Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History of Sex Work in America

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Despite lawmakers best efforts, sex work has been around for since record began...and will certainly go back even further.We often explore the history of sex work in Europe, but what history does this huge industry have in America? How did the colonisation of America and the slave trade impact and shape it? And how did sex workers and brothels help in the American Civil War?Kate's joined by Katie Hemphill, author of Bawdy City: Commercial Sex and Regulation in Baltimore, 1790–1915, to explore this history.We're also joined by Jennifer and Tara, who are madams at the Mustang Ranch Brothel in Nevada, to hear what it's like to work at the oldest legal brothel in America.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Oh, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. You're here, I'm here, the podcast is rolling, but before we can keep going, I think you know what's coming your way. That's right, it is the fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults, about adulty things in an adulty way,

covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. who, actually we are a bit adult today. We're looking at the history of sex work in America. And if for any reason at all, you don't want to be listening to that. Maybe you're in a public space in an office somewhere, sharing a radio with your nana. Well, maybe she'd have a few stories to tell you. But this is your chance to get out now while you still can. But before you go, actually, whilst I have your ear,

if you enjoy in betwixt, and we really, really hope that you do, It would be absolutely super wonderful, fabulous and awesome if you would consider following and subscribing, wherever it is that you get the podcast. I know that you hear that every single time and every single podcaster says it, but it really, really does help us out. And now we've got past that little lot.

On with the show! As you know, betwixters, the history of sex work is a real passion of mine. Yes, it is one of the oldest professions. There are a few other contenders in the... doctors and midwives, for example, but however you cut it up, it's a very, very, very old profession indeed, and the study of it can tell us so much about us, society and our shared history. And while we have gone betwixt the streets of many a sex worker in European

history, we thought we would take a trip over the pond to take a look at the history of sex work in America as well. In actual fact, it was a listener, Alex, who got in touch with and asked us to look at this particular history. Over to you, Alex. Hi, Kate and the Betwixt team. My name is Alex, and I'm an American who very recently moved to the UK and very thankful that I found your podcast. Not only have you been instrumental in helping me out with the accents over here,

but I adore your take on history. You have a great way of making these larger-than-life characters feel human and approachable, and honestly, your ability to not shy away from the raunchy bits just makes history fun again. So thank you. Speaking of Ranchie bits, I'm very proud to come from a long line of sex workers. My great-grandmother was a brothel madame in Washington State after she got her start in New Orleans Storyville, and I can trace sex work in my family all the way back to the American Revolutionary War.

So what I'm really curious to know is how sex work has altered or even created American culture from the way we speak to influencing how people migrated. Thanks so much. Oh, thank you, Alex. And a very belated welcome to the UK. Hey, we are thrilled to have you, and it is my absolute pleasure to explore the history

that is so dear to you as well. What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning enough and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I feel so, and beautiful time.

Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal, society with me, Kailister. Despite the best and often pretty aggressive efforts of lawmakers and moralizers all throughout history, sex work has not gone anywhere and is still very, very much with us. And it's always important to remember when you're talking about the history of people that are still here living their lives, that this is a living, breathing history that still impacts people to this very day. And to illustrate this point, we had the pleasure of speaking to two women who

work at the first legal brothel in America, the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, which opened in 1971. Over to you, Jennifer and Tara, to share some insights into what it's really like to run a working brothel today. My name is Tara Adkins, and I'm one of the madams with Jennifer at the Mustang Ranch. Tara and I, we've been working at the Mustang Ranch this go around for, I don't know, over 22 years. Jennifer does the hiring off the website, all the ladies have to. to apply it through the website. Then once they get to the house, we do a lot of training. That entails a lot, anywhere from condom training to D.C.,

which is dick-checking, negotiating skills. We do a lot of customer service when couples or men or women come in. We're greeting them and playing matchmaker, a whole array of things. We manage chaos is what we do all day long. It's a better way putting it. Well, the Mustang Ranch is a historical place because it was the first legal brothel in 1971. Joe Conforti was the first man that actually got the brothel license back in the 70s and made prostitution legal for the state of Nevada. That was more chaotic times.

He was a little wild, wanted to have fun in his own business, and that's not what we do anymore. So in Nevada, prostitution is only legal in a regulated house, and it has to be licensed and regulated, and it has to be in a population of less than 400,000. So I think the key opportunity here with the sex work industry is to regulate it. We don't feel that legalizing is the answer because that just puts the lady. in the hands of the predator and who's going to protect her. So when you walk in, it's so beautiful. There's dance stages and as you go into the brothel that you walk into a room that has a whole wall of mirrors where the ladies line up for you.

And then as you go through the building, there's VIP rooms, there's bungalows, there's sweets, we have a dungeon, a swimming pool. And one week in seven days, we have anywhere from 700 to 1,000 guests come through the door. We have, on a regular basis, 30 ladies in house. We've got 24 hours security for the ladies. It's a safe haven for these ladies to conduct their business. If girls want to do this business and they go into a hotel, they don't have the safety. They don't have a security team.

Our ladies are also seen by the doctor once a week, so they all. all get STD checks. These ladies, they pay their taxes, they see the doctor, the customers know they're safe, the ladies know they're safe, so there's many positives to be in a safe brothel. Once they get their medical clearance, we'll take them to the sheriff's department so that they can get their work cart. And then when they arrive back on property, you know, we'll spend quality time with the new lady and teach her how to work the brothel area.

And about the human touch. And a lot of our customers come in that might have not been with a female for a while. And so we teach the ladies how important it is to talk with somebody and touch them. So they're not nervous walking into that facility. We get a variety of folks that come in. I would tell you that the majority of them that come through, it's taken every. every ounce of their confidence to even walk through that door. We get people that are disabled that have came back from Afghanistan that might be burned

all over the place. We get versions in. We get women that have never been with women before. Couples that have been married for a while that want to price up their marriage. I mean, every walks of life we get. I mean, there's so much different requests we get anywhere from going to a dinner. date in town to stay in the night to being tied up and dominated to let's see diapers we'll put fetishes hand fetishes smoking fetishes I mean you think of it we offer it the ladies do I love the

caregiving aspect of it. And so whether if the great memory is a working lady, making, you know, a courtesan, you know, changing her whole entire life, turning the ship around, now she's buying a house and she's got her life together, or the guests that comes through, you know, maybe his wife has passed or whatnot, or maybe he's a 75-year-old virgin. And, has never been touched before. We're changing lives every day, and I just, that's the greatest part. Thank you, ladies.

That was absolutely fascinating and the perfect precursor to delving back into the history of sex work in America. Joining me today to explore this rich and varied history is Katie Hemp Hill, author of Bordy City, commercial sex and regulation in Baltimore 1790 to 1915. I am ready to do this if you are, but Twixters. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets.

It's only Katie Hemp Hill. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm happy to be here today and doing well. Your research, which is absolutely in my wheelhouse, my historical passion and area of study, the history of sex work. And I suppose, like all historians have got that origin story,

is what brought them to this? But what was it that brought you to study the history of sex work? and ultimately publish your book, Bordy City, Commercial Sex and Regulation in Baltimore, 1790 to 1915. You know, when I was doing some of my master's work at George Mason, I started to research women and crime, and I got really interested in sort of gender and policing in the antebellum period. And as I was looking at Richmond and Baltimore and sort of looking at police interactions with women, I started to notice that there was what struck me at the time as a curious pattern in the court records, which is that in Baltimore, all of these women would appear in the court records

sort of in a row, all for the same charge, keeping a bawdy house. And there were just so many cases that I started to look into this a little bit more. And then it just evolved into the entirety of my project, which I wasn't expecting at the time. It's such a... I don't know if it's a unique subject. It is unique in that when you're studying the history of sex work, I don't know about you, but I very, very quickly found that this is not dead history. It doesn't matter how far back you go,

that what happened in the past and the narratives around it and the discussions that happened and what you pull out directly impacts sex worker community today. And it created a really interesting dynamic for me in my research, which was that sex workers today were talking to me, me and it was changing my historical research in ways I hadn't realized it was going to do. What's been your story with that one? How do you feel about researching a history when the legacy of it is still around today and these are still issues that are ongoing? Yeah, that's

an interesting question. It was funny because when I started the project, I didn't have very many connections to people in sort of the sex worker activist community. I think that I have developed some of those, not as money as I would like over time. But when you research this historically, it's amazing how many of the conversations seem very familiar. The sort of white slavery panic in the early 20th century, the language about sort of trafficking, these are conversations that are obviously still ongoing and that seem in some ways so, so familiar in terms of how we talk about or can

conceptualize some of these issues. And so it's kind of amazing to me. I'm a historian. So we're concerned with change over time, obviously, but it's amazing to me how much these sorts of anxieties about immigration or anxieties about sort of labor and the global economy, how much our conversations about these things as it relates to sex work really sound quite familiar, you know, over 100 years apart. I've been able to do, you know, a few events where I have presented alongside women and other folks who are involved in the trade and been able to provide some historical context, which has been really interesting. But I guess, yes, doing my research and hearing how little some of our conceptualization

of the trade has changed, but also how little we listen to the women and other folks who are involved in this work. it seems to me distressing sort of constant. Isn't it? We started the show with an interview with two madams from the Mustang Ranch brothel and they were chatting away to each other and talking about what goes on at their brothel and how long they've worked there. And even then I'm hearing parallels coming up again and again and again,

like that people go there to work because you can get a lot of money in a short space of time. and the safety precautions that have to be taken, that have to happen, and the regulation and the impact that that has on women. And it's the same narratives over and over and over again. And I think America is particularly fascinating for this subject because you have this expansion West. And sex work, I don't want to oversell this. You're the one that this is your research and you can tell me,

but it seems like sex work in many ways forged the wild way. It was right there at the heart of it. Yeah, I mean, it was very common in a lot of Western towns, for sure. Just thinking through the narrative issue, it made me think about my sort of last chapters, which are the chapters in my book that I actually am able to get women's voices going a little bit more because in the early period, other than occasional court transcripts published in newspapers, I don't have a lot of these women commenting on why they actually entered the trade. I can sort of piece it together from census and other records, but I don't have that.

But by the time they actually, the progressive reformers, start sending out vice commissions to interview these women, it's fascinating the contrast between why they say they went into this versus this sort of narratives around it, which are, there's this pervasive fear that there's a huge white slave epidemic, which admittedly the vice commission sort of dismissed. But they view these women as to somewhat dupes. There's still that lingering question of their personal immorality. But a lot of these women will say exactly what you said, right? I can make $8 a week working in a department store and being on my feet for 10 hours a day.

Or I can sell sex occasionally and make $25 a week. Why would I not do that? Right. I like buying jewelry. This is a better life for me. That's why I do it. But they will still be ignored or the narratives don't seem to change, even though these women are actively telling them. something much different about why they're doing what they're doing. But in terms of the West,

yes, in a lot of places and sort of Western outposts, prostitution is a big industry. And it's a big industry, of course, because a number of reasons, there's big military presence in the American West. And so there will be rural brothels that crop up in these areas that are really trading on, you know, soldiers business. And then there will also be, even in Western mining towns, huge demographic discrepancies in terms of the number of men and women. And so a lot of women who go out there not only find that there's a market for commercial sex, but they have sort of limited employment prospects. And so that ends up being the way that they can make a living. Whenever you're talking about the history, sex anything, getting to primary sources is incredibly difficult. And as you just

pointed out there, people all throughout history, they talk over sex workers, they talk for sex workers, talk about sex workers. Even today, when they're a sex worker activist organizations, they are still dismissed. So in your research, what sources did you use to try and piece this history together? Oh, I used quite a few, particularly for the earlier period. It gets much easier later on when the vice commissions are coming out, because of course, they're not necessarily producing things you can take at face value. They have their own agendas, as all historical sources do. But they're at least recording some interviews with women. They're recording what they're observing about these houses. In the early period, it's a little bit trickier unless something happens.

Like I think I'm thinking here, Patricia Klein-Cohens, the murder of Helen Jewett, which is a book that provides such interesting insight into the workings of New York brothels. We got that insight, though, because a woman who sold sex, Helen Jewett, it was murdered. And so the resulting trial drew in all this testimony and all this investigation. And that's why we know what we know about this. Unless something like that happened or except in moments where things like that happened, it's more difficult to sort of access a lot of these women's lives. And so I ended up casting a very wide net. I would take down the names of people who appeared for keeping a bodyhouse charges. And then I would as much as possible cross-reference in the newspapers, look in the census records, even look at things like

Alm's House records and Ames House medical records to see if I could find any of these women in there. And so it was a tremendous amount of cross-referencing to get any biographical details about these folks or to try to figure out what their lives were like. But it was really difficult to do that. I can imagine. That research is so painstaking. When you did this kind of research, spend like weeks of just like turning up nothing like you've been doing the and there's nothing there but then once in a while you'll get the eureka moment did you have moments like that when you're researching the book like where you found somebody you trace somebody perhaps somebody whose name that you found it and that no one would have known about it if you haven't have done that research

yeah i think so so every chapter in my book starts with a little vignette about a woman and usually those were the women that i was successful at finding information about so one of them Who I really grew to like was Big Ann Wilson, who starts my first chapter, and she was a woman. I had seen her in the criminal court records, but the New York flashpaper happened to visit her house in the 1840s and write about what they saw there. And so I got a little description of sort of her family or what actually went on in her house from that article. But then I was able to also sort of find her in my criminal court records. I also found her in an almshouse record, which was so interesting because in her early, early days in the sex trade, when it was a really tough industry to be in because Baltimore was sort of experiencing shipping disruptions and economic contractions after the panic of 1819, I found her in the alms house where she had sort of come in for the winter to be treated for what was recorded as venereal disease. And so she had stayed there. And so I was sort of able to get, I found her from as early as about 1820 to the 1840s, which was really neat. And there were some

other women where I was able to sort of trace almost multi-generational networks of women who came up in one house, sort of presumably being mentored by the woman who kept that house and then ended up striking out on their own and operating in the trade for in some cases a couple of decades. It's such a vital history. And I think people often underestimate just how important it is. And I don't want to make the mistake of making sex work sound like it's glamorous and that everyone's having a fabulous time. Not at all. But it has been a way for people to make money in desperate situations for as long as there's been money to make. And in a deeply patriarchal world where women are disadvantaged, that has been consistently the thing that women have got to

sell. So I think that this absolutely is a history of women and men. as well. Did you encounter stigma as somebody who is researching sex work? Because there's a growing body of research that shows that the stigma around sex and sex work is so pervasive that it can actually impact the person researching sex work. Huh, that's interesting. I wouldn't say that I did except sometimes when I would tell people what I was working on, that I was working on this history of prostitution and commercial sex in Baltimore, they would say, oh, that's nice that they let you do something so specific. With the implication that this is, you know, like, oh, that's so cute that you're researching

something so niche. And I don't think it is niche is the thing. I mean, I think we forget what a large industry. I mean, it still is, but especially in the 19th century, I mean, this was huge. This was not a small trade in most American cities and Western cities. There were hundreds of brothels in a lot of these places, even, you know, smaller. cities boasted pretty sizable sex trades. It's really not a marginal industry. And it's not one that I think you can overlook when we think about sort of economic development of cities even.

And this is something that, you know, you asked me what attracted me to my book or what attracted me to this particular topic, you know, as coming up in grad school in the aftermath of the sort of 2008 economic collapse and history of capitalism was and, you know, still is to a degree. a big field, but it's also a field that doesn't talk a lot about women or that didn't when it first emerged in part because we were more focused on capital than labor, I think, but also just because we were not very quick to integrate women's stories in. And I remember being at a capitalism by Gas Lake Conference and Jane Kamenski gave the keynote address and she gave the keynote address and pointed out how few of the topics were related to anything having to do with

women's history or women's economic contributions. There was a critique bubbling as I was writing this book about sort of that lack of engagement. And I think it shaped what I looked for in terms of telling this story because what I was finding over and over again is that these women's labor, it was survival for them, right? A lot of them needed money. And this the way of getting it, but it was also a big moneymaker for various people involved in urban real estate. It was important. And it was an industry that generated a lot of money for other people as well. So your research, your book starts in 1790. But one of my favorite facts about sex work in America is that there's this idea that it was the pilgrim fathers that came over on the

Mayflower, they were all Puritans. There was actually quite a lot of criminals and sex workers who were extradited to America. I love that fact. That's always downplayed, that it's in the earliest colonization of America. It's right there. But what was it about 1790 that made you go? I'm going to start here.

You know, for Baltimore, it was just sort of where my records were. I don't know. Yes, the 1796 is the official sort of incorporation. And so my records dated to about then. And so for me, it was just mostly a records issue. I also think there's a way that you can see this particular period as being a period of rapid and noted growth of the sex industry, though, because the sex industry, as it has existed historically, tends to go along with cities, right? It's an urban phenomenon, not exclusively, but very heavily.

and that is the early 19th century, certainly by like the 1820s and 30s, you're starting to see an explosion of American cities, right? They have rapid population increases. Nothing like, you know, my European colleagues sometimes go, oh, you're calling that a city. But certainly that's where we start to see rapid population increases in a lot of places. And so that's the period right around the late 1820s and 1830s where you sort of get the first wave of people being really, concerned about prostitution. Before that, I mean, it had existed in the colonial era, of course, especially in cities like Philadelphia and Boston and New York, but it's a somewhat smaller trade that will become by the 19th century. I think that people, definitely people in the UK,

it's easy to forget how huge America is. And there are so many different states, and each one of those has their own internal government system and they're different, they're going to regulate it like this and they're going to regulate it like this. They're going to regulate it like that, what was going on in Baltimore? I mean, was it in line with what was going on in the rest of the states or did they go completely left field? What was happening in Baltimore? So I think, you know, it's always interesting to do a kind of micro history because it lets you really get into the nitty gritty. But in truth, I mean, there are always very specific things that are related to specific land use patterns or property arrangements in particular cities. But I think what stood out to me about

Baltimore is that in a lot of ways it is very much like other cities. It follows a similar pattern of dealing with commercial sex. And that pattern in the mid-19th century was that they're sort of, at least I argue, informally regulating it. You know, they will haul all the madams into court around the same time. They will charge them a fee that's sort of based on how nice their establishment is and what they think they can afford. And then they will turn them back out to go do their business again. And they will use those fees in Baltimore to pay for public dispensaries

that will provide tentative health care to medicine to poor people. Yeah, that's what they're using those fees for. Their logic is prostitution causes a public health issue. So we will put the money that we get towards that, at least partially towards funding public health care. And so that is what they are doing. That's very common.

And other historians who have researched cities ranging from very large ones to places like sort of Minneapolis, St. Paul, have found very similar patterns of dealing with this. It seems to me that an area, a city, a country, whatever, is that their attitude to commercial sex is it tends to be cyclical. And it goes through like uneasy toleration, through to like attempt at regulation. And then something will happen. And then there's like, right, no more of this. Everyone stop. The anti-vice crew come out. did you see that happening in your research?

You're going to say no, and then I've just, you fucked everything. No, no. No, there's certainly cycles of this. I should go back and rewrite all of my stuff. No, you're golden. In the 1830s, that's, you know, one of the first times that a lot of early 1830s in New York, you have sort of these vice reports being published, and then you get the sort of growth of the female moral reform societies.

The 1830s are sort of a, the first big multi-city, I won't say panic period, but there's this pervasive concern in part because cities have just expanded quite a lot and they're sort of grappling with what does this mean for, say, young men who come to the city who all of a sudden have all these temptations because they have a salary, they get some money in their pockets, they're living in these boarding houses that do not have common areas in a lot of cases. So they're going to be going out on the town to eat, to socialize. They're obviously going to be patronizing brothels. There's a lot of women who come to the city from rural areas looking for some money or in ways

to earn a living and finding that it's very difficult. The average wage for a domestic worker in a place like New York might be $2 a week in the 1830s. Women in high-end brothels get $5 per client. Now they don't get to keep all that. They've got to give half to the owner of the house or whatnot, but there is this panic about, oh my gosh, this is suddenly highly visible. There's also, I think, in the 1850s, and this is sort of my argument, there is moral concern about sex work, but there's also concern about what it's going to do to property values. And so there are these attempts in Baltimore and many other cities in the late 1850s to figure out various strategies for contains.

the prostitution trade because a lot of people, even as there is this sort of moral consternation about sex work, also think that it is necessary in some respects, that it's not something that you can eradicate, that men are going to want this, that there's demand for it, women have low wages, it's just going to exist. So how do you manage that? And how do you keep it out of nicer neighborhoods and how do you contain it to areas where it could be monitored and controlled? That happens in lots of different places.

And then, of course, the late 19th and early 20th century, there's going to be sort of more sustained attention to prostitution as a public health issue, but also as an issue that is, I think, related to larger anxieties about the changing status of women workers. And so the sexual vulnerability of women in their new workplaces, the fact that more and more women are leaving home, going to cities, taking industrial jobs, taking jobs and departments. apartment stores, finding clerical work. I think this gives rise to a lot of anxieties about their sexual vulnerability that then play into these international and national conversations about prostitution as a social problem. We'll be back with Katie after this short break. One of the things that you look at in your research, obviously with the time span, is the American Civil War, which is fascinating in and of itself, and there's been lots of good books and documentaries and all kinds of things written. But

the subject of sex for sale and sex in the Civil War has been covered, but not quite so much, not by a long shot. What was your findings about that particular period in Baltimore, in American history? What impact did the war have? Yeah, so I think in Baltimore, as in sort of a lot of areas around the American South, but even in the North as well, the Civil War expands the sex trade, because obviously you have a lot of young men. I mean, the average age of a Civil War soldier is 25 years old. A lot of these guys are leaving home for the first time. They're outside of family supervision for the first time.

And they're very conscious of the fact that they might die. And so there is this sort of, I think, particularly in camp life. And Baltimore is a city where a lot of soldiers sort of pass through on their way to muster in D.C. there is, you know, a lot of boredom in the local camp life. The sort of forts and Civil War encampments around Baltimore are close to the city. It's very easy for guys to, even if they can't get passes, just slip out. And so there is certainly a market for commercial sex. And at the same time, you have a lot of women who are obviously experiencing pretty profound economic dislocations as a result of the war.

In some cases, you know, their male family members are off. fighting. They're not getting money. And so there's a supply and demand issue if you want to put it that way during the Civil War. And what I found in Baltimore was that, yes, there are complaints that the sex trade is increasing in size. There's more people sort of being indicted for keeping body houses. But there's also some fascinating stuff where the women who are keeping the higher end houses in West Baltimore are working with the Union Army. And they're working with the Union Army because they're located, well, they're located near a hotel where a lot of sort of Confederate sympathizing and Southern sympathizing guys have their meetings. And so they will end up in these high-end

houses that tend to recruit near the railroads, getting some Confederate officers in the brothels, or getting some of the guys who are involved in the Southern sympathizing factions of Baltimore politics coming into their houses. And they will pass that information. that they gain through that onto the local union provost Marshall because, of course, drunk guys in brothels talk, right? They will spill things and they want to seem like big men, so they brag. And the women who hear this will inform on those guys. When Provost Marshall credited them with helping them capture a Confederate officer

in the area, and they will also help turnover soldiers who have gone AWOL. They will let the union officers, essentially the union, officers are pleased that they know where to look for these guys because they can just go round them up at the brothels. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So there's tentative toleration for this because the West Baltimore women are cooperating a little bit with the union. And actually there's a case where the provost marshal in charge of the Baltimore district gets court-martialed. And one of the allegations is that he had gone to balls and danced with the women from these houses. And he defends himself by saying, yes, I did go. Because they're an excellent source of intelligence.

And when it comes to those charges, it is agreed that that was legitimate for him to do. I was just going to ask you, what were the women working, getting out of this arrangement? But I've just been reminded, I once started talking to this fellow and he was in his 80s, and he used to be a police officer around Leeds where I lived. And he said that the police would often go to the brothels to sit and have a cup of tea, to get information. And I guess that it's not volunteered out of the goodness of their house. it's to stop the police raiding the premises.

Is that sort of what was going on there? Or do you think they would volunteer in this information because of patriotic reasons? I think it was both, actually. I mean, certainly there is a practicality to this arrangement, right? They don't want to get harassed by the military. They don't want concerns about sort of troop readiness or any of that stuff to cause a crackdown. But there are also women I know are very involved in. politics and one of them is an East Baltimore woman named Anne Manley. Her husband, James,

had been really involved in sort of unionist political gangs in Baltimore before the war. And there is a story that actually gets sort of republicized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton later of Anne Manley as troops are sort of coming through the train station. There's a very famous incident in April of 1861 where union troops who are marching through Baltimore are sort of assaulted by a mob of people. There's a car of musicians that arrives a little late in the city, so they arrive in the midst of all this sort of melee. She shelters them in her house.

She goes and drags them out of the mob and brings them to her house and washes their uniforms and gets them set up with food. And as far as I can tell, she is a really ardent unionist. She and James both are very, very strongly sympathetic to the unionist. Union. And so she's described in the records as an Amazon who comes and pulls these soldiers to safety. My God, that's an amazing story. Was there anything going on this Civil War and maybe into the First World War later on? Because in the UK, certainly the government got very twitchy

about venereal disease, the amount of troops that that was taken out of action. And they had a good, hard think about it. And they went, oh, I think the women are to blame. And then they targeted sex workers and brought in all these horrible laws that could be forcibly examined, all this stuff. Did anything like that happen in Baltimore in America? So in the Civil War, no, but it did happen in other parts of the country. So our first kind of experiment with formally regulated prostitution actually took place in Tennessee during the Civil War.

Officials in Nashville got really frustrated with how many women had sort of, as they put it, descended on the area as union troops were there. And so they started out, the Provost Marshall in that area started out trying to essentially deport these women via a steamship to another area. When that didn't work, though, because officials in the other area were not eager to have them either, he set up essentially a regulatory system where these women paid, they were subjected to medical inspections. And if they were, were, you know, found to be diseased.

And, of course, there's lots of problems with all of that stuff that I won't get into. They could be, you know, put in essentially a lock hospital. And this was before the contagious diseases acts. Wow. I had no idea that this was going on in America before. That's fascinating. It's very local, though. Yeah.

I had no idea. So how does this work with something like, because you mentioned there that the ongoing white slave panic. But what about actual enslaved people or people being brought to America from other countries? What was their experience within sex work? Do we have records for that? Well, certainly, you know, if we think about the intersections of slavery and prostitution, we do have research on women of African descent and these sort of intersections between the actual institution of chattel slavery in the United States and the world of commercial sex. We know, for instance, that within slavery, there is a kind of trade in women who are specifically

sold for the purposes of being sex slaves. And they are often called fancy girls. And they are typically lighter-skinned women who were specifically traded as sex slaves. And they are typically sex slaves and New Orleans was the center of that particular trade in the decades before the Civil War. We also know that there are instances of enslaved women either being sent to work in brothels in southern cities or in some cases to run them and essentially collect the money to give back to their enslavers. So there is something of an overlap. between those two trades, I guess I would put it. But a lot of southern cities, most sex workers who worked there

would have been white women. And the horrible reason behind that was that white women could commodify and control their sexual labor in a way that most black women in the South simply could not. And so black women's sexual vulnerability under slavery left them sort of unable to control their sexuality or their sexual labor in the ways that white women could or to commoditize that in the ways that white women could, which is a really grim reality. Is that, and I'm not sure how to pronounce it, is it placage? Tell me a bit about that. This is associated mostly with New Orleans, and I know that there have been some historians who have sort of challenged how we think about

this particular system, but the general idea and the way that it's usually talked about is that women of color or mixed-race women would enter in, in some cases, into essentially long-term sexual relationships that were contracted in some ways with white men in the area. So these, in some cases, the arrangements might include any children from the union being sort of sent off and educated. I know that there's a historian Emily Clark who has sort of challenged some of the mythology around these arrangements and suggested that a lot of them were sort of less formal than the mythology around that might suggest or that they looked a little bit different. But yes, there were sort of a lot of systems of legal concubonage in New Orleans that worked a little bit differently than areas that

didn't have that particular city's legal heritage or ways of looking and thinking about race even. One of the things that I found very difficult about research in sex work, and I know that other people have as well, is definitions because it's so slippery. Like when you say the word prostitute or sex worker, everybody thinks that they know what that is. And they've immediately conjured an image of somebody who's their full-time living comes from selling sex and that maybe they're in a brothel, they're on the streets. But the reality of it is that there are people who dip in and dip out. And there are people that if you ask them are you sex worker, they probably wouldn't say yes. they're just topping up an income. And then there's like people, like in the Second World War,

they might have sex for a pair of stockings and some chocolate. Like, is that commercial sex? Because just when you were saying there about this placage and then dealing with enslaved people who are being forced, but they're running embroiled. There's so much slippage with these definitions. How do you cope with that when you're researching there? Yeah, it was really challenging.

And there's obviously a lot of even debates about terminology because a lot of people in the early period of 18th and 19th century U.S. history, when they say prostitute, they can mean a lot of different things by that, right? And it could mean a woman who makes money selling sex. It could also just mean any woman that's sort of regarded as loose and immoral or of questionable sexual repute. So there is a trickiness there with most of the women that I dealt with and wrote about in the book. I could sort of see some of their economic dealings a little bit more. They were charged with keeping a body house, so they're involved. And they are actually the women who are involved in the more formal and to some extent

longer term parts of the trade, because they're often the women who kept the houses. The women who worked in them, though, yes, they do move in and out. And there is a kind of persistent 19th century and 18th century myth that, you know, the women involved in prostitution, it's a permanent fallen state and they're going to die within a few years in a gutter somewhere, right? This is the kind of narrative of what happens. In reality, we know that that's not the case. And just in the U.S., just like in England, a lot of the women involved in this trade are in it temporarily or they're in it in addition to other forms of work because they can't make a living in those. So it's part of this, you know, we might say economy of makeshifts,

where they are combining sexual labor with lots of other things. I know one woman in Baltimore, for instance, Elizabeth Black, she works in the theater sometimes, she sews stockings, she also sometimes will stay a couple weeks at a time in Brussels. And so she's doing all of these things. And for a lot of the women, this is temporary, right? They will go on to do something else. They'll get married.

They will go on to lead a different kind of life. or they'll make money in the trade and use that to fund a different kind of life. And so there's a kind of fixity to our language about this a lot of the time that I don't think reflects a lot of these women's actual experiences. There are people who work for decades in the trade. They exist. But I don't think that that's the most common arrangement. And even reformers at the time, when press, would have to admit that that was the case,

that most women were, quote, unquote, occasional prostitutes. The interview with the two madams from the Mustang. Brothel that we open the show with, they do actually talk about that they see a lot of women coming in temporarily and they make a lot of money and then they go off and they start their own business or they do something and it's kind of, it's interesting, like you're talking about the 18th and 19th century and that's still happening today, that narrative ongoing. If you look at something like specifically Baltimore, what impact on the city and its development do you think that sex work had? Yeah, it's a big question, but I think a really interesting one. Prostitution

as I understand it, evolved with the growth of the city, right? It is an institution or is a trade that comes with the development of the city. A lot of early prostitution is linked to the maritime trades, right? As sort of Baltimore becomes this entrepo for the grain trade, that's when you really start to see an explosion of body houses or houses of ill fame, as they were called at the time around the harbor. And then as the city grows, I think in a lot of ways, brothels become a way, one of my mentors who I talked to this about compared brothels to storage units

today, which is, you know, today you can buy up land that's sort of not in a desirable area. You can erect a storage unit for very cheap. You can make some money off of that. And then if development hits that, if the city grows or whatnot, you can sell that off and use it for more profitable uses, but it's a way of making money off of sort of what is undesirable. A lot of land near the city center that is muddy and not well-graded will be the area that they build brothels in. And then when they need that for something else, when that area becomes more industrial, you know, it's very easy to kick those women out and put something else there. But in the meantime, you can charge them much more in rent than you could a normal tenant because you can reasonably

argue that there is a risk to you, right? You can be indicted for renting a body house. You know, I look over and over again at some very wealthy people in the city who do gain a lot of upward mobility by renting houses to women, right? We're renting houses to women in the sex trade. Yeah, you can get mobility that way. You can make a lot of money. And again, they're very easy to clear out when you want to because you can turn to nuisance ordinances or whatever else to do this. And so these women, even outfitting their houses, I was able to find, you know, ask how do you access information about them? I looked at inventories in some cases. I knew when some of them had died. So I went and pulled, you know, orphans court records or other things and pulled their estate inventories because they died in some cases and tested.

And I got inventories of sort of what they had in their houses. They're spending a huge amount of money outfitting these places a lot of the time, you know, to have a house where you can charge men a lot of money. They expect a certain appearance to that house. And so, you know, they're spending money on liquor. They're spending money on paint. They're buying carpeting. They're paying a lot to local merchants for clothing. They are, in many senses, keeping a lot of money in the local economy.

And they're spending and distributing money throughout the local economy quite a bit. And so I wanted to tell that story, not just as a story of women doing this for their own survival, although that's a very real part of it, but also to say, hey, look, this matters, right? These women who are often talked about as though they are outside of these communities or as though they're damaging to these communities are, in fact, employing a lot of people, putting money into the economy. That's part of this story too.

We've spoken a lot about women selling sex, and that's because historically, that's been the biggest market, but it's certainly not the only market. In your research, did you find men selling sex to men or women buying sex? or how did the LGBTQ plus experience play into this? Because that's doubly hard to find evidence for that because it was so secretive and stigmatized. Yeah, so I did find some of that, although a lot of what I found was very clumsily documented

because, yes, well, the people who were part of the Vice Commission in Maryland did make some notes about men's involvement in the sex trade. And it's a little bit different because for the most part, it wasn't as brothel based as some women's sex work, by which I mean a lot of, of course, even women's sex work wasn't based in the brothels. A lot of it is streetwalking or soliciting at sites of entertainment. But with men, it was even more so. So it's sort of public solicitation on a few streets of the city that are noted for this. And they do some stings in right around, I think, 1913 or 14 and write a little bit. bit about this, but it is obviously people who don't understand what they're seeing very well, documenting this subculture. They have funny stereotypes. Like they say, well, the men involved in this are much inclined towards writing letters. And this is like, who, you know, and calling each other, you know, by nicknames of, you know, theatrical stars at the time or whatnot. So they write a little bit about these things. I didn't find a lot for the earlier period. I have every confidence that that was

probably going on. You know, it's been well documented that many cities had sort of thriving cultures of men who are engaged in sex with men or identified as queer by the late 19th century. I didn't find as much evidence. I did find, and I published an article on this, one of my really active anti-vice reformers is busted at a YMCA for trying to solicit another man. Yeah, yeah. That is amazing. So my final question, although I could talk to you forever, but could you tell me about this famous, or not so famous, but you've certainly researched it, fight that happened

between two Brothel madams in 1857, Eliza Simpson and Margaret, Hamilton because they sound formidable and I would not like to cross paths with either of them. Yes. So there's actually a little thing about Margaret Hamilton that I don't think made it into the book, but I will tell you a little bit about this. So Margaret Hamilton was a woman who had been involved in Baltimore, Sixth Trade for some time by this point. She'd been born in Pennsylvania. She had come to Baltimore and worked on lovely lane, which was sort of a middling sort of brothel district wasn't the fanciest, wasn't the lowest by the categories of the time. But she had sort of been feuding for some time, and I don't really know about what, with this other brothel madam.

And one day she stalks into Baltimore's center market carrying a hide, a cowhide, a whip, essentially. And she's going to beat Eliza Simpson. But Eliza Simpson is armed and ends up shooting her in the face very publicly. It is an event that I think probably I can't be sure is what precipitates what will turn out to be a very fateful move from Margaret Hamilton because she will end up buying a house a little ways away from the one that she had been working in on North Frederick Street. And when she moves there, she is the subject of a lawsuit by her neighbors who want to prevent her from keeping this house as a brothel, which they know. she's planning to do not just because of her reputation in the city, but also because she hired a

bunch of painters, speaking of money in the urban economy, and told them that that's what she was planning to do with this place. She said, oh yes, I'm going to open it as a brothel. And so some guys in the area end up essentially filing a suit to try to prevent her from inhabiting her house on the basis that it's going to lower their property values. They are successful in that. And it's a pretty important legal case. It sets the ground for a lot of the sort of quote-unquote slum clearance, stuff that will happen later on in the 19th century. But I will note, I found that she, even though she had that injunction, she lost that case, she was still in that house. I found entries for her in a New York brothel guidebook. She was still running that house at 51 North Frederick

Street years later. And she actually doesn't leave the sex trade until many years. after that, and she ends up leaving because there is a younger woman in one of the other brothels, and the rumor is that this younger woman had stole one of her lovers, who was a client, but apparently one that she was emotionally attached to. He had been frequenting this other brothel, and so Margaret Hamilton stormed into this house, stabbed this woman with scissors, and then tried to throw her out a third floor window. Yeah, that was sort of the end of her. Time to leave, Margaret.

Yeah, she was dramatic. Oh, Katie, you have been amazing to talk to. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Well, you can find my book at Cambridge University Press. I've published some articles in the Journal of the Guilded Age and Progressive Era and I'm on social media online. Can you check me out there? Thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. I've had so much fun.

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We have got upcoming episodes on everything from kinks in the Renaissance to 18th century graffiti all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.