Prostitution In Popular Culture

Outside of the battlefields, prostitution was widespread and ingrained in popular culture to such an extent that six of the fourteen Broadway theatres shared the same city blocks with a brothel during the Civil War. Meanwhile, the sexual double standard was quite apparent. Prostitutes were considered vile sinners, whereas men’s roles were often absolved. If someone was arrested for prostitution, it was generally the women who faced the harshest penalties while the men who paid for sex were usually unscathed by law enforcement. This was considered a “gentleman’s privilege” for middle and upper class white males who were the least likely to be arrested. And, if they were arrested, authorities were known to sometimes scribble out names in reports and dispose of mugshots for prominent members in the community. In addition, newspapers sometimes censored the arrest of a prominent member of the community. For example, an article in the Boulder County Herald in 1882 included this excerpt about a prostitution arrest, “Marshall Bounds and assistant Titus went to said house and arrested X and Y.”
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William Sanger, along with future researchers, documented how economic conditions generally pushed women into prostitution. Most professions wouldn’t hire women at that time and, if so, there was rampant sexual harassment and wage discrimination. One study by a Berkeley Chief of Police found that most of the prostitutes he interviewed had previously worked in degrading, low paying jobs, generally as a domestic or factory worker. Domestic servants were not only paid poorly and treated like trash, but they didn’t even have the benefit of autonomy outside of work as their employers often tried “to change the way they dressed, courted, and carried on their social lives.” One woman explained, “I’d rather do this than be kicked around like a dog in a kitchen by some woman who calls herself a