafer, Judith Kelleher. Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009.
Scully, Eileen P. “Prostitution as Privilege: The ‘American Girl’ of Treaty-Port Shanghai, 1860-1937.” The International History Review 20, no. 4 (1998): 855-83. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40107999.
Simons, G. L. (Geoffrey Leslie). A Place for Pleasure: The History of the Brothel. Lewes: Harwood-Smart Publishing Co. Ltd., 1975.
Spude, Catherine Holder. “Brothels and Saloons: An Archaeology of Gender in the American West.” Historical Archaeology 39, no. 1 (2005): 89-106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25617238.
Weidensall, Clara Jean. The Mentality of the Criminal Woman. Baltimore: Warwick & York, 1916. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:145515.
Wickenden, Dorothy. Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York, NY: Scribner, 2011.
Transcript
DeLeonibus: On April 9th, 1836, upscale prostitute Helen Jewett was brutally murdered by a brothel client in New York City. Her body was axed and burned in bed. She was 22 years old. Her death sparked a media sensation as people deplored the murder of the poor naive woman, seduced into sex by a man who then abandoned her virtueless, and forced into prostitution out of economic necessity.
Music plays
“and Lord knows she’s beautiful Lord knows the usuals leaving a body sore She take the little change she make to fix her nail cuticles, Lipstick is suitable to make you fiend for more She play Mr. Shakur That’s her favorite rapper bumping “Brenda’s Got A Baby” While a pervert yelling at her and she capture features of a woman But only 17, the 7 cars start honkin’”
Maddie: Helen Jewett was a person, Helen Jewett was a prostitute, and Helen Jewett was murdered.
Of these three characteristics, the final two seemed to be more important to the media after her death.
Hello, I’m Maddie Birchfield.
Stern: I’m Sophia Stern.
DeLeonibus: And I’m Sophia Deleonibus.
Maddie: And this is Fallen Women, coming to you on May 7th, 2017 from Grinnell Iowa. Today we will explore the narrative that has been created surrounding prostitution, and how we have dissected this historiography to try to uncover the pieces of the story that might be hidden or missing, or the parts that have been exaggerated and overshown to attempt to better discern the true history of sex work in America at the turn of the century.
Transition music plays
Stern: Helen Jewett’s murder makes me feel uncomfortable and distressed. The murder is brutal and scary. There is a part of me that doesn’t even want to talk about it, while another part of me thinks we have a duty to relay her life. However, my curiosity wants to spread her story because it’s interesting. The sensation around her murder has worked on me, and I want to gossip about it.
DeLeonibus: What struck me most when first hearing Helen Jewett’s story was the thought that we don’t actually know what her life was like. The only information we have on her are quote-on quote life stories written by men after her death. Helen’s narrative has been untouched by her own voice. And yet, we speak of Helen Jewett as if we knew who she was.
Maddie: As Sophia said in the intro, Jewett was said to have been forced into prostitution by economic necessity, but what I found myself searching for most in the research for this podcast was how, even when pushed into sex work by forces they could not control, how were these women able to push back on this lack of autonomy, and find ways to gain agency in their work and their surroundings. Yet, at the same time, I was trying to avoid what has been done time and time again, which is the simplification of these women’s lives down to the singular meaning for their existence.
Stern: The majority of my anxieties surrounding this narrative comes from history being constructed by men. The male gaze obscuring history is ever present in the history of the sex worker, leading to an unreliable narration.
DeLeonibus: Agreed! Similarly, I came across several sources that had major problems. The most worrisome examples were the multitude of female prostitute ‘autobiographies’ written by men.
Maddie: Additionally, so many sources use courtroom documentation which doesn’t paint a whole picture. For one, courtroom documents only show what ended up in court, not even close to a whole story. For another, courtroom’s were run by men and men who upheld the institution that created sex laws. The reports are constructed by only one side of any proceeding.
DeLeonibus: Think back to the Helen Jewett source! Helen Jewett was proclaimed a victim and only that. There was no place beside this victimhood to examine Helen as an agent or as an individual.
Stern: Men were writing her “life story” and sensationalizing her murder in the press. They took her voice, only caring about her once she wasn’t around to defend herself. In life, the reform era drew upon the Victorian vision of the Devil’s mistress. In death, they turned her into a depraved victim
DeLeonibus: So how can we think about Jewett’s agency in this case? Or any prostitutes agency?
Maddie: By using secondary sources to critique our narratives, especially the ones men are constructing.
DeLeonibus: Our first and macro cultural problem is the Othering of the prostitute as an Othered sex act. Because the inequities in society reflect in prostitution, labeling sex work as an oppressive system implies there is a utopia on the other side. As said by historian Brents Hausbeck, “The stereotypical approaches to prostitution — as deviance, as the enduring power of men over women, as violence against women, or alternatively as sexual liberation and empowerment, are problematic because they frame prostitution as a universal, singular “other” sexual experience.” (Hausbeck 226)
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Stern: One way of looking at the narrative of prostitution is by looking at material culture left behind. The turn of the 20th century goes by many names, but for our context, the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s was the Golden Age of Brothels. Sex work was happening in all shapes and forms, but the brothel dominated prostitution culture.
DeLeonibus: There were elite brothels and brothels with reputations for disease. There were expensive brothels and brothels where you could be in and out in ten minutes, ten dollars less in your pocket.
Maddie: At the end of the day, most brothels were illegal. Many brothels cropped up with fronts. A common guise was the saloon, especially out West. It was clever: both sold alcohol and both sold sex, but the saloon was legal.
Stern: The main distinction between the two is that saloon’s sold sex to encourage the sale of alcohol while the brothel sold alcohol to encourage the sale of sex. As long as the saloon wasn’t caught, the sex work could happen among the chaos of drunken men.
Maddie: To combat this, a law was passed that prohibited all women from entering any saloon or else she would be considered a prostitute. While this didn’t stop women, prostitutes or not, it did prevent women from having a lasting presence in these bars.
DeLeonibus: Remember, this was a time of Westward Expansion, manifest destiny, and the mining rushes. Men flooded the West Coast, seeking for their fortune, and with them came the women, also seeking theirs.
Maddie: We’d like to acknowledge here that Westward expansion was at the expense of American Indians. The saloons and brothels were situated on stolen land, as were the other events of our narrative.
Stern: As G.L. Simmons puts it, the American narrative is based on the rapid exploitation of natural resources. To keep America booming, the miners had to be kept happy, and non-pimped women were able to capitalize and fill their pockets. In some senses, this could be seen as a patriotic act. In others it could be seen as filled with agency. One aspect that is filled with agency was the archiving of material culture.
DeLeonibus: Because women were banned from the saloons under the law, they had little control over what was left behind, meaning most things we have from saloons are items deemed owned by men.
Stern: However, because women owned, operated, and occupied brothels, they were able to control the history they left us. Women dominated the selection of material culture in the brothels and thus they get to tell their story. In short, our material evidence that comes from brothels was controlled by women, while the material evidence from saloons-
Maddie: and almost everywhere else!
Stern: – was controlled by men.
Transition music plays
Maddie: On the subject of brothels, I have to bring up Rachael Pringle Polgreen. “She was a woman of color, a former slave turned slave owner, and many stories circulate that she ran a well-known brothel without much legal controversy.” (Fuentes 143)
DeLeonibus: As a member of the black elite, she was able to live like wealthy whites, but not everyone could garner the success that Polgreen had, and this didn’t mean that the women working for the brothel owners were completely disenfranchised in these establishments.
Stern: In fact, brothels could be safe places for women. In certain brothels, prostitutes earned a living, had a bed to sleep in, and had a supportive community of people who shared their life experiences.
DeLeonibus: Within the brothels, women had the ability to make friends out of loyal customers, a blatant use of their sexuality to gain security.
Stern: This community sometimes allowed protection in the case of difficult or dangerous partners. Compared to outside the brothels, where the stakes were higher and the security almost non-existent, for prostitutes on the streets, there was always the risk of being caught or prosecuted. Sex workers were often forced to move around, to escape the law, or to escape abusive partners.
Maddie: In the case of Dorothy “Tar Baby” Brown, she escaped her life on the streets only to end up living in horrible conditions because no work would pay her enough to expand her horizons. The money outside of prostitution was never comparable to the earnings that could be made selling her body.
DeLeonibus: Some women were able to make a good enough living that they had money to spare. Interestingly enough, some prostitutes willingly “donated to local charities, churches, and schools,” revealing their deep-seated desire to avoid ostracization from society (Collins 30).
Stern: Let’s bring economics fully into this equation. In his 1919 doctoral thesis, which examined social non-conformity and delinquency among women, Frances Quinter Holsopple studied a young woman named Bertha who “claims she was forced into prostitution by poverty” (Holsopple 39).
Maddie: Money can explain the distinction between women in brothels and women on the streets, and their different relationship with the law.
DeLeonibus: Women who did not bring in enough profit to the brothel were kicked out and “forced to solicit on the street because they [could not] otherwise earn a living” (Holsopple 8).
Stern: In the same vein, a prostitute excluded from a high end brothel could be found in a “cheap disorderly house,” where their pay was lower and the likelihood was that they were being pimped (Holsopple 8).
Maddie: According to Holsopple, “The prostitutes who [came] under the jurisdiction of the court are the least successful of their profession. As for the large number of women who were “kept” in more or less comfort, and the larger number who resort to occasional immorality to supplement their earnings, they are never included in any statistics of prostitution” (Holsopple 8).
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Stern: Whether women chose to enter prostitution or not, economic success was certainly a draw. “Many of the high class parlour women made considerable amounts of money, which in due course allowed them to set up their own houses if they wished” (Simmons 130), similarly to Rachael Polgreen.
Maddie: But not all prostitutes could turn brothel owner, and many met the much worse fate of jail time for their crimes. Although one article I read by Clara Weidensall was entitled “The Mentality of the Criminal Woman,” all of the tests focused on their physical attributes. The tests were done on two groups, some maids used as a control, and a group of prisoners in Connecticut, called the Bedford 88.
DeLeonibus: The Bedford 88 came out shorter and heavier, indicating a poor diet, lacking in nutritional value. One point made about the women, that actually hinted at the mind, was that a good portion of the women were not as educated as the maids.
Stern:When tasked with the Tapping Test, a test where the subject must tap repeatedly on the table as fast as they can until they fatigue, many of the girls could not understand the simple instructions.
Maddie: Rather than realizing that a major issue in these women’s lives is their lack of education, Weidensall asserts that “the test affords an excellent example of the incapacity of many criminal women to understand even very simple directions and emphasizes the need there is that greater care be given directions than is commonly the custom” (Weidensall 255).
DeLeonibus:The reason that these women might have not understood was because they didn’t have the same amount of schooling, creating a gap between the maids and Bedford 88 that goes back to the important thing that Weidensall overlooks in her study, money.
Maddie: These women were uneducated because they were economically disadvantaged, and they became criminals because prostitution provided earnings that could keep these women alive.
Transition music plays
DeLeonibus: The agent vs. victim binary is well-delineated in the historiography of American female prostitution. The prostitute as victim of circumstance, poverty, seduction, you name it, is a well-accepted narrative. Let’s think back to the story of Helen Jewett. Shortly after her death, a brief biography of Ms. Jewett was published, describing how she had been seduced into discarding her virtue by a man who then abandoned her. Disgraced and alone, she turned to prostitution to make ends meet.
Stern: While portraying prostitutes as victims may save them from condemnations of impurity, this narrative denies agency for women engaging in sex work. The prostitute as agent is the other side of the historiographical binary.
Maddie: A prostitute named Elizabeth examined in a 1919 doctoral thesis professed that she “became a prostitute deliberately” (Holsopple 41).
DeLeonibus: The idea of agency is not limited to the freedom to choose one’s profession – more often than not, the agency narrative is linked to social respect and economic independence.
Stern: In the book A Place for Pleasure, Simmons reveals that New Orleans brothel-owners “were often respectable pillars of society…some [achieving] national fame” (Simmons 127).
Maddie: These women were respected for managing and operating brothels and successfully navigating a male-dominated business world.
DeLeonibus: With this idea of agency in mind, I’d like to return to Helen Jewett. In contrast to the biographical account from mid 19th century, American women’s historian Patricia Cline Cohen describes Jewett as an agent rather than a victim in an article on her life. Interestingly enough, Cohen describes how Jewett yielded her intellectual agency to frame herself as a victim-turned prostitute. Cohen writes:
Stern: “Years of novel reading gave Helen ideas about how to invent her own life history to be most appealing to men…The resulting story she told [them] was a classic seduced and abandoned fantasy…Helen Jewett knew well that her self-presentation as a seduced and therefore ruined maiden augmented her sexual desirability among men” (Cohen 137).
Maddie: The fact that Helen Jewett the prostitute has been framed as both an agent and a victim complicates the historiographical binary of prostitution. In her article “Trick Identities,” Heather Lee Miller argues that agency and victimhood are not mutually exclusive. After questioning whether prostitutes are agents or victims, Miller states:
DeLeonibus:“The answer to this question cannot be posed as an either/or question. Rather, prostitutes are agents and victims – agents in that they choose to perform certain sex tasks as part of their workday life; victims because they must also appeal to (and presumably sate) customers’ desire in order to earn a living” (Miller 146).
Stern: Finally, Miller furthers her critique of an agent/victim binary by highlighting that the details of the lives of sex workers are often overlooked in historical studies of prostitution. Miller points out:
Maddie: “[though] this weakness is often attributed to a gap in the source base…it [actually] stems from a general failure among historians to consider the actual sex tasks involved in prostitution” (Miller 145).
Stern: In many ways, the strict binary of agent vs. victim in prostitution historiography seems to have blinded historians from evaluating the lives of female prostitutes as holistically as possible.
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Maddie: Our new historiography sees the prostitute as a more complete person, acting as agent and victim alike, but we had to dig through the persuasiveness of many of our sources, that were trying to convince us that the prostitute was either a criminal or helpless damsel, victim to circumstance.
DeLeonibus: The problem is, these sources that we examined to build our narrative and question the prevailing historiography of prostitution were created and preserved by men. How can we really understand what life was like as a prostitute in America in the 19th century if the only information we have is obscured by the male gaze?
Stern: And yet, in trying to correct those problems, we failed in a different way. Throughout this whole podcast we have been trying to challenge and change an oppressive narrative of prostitutes as only victims, but in doing so we framed our new narrative of prostitutes as poor, white, somewhat-autonomous women. We neglected many identities and reinforced a similarly oppressive white-washed, heteronormative narrative.
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Stern: We would like to thank Carolyn Lewis, our professor; Gina Donovan, our technical adviser; our peers for their advice and input; as well as everyone in the AV center for answering any and all of our questions. This has been Sophia, Sophia, and Maddie for Fallen Women. Until next time.
