American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [158]
William Williams also believed that most prostitutes were not forced into the profession. Even so, he noted that male pimps were increasingly dominating the profession and controlling the earnings of female prostitutes, but he did not think this was white slavery. As he saw it, while there might be some “incidental slavery, particularly at the outset,” for the most part women were “usually glad to place themselves under the control of and receive their direction from men.”
Williams was probably close to the truth. As one historian has put it, “the vast majority of women who practiced prostitution were not dragged, drugged or clubbed into involuntary servitude.” By one estimate, less than 10 percent of American prostitutes were victims of white slavery. At the height of the white slavery scare, slightly more than a thousand individuals were convicted of white slavery.
Many women chose to become prostitutes. Economic necessity and a poor home life were more often greater recruiting tools than physical force and enslavement. Yet it was easier to believe that passive and virtuous women could only become prostitutes at the hands of greedy men. Eva Ranc and Hermine Crawford show that women were often willing participants in the sex trade. They were smart, shrewd, and savvy, often outwitting immigration authorities, the police, and male suitors.
The public may have overreacted to the white slavery scare, but for those women forced into the profession it was a harrowing experience. After her arrest for prostitution, a young Swiss girl named Jeanne Rondez told her story at a deportation hearing at Ellis Island. She had been brought to America at age nineteen to work as a servant. She told inspectors about a few photographs she had made in France, which a friend of hers had given to a man named Lucien Baratte. The photos were likely nudes, and it appears that Baratte was trying to blackmail Jeanne.
While searching for Baratte in New York, Rondez ended up at the home of Mrs. Eloy Miller, who invited Jeanne to dinner. After dinner, the woman refused to allow Jeanne to leave and made her spend the night. Then Baratte entered Jeanne’s room and demanded sex. Jeanne refused and was kept in the room for two days before she succumbed to Baratte’s advances. She had been a virgin, and the shame of her situation allowed Baratte and Miller to force her into prostitution. For the next six weeks, Jeanne was made to receive men, who paid her $2 for sex. Six weeks after her ordeal began, Jeanne was arrested for prostitution and taken to Ellis Island.
Miller and Baratte were soon arrested, while Jeanne was released from Ellis Island into the care of the Jeanne D’Arc Home. The stress of her ordeal caused Jeanne to fall ill for the next two months, after which time she found a job in the home of Mr. J. Dreyfus in Staten Island. After her release, Inspector Tedesco went to see how Jeanne was progressing. Dreyfus informed him that Jeanne had admitted her past to him and he had no doubt that she was trying to “become a respectable woman.” In August 1911, five months after her arrest, the deportation order was canceled. Jeanne Rondez’s ordeal was over, but her experience as a white slave no doubt lived with her for the rest of her life.
ON JUNE 9, 1914, twenty-one-year-old Giulietta Lamarca arrived at Ellis Island. Though most of her fellow passengers had embarked at Palermo, Lamarca began her journey from Algiers, an unlikely starting point for most immigrants. Lamarca listed her profession as a domestic and declared she was heading for her intended husband, Marco