Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [144]
St. Louis, Missouri, between 1870 and 1874 was a single and somewhat instructive exception to the general rule. During those years the city ran an experiment in legalization.62 In 1865, St. Louis had a total population of about 300,000; by police estimate, the city’s prostitute population was 2,500. There were the usual raids on whorehouses, but they did little more than scatter the inmates, who “took private rooms, paraded the streets, and openly plied their infamous trade.” These were the words of Dr. William L. Barrett, the city’s chief health officer. Moreover, according to Barrett, when the brothels were closed, men were encouraged to vent their lust on innocent women instead.63
It all seemed so futile. Perhaps—just perhaps—regulation might be better than an outright ban. There was the somewhat dubious example of France, which had a licensing system for prostitutes. But Americans were hardly impressed by what went on in such a wicked country. On the other hand, people were coming to see prostitution as a problem of public health, and not just a problem of sin or vice. In the 1860s and 1870s, police and public officials in some cities had made some favorable noises about mandatory medical examinations for prostitutes. Bills to license prostitution in New York City were proposed in 1867, 1868, and 1871, but Albany said no. St. Louis, however, got a new state charter in 1870; the health and police boards of the city persuaded the state to give the city a flock of new powers. These included the power to “suppress prize fighting, coon fights, dog fights, chick and cock fights, gaming and gambling houses”—and the power to “regulate,” as well as suppress, “bawdy or disorderly houses, houses of ill-fame, or assignation.” 64
The city moved promptly to make use of this power. An ordinance was passed, giving the police licensing authority over brothels. The Board of Health was given the right to examine prostitutes for venereal disease. From the clergy came warnings about opening the “floodgates of pent-up lust,” warnings that St. Louis was in danger of importing the “deplorable standards of Parisian morals.” But the public, by and large, seemed willing to try the experiment—at first. The authorities went busily to work: they registered 1,284 prostitutes and licensed 136 brothels, 9 houses of assignation, and 243 single rooms.
Yet three years later the law was dead—killed in Jefferson City, Missouri; the legislature amended the charter of St. Louis to destroy this noble experiment. What had gone wrong? Enforcement, to begin with, proved difficult, especially with the “lower” prostitutes. Politically, trouble soon developed. Women’s rights leaders denounced the system, which they felt was extremely unfair; it bore down on promiscuous women and did nothing about promiscuous men. The clergy roused themselves and kept up a drumbeat of criticism. The local newspapers switched sides: “regulating social vice,” as one of them put it, “has shocked the moral sense of the people.”65
Regulation, in other words, failed because it looked too much like a bargain with the devil; such bargains have never been popular on the overt, official level, in this country. Regulation was really another example of the Victorian compromise, but without the subtlety and indirection America seemed to prefer. The living law of prostitution, of course, was nothing but a complex web of bargains with the devil. Covert, under-the-table recognition was one thing, formal recognition was another. The St. Louis experiment came too late in the century; it coincided, unfortunately, with the beginning of a new outburst of militant morality. The ordinance was doomed from the start; it was swimming against the tide.
The dirty little secret of the century was not prostitution itself, but the business of prostitution.