Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [652]
Dancing in the past had usually been held under organizational auspices—the annual balls of fire companies, militia units, and political clubs. Now it became a commercial proposition. Girls were admitted free; men paid twenty-five cents. Seamstresses and servants threw themselves into dances that were as acrobatic as they were graceful. George Foster noted that the “high-flyer stampedes” drew the East Side’s “unmarried womanhood” in all their finest clothes and declared that “New York is undoubtedly the greatest place for dancing in all Anglo Saxdom.”
On the Bowery, g’hals could enjoy a pleasurable evening away from the prying eyes of neighbors or keep an eye out for a permanent partner, amid a far wider constituency of eligible men than was accessible through family and community networks. Such independence could be risky. The crowds that shielded her from neighborhood scrutiny also left her exposed to seduction-bent males. Some of the b’hoys extended a rough courtesy to women and adopted a protective stance, particularly against “aristos”—gentleman rakes looking to pick up working girls. But there were plenty of workingclass sporting men, for whom conquest remained a source of self-esteem. Many still considered women in public a scant step from prostitution. They were quick to assume that women in dance halls were “rowdy girls,” willing to trade sexual favors for the provision of beer and oysters. Ruffians often hung around fire stations and rumshops, insulting and abusing women passing by. “Bloods” camped out on street corners, shouting out: “An Angel, by H———s!” “Dam’d fine girl, by g—d!” “Where do you lodge, my dear?” Predatory tavern rowdies and waterfront gangs dragged off lone women, especially those who appeared both vulnerable and independent, and subjected them to brutal group rapes, a male prerogative known as “getting our hide.” Such belligerence served as a stark reminder that women’s newfound access to public space remained subject to masculine veto.
FEME DECOVERT
When Lydia Maria Child asserted that women’s legal status was akin to that of slaves, the analogy seemed more compelling than when white working-class men used it. Female subordination, after all, was deeply inscribed in the law, and had been since the British Empire overrode Holland’s more tolerant approach to gender issues. Quite apart from not being allowed to vote, the doctrine of feme covert meant that a married woman could not sign contracts, control her own earnings or inherited property, or be the legal guardian of her children. Her legal identity was subsumed in her husband’s. Under the law, as a later judicial summary recalled, “the husband and wife were one and the husband was the one.”
In the 1840s feminist New Yorkers began to protest this state of affairs, starting with the laws blocking women from owning property. The premise underlying such statutes, the Advocate said in 1846, was that “women do not know enough to take care of [property], and therefore the laws and customs of society virtually say they shall have none to protect.” Radical feminists argued that “free Christian enlightened women” needed their property and earnings if they were not to be forced into economic subservience. More conservative women emphasized that such a right would protect wives against drunks and gamblers who would squander their property.
Initially, legislators resisted, leery of undermining the sexual order, but it was increasingly clear that the vicissitudes of contemporary capitalism dictated some gender adjustments. The first convincing arguments for a married women’s property bill were made during the Panic of 1837, in the context of debtor relief. Too many respectable families had been wiped out after husbands sank their wives’ money into illchosen investments. Given the growing centrality of stocks and credit to New York’s economy, was it really wise for a wife’s property to be subject to her husband’s debts?
This was part of a larger problem: feme covert was hampering development of new kinds of capitalist