VIRTUE LOST: UTILIZING PREVIOUSLY EXCAVATED COLLECTIONS TO STUDY
THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT OF PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
by
Jacqueline Leigh Rodgers
B.A. University of Texas at Austin, 2010
A thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities The University of West Florida In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
2014
The thesis of Jacqueline Leigh Rodgers is approved:
______Norine Carroll, M.A., Committee Member Date
______Amy M. Mitchell-Cook, Ph.D., Committee Member Date
______Ramie A. Gougeon, Ph.D., Committee Member Date
______Elizabeth D. Benchley, Ph.D., Committee Chair Date
Accepted for the Department/Division:
______John R. Bratten, Ph.D., Chair Date
Accepted for the University:
______Richard S. Podemski, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School Date
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This thesis would not have been possible without the generosity and support of so many people. First and foremost I want to thank Norine Carroll, who’s been my mentor and friend since I first started this process. I would be nowhere without your patience and guidance with all things collections. I’ll never again write on a single piece of paper without my name and date on it! To the rest of my committee, Elizabeth Benchley, Ramie Gougeon, and Amy Mitchell-Cook, thank you so much for your help and support through what felt like and endless process to a final product I can be proud of. You’ve all taught me more than you know.
Leora Sutton, thank you for granting me an interview and taking an interest in Pensacola history and archaeology. You were truly ahead of your time. A huge thank you to the friendly staff and security team at the M. C. Blanchard Judicial Center. I’m eternally grateful for the voluntary extension of your duties to include my work cart and your limitless enthusiasm. Thank you to Jacqi Wilson and the rest of the staff at the Pensacola Historical Society for allowing me to pour through Leora Sutton’s papers and answering seemingly countless off-the-wall questions about 20 th century Pensacola.
A special thank you to David Valentine, Mark Warner, and Teresa Brown for assisting me with specialized artifact identification. My analysis would not nearly have the depth that it does without your help. And thank you Wayne Abrahamson for your specialized knowledge and great references. Thank you Zack Cruze for keeping my research in mind when doing your own classwork, and thank you Mike Thomin for helping me bring my message to the people. No way that exhibit would have looked as nice or reached nearly as many people without your mad skills.
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Thank you John Worth for teaching me not to be afraid of archives, Eric Swanson, and
John Phillips for all your GIS expertise, Jenn Melcher for being an Access/Excel wizard, and
John Bratten, Kad Henderson, and Allen Wilson for teaching me conservation, letting me take up space in your lab, and suffering me to pick your brains whenever I needed help. A big thank you to Jan Lloyd and all the archaeology lab personnel and FPAN volunteers that re-processed the collections. You saved me months of work and I sincerely hope you didn’t have to stick anything in your mouths. Thank you to Karen Mims, Cindy Jackson, and Juliette Moore for helping me navigate the world of UWF bureaucracy, paychecks, and travel funds.
While it’s impossible to write a thesis without technical support, it’s equally impossible to go through the process without moral support as well. I first want to thank my friends Patty
McMahon, Sarah Sexton, Malina Suity, Steph Powell, and Tara Cole for helping me survive the earliest stages of this project. Our late night study and brainstorming sessions and countless adventures gave me the confidence I needed to pursue this topic despite its many obstacles.
Lindsey Cochran and Colin Bean, I can’t thank you enough for your love and support. All of the help with GIS, technology, proof reading, and Hopjacks beer therapy sessions were essential to my success and sanity. Cindy Sommerkamp, girl, you don’t even know! Sometimes all you can do is laugh, and you kept me going both with laughter and with graphics manipulations when I reached my wit’s end. Next I want to thank Lauren Walls, Salina Hebert, and Morgan Wampler for helping me both navigate the collections and pull artifacts in addition to our good times.
Meghan Mumford and Kelsey McGuire, you’re constant love and support in addition to your helpful insight and collections proficiency gave me the strength to keep me going towards the end of this project. Long live the Coven! I also want to thank Connie and Andy Derlikowski,
Jess Hendrix, Zach Harris, Wells Bibo, Gregg Harding, Patrick Johnson, Becca and Thomas
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DeMabreon, Tristan Harrenstein, Bill Neal, Amanda Disharoon, Will Wilson, Tonya and Joseph
Chandler, Robert Taylor, Janene Johnston, and Sarah Bennet for all of your input, love, and support. You guys are the best, and I hope you know it. I love and appreciate all of you and everything you’ve done for me, even if it’s too long to list here. And a last shout out to everyone else on the Theme Party circuit. There’s no way I could have gotten through graduate school without the fun and comradery they gave all of us.
Finally, I want to thank my family. The Cummins’ and the Rodgers’ have been behind me all the way, and without your wonderful support I could never have dedicated so much of my life towards this research and this degree. I promise I’ll stop peppering you with facts about early
20 th century birth control methods at holiday dinners. And last but definitely not least, I want to thank my parents, Cindy and Charles Rodgers. You two are incredible. Thank you for loving me, supporting me through thick and thin, and raising me to be the person I am.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii
LIST OF TABLES ...... vii
LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii
ABSTRACT ...... xi
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
CHAPTER II. RESEARCH DESIGN AND DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS...... 5
A. Research Design...... 5 B. Archaeological Investigations of Other Red Light Districts ...... 6 C. Documentary Analysis ...... 7
CHAPTER III. HISTORIC CONTEXT OF PROSTITUTION IN PENSACOLA ...... 10
A. Prostitution and Red Light Districts in the United States ...... 10 B. Pensacola’s Red Light District...... 20
CHAPTER IV. ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT AND SAMPLE SELECTION ...... 41 A. Site History ...... 41 B. Archaeological Excavations...... 43 C. History of the 8ES34 Collections ...... 48 D. Sample Selection ...... 52 E. Artifact Assemblage Used for Analysis ...... 57
CHAPTER V. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ...... 61
A. Medical Paraphernalia ...... 61 B. Contraceptives...... 78 C. Toiletries and Cosmetics ...... 93 D. Personal Adornment Items ...... 120 E. Customers’ Personal Items ...... 130 F. Other Personal Items ...... 141
CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSIONS ...... 152
REFERENCES ...... 156
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LIST OF TABLES
1. UWF Database Classifications for 2000 and 1975 Excavations ...... 55
2. Artifacts Analyzed from Each Collection ...... 58
3. Figure 3 Key ...... 66
4. Bead Descriptions ...... 120
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LIST OF FIGURES
1. 1896 Bird’s Eye of Pensacola, FL with red light district outlined in red ...... 21
2. 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of brothel addresses ...... 22
3. Black or mulatto brothels before 1917 in blue ...... 23
4. White brothels before 1917 in red ...... 24
5. Black or mulatto brothels after 1917 in blue ...... 25
6. White brothels after 1917 in red ...... 25
7. Military locker room card ...... 37
8. Innerarity Mansion and Panton Mansion Ruins 1850...... 42
9. Map of 1975 excavation unit locations ...... 45
10. 2000 excavations ...... 46
11. 2000 excavation units ...... 47
12. Original courthouse display ca. 1976...... 49
13. M. C. Blanchard Judicial Center display ...... 52
14. Excavation units in the red light district ...... 53
15. Medical bottles and closures by count ...... 62
16. Embossed pharmacy bottle origins ...... 65
17. Date range and count of embossed pharmacy bottles ...... 67
18. Hargis Pharmacy bottles ...... 68
19. Pharmacies frequented compared to pharmacies available from 1880-1920 ...... 70
20. Sharp & Dohme mercury bichloride ad ...... 75
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21. Mercury bichloride bottle 86D8-57-70 ...... 75
22. Contraceptives recovered from 8ES34 ...... 80
23. Chesebrough Vaseline jars recovered from the 1975 excavation of 8ES34 ...... 82
24. Condom tins ...... 85
25. Condom tin provenience ...... 87
26. Detail of Lysol bottles 86D8-10-49 ...... 91
27. Glass Douche 13N-64 ...... 92
28. D’Alemberte toothbrush ...... 95
29. Compact lid 86D8-11-233 ...... 100
30. Milk glass jars recovered from 8ES34 by company ...... 102
31. Pond’s jars ...... 104
32. Guilmard Eau Sublime hair dye bottle 86D8-11-76 ...... 110
33. Lipstick tube with residue 86D8-3-93 ...... 112
34. Perfume bottles ...... 115
35. Perfume frequencies by price...... 118
36. Egyptian revival pendant 00P-20-54 ...... 122
37. Wedding ring ...... 125
38. Non-single prostitutes ...... 127
39. Pochette frame ...... 130
40. Tax tokens ...... 132
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41. Military buttons ...... 137
42. Army identification tags ...... 140
43. Menstrual belt clip 86D8-19-66 ...... 143
44. Dog licenses ...... 146
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ABSTRACT
VIRTUE LOST: UTILIZING PREVIOUSLY EXCAVATED COLLECTIONS TO STUDY THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT OF PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
Jacqueline Leigh Rodgers
Pensacola’s historic red light district spanned four city blocks and was in operation from the 1890s until it was permanently shut down in 1941. One block of the district was previously the location that the Panton Leslie and Company headquarters had occupied from 1785 to 1848.
The Panton Leslie site (8ES34) was excavated three times, in 1964, 1975, and 2000 to salvage remains of the trade headquarters. This study re-examines the archaeological collections resulting from the 1975 and 2000 excavations to interpret the daily lives and community interactions of red light district workers and their customers. Items such as medical paraphernalia, contraceptives, cosmetics, and personal items are examined. Results from this study indicate that Pensacola prostitutes suffered from a variety of diseases, used multiple means to avoid pregnancy, and interacted with the greater community more than previously imagined.
Evidence from customers indicates that men from various backgrounds traveled both locally and from great distances to enjoy themselves in Pensacola’s brothels.
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In Victorian era America, it was common for cities with large transient male populations to have a vice district. While such vice districts are considered atypical in today’s social context, they were once considered to be a normal and vital part of society. The port town of Pensacola,
Florida was no exception. Pensacola’s red light district, also known as “The Line,” operated from the late 1890s through 1941 and encompassed four city blocks (McGovern 1975:131-144).
The attitude toward vice districts as being an integral part of the community of Pensacola is visible in the historical record. The presence of prostitutes and madams was well documented in public records such as city directories, Sanborn fire insurance maps, newspaper articles, census records, and personal accounts. However, these records did not include how sex workers interacted with the Pensacola community in their everyday lives. Even though prostitutes and madams did not leave behind personal descriptions of their daily lives, these interactions with the community can still be determined. By analyzing the archaeological record of the Pensacola red light district, the interactions between sex workers living within the district, their customers, and the greater Pensacola community becomes more clear. This analysis provides an understanding of how these women worked and lived within the community.
Archaeological research has been conducted on other red light districts across the nation;
however, relatively little work has been published about how the districts’ residents and
customers interacted with their respective communities. By working with archival data (Sanborn
fire insurance maps, census records, city directories, etc.) and analyzing diagnostic artifacts
qualitatively, patterns of interactions between the district’s residents and the community as a
whole will be scrutinized.
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This study is a reanalysis of collections from previous salvage excavations in 1975 and
2000 conducted within a portion of the Pensacola red light district, at a site now referred to as
8ES34. The reanalysis required the rehousing of the collections to address the deterioration of the collection’s packaging over time. There are several shortcomings in the analytical potential of the collections. For instance, since none of the collections studied have provenience information beyond general unit and feature locations, detailed spatial analyses are impossible.
Certain historical facts mitigate these shortcomings. Specifically, the date range for the red light district is well defined between the late 1890s and 1941. Historic maps and census data reveal that the area was consistently occupied by brothels and saloons during this time (Sanborn Map
Co. 1903, 1907, 1932; Sanborn Perris Map Co. 1892, 1897). This consistency in occupation means that as long as the artifacts in the assemblages date from this time period, they are undoubtedly from the red light district occupation. Excavations were conducted in the middle- class area of the red light district, which provides a good understanding of what life was like for an average Pensacola prostitute. General information about this portion of the district can be discussed, but linking artifacts to specific establishments is impossible due to a lack of provenience information.
Three previous excavations have occurred within the Pensacola red light district. Each of these excavations’ primary research goals were to excavate the Panton and Leslie Trading
Company headquarters (1785 to 1848), which happened to be located on the same site as the middle-class portion of the district. None of the collections have been studied with a focus on the red light district. A reexamination of these collections for red light district contexts provided new insights on how residents of the red light district in Pensacola interacted with the community.
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It is common practice in archaeology to keep and curate all of the cultural material recovered from a site, whether or not it pertains to the research question that the excavation was undertaken to answer originally. Ethically, this archaeological stewardship necessitates the preservation and protection of excavated archaeological resources for present-day and future archaeologists (Childs and Sullivan 2004:3). According to the Society of American
Archaeology’s Ethics Guide, “archaeological excavation is a destructive process, and the resulting collections are finite, non-renewable resources. Efforts should be made to employ existing collections and databases to address research questions whenever possible” (Childs
2004:vii). Additionally, if collections are never looked at again past their original research goals, then they are simply wasting valuable resources used to store and curate them in perpetuity.
Therefore, it is the responsibility of archaeologists to employ previously excavated collections to answer research questions rather than conduct a new excavation whenever possible. For this study of Pensacola’s red light district, two previously excavated collections were utilized to yield greater insight into the daily lives and interactions between prostitutes, their clients, and the greater Pensacola community.
Accurately dating the artifacts in the collections verifies that they are from the correct time period to be part of the red light district context. Dating the artifacts was accomplished by analyzing glass finishes, bases, forms, and maker’s marks. Additionally, many artifacts have intact labels. Due to the nature of the excavations and lack of specific provenience information, the artifacts used in this study were selected for diagnostic dating attributes on an object by object basis. Artifacts that do not originate in the date range of the district’s occupation from the late 1890s-1941 are not included in this study.
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In most studies (both archaeological and historical) of red light districts at the turn of the century, the districts are characterized as autonomous units that were at odds with the rest of the community they were servicing (Cheek and Seifert 1994; Bonasera 2000; Costello 2000; Seifert et al. 2000; Powell 2002; Crist 2005; Ketz et al. 2005; Meyer et al. 2005; Spude 2005; Yemin
2005; Horobik 2011; Gensmer 2012). While this idea makes sense within modern-day social contexts, the reality of the situation was that prostitutes provided a necessary outlet for social constraints on sexuality. Rather than viewing red light districts and their residents as mere oddities or curiosities, this research demonstrates how the districts and residents were viewed during the time period which they occupied: as a normal and necessary part of society.
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CHAPTER II
RESEARCH DESIGN AND DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS
Ideally, archaeologists have specific research questions in mind before they start excavating. In this way, they can better guarantee that their data set will pertain to their research.
Yet in the case of using previously excavated collections, the researcher’s data set is predetermined. One is almost forced to work backwards and look at what data are available before formulating research questions. In this case, the data available included three collections from a 2000 University of West Florida (UWF) salvage excavation, a 1975 salvage excavation supervised by amateur archaeologist Leora Sutton, and a display of what were considered the
“best” artifacts of the 1975 excavations. Of the three collections, none were excavated specifically to study the red light district, but instead targeted the Panton Leslie and Co. Trading
Company headquarters and earlier colonial occupations. Therefore, each collection had to be examined for what potential archaeological evidence of the red light district remained.
Research Design
The primary goal of this research was to humanize Pensacola red light district workers and their customers and to provide insight into prostitutes’ daily lives. To achieve this goal, the literature on excavated red light districts was reviewed to determine how archaeological studies of brothels had been conducted, and each collection from Pensacola was surveyed for what types of artifacts and how much provenience information remained intact. The types of artifacts that were most numerous in other red light districts and would yield the most qualitative data included medical paraphernalia, cosmetics, and personal items were therefore artifact types chosen for analysis in this study. An analysis of the historical and archaeological records determined that it was more plausible to study the portion of the district that was occupied by
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8ES34 (the site the collections had been excavated from) as a whole rather than individual brothels present at the site.
Archaeological Investigations of Other Red Light Districts
The focus of most archaeological studies of brothel prostitution has been on broad assemblage observations and comparisons such as brothel assemblages compared to non-brothel households of similar socio-economic status (Seifert 1991; Cheek and Seifert 1994; Seifert et al.
2000; Meyer et al. 2005; Yemin 2005), prostitutes’ public images compared with their private lives (Ketz et al. 2005), high-end brothels compared with cribs (Meyer et al. 2005), and identifying gendered items within brothel and saloon contexts (Spude 2005).
All of the aforementioned studies noted high percentages of alcohol paraphernalia, lighting, serving ware, medications, contraceptives, cosmetics and toiletries, personal adornment items, and other personal items. Of these categories, all but alcohol paraphernalia are the most likely to yield information about how prostitutes and their clientele negotiated the social rules of
Pensacola.
Thus far only medications, cosmetics and toiletries, along with personal adornment items have been studied in-depth at red light districts. Medications have been studied in detail at red light districts in both Colorado (Horobik 2011) and in New York (Bonasera 2000). These studies focused primarily on identifying the ailments prostitutes and their customers suffered from. A study on cosmetics and personal adornment items concentrated on how prostitutes might have used such items to reinforce their social identity as prostitutes rather than individuals (Gensmer
2012). None of the aforementioned studies address the way artifacts demonstrate how prostitutes and customers interacted with each other and the community as a whole by navigating through local social structures.
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By studying the medical paraphernalia, contraceptives, cosmetics and toiletries, personal adornment items, and other personal items of the archaeological assemblage of 8ES34, new insights about Pensacola’s red light district were gleaned. An in-depth qualitative study of such artifacts indicates how prostitutes and their clientele chose to “actively negotiate social rules”
(Hodder 1985:2) of prostitution in a small southern port city from the late-19 th century to the mid-20 th century by demonstrating both their movements and their communal interactions within
and outside of the district.
Documentary Analysis
An extensive documentary analysis was essential to not only determine what was already
known about Pensacola’s red light district, but also to ensure that artifacts would be associated
with brothel contexts. Archival documentation in the form of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, city
directories, and census data were compared to one another to identify prostitutes and establish
their locations through time. By confirming through historical documentation that 8ES34 had
been consistently occupied by prostitutes during from 1898 to 1941, it was possible to determine
with a high degree of certainty that artifacts that date within this range are highly likely to be
associated with brothel contexts.
It is very difficult to get an accurate count of brothels located in the district in any given
year due to inconsistencies in recording. Prostitutes may be assigned other occupations on
official documents, some may be recorded while others may be overlooked, or due to the nature
of their work, prostitutes may not be listed at all. For example, the 1903 Sanborn map identifies
twelve brothels in the district, while the 1903 city directory only lists eight madams, some of
whom do not live at the addresses marked as brothels on the Sanborn map (Sanborn Map Co.
1903, Wiggins 1903). Therefore, it is likely that some prostitutes not listed in historical
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documents occupied the area in addition to the prostitutes who were present in the documentary record.
It was necessary to subdivide women living in the district into three categories: positive prostitutes, probable or likely prostitutes, and non-prostitutes in order to fully understand where prostitutes were living throughout the district’s occupation without falsely attributing other resident women of the district with the stigma of “prostitute.” Positive prostitutes are recognized as women who were identified as such in census records or city directories, lived in structures identified as brothels at the same year of their recording on Sanborn maps, or were listed as living in households with known prostitutes or madams identified in city directories or census records. Probable prostitutes were women who were listed in census records as living in households consisting of one older woman (usually in her thirties or forties) and multiple younger women (in their late teens or twenties) who have no occupation listed, and their house was located within the red light district. Women who were listed in city directories as being heads of households within the district for a considerable length of time are also considered probable prostitutes. Many of these households were labeled as brothels at one time or another during the district’s occupation, but not necessarily at the time that probable prostitutes occupied the structures. Women who were not considered prostitutes were residents of the district who lived with men or families with men and children under the age of 18 as listed in census records.
While prostitutes sometimes lived with their children, men very rarely lived in brothels.
Although prominent business men often owned brothels, they preferred to let madams handle the day to day aspects of the business (Rosen 1982:71). The presence of men in a household suggests that associated women were not prostitutes.
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The 1910 census record is the most complete record of prostitutes, with each prostitute listed as “Sporting Woman” for her occupation (United States Census Bureau 1910). Names from that census and the 1898 city directory where madams are listed as “Madames” can be cross-referenced with other directories, maps, and census records (which also record a pattern for brothels of slightly older women living with multiple women in their late teens to late twenties with no occupations listed), to determine locations of other brothels within the red light district
(United States Census Bureau 1910).
Comparing the archaeological data to the archival results revealed that the red light district was indeed present consistently from the 1890s to 1941 and is represented materially in both Sutton’s and UWF’s collections. While the 2000 excavation unit locations are precise, the majority of the Sutton collection can only be associated with general areas. The majority of both excavations took place in an area consistently associated with at least six brothels; in the eastern portion of the block bounded by Main street to the south, Zarragossa to the North, Palafox to the east, and Barcelona (later renamed Spring) to the west, (Benchley 2000, Sutton ca. 1976).
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CHAPTER III
HISTORIC CONTEXT OF PROSTITUTION IN PENSACOLA
By the end of Reconstruction, Pensacola’s port had become a host to several industries including fishing, naval stores, brick manufacturing, and lumber, as well as the military. These industries tended to attract single, transient men as their primary labor force; a labor force that historically draws prostitution. Although prostitutes had operated throughout Pensacola since the first Spanish occupation of the city in 1698, it was not until 1885 that prostitutes started to move into the area that would become Pensacola’s red light district (Webb 1885:88).
Prostitution and Red Light Districts in the United States
Pensacola was by no means the only city with a red light district during the Gilded Age.
Although prostitution was condemned in the United States, it was not considered illegal (Mackey
1987, Rosen 1982:4). In fact, prostitution was seen as a necessary evil to keep society in working order. Men’s sex drives were perceived as so violently destructive that they had to be satisfied through women of lower social status, such as prostitutes, to preserve the virtue of higher-class women; meanwhile upper-class women’s sexual desires were seen as non-existent, therefore rendering them unable to satisfy their husbands completely (Rosen 1982:5). Basically, men had sex drives, while women had maternal drives (Gordon 2002:58). This view led to a double standard of sexuality where young, upper-class men were able, and even encouraged, to engage in premarital sex with “appropriate” lower class women and prostitutes while upper-class women were expected to remain chaste until marriage (Rosen 1982:5). Even after marriage many women avoided their “wifely duty” because “they typically had two choices: passive and frequently pleasureless submission, with high risk of undesirable consequences [dangerous pregnancies or venereal diseases], or rebellious refusal” (Gordon 2002:63). Therefore, married men also
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frequented prostitutes to find sexual satisfaction that their wives either could not or would not give them at home. This double standard reinforced the idea that women were either angelic
(pure upper-class women), or completely depraved (lower-class women who clearly did not have any virtue or morals since they had sexual encounters before marriage) (Rosen 1982:6). There was no middle ground.
Prostitution therefore had different meanings for men and women. For women, it was a warning of what would happen to them if they did not adhere to their social standards of virtuosity. For men, prostitution upheld the idea that women were either inherently good or evil, and reinforced women’s purpose of serving men (Rosen 1982). Many in the United States viewed prostitution as a necessary evil; however, this evil needed to be contained and removed from respectable society so it would not corrupt the virtuous.
Prostitutes were commonly segregated into “red light” or vice districts; “the red light district is a distinctive social and geographic form which sometimes characterizes prostitution and was especially prevalent in American cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries” (Shumsky 1986:666). People whose economic livelihood depended on prostitution also lived in or near the district, such as madams, and pimps. In addition service industries such as doctors, laundrymen, clothiers, furniture dealers, saloon and restaurant owners, and grocers who catered to prostitution workers and their clients lived nearby (Shumsky 1986:666). The red light district often overlapped two other important urban regions where the greatest number of potential clients could be found: the business and entertainment districts (Shumsky 1986:667).
Rather than being spread throughout town, conscious decisions by policemen and other municipal officials were made to confine prostitution into a single section of town in order to
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oversee and contain potential crimes associated with prostitution and to regulate prostitutes’ health to avoid outbreaks of venereal disease (Shumsky 1986:665).
Red light districts also served as a way to protect upper-class women from the lusts of lower-class and immigrant men. Transient, lower-class men looking for sexual encounters knew where prostitutes were located if the city had a red light district, and therefore were less likely to harass upper-class women (Shumsky 1986:674). Oftentimes the police went so far as to hassle any prostitutes they found venturing outside of the district in an effort to ensure that upstanding women would not be confused for prostitutes (Rosen 1982:4). By being located inside the red light districts, the prostitutes were also allowed to advertise their wares which otherwise would have gotten them arrested for indecent behavior and exposure outside of the districts (Rosen
1982:81). While tolerant and aware of these districts, elite Victorian society could not allow a group of people so deviant from middle-class societal norms to be accepted or normalized in what was seen as proper society.
By the late 1880s, progressivism began to sweep the South. The progressive movement in the South originated in a Protestant push for prohibition. Prohibition “offered a means of moral reaffirmation of traditional values … [and was] also an expression of concern about personal morality and an instrument of social control with far-reaching class and racial implications”
(Grantham 1983:172-173). The wide-spread support for prohibition opened the door for other reforms: “moral reformers’ concern with social decay, focusing on its public display, led to an attempt to extend private, evangelical morality to the public sphere” (Link 1997:52). Nowhere was private morality more on display in the public sphere than in urban red light districts.
Reformers viewed prostitution as a result of the sexual double standard of male promiscuity and female chastity, and also a cause of the spread of venereal disease when husbands visited
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infected prostitutes and carried diseases back to their innocent wives (Link 1997:53). Eventually this double standard led to the view that prostitutes were more the victims of social and economic circumstances while their better-off male customers kept the profession alive (Link
1997:120). The main goals of purity movement activists, besides ending regulated prostitution, were to prosecute customers of prostitutes as well as the prostitutes themselves, reform prostitutes, sexually segregate prisons, provide police matrons, stop abortions, censor pornography, and distribute purity education (Gordon 2002:73). In essence, to end the sexual double standard by holding both men and women accountable for their promiscuity.
By 1915 the Richmond Vice Commission was created to study the causes of and find effective ways to stop prostitution in Richmond, Virginia’s red light district. It reported that factors such as dance halls, motion pictures, automobiles, theatrical performances, and soda fountains led to a morally corrupt environment that, when combined with poverty, led to prostitution. The commission stated that the city’s 1905 decision to regulate prostitution had been an abysmal failure, and recommended the city enforce existing laws against prostitution, provide rehabilitation for arrested and reformed prostitutes, and institute an extensive reorganization of the city’s police force to effectively enforce the law (Link 1997:122). The findings of this Southern city’s vice commission reflected the opinion of the greater Southern public of which Pensacola residents shared: that prostitution was no longer a necessary evil, but was now a social evil. It would take federal intervention, however, in addition to public opinion to actually shut down profitable red light districts across the United States.
In 1916, president Woodrow Wilson ordered Raymond Fosdick to investigate reports of rampant debauchery in and around military camps established to mitigate the threat of Poncho
Villa at the Mexican border (Barnes 2010:130). Fosdick confirmed the reports, but pointed out
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that there was no alternative form of entertainment besides saloons and red light districts surrounding the camps. Consequently men gravitated toward the districts in their off time to break the monotony of camp life (Barnes 2010:130). Young Men’s Christian Association officials noticed this pattern as well on mission trips to help with troops, and orchestrated a meeting with the heads of the American Social Hygiene Association, the Rockefeller
Foundation, and the Secretary of War. This meeting resulted in the formation of the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA), which was formed 11 days after the United States entered
World War I (WWI) (Brandt 1987:59). The CTCA’s mission was to coordinate civilian organizations that wanted to provide services for the troops such as the Young Men’s Christian
Association, the Salvation Army, The Knights of Columbus, and many others. The primary goal of the CTCA was to shut down red light districts surrounding military installations and provide troops with alternate, morally acceptable entertainment options (Barnes 2010:134).
The new ideal form of masculinity emphasized qualities of a desire for adventure, a willingness to use force in both personal and diplomatic relations, and self-discipline. Examples can be seen in everything from politicians like Theodore Roosevelt to contemporary pop culture icons like Tarzan of the Apes (Barnes 2010:185). These masculine traits coincided nicely with the military’s need for ideal soldiers: men who were physically fit, ready to take risks, capable of thinking on their feet, and willing to believe in a cause (Barnes 2010:185). Keeping troops from engaging prostitutes was seen as an important factor in ensuring fighting men were at their peak both psychologically and physiologically.
Self-restraint was a key component to this equation because it demonstrated the capacity for personal discipline that maintained ethical standards set by various nations. Woodrow
Wilson’s open letter to draftees emphasized this wholesome ethic as well; “let us set for
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ourselves a standard so high that it will be a glory to live up to it and then let us live up to it and add a new laurel to the crown of America.” He added “let it be your pride, therefore, to show all men everywhere not only what good men you are, keeping yourselves fit and straight in everything and pure and clean through and through” (Barnes 2010:185). For progressives, WWI was a chance as soldiers ventured to Europe to demonstrate the superiority of American ideals and morals to an international audience (Brandt 1987:52).
Ideal American masculinity aside, venereal disease posed a very real threat to the health of fighting men. Venereal disease not only symbolized moral failure and social decay of individual servicemen, it was also a legitimate health concern that thinned the ranks of the
United States military fighting force. For example, in the training camps near the Mexican border where the sexual exploits of soldiers were first reported, almost 30 percent of troops reported some form of venereal infection (Brandt 1987:54). Although this conflict was a regional one, involving volunteer forces, the implications of such a problem on a national scale, with the influx of draftees for WWI were massive (Brandt 1987:56).
One proponent for the social hygiene campaign mirrored the nation’s sentiment “that army and navy which is the least syphilized [sic] will, other things being equal, win” (Brandt
1987:62). As a response to this threat, two weeks after the United States entered WWI the
General Medical Board of the Council of National Defense passed a resolution stating:
WHEREAS, venereal infections are among the most serious and disabling diseases to
which the soldier and sailor are liable; WHEREAS, they constitute a grave menace to the
civil population; THEREFORE, the Committee on Hygiene and Sanitation of the General
Medical Board of the Council of National Defense, recommends … that the Departments
15
of War and Navy officially recognized that continence [abstinence] is compatible with
health and that it is the best prevention of venereal infections (Brandt 1987:63).
To uphold this resolution, the CTCA provided sex education to incoming soldiers, since the soldiers’ previous educations were determined as inadequate, misinformed, or non-existent
(Brandt 1987:61). A dual system of fear and guilt was employed to keep military personnel abstinent; the fear of the twisted limbs, open lesions, physical deformities, paresis, locomotor ataxia, insanity, and sometimes death came from syphilis while kidney infections, arthritis, and sterility was attributed to gonorrhea. The guilt of infecting their innocent wives and rendering them sterile added to the possibility of infecting their future children, rendering them blind.
Military men took these scare tactics to heart (Brandt 1987:65). Soldiers were also told in the educational pamphlet Keeping Fit to Fight “a venereal disease contracted after deliberate
exposure through intercourse with a prostitute is as much of a disgrace as showing the white
feather … A soldier in the hospital with a venereal disease is a slacker … You lessen the man-
power of your company and throw extra burdens on your comrades. You are a moral shirker”
(Brandt 1987:66). One of the worst crimes a soldier could commit was showing cowardice.
Therefore, by comparing a soldier being removed from combat for venereal disease to a coward,
officials hoped to shame soldiers into avoiding unprotected sex and not let down their comrades.
In addition to education, the military sought to eradicate the source of temptation while
troops trained state-side. After Fosdick’s testimony, the Senate Military Committee drafted the
Selective Service Act and added appendices that forbade liquor and prostitution in areas
proximate to training facilities (Brandt 1987:71). State governors were enlisted to help military
personnel protect the nation by insulating military personnel from “unhealthy influences and
16
crude forms of temptation” (Brandt 1987:71). The nation was parceled into sections, one for each camp, and one vice investigator was dispatched to each section with the goal of enforcing the
Selective Service Act (Brandt 1987:74). While most cities complied, a few who did not were threatened with the removal of nearby camps or of forbidding troops to enter the cities in question (Brandt 1987:75). While this tactic worked and many red light districts near military installations were shut down, often city governments simply told prostitutes to leave town, which they did by moving into another city whose district was still operational (Brandt 1987:74).
Yet these actions did not eradicate venereal disease completely from the military’s ranks.
Most cases came from previously infected men; sometimes up to 25 percent of incoming draftees were infected at individual camps (Brandt 1987:77). This statistic meant that venereal disease was recognized as a nation-wide problem. A national campaign to eradicate venereal disease was begun through the Council of National Defense’s Civilian Committee to Combat Venereal
Disease (CCCVD) in December of 1917 (Brandt 1987:78). The CCCVD claimed that getting rid of venereal disease was a calculated part of the war effort in which civilians should assist, linking venereal disease with a loss in productivity in business and industry as well as in the military (Brandt 1987:78).
Resulting from pressure by the CCCVD, in 1918 congress passed the Chamberlain-Kahn
Act which applied a curfew of nine p.m. for women in towns near military installations. Any woman caught after that time, without identification as being a relative of the man they were accompanying or without parental permission, was suspected by military police to be a prostitute and was subject to mandatory physical examination and imprisonment (Weatherford 2010:361).
While being extremely restrictive of women’s civil liberties, the law also sought to dissuade prostitutes from working independently after brothels in the red light districts were shut down.
17
Ultimately, Theodore Roosevelt, the ideal of American masculinity, summarized the attitude toward the nation’s men under which the social hygiene program operated best:
Let them lead clean, self-respecting lives, in the first place because it’s the straight,
decent self-respecting thing to do, next because it’s the only way in which to give the
square deal to women of the right type, who, Heaven knows, need the square deal; and
finally because they owe it to the country not to ruin their efficiency as soldiers and
citizens (Brandt 1987:69).
While the CTCA and the CCCVD could not force men to uphold the high purity standards of ideal American masculinity or completely eradicate venereal disease within the American military and American society at large, they were ultimately effective in shutting down the nation’s red light districts. Very few, including Pensacola’s, continued to function with the traditional brothel system after 1918. As part of this national effort to eradicate red light districts near military installations, Pensacola’s red light district was raided in 1917. The governor of
Florida himself ordered the sheriff to clear out the district with the assistance of United States marshals, but public support of the district meant that prostitutes were allowed to reoccupy the area with brothels, leaving the district much as it had been before the raid (Pensacola News
Journal 1917b).
Not even WWI eradicated red light districts completely. A few stayed in operation
because of economic and political support. Wealthy, politically powerful men owned many of
the buildings that were being used for brothels and profited greatly from them. So in these areas,
the men did just enough political maneuvering to keep the districts open (Rosen 1982:72).
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Additionally, Southern progressivism broke down after WWI. Social change, accelerated by the war, brought new tensions that created sharp divisions between the South and the rest of the country and within the South regionally (Grantham 1983:410). However, what would ultimately be the districts’ downfall were the changing views of morality and sexuality in the United States.
During the late 1910s, urban bohemians and radicals, based mostly in New York City and other large cities, started experimenting with sexuality and the concept of free love (Gordon
2002:129). They revolutionized the concept of love from an ideal of a spiritual union to that of a physical union, making sex an important expression of love rather than merely a means to procreate and satisfy men’s animalistic urges (Gordon 2002:133). Although contained within bohemian urbanite communities before WWI, by the start of the 1920s this sexual revolution had become widespread in American culture through mass media and advertising (Gordon
2002:128). The Roaring Twenties had begun.
With this sexual revolution came a new woman unafraid to experiment sexually before and after marriage. Sanctioned prostitution did not become widespread again after WWI, not because of an increase in male purity, but because of an increase in female sexual experimentation (Gordon 2002:130). Since unmarried women were more willing to have premarital sex and engaged in more sexual experimentation, the need for prostitution decreased substantially (Hobson 1987:164). Men no longer had to pay for what they could now get for free.
This new sexual morality ensured that most of the few remaining red light districts left within the
United States would not outlast the early 1920s. Yet, in a few cities prostitution remained and the infamous “Line” of Pensacola survived.
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Pensacola’s Red Light District
There is no simple way to discuss Pensacola’s red light district. Few broad histories of the district exist and those few are based on primary accounts of customers (McGovern 1975,
1976). Little analysis of other primary documents has been attempted to verify these accounts.
Therefore, it was necessary to include detailed documentary and spatial analysis within a general discussion of the history of the district. The following discussion incorporates both the primary accounts of the district and a detailed documentary analysis to establish the district’s boundaries and interior socioeconomic divisions, a brief occupational history of the district, and what types of activities would likely have occurred in daily life at the district.
Pensacola’s red light district was in operation from the late 1880s to 1941 and can be divided into two occupational periods: before the 1917 raid that coincided with the national movement to eradicate red light districts across the US, and after the raid when prostitutes gradually repopulated the district with brothels ( Pensacola News Journal 1917b, United States
Census Bureau 1920, 1930, 1940; Polk 1919, 1924, 1927, 1934, 1936, 1940; Sanborn Map Co.
1932). As with other cities, Pensacola’s red light district was situated where it would be the closest to potential customers: on the south side of town near the business district and the bustling wharves. The district was bordered by Palafox Street to the east, Main to the south,
Barcelona (later renamed Spring) to the west, and Government to the north; a total of four city blocks (McGovern 1975; Figure 1). Although the district was never officially sanctioned in
Pensacola’s city ordinances, these borders are verified in contemporary accounts by patrons and police officers who frequented the district (Blount 1898:51; McGovern 1975). Considering that
Pensacola’s population was only around 30,000 people before the 1930s, the Line was quite a large area to be dedicated to prostitution (Walker 1955). Ann Thigpen, a Pensacola resident born
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in 1924, described how the district looked in the late 1930s. “I can remember when I was a kid in high school driving down there at night with the kids and we would peek up and down the side of the street … to see what was going on down there” (Thigpen 2014). She continued “it was just like a regular street I mean you know you could see … the light on the porch was on you know, and that’s the red light district” (Thigpen 2014).
FIGURE 1. 1896 Bird’s Eye of Pensacola, FL with red light district outlined in red (Figure by author, 2014).
The “Line,” as it was commonly known, referred to Zarragossa Street, where most of the brothels were situated (McGovern 1975). The district was further subdivided by Baylen Street; everything east of Baylen (with addresses on the west 1-99 block) was reportedly the higher class, all white, “five dollar houses,” while everything west of Baylen (the west 100-199 block) was the “cheaper and rowdier quarter where less particular white women competed with Negroes
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for the one- and two-dollar trade” (Walker 1955:90; Figure 2). Regardless of the price, no
African American men were permitted inside the district.
FIGURE 2. 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of brothel addresses. West Zarragossa Street addresses 1-99 in red, addresses 100-199 in green, and South Baylen Street addresses 300-399 in blue (Figure by author, 2014).
Census records and city directories reveal that the division between all-white, upper class houses east of Baylen and mixed race, lower-class houses west of Baylen was not always the case. Rather the lower-class houses, which are identified as having African American or mulatto
(mixed race) prostitutes, are situated along the north block (addresses south 300-399) of Baylen prior to the 1917 raid. After 1917 the black and mulatto prostitutes were distributed along the western portion of the Zarragossa west 100-199 block along with white prostitutes. No prostitutes remained on Baylen after 1917. The first African American women identified positively as prostitutes within in the red light district do not appear until the 1898 City
Directory. Throughout the years 1898 until the 1917 raid, black and mulatto brothels were
22
consistently located along the 300-399 block of South Baylen Street although some white brothels were located along this block as well (Maloney 1898; United States Census Bureau
1900; Wiggins 1903:266, 347; Polk 1905; Sanborn Map Co. 1903, 1907; Figure 3).
FIGURE 3. Black or mulatto brothels before 1917 in blue. 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map (Figure by author, 2014).
The few outliers that were not located on that block were located on the 100-199 block of
West Zarragossa and the 400-499 block of South Baylen. By 1908, all of the brothels with black
madams were located along the 300-399 block of South Baylen (Polk 1908). In 1910, the most
informative year of brothel and prostitute data due to the thoroughness of the census, all but one
of the brothels that contained black or mulatto prostitutes were situated along the 300-399 block
of South Baylen, with the outlier being on the 400-499 block of South Baylen (United States
Census Bureau 1910). Six all-white brothels were situated along the 300-399 block of South
Baylen before 1917, suggesting that this area of South Baylen Street was actually, as patrons
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described it, “cheaper one to two dollar trade” rather than the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa
(United States Census Bureau 1910; Figure 4).
FIGURE 4. White brothels before 1917 in red. 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map (Figure by author, 2014).
After the 1917 raid, the social landscape of the red light district changed substantially.
Brothels along the 300-399 block of S Baylen were abandoned by prostitutes, both black and
white, presumably because they could not afford to reopen like the more expensive brothels
along Zarragossa (United States Census Bureau 1920, 1930, 1940; Polk 1919, 1924, 1927, 1934,
1936, 1940; Sanborn Map Co. 1932; Figure 5; Figure 6). When prostitutes began repopulating
the district in the 1920s, African American prostitutes were not among them. Not until 1930 did
black prostitutes start occupying brothels along the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa (United
States Census Bureau 1930).
24
FIGURE 5. Black or mulatto brothels after 1917 in blue. 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map (Figure by author, 2014).
FIGURE 6. White brothels after 1917 in red 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map (Figure by author, 2014).
25
While African American women were present at the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa throughout the district’s later occupation until it was shut down in 1941, they did not remain in specific houses consistently (United States Census Bureau 1920, 1930, 1940; Polk 1919, 1924,
1927, 1934, 1936, 1940; Sanborn Map Co. 1932). African American women only sporadically occupied brothels along the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa. White women lived in the same buildings at different times than the African American women throughout the district’s later occupation, and were always the majority of residents. Potential and known brothels with black and white madams continued to be located along the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa until
1940, just before the district was shut down (Polk 1940, United States Census Bureau 1940,
Figure 6). This mixture of ethnicities present along the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa and the lack of prostitutes located along the 300-399 block of South Baylen indicates that after the
1917 raid, the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa became a mixture of lower-class and middle- class brothels while the 1-99 block of West Zarragossa remained upper-class, possibly mixed with middle-class brothels. In short, before 1917 the district was divided into lower, middle, and upper class brothels while after 1917 it was divided into only upper and lower class brothels.
Using race as an indicator of inexpensive versus expensive brothels, reveals that the 1-99 block of West Zarragossa was the higher-end portion of the district, and that the 300-399 block of South Baylen was the lower-end portion of the district prior to 1917. The 100-199 block of
West Zarragossa, which was consistently occupied by all-white brothels in the early period of the red light district, was the middle class portion of the district. While the 1-99 block of West
Zarragossa remained the upper to middle class portion of the district after the 1917 raid, the 100-
199 block of West Zarragossa became the lower to middle class portion of the district.
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Although boundaries were established to keep crime associated with prostitution out of the rest of the city, order was kept within the district as well. Police forces larger than those stationed in the rest of the city were assigned to the district, madams were issued whistles to summon police when situations developed that threatened persons or property, and prostitutes were expected to inform on criminals who sought entertainment in their establishments
(McGovern 1976:73). Prostitutes were also required to submit to periodic physical examinations for venereal disease (McGovern 1975:134). Madams at higher-class establishments monitored their workers as well, confining prostitutes who were found to be infected to household chores until they had recovered (McGovern 1975:136). Women who did not comply with these rules were at risk of being incarcerated (McGovern 1976:73).
Following national trends in the behavior of lower-class prostitutes, workers in lower-end brothels situated along the 300-399 block of South Baylen, would entice potential customers with shouts of “Come on, Honey!” and invite men to play the nickelodeon for 25 cents, have a few dances, or to buy a quart of beer before going upstairs to have a “date” (McGovern
1976:76). Lower-class prostitutes were not held to the same standards of behavior as higher-class prostitutes and were usually more vulgar in dress and manner than high-class prostitutes. Lower- class prostitutes usually came from the local area (McGovern 1976:76). Higher class brothels along the 1-99 block of West Zarragossa boasted elegant furnishings and more exotic prostitutes from across the country with equally elegant manners (McGovern 1975:137). The main offering of elite brothels was to create a sustained sexual fantasy for their customers, which required the exotic and the elegant (Rosen 1982:91). Rather than merely having sexual encounters as was common for low-class brothels, elite brothels offered full experiences complete with
27
sophisticated surroundings, offerings of alcoholic beverages, dances, and food to complete the experience for customers (Rosen 1982:91).
Pensacola’s district also followed national trends in that there are no descriptions of the middle-class brothels situated along the 100-199 block of West Zarragossa. Nationally, reformers preferred to describe cribs and lower-class houses while former patrons, madams, and reformers enjoyed describing the high-class houses and all of the indulgences that could be found within (Rosen 1982:92). Descriptions of middle-class houses are very rare. However, from the few descriptions that do exist, middle-class houses appear to have catered to both middle-class affordability and sexual preferences. One former prostitute recounted “the prostitutes sat around in their underwear or wrappers, drank beer, joshed a lot in country talk, felt at home with the simple horny guests that came to them with dusty shoes and derbys [sic]. There was a morality about these places that mirrored the words of the whores and their guests. They were Mama and
Papa fuckers, doing it mostly the straight and American way, as they had been raised” (Rosen
1982:92). The average clients for these houses were “all those who figured the cost of their spending … the clerk, the wagon husky, the logger, the husband who wasn’t getting it properly at home … he would come to have his ashes hauled, his wick dipped – both expressions popular in these middle-class joints” (Rosen 1982:96). One working-class man gave an account of his experiences in a middle-class brothel: “Naturally as a wage laborer I couldn’t afford those luxury places … The real truth is, though, that an evening in any house, no matter what the going rate was reported to be, it always cost you as much as you had in your pocket.” Once inside the brothel, “the player piano only had FAST tunes … it seemed like everything they did was fast, especially take all your money and get you out of there so they could take on more customers.”
Upon venturing upstairs with a prostitute he recounted:
28
You wouldn’t believe how fast those girls could get their clothes off. Usually they’d
leave on their stockings and earrings, things like that. A man usually took off his trousers
and shoes. New girls didn’t give you a second to catch your breath before they’d be all
over you trying to get you to heat up and go off as soon as possible … when it came to
the actual act, though, the routine was standard … I think the girls could diagnose clap
better than the doctors at that time. She’d have a way of squeezing it that, if there was
anything in there, she’d find it. Then she’d wash it off with a clean wash cloth. She’d lay
on her back and get you on top of her so fast, you wouldn’t even know you’d come up
there on your own power. She’d grind so that you almost felt like you had nothing to do
with it. Well, after that, she had you. She could make it get off as quickly as she wanted
to … and she didn’t waste any time I’ll tell you … I’d say the whole thing, from the time
you got in the room until the time you came didn’t take three minutes. Then she’d wash
you off again, and herself. Then she’d get dressed, without even looking at you … you
could see she was already thinking about nothing but getting downstairs. But she’d be
smiling, though, as if everything was just fine and she’d had a good time … In fact, from
the time you’d come in the front door of the house until you’d be back out on the
banquette hardly even took more than fifteen minutes (Rosen 1982:96).
Although the experience could be quite impersonal, customers received the types of services they paid for depending on how much money they were willing to spend.
Various customers frequented the district. Regional governmental officials, all ranks of military personnel, immigrants, local business men, and transient labor forces from the fishing,
29
lumber, railroad, and all other port-related industries could all find sexual entertainment along the Line (McGovern 1976:72). Their social status and the amount of money they were willing to spend determined which level of establishment they frequented, but there were no social repercussions for frequenting the Line. The practice was so acceptable that some men from wealthy families supposedly paid by personal check (McGovern 1975:136). Many high-school aged boys had their first sexual encounters there and would visit nightly “in the first flush of discovery” (Walker 1955:93). Some men even went on to marry prostitutes, such as one
prominent local business man who married “French Louise” (McGovern 1975:138). Not much is
known about how prostitutes spent their free time. Reportedly, they would go to the movies or
take beach excursions during the afternoon, but they had to stay in the district at night to keep
order in town (McGovern 1975:138).
Pensacola was very tolerant of the district as long as it did not increase crime throughout
the city: “as a port city, Pensacola responded historically to the sexual desires of large numbers
of male transients by noteworthy permissiveness” (McGovern 1976:131) Simply, Pensacola
citizens felt that prostitution was an unavoidable result of being a port town that hosted so many
transient males. Therefore, citizens decided to tolerate and regulate prostitution instead of trying
to banish it completely, which would not only leave these men with nothing to do but cause
trouble while at port, but also make them less likely to spend money in Pensacola. Pensacola
resident Ann Thigpen verified the toleration of the district: “it was accepted. I mean we knew. I
mean everybody in town knew” (Thigpen 2014). She continued “we were a sea coast town.
Ships came in from all over the world back in those days. And that was where they headed. You
know?” (Thigpen 2014).
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At no point in history did local authorities or citizen organizations mount a sustained effort to shut the district down (McGovern 1975:133). Indeed, the fines that were levied against prostitutes were tantamount to licensing in that as long as prostitutes paid their fines and obeyed the rules, they were free to operate in Pensacola (McGovern 1976:73). Not only did the district serve the city by containing vice and other criminal activity in a highly regulated area, it provided funds for the city municipality through its fines. Therefore, while many red light districts throughout the rest of the United States were being shut down permanently during
WWI, Pensacola’s reopened for business and remained open for another 24 years ( Pensacola
News Journal 1917b).
Although Pensacola was in many ways keeping up with the progressive movement, the social reform movement had not yet taken shape. Pensacolans remained tolerant of their red light district and continued to view it as an asset rather than a drawback to their city and their economy. These attitudes are reflected in Pensacola’s contemporary newspapers. Surprisingly, very few newspaper articles focus on prostitution, indicating that prostitution and the red light district were so entrenched in daily life they did not warrant news coverage. In 1909, an article ran the results of a police raid in which 45 women convicted of being “lewd persons” were fined and forced to leave town within ten days ( Pensacola News Journal 1909). But the paper was far from congratulating the police on running these “moral deviants” out. Instead, the article condemned the authorities for using a temporary solution for a bigger problem:
Well, after they have been driven out, what then: Will it be possible to prevent others
from coming here to take their places? … If it helps this community – which we seriously
doubt – does it not do so at the expense of some other community? What does it do for
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the women themselves? Does it give them any better chance to lead clean lives than they
had before? Does it help them on the road to reform or simply accelerate their movement
down the road to hell? ( Pensacola News Journal 1909).
Indeed, the paper reflected the opinion that these women were not hated, evil women going against society, but were to be pitied as victims:
The social evil is one of those problems which the best thought of the world has so far
failed to solve … Whatever may have been the circumstances which led them into it, we
are convinced that very few of the women of the underworld continue year after year to
lead the immoral life from choice. The trouble is that, once into that life, they have no
way of getting out of it … we cannot conceive a more heartless policy than one which
contemplates the driving of these unfortunate people from one town to another … If there
is one creature in the whole world who deserves the sympathy of humanity it is the fallen
woman ( Pensacola News Journal 1909).
Not only was prostitution so common in Pensacola that it was un-newsworthy, the prostitutes themselves were considered victims that, if not out-right cared for, should at least be pitied and treated humanely.
In 1917 one of the most noteworthy instances of prostitution occurred when women conducted prostitution outside of the red light district ( Pensacola News Journal 1917a). While the event did not warrant a long story, the short article made clear that prostitution conducted outside of the red light district was frowned upon; yet the article’s title, “Stiff Fines Given by
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City Recorder” implies that citizens would be more impressed with how much the offenders were fined rather than with their crimes ( Pensacola News Journal 1917a). An examination of
The Pensacola News Journal ’s coverage of and attitude toward the red light district suggests that
prostitution was so entrenched in daily life that it was not normally worth commenting on.
Papers at the time often resorted to sensational journalism to sell more papers, and would print
any story deemed worthy of interest (Collins 2003:242). If the presence of the red light district
had been a source of scandal or controversy, the paper would most likely have printed more
stories about the district in order to increase the paper’s circulation.
When the United States took control of the Panama Canal in 1904, Pensacola’s citizens
thought the economic security and future growth of their city was ensured. Pensacola is the
closest deep water port to the canal, so citizens naturally thought that a large boom in business
would follow the canal’s completion (McGovern 1976:15). Pensacola had several exports that
would benefit greatly from the canal. In 1910 Pensacola ranked first on the Gulf Coast in
exporting timber, naval stores, and steel rails and third in cotton; however, the city relied solely
on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company and did not invest any further in its
infrastructure (McGovern 1976:20). This lack of infrastructure, coupled with the decrease in
European market demands for naval stores caused by WWI, meant that Pensacola could no
longer rely solely upon its port for economic stability (McGovern 1976:22-23). In 1912 at the
annual meeting of the Pensacola Commercial Association, city businessmen agreed that
emphasis should be placed on the area’s agricultural potential since the city lacked facilities to
promote industries or tourism (Pearce 1980:123). Timber and fishing, which had been
established as major exports for the city for decades, were turned to, but both industries were
severely damaged by hurricanes in 1906 and 1916 (McGovern 1976:25).
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During this time of economic fluctuation, the Navy opened the Aeronautic Center for the newly formed Naval Aeronautic Service at nearby Fort Barrancas in 1914 (Pearce 1980:126).
Gradually, Pensacola’s economy shifted away from its port and became dependent upon this military installation. Yet, during the time of the 1917 raid on the red light district, some revenue was still being made on other industries, which remained profitable until after the end of the war.
These profits on other industries meant that Pensacola was not yet fully dependent on the military for its economy, and could afford to ignore the threat of moving the military installation if prostitutes returned to the area by relying on other industries. After the war a high number of personnel were still stationed at the base. The combination of high numbers of military personnel looking for entertainment and Pensacolans’ permissive attitudes towards prostitution all but ensured the return of prostitutes to the red light district (Pearce 1980:158).
Despite the social shift in attitudes towards prostitution from a necessary evil to upholding the sexual double standard in the 1910s, by the mid-1920s the red light district functioned in Pensacola at only a slightly lower rate than it had been before WWI. This change
in social attitudes is reflected in the city directories, Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, and census
data pre and post-dating the 1917 raid. From 1885 when the first brothel is recorded in the
district to 1916 just before the raid, the numbers of confirmed brothels located within the district
ranged from a low of one in 1885 to a high of twenty-eight in 1910 (Webb 1885, United States
Census Bureau 1910).
The re-population of the district is somewhat visible in the available documents. In 1919,
only three households within the district could be confirmed as brothels (Polk 1919). In the 1920
census, several families of various ethnic backgrounds were listed as living along the 100-199
and 1-99 blocks of Zarragossa, territory which had until then almost exclusively housed definite
34
or likely brothels, while only five definite brothels remained (United States Census Bureau
1920). By 1927, the number of definite brothels increased to six, and more women than men were listed as heads of households from 1924 through 1927 in the area, indicating families may have moved out and prostitutes may have moved back in (Polk 1927). In 1930 no less than 20 households of women fitting the brothel pattern appeared on the census, but only two of the households were identified as definite brothels (United States Census Bureau 1930). Despite the fact that only a few brothels were positively identified at that time, potentially large numbers of unidentified brothels were present in the district. Throughout the 1930s the number of confirmed brothels ranged from eight in 1932 to two in 1936 (Sanborn Map Co. 1932; Polk 1934, 1936). In
1940, only one brothel could be positively identified, but eight households followed the brothel pattern on the 1940 census record (United States Census Bureau 1940). However, the Pensacola
News Journal reported that 15 brothels were included in the 1941 quarantine for venereal disease that effectively shut down the district.
Following the stock market crash in 1929, the country’s priorities were rearranged during the Great Depression. The nation became less preoccupied with moral decline and more concerned with employing and feeding its citizens. However, the Great Depression did not affect
Pensacola as badly as it did the rest of the nation. During the 1920s the transition in Pensacola’s economy from being reliant on various industries to dependent on the local military installation became complete; the Pensacola Chamber of commerce gave large parcels of land to the Naval
Aviation Station (NAS, the name newly changed from the Aeronautic Center) for landing strips, and it was estimated that 85 percent of the Navy’s payroll was spent in Pensacola (Pearce
1980:170, 177). By the late 1920s NAS had become the city’s most important economic asset
(McGovern 1976:92). Major industries that were primarily impacted by the Depression were not
35
present in Pensacola, therefore Pensacola only felt the peripheral effects of the Depression at first
(McGovern 1976:115). The city only turned to federal aid in 1932, after city officials refused to go into debt (McGovern 1976:120). However, NAS continued to grow throughout the 1930s, which cushioned Pensacola from the worst of the Depression (McGovern 1976:128).
The economic benefits of the base were not lost upon Pensacola; “The Chamber of
Commerce looked with horror on ‘any possible opinion on the part of the Navy that any of our citizens are not wholeheartedly cooperating to promote the welfare and happiness of the service and its personnel’” (McGovern 1976:137). Pensacolans knew that their city’s economic livelihood depended on keeping the base in Pensacola, and went out of their way to not only show that they appreciated the Navy’s presence through city-wide celebrations such as “Navy
Day”, but also that they would do whatever was in their power to keep the Navy pleased (Pearce
1980:177; McGovern 1976:137). The Navy responded by expanding the base’s facilities through
Works Progress Administration construction programs in the late 1930s, which employed local
Pensacola residents and brought more customers to Pensacola businesses (Pearce 1980:178).
However, expanding the base to boost Pensacola’s economy was not the immediate aim of the
Navy.
While international relations deteriorated in the late 1930s, the United States entered a
military preparedness program that had far-reaching effects on Pensacola. As the number of
military personnel stationed at NAS increased dramatically through the 1920s and 1930s, so did
the number of prostitutes in Pensacola. The 1930 census reflects this growth, with 20 households
following the brothel pattern of an older female head of household with multiple younger women
living with her (United States Census Bureau 1930). This increase of possible prostitution in the area was seen as a symptom of being a “Sailor Town” by locals, and therefore was somewhat
36
unavoidable (McGovern 1976:145). To accommodate servicemen in their extracurricular activities, locker rooms such as the one advertised in Figure 7 appeared in Pensacola (Figure 7).
Military personnel on leave were required to wear their uniforms, but would be reprimanded if they returned with an unkempt uniform (Abrahamson 2014). Therefore, to keep uniforms clean and to be more comfortable many men rented a locker in to deposit their uniforms while they hit the town in civilian clothing (Abrahamson 2014). Apparently this particular locker room, located a block north of the district, also offered waivers for sailors to have prostitutes and other women sign to avoid accusations of assault or proposed marriage (Figure 7). While these were serious allegations at any time, they were especially significant during the Great Depression when impoverished single women might try to take advantage of a service man’s steady paycheck by forcing him to marry with the threat of the possibility of an unwed pregnancy.
FIGURE 7. Military locker room card. Left , front of 1937 card; right, reverse of card (Courtesy Pensacola Historic Trust, 2014).
As it had been in WWI, the military was concerned about venereal disease rates in its fighting men at the onset of World War II (WWII), although it no longer had a social agenda of morality imposed on military personnel (Weatherford 2010:362). As part of the nation’s military
37
preparedness program, on March 27, 1941, the military decided to shut down the red light district and the City of Pensacola did nothing to hinder the military’s efforts (McGovern 1976). This time the attitude of the Pensacola News Journal led no public outcry against the action. Instead, it simply reported the facts of the case:
Suppression of prostitution and abolition of restricted districts which heretofore have
been under more or less regulation now is the adopted policy of the government in cities
and towns adjacent to large Army and Navy posts and in defense industrial areas. The
policy was agreed upon by the secretaries of war and the Navy and the surgeon general of
the public health service ( Pensacola News Journal 1941a).
In compliance with the military’s wishes, Dr. A.L. Stebbins, director of the city-county health unit, and Dr. W.T. Sowder, liaison officer for the public health service (who had been sent to Pensacola on the request of the Secretary of the Navy), went to all the houses in the district after consulting former medical documentation, and quarantined all of the inhabitants of 15 identified brothels for having gonorrhea and syphilis ( Pensacola News Journal 1941a). Placards warning of the diseases present in the houses were placed in the windows of the brothels.
Stebbins reported “the women on Zarragossa and Baylen Street were told that if they wanted to leave their houses they must leave the county and if they take up residence in other places those places will be placarded” ( Pensacola News Journal 1941a). This raid was the first time the quarantine law for contagious diseases had been used for venereal diseases to shut down a red light district in the United States. If prostitutes chose to remove the signs or leave the house, they faced up to a $1,000 fine and six months of jail time ( Pensacola News Journal 1941a).
38
Quarantine law gave city and county health officers full police power to cope with women who had been quarantined, and stated:
When the persons whose names are reported are known to be prostitutes, or to be
engaged in commercialized vice, it may be assumed that such persons cannot be trusted
to protect others from exposure to infection, and it is the duty of the health officer to take
immediate steps to isolate them without waiting to interview either the physician or the
patient. ( Pensacola News Journal 1941a).
The severity of the treatment of prostitutes was justified by Sowder’s report that two- thirds of the cases of venereal disease reported at NAS and Ft. Barrancas had originated in
Pensacola’s red light district rather than from street walkers (prostitutes that worked on the street outside of the brothel system) ( Pensacola News Journal 1941a). Faced with these options, most of the prostitutes who lived and worked on the Line chose to leave. By April 1, Sowder reported that the district had been cleaned out and that “most of the women have gone, except for a few old timers who had gotten rid of their girls and will stay on and take in boarders” ( Pensacola
News Journal 1941b). The effects on local military personnel were immediate. Sowder noted “a
‘precipitous’ decline in the number of service personnel who took prophalctic [sic] treatment at the city first aid station. The number has dropped from a high of 80 a night to an average of five he said” ( Pensacola News Journal 1941b). Unexpectedly, four marriages resulted from the raid as well; if prostitutes were married they were not required to leave town ( Pensacola News
Journal 1941b). Ironically, the military, who had given the Line so much business over the
39
years, would be the red light district’s downfall. This time, the red light district would not recover.
During the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, prostitution in America was considered a
socially acceptable, even necessary part of daily life as long as it was relegated to red light
districts. As the Progressive Era brought sweeping changes in social attitudes across the country,
prostitution went from a necessary evil to a social evil that upheld a sexual double standard for
men and women. As a result of these changing social perceptions and the dangers of venereal
disease for the military as the nation entered WWI, almost all red light districts across the
country were shut down by 1918. Spanning 56 years until its demise, Pensacola’s red light
district defied this trend. Although the district was ultimately shut down by the military before
the country entered WWII in 1941, the district itself followed national trends in its location,
regulation, and behavior of its residents.
Despite the historical documentation of Pensacola’s red light district, relatively little is
known about the prostitutes who lived and worked in the district themselves, especially along the
middle-class 100-199 block of West Zarragossa. How did these women spend their time? How
did they deal with health issues? Did they interact with much of the community, or did they keep
to themselves within the district? And what can be discerned about their customers? While
helpful in determining boundaries and social landscapes, historical documentation of the Line
cannot answer these questions effectively. Fortunately, a study of the material culture these
women left behind does shed light on the answers to these questions.
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CHAPTER IV
ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT AND SAMPLE SELECTION
In order to determine which artifacts from 8ES34 would provide the most information about the residents of the red light district, it was necessary to first establish the history of the site and the history of the site’s excavations and collections. This survey of the collections and the site’s history was essential in discerning how much provenience information was available for the artifacts, and therefore, which artifacts would be the most insightful based on their diagnostic attributes.
Site History
As is the case in many urban archaeological settings, the history of the site and its archaeology is complex. The site was first used as a residential area during the First Spanish
(1722 to 1763) and British (1763 to 1781) occupations of Pensacola. The site was occupied by the Panton Leslie and Co. Trading Company from 1785 to 1848, which encompassed the Second
Spanish (1781 to 1819) and American (1820 to present) occupation periods (Coker and
Watson1986). The headquarters consisted of a mansion, a warehouse, a store, and various outbuildings that occupied the majority of the block. On September 24, 1848 a fire that destroyed much of Pensacola also destroyed the Panton Leslie headquarters, leaving only the warehouse standing. At this point Dr. Isaac Hulse converted the damaged warehouse into a mansion for his father-in-law (who had been a partner in the Panton Leslie Company), John Innerarity (Coker and Watson 1986).
Innerarity and his wife lived in the mansion from 1850 until their deaths; their heirs sold the property to Dr. James Herron on January 1, 1873 (Sutton ca. 1976, Vickers 1981, Figure 8).
Dr. Herron converted the building to a seaman’s hospital, adding a tunnel to the property in 1876
41
that went directly from the hospital building to the bay so sick sailors would not interact with the community. The tunnel presumably prevented the spread of disease but more importantly reassured Pensacola citizens, since at that time hospitals were viewed as epicenters for death and disease rather than places of healing (Herron 1909). The building was used as a hospital at least
until 1892, and by 1897 until approximately 1903 it was used as tenement housing (Sanborn
Perris Map Co. 1892, 1897; Sanborn Map Co. 1903). The building was abandoned sometime
before 1907 and was ultimately destroyed by the 1916 hurricane (Sanborn Map Co. 1907, Sutton
ca. 1976).
FIGURE 8. Innerarity Mansion and Panton Mansion Ruins 1850 (Courtesy UWF Historic Trust, 2014).
In 1898 the first definitive brothel was located at the block, and by 1907 five brothels
were located along the north east portion of the block (Maloney 1898, Sanborn Map Co. 1907).
The site area remained occupied by brothels until the district was shut down, with only a few
42
years of sporadic occupation following the 1917 raid (Polk 1905, 1908, 1919) By the mid-1920s the prostitutes had reoccupied the area (Polk 1927). On June 9, 1935, the City of Pensacola acquired and converted the south western portion of the block into a park, and added a memorial to Alexander McGillivray (a leader of the Upper Creek and partner in the Panton Leslie
Company) in an effort to clean up the neighborhood (Sutton ca. 1976). On March 27, 1941, the
red light district was shut down permanently following the imposition of the quarantine law
(Pensacola News Journal 1941a). After the prostitutes left, the block was used for low- socioeconomic housing until 1975, when Escambia County began construction of the M. C.
Blanchard Judicial Center (Sutton ca. 1976). A surface parking lot was constructed over the
eastern half of the block, which included the lots of at least five former brothels in addition to the
area where the Innerarity Mansion/Panton Leslie warehouse and Panton Leslie Mansion once
stood. In 2000, the parking lot was removed and construction began on a multi-story parking
garage which still stands to this day.
Archaeological Excavations
As early as 1963, the archaeological importance of site was recognized by Leora Sutton,
an archivist and avocational archaeologist. In the spring of 1963 she was granted permission by
the city manager to excavate trenches in the city-owned property of the park (Sutton ca. 1964).
Using city workers and volunteer labor from the spring of 1963 to the fall of 1963, Sutton
excavated at least two trenches and probed along the walls of the western portion of the Panton
mansion (Sutton ca. 1964). She wrote a brief report about this excavation, but no other
paperwork or artifacts remain from this project.
In 1964, Sutton enlisted the help of Dr. Hale Smith of Florida State University to
excavate a portion of the Panton Leslie site while he was conducting a field school on Santa
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Rosa Island (Sutton ca. 1976). Smith excavated portions of the Panton Leslie mansion and the kitchen, but no collections or notes remain from the excavations. The only extant records are
brief mentions in Sutton’s 1976 report and a few excavation pictures (Sutton ca. 1976). The
excavation photos indicate that at least one trench was excavated along the southern boundary of
the city park, but no more detailed photos exist (Sutton ca. 1976, Figure 3). During either the
1963 or 1964 excavations, the site was designated 8ES34 by the state of Florida.
As early as 1966 the city began planning for a new governmental center that included the
block where site 8ES34 was located ( Pensacola News Journal 1966). As plans progressed, local historic preservation groups and individuals (including Sutton) became increasingly concerned about the impact of construction on site 8ES34. By January 29, 1974 it seemed likely that the county would preserve the site as a park and memorial (Dodson 1974), however as of June 21,
1974 the Pensacola Historic Preservation Society was budgeting for full excavation of the site, suggesting that a park to preserve the site was no longer an option (Pensacola Historic
Preservation Society 1974). On July 12, 1974 the state offered to contribute $36,000 in funding for excavation and analysis of the entire property that would have been impacted by construction, not just the lot where 8ES34 was located (Brown 1974). However, for the funding to be initiated, the city had to raise $35,000 to pay personnel who would have been working on
“one of the five most important archaeological sites in the Southeast” (Gund 1974).
Unfortunately, the city did not raise the necessary funds to complete excavations. With the funds the county had available they hired Leora Sutton to excavate the Panton Leslie site, but not the rest of the property used by the governmental center (Brown 1976). Sutton was granted more than eight weeks from August to December of 1975 and at least 12 county employees to assist with excavations (Sutton ca. 1976) Her primary objectives were to locate any historic buildings
44
and wells, to expose foundations of the Panton Leslie mansion, and to “rescue artifacts, to write a report of her findings, and to display the artifacts recovered in the Escambia County Courthouse lobby (Sutton ca. 1976). Sutton and her crew were given permission to dig as each owner sold their property to the Governmental Center Authority (Sutton ca. 1976).
In all, around 25 units were excavated on the lot, but unfortunately an accurate count cannot be obtained (Sutton ca. 1976). The bulk of Sutton’s notes still exist, but they consist primarily of lists of artifacts found in particular units which are named usually by excavator or former property owner. No full list of excavators or of units excavated exists, no accurate map of unit locations exists, and no provenience log exists, making it extremely difficult to determine unit locations and labels (Figure 9). Sutton did publish a report in 1976, but she only included an
FIGURE 9. Map of 1975 excavation unit locations (Courtesy UWF Historic Trust, 2014).
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incomplete verbal account of unit locations and descriptions based off of property boundaries and the Zarragossa Street’s sidewalk, none of which still exist (Sutton ca. 1976). When excavation and construction were complete, the M. C. Blanchard Judicial Center stood on what had been the block north of site 8ES34, and a parking lot was placed over the site itself.
In early September of 2000, the county began construction on a parking garage to replace
the parking lot (Figure 10). At the time, no county policy existed to protect archaeological sites
on county land (Ingram 2000). Therefore, construction trenches had already been started before
concerned staff of the UWF Archaeology Institute brought the situation to light (Lloyd 2000).
FIGURE 10. 2000 excavations (Courtesy Archaeology Institute, University of West Florida, 2000).
Once county commissioners were alerted to the potential destruction of the site, they
halted construction for seven days and allowed UWF archaeologists headed by Dr. Elizabeth
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Benchley to perform salvage excavations (Benchley 2000; Ingram 2000). Two long, “trench” units and eight square, “block” units had been opened by the earth moving equipment along the eastern half of the city block (Benchley 2000, Figure 11). UWF archaeologists assigned each
FIGURE 11. 2000 excavation units. 1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map with units in red, brothel locations in black (Figure by author, 2014). existing “unit” a different numerical designation, with trenches distinguished from blocks
(except in the case of Block Two, which was located at the western portion of Trench Two and was eventually incorporated into Trench Two, rendering Block Two non-existent). UWF personnel cleaned profile walls and documented features, and collected a sample of artifacts from the features (Benchley 2000). Accurate plan maps of the units as well as unit profile maps were kept, and the site was thoroughly photodocumented. Recovered artifacts were recorded in a
47
provenience log, however items identified as “modern refuse” were discarded without further documentation (Benchley 2000). A report is still in production.
History of the 8ES34 Collections
Archaeological collections can become separated from their associated paperwork over time. Artifacts are sometimes stored in different facilities, paperwork gets mis-filed, collections get donated to different organizations, and repositories move to different locations or become restructured, creating “orphan collections.” An orphan collection is broadly defined as “a collection that has lost curational support or whose owner has abandoned it” (Voss 2012:147).
Collections can become orphaned in a variety of ways including museum closures or cutbacks, curatorial staff retirement, or inadequate curational provisions for excavations (Voss 2012:147).
Orphan collections are often relegated to a lower level of care than other collections because of budget constraints, and “may remain unattended for years … As time passes … the collection becomes more and more isolated with fewer and fewer staff who possess adequate knowledge of its history. Such a setting greatly increases the danger of the collection losing all remaining research potential” (Marino 2004:44). The best way to combat this loss of institutional memory is rehousing the collection, which “is the only way to … return a collection to some level of usefulness with respect to scientific research” (Marino 2004:44). While they are often difficult to work with, orphan collections such as the 1975 Sutton collection, can be reassigned provenience information and yield informative data.
Initially, it was necessary to piece together what exactly had happened to the orphaned
Sutton collection between Sutton excavating it in 1975 and UWF acquiring it in 1986 in order to determine the relevance of remaining provenience information. From August through December
1975 Sutton excavated the site, and the artifacts were processed and stored in the Archives
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Building until the Judicial Center was complete (Sutton ca. 1976). From October 1975 through
August 1976, some of “the best of the artifacts” were put on display in the Escambia County
Courthouse lobby (Figure 12), then transferred to the newly completed M. C. Blanchard Judicial
Center lobby (Sutton ca. 1976).
FIGURE 12. Original courthouse display ca. 1976 (Courtesy UWF Historic Trust, ca. 1976).
The route of the artifacts from the 1975 Sutton collection from excavation, to analysis, to display and curation was difficult to follow. After the fact, Sutton submitted a bid on September
27, 1977 to sort the artifacts and make a display (Sutton 1977). On March 17, 1978, she signed a contract with the county authorizing her to sort and identify the collection, create a display, and do background research on the site (Beck 1978).
As early as October 20, 1977, the county acknowledged there would be no funds for storage or cataloging available for permanently housing the collection, and recommended it be donated to either the Pensacola Historical Society (PHS) or the Pensacola Historic Preservation
49
Board (Escambia County Administrative Committee 1977). Apparently, it went to neither. On
July 22, 1978, “20 grocery cartons” of artifacts from the site were accessioned by the TT
Wentworth Museum (Wentworth 1978). On October 13, 1983 the TT Wentworth Museum merged with the Historic Pensacola Preservation Board (HPPB), and all of the Wentworth collections were accessioned by the HPPB (Brosnaham 2010:107). At some point in early 1986,
Dr. Judy Bense, then head of the archaeology program at UWF, became aware that the HPPB had multiple archaeological collections it had acquired from the Wentworth merger that it was unable to curate in a manner that would be beneficial to future research. By March 1986, UWF acquired all of the archaeological artifact collections found in the County Court of Records
Annex Building (where some of the HPPB collections were stored), and reorganized them according to their site numbers (Pensacola Archaeological Society 1986). Sutton’s 1975 collection was part of this acquisition. The collection had been rehoused (put into archival storage materials) upon accession to UWF, and in October of 2011 it was rehoused again for this study. The collection physically moved several times both between institutional moves and to different storage facilities operated by the same institution during its tenure at each institution.
Unfortunately, during these moves portions of the collection had been mixed with other archaeological materials previously held by HPPB and PHS. The remainder of archaeological materials belonging to the HPPB and PHS (both of which later merged into West Florida
Historic Preservation Inc, [WFHPI], which is now UWF Historic Trust) were donated to UWF in
2012. The 2012 WFHPI donation has yet to be fully processed and was acquired after this research project was already underway. Therefore, only one artifact from the 2012 WFHPI donation, a dog license, was used in this study due to the artifact’s unique nature and likelihood of yielding significant qualitative data.
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Because the 1975 collection transferred to UWF in 1986 had not been utilized for 25 years, many of the bags had started to deteriorate. The entire collection was stabilized and rehoused in modern archival materials, cleaned, and processed. Once that was complete, it was attempted to establish provenience information for the collection. After searching multiple repositories for Sutton’s excavation notes and maps and interviewing the then-98-year-old Sutton herself in 2012, it became apparent that linking artifacts to their original units would be extremely difficult, and establishing precise unit locations or even knowing the exact number of units excavated would be impossible. Very little of the information on the Sutton notes, bag labels, artifact labels, maps, and final report was internally consistent. Once it was determined that more provenience information was not forthcoming, the collection was provenienced based on its bag labels, processed, and entered into a database. All of Sutton’s papers were digitized so that later researchers can use them and potentially link artifacts with some provenience information should new documentation about her work be uncovered.
The M. C. Blanchard Judicial Center display had remained largely untouched throughout the years (Figure 13). Sutton was placed in charge of caring for the display (Beck 1978). While some artifacts thought to be associated with later building renovations were removed from the original 1970s display and donated to UWF by the Judicial Center in 2012 (as became apparent after closely examining early photographs of the original display found in Sutton’s paperwork), the majority of the display collection has not moved from its position in the lobby. At some point it seems that Sutton loaned display artifacts to other Pensacola institutions. One record indicates that some items were loaned to the Pensacola Art Center, however no date is included in this document (Sutton [1970s]). These artifacts, at least, were returned to the display.
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FIGURE 13. M. C. Blanchard Judicial Center display (Photo by author, 2013).
In the summer of 2013 the author cleaned the entire Judicial Center display and photodocumented the artifacts that appeared most likely to warrant inclusion into this research.
An arbitrary numbering system was assigned to these artifacts, but a full catalog of every artifact in the display was not created at the time of the project. An updated display is in the preliminary planning stages for the Judicial Center, at which time the entirety of the artifacts on display will be catalogued.
The 2000 collection’s provenience information remained intact. It was cleaned, processed, and housed in archival materials after it was excavated; and the collection and its paperwork were both curated in UWF facilities. The collection was rehoused into more current archival materials, and all of its artifacts were double-checked as to their identification and re- entered into its database if any corrections were found before being included in this research.
Sample Selection
Due to the inconsistencies in the Sutton collection’s paperwork, and the lack of precise horizontal and vertical control in non-feature portions of the 2000 collection’s unit walls, the
52
author determined that it would be best to examine the residents of this quadrant of the district as a whole instead of as the residents of any particular brothel (Figure 14). This study was made
× × × × ××
××× × × ×× × × ×× ×× × × × × × ×
× × ×× × ××× × × ××× × ×
×
FIGURE 14. Excavation units in the red light district.1907 Sanborn Fire Insurance map with 1975 unit approximate locations in blue, 2000 excavation unit locations in green, and positive brothel locations in red (Figure by author, 2014). possible by the strict borders of the district, the identification of brothels that were consistently occupied by prostitutes from the 1890s through 1941 in Sanborn maps and city directories, and
53
the knowledge that the general location of most of Sutton’s units were in the portion of the block that was occupied by the most brothels on the block.
Therefore, temporally diagnostic artifacts that date from between the 1890s through 1941 from these excavations are very likely to be from brothel contexts, and were included in this study. All proveniences from the 1975 collection were included, while proveniences that were associated with strictly colonial features from the 2000 excavation were excluded from this study. Artifacts from Blocks Three and Four from the 2000 excavation were also excluded from this study because their locations correspond to buildings that were occupied consistently by
African American laborers rather than by prostitutes. All artifacts dating from the correct time
period were included from the Judicial Center Display.
The main goals of this research were to demonstrate how prostitutes went about their
daily lives, how prostitutes interacted with the surrounding community, and what, if anything,
could be ascertained about their customers. Therefore, it was necessary to first identify the types
of artifacts that could yield the most information about the daily workings of the red light district
residents, then date those artifacts as accurately as possible. The artifacts that were determined to
be from the correct date range from the entirety of each collection were then analyzed for
qualitative and broad quantitative data. Although the artifacts from the 1975 Sutton collection
and the Judicial Center Display were from the same excavation, they were analyzed as separate
data sets due to the inability to bring the Judicial Center Display collection back to the lab and
process it into a workable database. Artifacts that were readily identifiable based on diagnostic
attributes such as bases, finishes, product labels, and makers marks were the main focus of this
study in order to yield accurate dates and the maximum amount of qualitative data for each item.
54
After both the 1975 and 2000 collections were processed and entered into UWF archaeological databases, it became clear that the type of information that was included about each artifact was unsatisfactory for the purposes of this thesis. Many of the artifacts had been only identified generally and included into the “other” category (Table 1). In order to find artifacts within the collections that would yield the most information about red light district residents, it became necessary to determine what kinds of objects had been recovered from other
American red light districts and double check the ambiguously categorized artifacts to ensure all pertinent artifacts were being analyzed.
TABLE 1 UWF DATABASE CLASSIFICATIONS FOR 2000 AND 1975 EXCAVATIONS
2000 1975 South 2000 1975 Material Type Further Information Weight Weight Group Count Count in Grams in Grams Activities Glass 63 714.3 61 793.7 Activities Lithics 10 4084.2 46 4567.9 Activities Metal 108 636.8 397 15497.16 Activities Modified Fauna 2 15.2 1 15.7 Activities Other 2 5.4 2 19.3 Architecture Building Material 1334 172463.7 222 69982.4 Architecture Glass 133 201.7 34 144.4 Architecture Lithics 1 1425.3 3 605.5 Architecture Metal 951 3681 1915 12075.6 Architecture Modified Flora 1 477.1 1 100.3 Architecture Other 1 0.1 Arms Lithics 7 1 7 49.2 Arm s Metal 92 88.1 17 206 Arms Other 1 23.1 Clothing Ceramics Porcelain 1 0.8 Clothing Glass 35 2.3 1 85-164 Clothing Metal 53 16 31 99.4 Clothing Modified Fauna 15 16.9 1 19-85 Clothing Other 3 1.6 Furniture Metal 26 434.4 4 14.5 Kitchen Building Material 3 33.4 Kitchen Ceramics Unspecified Euro -American 1 3.9 5 6
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2000 1975 South 2000 1975 Material Type Further Information Weight Weight Group Count Count in Grams in Grams Kitchen Ceramics Coarse Earthenware 135 6376 .6 96 2559 Kitchen Ceramics Creamware 237 837 915 3942.4 Kitchen Ceramics Delft 21 352 23 139.1 Kitchen Ceramics Faience 8 70.6 2 21.8 Kitchen Ceramics Ironstone 3 148.5 8 654.2 Kitchen Ceramics Majolica 3 65.3 10 75.1 Kitchen Ceramics Pearlware 136 579.6 1275 5024.64 Kitchen Ceram ics Porcelain 26 186.8 202 1142.5 Kitchen Ceramics Redware 37 649.7 13 135 Kitchen Ceramics Refined Earthenware 3 4.3 23 186.5 Kitchen Ceramics Stoneware 48 1492.8 325 11312.1 Kitchen Ceramics Whiteware 108 3194.1 1403 15660.1 Kitchen Ceramics Yellowware 2 142.2 69 928.8 Kitchen Ceramics Native American 4 7.2 5 74 Kitchen Glass Unspecified 894 2522.6 420 6040.8 Kitchen Glass Carboy Bottle 1 94.7 Kitchen Glass Case Bottle 1 5.6 19 408.6 Kitchen Glass Condiment Bottle 1 6.9 45 3449.2 Kitchen Glass Flask 57 3825.7 46 2756.7 Kitchen Glass Milk Bottle 2 166.2 1 64.5 Kitchen Glass Other Bottle 176 3404.2 440 8591.2 Kitchen Glass Pharmaceutical Bottle 20 1124.3 103 3844.4 Kitchen Glass Soda Bottle 37 3613.3 66 33 74.4 Kitchen Glass Bottle Stopper 10 99 43 477.2 Kitchen Glass Wine Bottle 257 5210.7 501 13912.5 Kitchen Metal 43 730.7 45 2420.9 Kitchen Metal Bottle Seal 1 1.1 1 8.7 Kitchen Metal Cap 46 217.3 7 60.1 Kitchen Modified Fauna 1 0.5 Personal Modified Fauna 1 47.1 Personal Ceramics Faience 1 144.1 1 4.8 Personal Glass Cologne Bottle 23 739.8 Personal Glass Cosmetic Bottle 16 1273.8 Personal Glass Nail Polish Bottle 1 31 Personal Glass Jewelry 2 0.4 3 263.4 Personal Glass Mirror Glass 19 77.8 Personal Glass Thermometer 3 2.6 Personal Lithics Pencil Lead 3 0.3 Personal Lithics Precious Stone 1 19-86
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2000 1975 South 2000 1975 Material Type Further Information Weight Weight Group Count Count in Grams in Grams Personal Metal Button Eye 1 0.6 Personal Metal Coin 1 1.5 2 4.7 Personal Metal Compact 2 11.6 Personal Metal Jewelry 6 16 3 10.2 Personal Metal Key 7 45.7 Personal Metal Metal Blade 1 6.3 Personal Metal Metal Ornament 2 15.2 Pe rsonal Metal Personal Hygiene 3 10.6 Personal Metal Purse Frame 1 116.3 Personal Metal Shoe Hardware 4 0.2 Personal Metal Straight Razor 1 55.7 Personal Metal Tag 2 7.1 Personal Metal Watch Part 2 41.4 Personal Modified Fauna Pipe Stem 1 2.8 Personal Modified Fauna Die 1 Personal Modified Fauna Toothbrush 1 3.3 1 1.4 Personal Other Comb 37 18.8 Personal Other Doll Part 2 0.9 1 1.6 Personal Other Bead 1 2.1 Personal Other Personal Hygiene 1 7.2 Tobacc o Other Vanity Set 1 2.7 Tobacco Ceramics Coarse Earthenware 30 55.3 96 215 Tobacco Glass Snuff Bottle 1 186.2 4 44.5 Unspecified Fauna 27 6651.2 62 5118.5 Unspecified Flora 2 32992.2 1 81.8 Unspecified Glass 4 28.6 5 81.7 Unspecified Lithi cs 1 995.6 3 928.6 Unspecified Metal 68 4018.3 60 3781.7 Unspecified Metal Bottle Closure 161 285.6 3 33.1 Unspecified Modified Fauna 1 1.6 1 57.3 Unspecified Other 2 46656.8 6 739.3
Artifact Assemblage Used for Analysis
In total, 610 artifacts were considered from four collections for this analysis. Almost all of the artifacts came from the 1975 Sutton excavation collection, the Judicial Center Display from Sutton’s excavation, and the 2000 UWF excavations. One artifact, a dog license, was
57
included from a collection of artifacts donated to UWF from WFHPI in 2012. This artifact originated from the 1975 Sutton excavations, as did several other artifacts included in this donation. It was the only artifact from the 2012 donation included in the study because of its unique nature. The donation had yet to be processed at the time this thesis was being written, and the full collection was not available for analysis.
The artifacts used for the current analysis were divided into six categories: Medical
Paraphernalia, Contraceptives, Toiletries and Cosmetics, Personal Adornment Items, Customers’
Personal Items, and Other Personal Items. Table 2 provides a summary of the items included in this analysis (Table 2).
TABLE 2 ARTIFACTS ANALYZED FROM EACH COLLECTION
Judicial 2000 1975 TT Wentworth Artifact Category Center Excavation Excavation Donation Display Medical 41 209 28 0 Paraphernalia Contraceptives 1 27 3 0 Toiletries & 10 78 38 0 Cosmetics Personal 58 9 39 0 Adornment Items Customers' 3 0 14 0 Personal Items Other Personal 3 12 37 1 Items
Medical Paraphernalia consisted of glass bottles (chemical, pharmaceutical, patent, and pill), vials, and syringes. Some items are associated with douching, which was included in the
Contraceptives category, however the artifacts were included in the Medical Paraphernalia category if their primary function was to fight disease rather than prevent pregnancy.
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Contraceptives included condom tins, douching paraphernalia, and items used for spermicidal lubricant (such as olive oil and Vaseline). While some douching paraphernalia such as nozzles could be used for medicine application to fight disease rather than prevent pregnancy, most of the other douching-related items (specifically douching solutions) found at the site were related to pregnancy prevention rather than medical application. Therefore, the douches themselves were included in the Contraceptives category.
Toiletries and Cosmetics consisted of cosmetic containers, cosmetic applicators, mirrors, shaving razors, and personal hygiene items. This category was constructed to emphasize bodily enhancements through physically altering a prostitute’s appearance. Personal Adornment Items included beads, jewelry, shoe enhancements, and other visible items such as purses. This category demonstrates how prostitutes used objects to reflect their wealth, identity, and mobility within the community. Customers’ Personal Items were items that were most likely left at the site by prostitutes’ customers. These items included campaign cards, coins, key chains, work pins, and military regalia.
The final category, Other Personal Items, consisted of items that did not readily fit into the above categories, but the insight they offered about life within the red light district warranted their inclusion in this study. These items included clothing fasteners, sanitary napkin pad clips, toys, and dog licenses. The sanitary napkin clip was not included in any of the above categories because it was not used to fight disease, prevent pregnancy, or alter the outward appearance of the prostitutes. Rather, it was an item used to enhance the prostitute’s daily life through cleanliness. Clothing fasteners included in this study also did not significantly alter the outward appearance of prostitutes or their clients. Rather, they were utilitarian items that were attached to clothing not for decoration or by choice of the garment owner, but were instead used to keep
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clothing on the body. The fasteners were included in this study because they indicate socio- economic status of the garment owner and indicate what type of garment they were attached to.
It is unsurprising that prostitutes living in Pensacola’s red light district left behind large
numbers of medical items, toiletries, and personal items. Archaeological excavations of other red
light districts across the nation and throughout the history of the United States reveal similar
patterns of artifact deposits (Cheek and Seifert 1994; Bonasera 2000; Costello 2000; Seifert et al.
2000; Powell 2002; Crist 2005; Ketz et al. 2005; Meyer et al. 2005; Spude 2005; Yemin 2005;
Horobik 2011; Gensmer 2012). While a quantitative analysis of these collections’ assemblages
would be incomplete without the inclusion of the artifacts from the 2012 WFHPI donation, the
in-depth qualitative analysis conducted in this study provides insight into how prostitutes and
their customers interacted with each other and the surrounding community.
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CHAPTER V
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
In both fictional and academic representations, prostitutes are often depicted as static, impersonal figures. From this viewpoint prostitutes living in brothels follow a preconceived notion of social rules. For example, they are always located in or around their brothel because they are considered social outcasts. They display their bodies and paint their faces more than average women as part of their identity as a prostitute and to set themselves apart from others in order to bond with one another and advertise for clients (Gensmer 2012). Prostitutes working in brothels are single, fun-loving, high-class courtesans with “hearts of gold” who are clean and disease-free because the madams provide immediate medical care (Rosen 1982:105). In a similar vein, prostitutes’ customers are depicted as faceless “Johns” who simply pay for entertainment and sometimes provide anecdotes about their experiences after the fact. In most historical and archaeological studies of prostitution, customers are barely mentioned at all. By studying personal artifacts such as medical paraphernalia, contraceptives, toiletries and cosmetics, personal adornment items, and both customers’ and prostitutes’ personal items; new information about the daily lives of prostitutes, and the manner in which prostitutes and their customers navigated the social realities of the red light district and the greater Pensacola community can be better understood.
Medical Paraphernalia
Due to the nature of their work, prostitutes were highly prone to contracting diseases.
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are given the most attention throughout the literature on prostitution, but the constant exchange of bodily fluids inherent in prostitution means that prostitutes were susceptible to everything from the common cold to the yellow fever outbreaks
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that plagued Pensacola periodically during the time the district operated. Therefore, it stands to reason that high numbers of medical paraphernalia should be present in a red light district archaeological assemblage. In fact, this phenomenon has been noted in several previous excavations of red light districts around the nation (Cheek and Seifert 1994; Bonasera 2000;
Costello 2000; Seifert et al. 2000; Powell 2002; Crist 2005; Ketz et al. 2005; Meyer et al. 2005;
Spude 2005; Yemin 2005; Horobik 2011; Gensmer 2012). Pensacola is no exception to this trend. Of the 3,666 pieces of glass present in the assemblage of all three collections, 292 pieces of glassware were identified as being medicinal paraphernalia that date from the late 1880s-1941
(Figure 15). The frequencies of different kinds of medical bottles present suggest what form of medication prostitutes preferred. The high number of pharmaceutical bottles compared to patent
Chemical 22
Stopper 41
Applicator 3
Pharmaceutical 150 Patent 32
Homeopathic 45
FIGURE 85. Medical bottles and closures by count (Figure by author, 2014).
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and homeopathic indicates that Pensacola prostitutes could and did afford prescription medications. Unfortunately, qualitative information about the contents is limited for pharmacy bottles and homeopathic vials: contents were mixed in the pharmacies, bottles were mass produced, and the paper used to label contents have since deteriorated (Griffenhagen and Bogard
1999:36). Despite these limitations, medical bottles can yield other kinds of information.
The practice of medicine at the turn of the 20 th century was not yet fully developed to today’s standards. Across the medical profession no one knew what caused most diseases, therefore medicines tended to treat the symptoms rather than the causes of patients’ ailments
(usually with large percentages of alcohol or opiates) (Haller and Haller 1974:277). People suffering from illness basically had three options when they desired treatment: they could obtain a prescription from a doctor or pharmacist, rely upon proprietary (otherwise known as “patent”) medicines, or self-medicate with remedies made at home (Bonasera 2000:371). Patients considered many factors when making a decision on which type of medication to choose.
According to Stage (1979:47) at the turn of the 20 th century physicians were not trusted due to their reliance on dangerous and ineffective therapeutic techniques. Known as “heroic” treatments due to their severe impact on the patient, popular cure-alls included blood-letting, purging, leeches, and blistering (Stage 1979:47). Physicians were even less appealing to women suffering from “female complaints” because doctors often performed drastic and unnecessary or invasive surgeries (such as ovariotomies, hysterectomies, and even clitoridectomies) when no cure could be found (Stage 1979:81). The distrust generated by these practices led patients to seek alternative medications, and proprietary medicines seemed to offer a more gentle solution.
Patent medicines initially became very popular in the late 19 th century due to the public’s distrust of physicians’ heroic therapies (Stage 1979:45). Economics played an important role in
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medical choices as well. Only the wealthy could afford to consult a physician, while patent medicines were relatively inexpensive and readily available (Hodgson 2001:103). Patent medicines also contained high percentages of alcohol and opiates as their active ingredients to relieve the symptoms of disease. The alcohol and opiates made patent medicines addictive and ensured that people who consumed them would continue to purchase the medicine (Hodgson
2001:103). Ultimately the rise of mass advertising probably influenced people in need of medication the most. By the late 19 th century advertising agents promoted medications across the nation in daily newspapers with often fraudulent claims of miraculous cures to ever expanding audiences (Stage 1979:165). The other option patients had for treatment was self-medication.
Recipe books for making medicine at home were available to the public. These recipes also included large amounts of opiates and alcohol (Hodgson 2001:106).
At the turn of the century in Pensacola, there were quite a few pharmacies prostitutes could choose from to obtain their medications. Many were located just a few blocks from the red light district. An analysis of the pharmacy bottles in the archaeological assemblage reveals a sample of the pharmacies patronized by red light district residents at different periods in time.
From about 1870-1920, pharmacies often embossed their bottles with their names and addresses as a form of advertising (Griffenhagen and Bogard 1999:36). At this time, pharmacies ordered their bottles in various sizes in bulk from large glass manufacturing companies (Griffenhagen and Bogard 1999:36). For an extra fee, pharmacies could submit a unique design for an embossment made from a flat plate in the bottle mold. This plate could be exchanged for other plates for different pharmacies’ orders (Griffenhagen and Bogard 1999:36). Cross referencing these embossments’ addresses with listings in the city directories, provided dates for the bottle to within the few years. And by comparing these locations to other pharmacies that were in
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Pensacola during the same time periods, it can be determined with a fair degree of certainty which pharmacies the red light district residents preferred over others. However, the majority of the pharmaceutical bottles that were recovered from the red light district had no embossments besides container size and graduation marks, and cannot be traced to specific pharmacies.
Therefore, it is possible that in addition to the pharmacies identified through embossed bottles, other pharmacies may be represented by unmarked bottles. Although not all bottles were embossed, the embossed bottles do indicate at least a sample of the pharmacies prostitutes preferred (Figure 16, Table 3).
FIGURE 16. Embossed pharmacy bottle origins. 1896 map with embossed pharmacy bottle locations in relation to red light district (Figure by author, 2014).
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TABLE 3 FIGURE 3 KEY
Figure 3 Years Pharmacy Artifact Label Embossment was at this Number Color Location Hargis' Pharmacy 107 E. Romana ST. Blue 1898 13N-7 Pensacola, FLA Hargis' Pharmacy No. 215 S. Palafox ST. Yellow 1900-1903 13N-8 Pensacola, FLA Hargis Pharmacy American National Bank Pink 1911-1914 13N-4 BLDG. Pensacola, FLA Mountain Mint Tonic Prepared Solely by Green 1893-1920 13N-11 P.E. Hannah M.D. Pensacola, FLA Orange The Crystal Pharmacy Pensacola, FLA 1908 -1920 00P -110 -4 Depot Dr ug Store, H. L. Bryans M. D. Prop. Purple 1909-1914 00P-18-7 Pensacola, FLA Depot Drug Store, H. L. Bryans M. D. Prop. Purple 1909-1914 00P-20-45 Pensacola, FLA Depot Drug Store, H. L. Bryans M. D. Prop. Purple 1909-1914 13N-9 Pensacola, FLA
In all, eight embossed bottles were recovered from the site from the 2000 excavation and from the Judicial Center Display. Three were from the Hargis Pharmacy, three were from Depot
Drug Store, one was from the Crystal Pharmacy, and one was from Hannah’s Pharmacy (Figure
17).
All but the bottle from Hannah’s included addresses for the pharmacies. The Hannah’s bottle was for a specific medicine, “Mountain Mint Tonic”, which was probably used to ease digestive issues since this was the main use for mint at the time (Hein 2007). Hannah’s
Pharmacy was one of the longest operating pharmacies in Pensacola. First appearing in the city directory in 1893, it was listed in the directories at various addresses until 1920 (Rosenbleeth
1981:20-21). Unfortunately since there is no address on the bottle it is impossible to narrow down when the bottle was sold or from which location.
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FIGURE 17. Date range and count of embossed pharmacy bottles (Figure by author, 2014).
The Crystal Pharmacy bottle has a similar dating issue. This pharmacy was located at 25
South Palafox consistently from 1908-1920. The Crystal Pharmacy was located three blocks north and one block east of the project area within the red light district. At any given time during this time period, there were roughly 10 pharmacies closer to the district than the Crystal
Pharmacy, many of which would have had to be passed on the way to this pharmacy. The Depot
Drug Store, which was located even further northeast from the district than the Crystal
Pharmacy, had three bottles present in the assemblage. Listed in the city directory at 108 E
Wright in 1909 and 1914, the Depot Drug Store is a full seven blocks north and two blocks east of the project area within the red light district (Rosenbleeth 1981:20). For these two years, it was the pharmacy that was furthest away from the red light district. It is also one of the two pharmacies with the highest frequency of embossed bottles present at the site, indicating that despite its distant location, it was a pharmacy preferred by red light district residents.
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The other highest frequency bottles are from the Hargis Pharmacy (Figure 18). The
Hargis bottles yield the most information because each displays a different address with
corresponding years of use. According to the city directories, the bottle from 107 East Romana
dates to 1898 (Rosenbleeth 1981:21). In this year, five pharmacies were located between the
district and the Hargis pharmacy, which was three blocks north and three blocks east of the
project area. By the years 1900 and 1903 the Hargis pharmacy had moved to within two blocks
north and one block east of the project area at 215 South Palafox, and only one block north of the
district as a whole, becoming one of three of the closest pharmacies to the project area. It
remained one of the three closest in 1911, 1913, and 1914 when it was listed as located at 8 East
Government (Rosenbleeth 1981:21).
FIGURE 18. Hargis Pharmacy bottles. Upper left , Hargis bottle dating to 1898, 13N-7; upper right, Hargis bottle dating to 1900-1903, 13N-8; below, Hargis bottle dating to 1911-1914, 13N- 4 (Photos by author, 2013). 68
While the Hargis Pharmacy was not exceptionally far away from the district, the continued purchases from this particular pharmacy over a 17 year time span from multiple locations indicate that as consumers, prostitutes preferred to use the Hargis Pharmacy. This customer loyalty may have been due to the fact that a woman was behind the counter. Modeste
Hargis became the first licensed pharmacist in the state of Florida on August 3, 1893 and went to work in the pharmacy bearing her family name (The Times-Picayune 1893). Between 1898 and
1903 her brother, R. W. Hargis owned the pharmacy, but by 1905 she was listed as the owner
(Rosenbleeth 1981:21). She was the only female pharmacist in Pensacola listed in the city directories from 1893 through 1920 (Rosenbleeth 1981). Due to the nature of their work and the kinds of health issues they would have experienced, it is highly likely that prostitutes would have preferred to do business with a female rather than a male pharmacist. Indeed, having prostitutes as clients could have been highly profitable for druggists. Their susceptibility to illness would have made them reliant upon many medications, as can be seen in the amount of medicinal bottles in the red light district’s assemblage. This constant demand for medications may explain why the Hargis Pharmacy relocated to an area at least a block closer to the district from 1900 through 1914 than it was in 1898.
As can be seen in Figure 19, a relatively low percentage of pharmacies in operation in
Pensacola were definitively frequented by prostitutes (Figure 19). While this observation is undoubtedly skewed by sample bias and the lack of bottles with embossments, it does provide a glimpse into the consumer behavior of prostitutes regarding their health. One would assume that due to the marginality of the prostitutes’ status in society and their sequestration in a designated red light district, prostitutes would frequent the closest pharmacies available to them without venturing into the community that marginalized them. However, the archaeological assemblage
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challenges this assumption. Not only did prostitutes purchase from pharmacies that were the furthest away from them, they avoided drug stores that were within the boundaries of the red light district. While some pharmacies (including the Hargis Pharmacy) advertised delivery across town, the Depot Drug Store did not, therefore prostitutes likely purchased medications from the
Depot Drug Store in person (Rosenbleeth 1981). The absence of other pharmacy bottles that were located much closer to and even within the district (many of which also offered embossed bottles) is also telling.
FIGURE 19. Pharmacies frequented compared to pharmacies available from 1880-1920 (Figure by author, 2014).
The most notable drug store that is not represented in the assemblage is Sheppard’s
Pharmacy. In operation from at least 1885-1916, Sheppard’s Pharmacy was located a block to the east of the project area at 401 and 405 South Palafox; technically within the boundaries of the district itself (Rosenbleeth 1981:22). While Sheppard’s was not known to have any medicinal bottles embossed with the name and address of the pharmacy, it did sell “Sheppard’s Southern
Chill Tonic” (Rosenbleeth 1981:24). It seems unlikely that Sheppard’s would have had a specific kind of medication embossed with the pharmacy name, but no simple embossment with just the pharmacy name and address on a regular pharmaceutical bottle. Yet no such bottle is known to
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exist in other collections (Rosenbleeth 1981:24). It is possible that a Sheppard’s Pharmacy bottle was at the site but was missed through sampling bias, but since that multiple bottles from more than one other pharmacy are present, it seems more likely that prostitutes were not regular customers at Sheppard’s Pharmacy. Considering the distances prostitutes were willing to travel outside of the district for their health issues, the nature of interactions with the outside community may have been more of a factor in their pharmaceutical choices than locational convenience.
Although pharmaceutical bottles do not yield much insight as to what prostitutes were being treated for, other data sets can be utilized to illustrate what might have been their ailments.
In 2011 Heather Horobik studied the medicinal bottle assemblage of a red light district in Ouray,
Colorado. In order to understand what kinds of health issues past prostitutes likely would have suffered from, she compared three modern health studies conducted on sex workers. She found that in all the studies:
Problems detailed in modern literature include the expected STDs, sexual assault, drug
and alcohol abuse and addiction, pregnancy, and miscarriages. The authors also found
that dental problems, respiratory problems, skin problems, stomach problems, various
body pains and numbness, vision problems, facial sores and rashes, bleeding ulcers,
sterility, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety problems, and eating
disorders were common health issues for modern sex workers. (Horobik 2011:39).
While these conditions may not represent the exact health issues historic prostitutes faced, they do serve as an indicator of general health concerns of prostitutes. She adds “while
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new illnesses have arisen during the last century, many historic health problems have decreased due to advances in hygiene, waste disposal, and the medical profession. In light of these issues the probability that historic sex workers suffered from higher rates of health problems should be kept in mind” (Horobik 2011:40). Despite the fact that the bulk of the pharmaceutical bottles found at the red light district in Pensacola do not have information concerning their contents, the few that do can be used to correlate the types of identifiable ailments present at this site with those of the 21 st century.
Several types of patent medicines were also recovered from 8ES34, including at least two
Listerine bottles. Before the 1920s when it started being used primarily to treat halitosis (a term for bad breath invented by the company), Listerine was advertised as both “an external and internal cleaner”, and was considered to be an effective treatment for gonorrhea (Levitt and
Dubner 2005:91). From the physician’s perspective, it was difficult to determine the date the disease was contracted and its source at the turn of the century because “women, as a rule, are less communicative and truthful regarding their amours than men are” (Taylor 1900:155). To treat gonorrhea in women “the prime essentials are scrupulous cleanliness, copious antiseptic injections and flushings, and constant care as to details” (Taylor 1900:166). “Flushings” of the vagina were considered a staple for female cleanliness at this time, and were used to treat a variety of ailments, such as gonorrhea (Stage 1979:127).
One distinctive brown bottle with a quilt-like embossed pattern on a portion of the body contained Mercury Bichloride Antiseptic Tablets. At the turn of the century, the most common medical use for mercury was as a treatment for syphilis (Taylor 1900:670). Mercury had been used to treat syphilis since the early 18 th century and continued to be the preferred treatment
method for both men and women until the advent of penicillin in 1943 (Bynum et. al. 2006). In
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general it took two to two and a half years to “cure” a patient of syphilis, but many factors including:
weakly, cachectic persons of poor fibre; flabby subjects; … underweight individuals;
persons with very light and sandy complexion; those suffering from … adynamic
conditions or influences; those having visceral disease of any kind or any inherited or
acquired morbid tendency; and particularly persons addicted to alcoholic indulgences –
are liable to suffer more or less severely from syphilis, and that in such cases the
prognosis is less favorable and a longer time for cure may be required” (Taylor 1900:671-
672).
With so many factors negatively impacting the treatment of syphilis, patients suffering from the disease often took more than two years to “cure.” It was also recommended that tobacco and alcohol use be stopped during treatment due to their negative impacts on the treatment and that
“it is almost unnecessary to say that excessive sexual indulgence are depressing and exhausting and that they are to be avoided. Very many cases of cerebral and nervous syphilis have their origin in sexual excess,” which does not bode well for prostitutes (Taylor 1900:673).
As to the pills of mercury themselves, they were not considered great treatment options.
They tended to dissolve in the mouth too quickly and were irritating to the stomach and liver, making hypodermic needle the preferred treatment method (Taylor 1900:674). The side effects of mercury treatment were not pleasant. Patients taking mercury orally could expect “sponginess and bleeding of the gums, necrosis of the jaw bones, strangulation, irritation of the skin, gangrene, and ulcerated cheeks”, sometimes to the point of losing their lower jaw completely
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(Haller and Haller 1974:268). Traditionally opium was prescribed to counteract the effects of mercury on the stomach, but by 1900 stomach bitters were recommended instead due to a high rate of patients becoming addicted to opium. Opium also made it more difficult to determine how the disease was responding to treatment (Taylor 1900:676).
The mercury bichloride bottle features a quilt-like pattern on its shoulders and body to illustrate that its contents were poisonous if taken incorrectly (Fike 2006:180). Pictures of the same bottle identified it as being from the Sharpe and Dohme Company, with its contents listed as mercury bichloride from intact paper labels (Flashenjager 2000). The labels also specified that the tablets were antiseptic and meant for “external use only” (Flashenjager 2000). As an additional safety standard, the pills were shaped like blue clovers or coffins and attached to one another with a string so that it would be more difficult for customers to accidentally poison themselves by consuming the wrong types of pills (National Association of Retail Druggists
1915:134). While an ad for Sharpe and Dohme mercury bichloride tablets in the 1915 Journal of the National Association of Retail Druggists illustrates this principle, the bottle’s different shape, extensive embossing, and similarity to later, coffin-shaped pill containers indicates that this particular bottle dates after 1915 (National Association of Retail Druggists 1915:134; Figure 20;
Figure 21).
On another Sharpe and Dohme paper label, the proper ratios for mercury bichloride solutions for various purposes are listed, including “Vaginal use 1:5000 (1 disc in 5 pints water)”
(Odell 2007). Due to the poisonous nature of the pills themselves if taken orally, the extensive use of douching at the time to fight venereal diseases, and the common use of mercury as a cure for syphilis, it seems likely that these tablets were dissolved in a water solution, then used as a douching agent to treat syphilis.
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FIGURE 20. Sharp & Dohme mercury bichloride ad (National Association of Retail Druggists, 1915).
FIGURE 21. Mercury bichloride bottle 86D8-57-70 (Photo by author, 2014).
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Common health concerns for all women at the turn of the 20 th century were “female
complaints.” The female complaint was a broad term applied to a variety of ailments, ranging
from fatigue and depression to prolapsed uteruses. At least two bottles of medication used for
female complaints were recovered from the site. While most gynecological issues stemmed from
venereal diseases, physicians at the time did not know how to treat women effectively without
resorting to extreme surgeries (Stage 1979:82). These extreme procedures left most women
distrustful of physicians and more reliant upon homeopathic and patent medicines, such as Lydia
Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound (Stage 1979:108). Although the compound included many
herbs that were known traditionally for treating gynecological complaints, like many patent
medicines at the time, Pinkham’s elixir had a very high alcohol content: 20.6 percent by volume
(Haller and Haller 1974:288). To force companies to be truthful about the contents of their
products, the United States passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 (Stage 1979:169).
However, the act did not force companies to stop selling potentially dangerous drugs, it only
forced them to show the percentages of contents on their labels (Stage 1979:171). Despite the
limits of the law, Americans assumed that the law forced companies to use safer materials, which
in turn made them trust companies more and sales for patent medicines after the Pure Food and
Drug Act actually rose as a result (Stage 1979:178).
Although no bottles of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound were recovered at the site, there were portions of at least two bottles of what appear to be St. Joseph’s Vegetable Compound were. Very little information on the St. Joseph’s Company or their products is available, making it necessary to infer the bottles’ probable contents from the information at hand. Best known for its aspirin, the St. Joseph Company was acquired in 1920 by Abe Plough in Memphis, Tennessee
(Lewis 2010). In 1923, the Plough Chemical Company filed trademarks for St. Joseph’s
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“medicinal preparations-viz, a vegetable compound tonic, kidney blood remedy, cough sirup
[sic], pine-tar honey, liniment, a vegetable compound for the treatment of colic, cramps, cholera, and kindred complaints; aspirin, Epsom salts” (Trademarkia 1923). Due to the fragments’ shape and thickness, the bottles appear to be consistent with bottles with the embossment of “St.
Joseph’s Ensures Purity” that were identified by Fike to be vegetable compound bottles these bottles were no longer in production by 1935 in The Bottle Book: A Comprehensive Guide to
Historic, Embossed, Medicine Bottles (Fike 2006:179). Unfortunately, no images of the St.
Joseph bottles with intact labels or packaging, and no advertisements for St. Joseph’s could be located to verify that the vegetable compound was indeed contained in these bottles. Yet the shape of the bottles indicate they held liquid rather than aspirin tablets, and the context of the site in which they were recovered suggests that prostitutes living at the Line would have used a vegetable compound like St. Joseph’s to counteract the inevitable gynecological issues.
In addition to STDs and “female complaints,” prostitutes on the Line suffered from a variety of other diseases as well. One brown, machine-made bottle embossed with “Capudine for
Headache” contained a liquid used for headaches, muscular aches and pains, and also reduced fever (Smithsonian Institution 2012). Capudine was sold from 1890-1920 and the company was based in Raleigh, North Carolina (Fike 2006:166).
It seems that prostitutes also suffered from cold and flu-like complaints. A cobalt blue,
machine-made glass “Vicks Vaporub” jar was found at the site. According to the Vicks company
archive timeline, Vaporub was distributed in such blue glass jars from 1912-1940, with this
bottle most closely matching an example from 1925 (Vicks 2013). Vicks Vaporub had become a
household name in the United States after the 1918 flu epidemic, and was used most commonly
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for the same ailments as it is today: namely cough, congestion, and minor muscle aches and pain
(Vicks 2013).
Digestive issues were another problem for sex workers on the Line. Bottles that resemble typical square bitters bottles were found at the site (Lindsey 2013a). Bitters were used as a stand- alone medication to treat stomach discomfort and as a supplement to ease discomfort caused by extensive mercury treatments for syphilis (Lindsey 2013a, Taylor 1900:670). At least one
“Chamberlain Colic Cholera and Diarrhoea Remedy” bottle was recovered as well. A 1905 newspaper ad claims that the remedy “will invariably cure an ordinary attack of diarrhea”, and goes on to state that it is an effective treatment for more serious diseases, such as cholera and dysentery (The Ellensburg Dawn 1905). The bottle is embossed with “Des Moines, IA. USA” on its side, indicating that it dates between 1892-1925 when the Chamberlain Medicine Company was based out of Des Moines (Weeks & Leo 2009).
By analyzing the identifiable medications present at 8ES34, the residents of the block suffered from similar ailments as the modern-day prostitutes discussed in Horobik’s (2011) analysis. Like modern sex workers, Pensacola’s prostitutes suffered from STDs, respiratory problems, stomach issues, and general body pain in addition to female complaints.
Contraceptives
In addition to the many health concerns prostitutes had, they were also careful to avoid pregnancy. Prostitutes working on the Line circumvented pregnancy by utilizing condoms, douches, and spermicides; all of which were located in the archaeological assemblages.
Becoming pregnant was not only an added social stigma for single mothers, but also put prostitutes out of work for substantial amounts of time, was an added financial liability, and was still dangerous for women in the early 20th century (Rosen 1982:99). Therefore, it was in the
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prostitute’s best interest to avoid becoming pregnant. Indeed women of all walks of life have attempted to avoid pregnancy throughout history. During the first half of the 19th century, abortive drugs to induce miscarriages outsold contraceptives; it was not until the 1870’s that contraceptives became the preferred way to avoid unwanted pregnancy (Haller and Haller
1974:117). This change in contraceptive preferences was in part because contraceptives were seen by doctors (and society) as assisting the moral downfall of the American family. If there were no threat of producing illegitimate children, then there would be no incentive for men to stay faithful to their wives. As a result, prostitution would be encouraged and the family unit would disintegrate (Haller and Haller 1974:123). In addition, upper-class women, especially women who were active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other purity-oriented organizations, thought that the dissemination of contraceptives into families would “destroy the sanctity of the home circle by bringing into it the tools of the street prostitute, and… would perpetuate in a most licentious manner women’s continuing role as sex objects” (Haller and
Haller 1974:124). Purity crusaders also thought that contraception would make fallen women more promiscuous, therefore husbands would be more likely to stray (Gordon 2002:57).
In fact, contraceptives were used in the 19th century so women who could not physically or psychologically have children could avoid it, not so people could indulge in sexual activity as often as they wished (Gordon 2002:59) During the Victorian era, American society dictated that sexual intercourse was to only be engaged in for reproduction. Effective contraception threatened to separate sexuality from reproduction (Gordon 2002:66). Therefore, as a harbinger of the destruction of the American family, contraceptives were considered indecent. In 1873 this view became law when the Comstock Act was passed, which defined contraceptives as obscene, and
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outlawed obscene materials from being processed in the mail or crossing state lines (Tone
2001:4).
Locally, Pensacola went a step further by passing city ordinances that made it unlawful to
“expose, circulate, offer for sale, sell or distribute within limits of the city any obscene, scandalous or libelous book, print newspaper, pamphlet, pictures, drawings, statues, or other object whatsoever of any immoral or scandalous nature” (Blount 1898:54). It was also made illegal “to post up, or have posted up, or placarded in any public place, any hand-bill announcing the sale of medicine for, or the treatment of, any immoral disease” (Blount 1898:54). These ordinances left prostitutes at a distinct disadvantage for acquiring contraceptives and venereal disease medication. Nevertheless, prostitutes living on the Line actively used various birth control methods that were common throughout the time period the district was in operation
(Figure 22).
18 16 14 12 10
Count 8 6 4 2 0 Suppository Condom Douching Solution Douche Spermicide Containers Containers Applicators Containers Contraceptive Type
FIGURE 22. Contraceptives recovered from 8ES34 (Figure by author, 2014).
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Before contraceptives became mass produced, everyday materials were often used. Olive oil was first prescribed as a suppository spermicide by Aristotle in ancient Greece, and is still used to this day (Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. 2006). In 1931 a study by
Marie Stopes found a zero percent pregnancy rate in two thousand cases where olive oil had been the only contraceptive (Tone 2001:14). The remains of at least three Re Umberto Brand Pure
Olive Oil bottles are present in 8ES34’s collections. This oil was first marketed in 1904 by the
Strohmeyer & Arpe Company Corporation in New York, and was sold in similar bottles until the
1920s (Strohmeyer & Arpe 2004). During this time, olive oil was commonly mixed with boric acid, tannic acid, and sometimes the aforementioned mercury bichloride (also present at the site) to act as a suppository spermicide (Haller and Haller 1974:118). Although it is possible that the olive oil was being used for culinary purposes rather than for contraception, at this point in history Americans rarely used olive oil for cooking. Xenophobia as a reaction to the mass influx of immigrants made the use of Mediterranean olive oil for cooking less likely in American households (Kasson 1978). Therefore, it is probable that prostitutes living on the Line used olive oil as a way to get around the city ordinances forbidding the sale of contraceptives within city limits.
Another way Pensacola prostitutes avoided pregnancy (and city ordinances forbidding the
sale of contraceptives) was through the application of Vaseline. Owned by the Colgate
Company, Vaseline was first advertised as an effective contraceptive method in the mid-1870s
(despite the Comstock Act) that included a doctor’s endorsement that “Vaseline, charged with
four to five grains of salicylic acid, will destroy spermatozoa, without injury to the uterus or
vagina” (Tone 2001:29).
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No less than 12 Chesebrough Vaseline jars and one Royaline Petrolyum Jelly jar were found across the site (Figure 23). Vaseline was originally packaged in cork-stopper jars and later featured external threaded seals (one source says this change took place in 1908, but this date cannot be verified) (Whitten 2013). All of the jars present in the collections are externally threaded, and have ejection/valve marks on their bases, which indicate they were made by a press-and-blow machine that was phased out in glass manufacturing in the 1940s (Lindsey
2013b). While there is no proof that prostitutes were using Vaseline purely for contraceptive uses, the high numbers of Vaseline jars at the site along with large numbers of other skin products indicate that they were likely used for contraception while the other products were used for skin care.
FIGURE 23. Chesebrough Vaseline jars recovered from the 1975 excavation of 8ES34 (Photo by author, 2014).
The Royaline Petrolyum Jelly jar is from the Clyde Collins Company, which was based in Memphis from 1916 to about 1957 (Lauderdale 2008). Because this regional brand was not widely available nationally, this bottle was likely purchased for use in or around Memphis.
Prostitutes rotated through brothels from different areas so that customers would not grow bored 82
with their selection, which in turn allowed prostitutes to work longer by lengthening the time of their desirability. Once a prostitute was no longer considered attractive, she was often turned out of the relative safety of the brothel and was forced to work alone on the street (Culp 2009:16).
Since it seems unlikely that a native Pensacola prostitute would have bought a bottle of Royaline to aid in her work while passing through Tennessee (especially since Vaseline was obviously the preferred brand for residents of the Line), this bottle was possibly brought by a prostitute who had been living and working in Tennessee, then later moved to Pensacola.
Although Vaseline was the type of contraceptive with the highest frequency at the site, evidence of condom use at 8ES34 is also present in the collections. Also subject to the Comstock
Act, condoms were illegal in the United States after 1873 and were considered the most immoral of contraceptives because they had to be acquired before intercourse, and therefore encouraged premeditated promiscuity (Gordon 2002:137). However this illegality did not stop Americans from using them. During WWI, American soldiers became intimately acquainted with the condom and its use. Before the United States entered the war, the military was most concerned with keeping venereal disease in check in its fighting men rather than preventing unwanted pregnancies, and relied upon post-coital chemical washes instead of condoms because of the controversy surrounding condom use (Tone 2001:95). Men were to report their sexual exploits to their medical officers and receive treatment, but the treatment was so painful that many avoided this step. Noncompliance became such a problem that in 1912 the Navy denied pay to men who developed venereal disease who had forgone treatment (Tone 2001:96). Sailors were also threatened with court martial if they did not report for disinfection after shore leave (Haller and
Haller 1974:270). However, once sailors, soldiers, marines, and aviators were exposed to liaisons in condom-friendly Europe after the United States entered WWI, they quickly opted for the more
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effective and less painful condom that was also effective for contraception; and just as quickly, disseminated its proper use to American women upon their return from the war (Tone 2001:105).
Condom use became so wide-spread that in 1918 the Comstock Act was altered to exclude the sale of disease-prevention articles, making condoms legal (Tone 2001:105). By the 1920s, condoms could be obtained from “bellhops, elevator boys, street peddlers, barbers, bartender, grocery clerks, razor-blade and tobacco merchants, waiters, tailors, filling-station attendants, bootblacks, students in fraternity houses, and operators of slot machines”: basically from any male-associated space (Tone 2001:188).
Condoms of this time do not resemble the condoms of today. Before the invention of latex rubber in 1920, gasoline was required to make rubber viscous enough for the molding process. Condoms were made by dipping glass molds into molten rubber resulting in thick, non- uniform condoms and highly flammable factories (Tone 2001:193). Latex did not require gasoline to liquefy and resulted in a thinner, more reliable product. Thick hand-dipped rubber condoms continued to be used, however, because they could be reused and would not dissolve in oil or grease (often used as lubricant during this time) (Tone 2001:196). Once condoms were exposed to the elements they deteriorated rapidly, which gave them a short shelf life and consequently, makes them difficult to find in the archaeological record (Tone 2001:70, Valentine
2011). On the other hand, their packaging was more durable and is less difficult to find. Rubber condoms were often sold in round aluminum tins that mostly date from WWI to the mid-1930s
(Elliot et al. 1998). Four such tins labeled “3 Merry Widows” were found at the Line (Figure 24).
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FIGURE 24. Condom tins. Upper left and right , “Selected and Tested” condom tin lids that post- date the 1930s, 13N-194 and 86D8-85-20; lower left and right , tins that pre-date the 1930s, 86D8-83-3 and 00P-115-34 (Photos by author, 2013, 2014). 85
The 3 Merry Widows brand was created by the Julius Schmid Company and was in use from about 1915 to at least 1950 (Elliot et al. 1998, Valentine 2011). The tins contained non- latex, thick rubber condoms that had a shelf life of three years and were reusable (Tone
2001:184, Valentine 2011). This brand was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s, when investing in thicker rubber condoms that could be used multiple times had a greater economic importance due to the Depression (Tone 2001:184). Condoms were recycled in spite of their short shelf life by “a cost-saving but odoriferous practice in which condoms were rinsed, dried, powdered, and then reused” (Tone 2001:68).
Two of the tins are molded with the phrase “selected - tested” on the bottom of the tin.
Condoms were not subject to federal testing until the 1930s, indicating that the two tins were
likely made after this date (Tone 2001:49). One tin is molded with the names of the widows:
“Agnes – Mable – Beckie” which was considered “an invitation to sexual play. ‘Proper’ women
waited until marriage to have intercourse, making widows Agnes, Mabel, and Beckie
legitimately experienced and, better yet, available” (Tone 2001:185). The lack of a testing label
may indicate that this tin predates the 1930s. The fourth tin is the least intact. The lower portion
of the tin where the names or the tested label are present on the other tins is not intact. Therefore,
this tin is the most difficult to place temporally. However, the rest of the fourth tin is stylistically
very similar to the pre-1930s tin with the widows’ names, which indicates it also predates the
1930s.
Condoms are often considered androcentric forms of contraception, and were especially
seen as such during the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. While they were used primarily to prevent disease, in 1895 it was reported that “sporting houses preferred a salve of Vaseline and boric acid to the condom” because Vaseline added a layer of protection for vaginal walls and
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condoms detracted from the clients’ pleasure (Haller and Haller 1974:262). There are two plausible explanations why multiple condom tins of the same brand were recovered from the site: either the prostitutes themselves were purchasing them for contraceptive and prophylactic reasons, or customers were bringing the widows with them to prevent venereal disease, and happened to purchase the same brand because it was very common. If the prostitutes were purchasing condoms, it would explain why the tins are all the same brand despite the myriad of customers that would have used condoms. 3 Merry Widows is the most common condom tin found at archaeological sites across the country (Valentine 2011), which may indicate they were purchased by customers due to their commonality. It seems that the best way to determine which scenario is most likely would be to look at the specific contexts in which each container was found (Figure 25).
FIGURE 25. Condom tin provenience. Condom tin 00P-115-34 recovery location (in blue) in relation to brothels’ locations (in black). 2000 excavation units in red (Figure by author, 2014). 87
Brothel contexts have been shown to contain more items indicative of what the prostitutes themselves were using in the area behind the brothel, while items associated with customers are more often found in the front of the lot (Horobik 2011, Ketz et al. 2005).
Unfortunately, at this time only items from the 2000 excavations can be conclusively linked to specific unit locations or features. Only one earlier “Agnes – Mabel – Beckie” tin could be analyzed spatially. This tin was recovered from the south wall of Trench Two, which was located in the backyard area of multiple brothels.
While condoms enjoyed an increase in popularity and legitimacy, they were not the only popular form of contraceptives available during the early 20th century. A 1924 study found that while condoms were the number one form of birth control recommended by doctors, douching was a close second (Tone 2001:76). A variety of douching paraphernalia was found at the site including nozzles and solutions. The supposedly mild chemicals would kill sperm and venereal disease, although in reality douching is not effective for either.
As a hygienic practice, it is unnecessary and potentially harmful, because the vagina is
self-cleansing. Water and chemical solutions wash away beneficial bacteria, increasing
chances of infection. In addition, forceful douching may remove the mucous plug
protecting the cervix, uterus, and Fallopian tubes from disease, providing a biological
expressway for pathogens. Studies have linked douching to a higher incidence of pelvic
inflammatory disease, sexually transmitted diseases, and ectopic pregnancy (Tone
2001:75).
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Douching is now known to be equally ineffective against preventing pregnancy. Often sperm has already penetrated the cervix and is almost impossible to remove by the time a douching solution is applied (Tone 2001:75). Nonetheless, douching solutions became the most popular contraceptive for women from the 1920s through the invention of the birth control pill in the
1960s (Tone 2001:170). Douching retained its status through its affordability (in the 1930s one dollar could buy enough douching solvent to make six gallons of solution), its availability in most stores, and the fact that it could be purchased without a prescription or doctor’s examination (Tone 2001:151).
Perhaps what made douching so popular despite its ineffectiveness was the high amount of advertising aimed at women dedicated to its sale. During the 1920s advertisers recognized that women accounted for up to 80 percent of consumer spending, so advertisers started “universally endorsing among themselves a psychological profile of the female shopper as mercurial and easily swayed by emotional appeals, advertisers attempted to convince women that consumption was inherently empowering” (Tone 2001:156). To sell birth control, advertisers coupled this idea of empowerment through purchasing with the commonly held view that reproduction was exclusively a woman’s responsibility, and mixed in a healthy dose of fear-mongering and emotionality into their advertisements (Tone 2001:156). Of the several brands of douching agent available at this time, Lysol dominated the market.
Lysol was first marketed in the 1890s, and was a soap solution that contained “cresol (a constituent of crude carbolic acid, a distillate of coal and wood), which, when used in too high a concentration, caused severe inflammation, burning, and even death” (Tone 2001:170). Despite the dangers, Lysol reached the height of its popularity for use in feminine hygiene from the
1930s through the 1960s through a major ad campaign (Tone 2001:160). Due to the Comstock
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Act, Lysol could not be advertised as a contraceptive. Instead ads were aimed at married women
(those for whom it was socially acceptable to be sexually active) and their vague fears which according to the ads, aged women prematurely and made their husbands desire them less (Tone
2001:159).
One such ad from 1933 reads “The Most Frequent Eternal Triangle: A Husband, A Wife,
And Her Fears; Fewer marriages would flounder around in a maze of misunderstanding and unhappiness if more wives knew and practiced regular marriage hygiene” (Gordon 2002:224).
Another poignant ad reads “Many marriage failures can be traced directly to disquieting wifely fears… Recurring again and again,” these fears were “capable of changing the most angelic of nature, of making it nervous, suspicious, irritable … I leave it to you, is it easy for even the kindliest husband to live with a wife like that?” (Tone 2001:161). These “fears” are never fully explained in the ads. The ads also detail the effectiveness of the product: “Lysol has the power to destroy the most active germ life, which other compounds fail to do in the presence of organic matter” (Tone 2001:161). Although the ads cannot expressly state so, “the most active germ life” and “organic matter” likely to be present in a young bride’s vagina was semen. Therefore,
Lysol’s main purpose, according to the subtle ads, is for birth control. The fear of having children right after marriage and having them frequently, causing premature aging in mothers, was apparently enough to drive husbands away, at least according to the ad. Luckily for new brides, Lysol was there to save their marriages.
It seems that Pensacola prostitutes, as well as young brides, could read between the lines in advertising. At least five Lysol bottles have been found at the site (Figure 26). One had an
Owens Bottle Company maker’s mark on its base that indicates it was made between 1921 and
1928; one had a “L. & F. Prod. Corp.” mark that means it dates from 1938 through the 1969, and
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the other three could only be dated based on their general shape and finish, which indicate that they range from the 1890s to the 1930s (Whitten 2005; Lindsey 2013b). However, all of these bottles’ characteristics are consistent with the bottles featured in Lysol advertisements dating from the late twenties to the late thirties (Tone 2001; Gordon 2002). Prostitutes could have purchased Lysol at a local five and dime store (many of which devoted special feminine hygiene and cosmetic spaces for their women customers) or through the mail (Tone 2001:165).
FIGURE 96. Detail of Lysol bottles 86D8-10-49 (Photo by author, 2014).
In addition to the chemical containers, the remains of the apparatus employed in douching were recovered from the site as well. Based on the Whitall Tatum Company druggists’ supplies catalog of 1880, there appear to be two options for over-the-counter douching techniques available in the late 19 th and early 20 th century: the patient could either use a rounded syringe made of glass or metal, or a “fountain”, which consisted of a basin for the douching solution, a hose, and a rubber application nozzle (Whitall 1880:58-59). Only one metal syringe
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was identified in the collection. This singular find was probably the only one because within the catalog, metal syringes were listed as more expensive than glass, did not hold as much solution as glass, and were liable to rust (Whitall 1880:58-59). Therefore, the preference for more affordable and reusable glass syringes is understandable. This preference can be seen in the archaeological record, with at least two syringe tubes, and three pistons present in the collections
(Figure 27).
FIGURE 27. Glass Douche 13N-64 (Photo by author, 2013).
Evidence for a glass fountain at this site was also recovered. Despite this option being
the most expensive, the glass fountain was desirable because it would also not rust, it would not
transfer heat, it would require only one insertion versus multiple insertions for thorough
cleansing, and its rubber nozzle made it undoubtedly the most comfortable (Whitall 1880:59).
Two of these rubber nozzles and two fine-pointed glass nozzles were recovered from the site,
indicating that at least a few of the prostitutes preferred to spend more money to invest on a
higher quality douching product.
Like today, women and men during the early 20 th century had several options when it came to contraception. Often multiple methods of contraception were used at the same time to
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increase their effectiveness (Tone 2001:78). As evidenced through the archaeological record, prostitutes living on Pensacola’s infamous Line used several options available to them throughout the Line’s operation.
Toiletries and Cosmetics
While it was important for a prostitute to avoid illness and pregnancy, it was equally important to maintain a healthy, alluring appearance to attract more clients: “as a laborer she [the prostitute] would not succeed if she did not project the appropriate sexuality through her hygiene and appearance to entice her male customers” (Gensmer 2012:32). It was important for prostitutes to not only look alluring, but healthy as well. Maintaining good dental hygiene was one way prostitutes on the Line kept up their beauty regimen.
Five toothbrush fragments and two toothpaste jars were located at the site. For centuries, white teeth have been a marker of beauty, health, and even high social status in Western society
(Mattick 1993:162). Toothbrushes were an important tool for dental hygiene. While the vast majority of toothbrushes were made in France, by 1780 bone toothbrushes were more readily available in the United States (Mattick 1993:163). Bone handles hand-made with boars hair bristles were the standard construction materials until WWI when bone became used for other war materials. Nylon bristles were invented in the 1930s (Mattick 1993:166). Despite their wide dispersal, by as late as 1932 only about 20 percent of Americans regularly brushed their teeth with toothbrushes (Mattick 1993:168). Early Pensacola red light district prostitutes seem to have been part of that 20 percent. At least two bone toothbrush heads and three handles were found in the assemblages. Bone toothbrushes tended to retain some water after their use, which meant that the boars hair bristles deteriorated after about three to four months (Mattick 1993:168).
Therefore, bone toothbrushes were temporary, disposable items that are often found in the
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archaeological record without their bristles. Unfortunately, all of the toothbrushes associated with the site are fragmentary, which makes it difficult to date them.
The two toothbrush heads are most similar to toothbrushes that have been identified as dating from 1875-1885 in their size, shape, and bristle patterning (Mattick 1993:181). Due to the low quality and color of the bone, it seems likely that these were average toothbrushes with no distinctive features. This time period correlates with the occupation of the site by Dr. James
Herron’s mariner’s hospital more than it does brothel occupation, as does the lower-quality of the toothbrushes. Prostitutes were more likely to invest more money in their teeth to stay attractive to clients.
One of the toothbrush handles appears to date between the two occupations. With the
head and neck broken off, this handle bears the cursive stamp “… wo-Hundred.” While its
rounded shape and lack of a drying hole drilled into the base (which was introduced in 1884) are
indicators that the toothbrush is an earlier model, the quality of its stamp and bone of which it
was made seem to indicate an owner who invested in dental hygiene (Mattick 1993:181). The
best date range for this brush is 1850-early 1900s. Unfortunately the stamp could not be matched
with a brand, so a tighter date range is impossible, leaving this toothbrush in question as to
whether it belonged to sick sailors or prostitutes.
The second handle is less ambiguous in age. Due to its three rows of bristles on the remaining portion of the head, its flat shape, and its hanging hole, the brush stamped “Superior
Quality” dates from 1885 to WWI, around 1914 (Mattick 1993:181). A prominent rust stain around the hole indicates that the brush hung from a nail or iron hook when not in use.
The final toothbrush handle is the most diagnostic. Featuring an elephant motif and
“Dupont; Paris; The Dentists Favorite; Replaced if Bristles Come Out” on one side, the brush
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matches one noted by Mattick that dates from 1850-1890 (Mattick 1993:171, Figure 28).
However, this brush is also flattened in shape with a hanging hole in the base which indicates that it dates from 1884-1890. This date is late enough to coincide with the brothel occupation, especially considering the quality of the brush. On the reverse side, the brush is stamped with
“W. A. DALEMBERTE”, who was another prominent pharmacist in Pensacola. W. A.
D’Alemberte operated a pharmacy in Pensacola from 1885 to 1908, moving from 26 Palafox to
203 South Palafox in 1887 (Rosenbleeth 1981:20). In 1885 and 1886, prostitutes only had three options for pharmacies, and D’Alemberte’s was the furthest away from the district and the closest to the upper-class residential neighborhood of North Hill (Rosenbleeth 1981). When the pharmacy moved to 203 South Palafox from 1887 to 1890, it was two blocks closer to the red light district; only one block north of its boundaries on Palafox. However, within those three years four to five pharmacies were an equal distance or closer to the district, with only two to four farther away. This distribution indicates that early prostitutes did not have qualms about venturing outside the red light district for their oral hygiene as well as for their prescriptions. It could also reinforce the interpretation that prostitutes were loyal customers, preferring to do business with a pharmacist farther away than one that would have been more geographically convenient.
FIGURE 28. D’Alemberte toothbrush. Left, front of 13N-75; right, reverse of toothbrush (Photos by author, 2013). 95
In addition to toothbrushes, toothpaste jars were also recovered from the site. One complete jar and one half jar lid of Jewsbury and Brown Oriental Toothpaste “for Cleansing
Beautifying and Preserving the Teeth and Gums” were found at the site. Unfortunately, little information could be found about this company that would assist in dating the jars. Based out of
Manchester England, the company moved to Ardwick Green (which is noted on the jar labels) in
1894 (Churchill 1907). Aside from the profile of the company in the 79 th volume of the
Pharmaceutical Journal published in 1907, an internet search only yielded ads for the toothpaste
dating as late as 1907, therefore, these jars probably date from 1894 to the late 1900s. This time
period suggests that the toothpaste was used by prostitutes on the Line to cleanse, beautify, and
preserve their teeth and gums.
Another way prostitutes enhanced their appearance was by wearing cosmetics. In the late
19 th and early 20 th centuries wearing heavy makeup was a sure indicator that a woman was a prostitute or at least promiscuous, a stereotype that continues today (Rosen 1982; Peiss 1998:27;
Gensmer 2012); “for nineteenth-century Americans, lady and hussy were polar opposites-the best and worst of womanhood-and the presence or absence of cosmetics marked the divide”
(Peiss 1998:3). Cosmetics were seen as a mark of women’s degradation and another indicator of the downfall of the American family because women who spent time applying cosmetics were not spending that time with their children or families, and were therefore more focused on their individual pursuits and personal appearances; in short the women who frequented beauty salons were likely to be the same women who went to abortion clinics (Peiss 1998:28). Prostitutes were the ultimate personification of the abandonment of family for individual gain, so it made sense that they would be wearing cosmetics. One 1842 description of a prostitute in makeup illustrates how society in general perceived them “every sign of health, natural animation & passion had
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left her, & with a wasted form, hectic & fallen cheeks, glassy eyes, & a frisette fastened to her head, she looked like a painted galvinised [sic] corpse” (Peiss 1998:29). Prostitutes themselves were aware of this stereotype. One reformed prostitute refused to wear makeup while she was in the profession, stating “I had to draw the line somewhere” (Peiss 1998:53).
In fact the choice of whether or not to wear cosmetics was a decision prostitutes had to make depending on how they wanted to navigate their interactions with the larger community.
While wearing makeup could enhance their appearance and make them more attractive to clients, it also marked their profession and drew the attention of law enforcement, which was especially troublesome for streetwalkers not under the protection of the brothel support system (Peiss
1998:53). The archaeological record from 8ES34 indicates that Pensacola prostitutes kept up with national trends at the same time as average American women and did not wear heavy cosmetics before it became mainstream in American culture. Items recovered from the site such as compacts and mirrors, cold cream jars, face powder, lipstick, perfume, nail polish, and deodorant reveal details about prostitutes’ attention to their appearances.
The rise of American beauty culture did not come about until around WWI. Before this time it was only socially acceptable for older women to use cosmetics, younger unmarried women were supposed to rely upon their natural beauty and youth to attract husbands; the only other women who supposedly used cosmetics in public were actresses and prostitutes (Dade
2007:10). Because of this social stigma, the beauty industry of widely available cosmetics did not exist, and women instead made cosmetics from recipes at home (Peiss 1998:9). Like medications, the few commercially available cosmetics that did exist at this time were not regulated and were often dangerous. Over the counter cosmetics were often seen as impure physically as well as socially (Peiss 1998:22).
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Several factors revolutionized the beauty industry from being on the margins of social acceptability at the turn of the century to being widely available and socially mainstream by the end of WWI. The advent of affordable and amateur photography at the turn of the century left many women who normally avoided cosmetics to request them for their portrait sessions (Peiss
1998:47). Perhaps the most influential stimulus was the invention of motion pictures. Suddenly actresses (who used cosmetics to be more attractive for close-up camera angles and in signature fashions to stand out from their peers) became socially acceptable, and average women started to look to movie stars as the standard of beauty (Dade 2007). Additionally, the rise in nationally distributed papers and magazines (complete with nationally visible advertising) also led to a rise of a cosmetics mass market and cheaper cosmetics that lower-class women could more easily afford (Peiss 1998:95). By the end of WWI these factors had made cosmetics socially acceptable to be worn in public by average American women (Dade 2007:12); “between 1909 and 1929 the number of American perfume and cosmetics manufacturers nearly doubled, and the factory value of their products rose tenfold, from $14.2 million to nearly $141 million” (Peiss 1998:95). This rise in popularity also meant makeup was no longer only available in large cities, but had disseminated throughout smaller cities and rural communities (Peiss 1998:168). Now makeup was no longer seen as a false mask by average Americans, but rather as the true expression of feminine identity (Peiss 1998:166).
Another factor that led to the rise in popularity of cosmetics was the increased availability of affordable mirrors. By the turn of the century advances in glass production and the silvering process meant that “once a luxury of the rich, mirrors were everywhere” (Riordan 2004:15).
Now women had the means to apply makeup and judge its effects upon their facial features.
Mirrors were offered in the same variety of sizes as they are today, from large full-body mirrors
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to hand-held vanity sets to portable compacts. The archaeological record indicates that prostitutes living on the Line used all of these varieties. No less than six mirrors and compact fragments were found at the site. Two fragments from a large, probably square-shaped mirror were recovered. At six millimeters thick, this glass most likely came from a large full-body or decorative mirror. A Bakelite plastic handle from a vanity set was also discovered from the site.
The art-deco style handle is bright yellow, a color which started to become widely available in
the early 1920s, which indicates the handle dates from around 1920-1940 (Lindsey 2013b). Its
flat shape indicates that it was not a hairbrush and would have likely been from a mirror or
another piece of a vanity set.
One mirror fragment was from a compact. Rounded at one end and 2mm thick, its
projected circumference is only 7.85cm. A brass 3.9cm diameter compact lid with fragmentary
mirror shards was also recovered from the site (Figure 29). Sporting an art-deco design on its
exterior, this compact would also have dated from the early 1920s to about 1940 (Lindsey
2013b). A second compact lid was recovered, but it did not contain mirror fragments. Although it
did bear the Armand company logo.
Compacts were introduced in the early 1920s for the reapplication of makeup on the go
and were adopted by flappers as fashion accessories and props for the public performance of
making up in public places (Peiss 1998:186). Their inclusion into the archaeological record of
brothels is surprising because prostitutes who lived in red light districts were often characterized
as social outcasts who primarily stayed within the boundary of the district (Rosen 1982). The
presence of mirrors at the site suggests that prostitutes from at least the 1920s through the end of
the district in 1941 had more mobility than is generally recognized.
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FIGURE 29. Compact lid 86D8-11-233 (Photo by author, 2014).
One way prostitutes who lived on the Line attracted customers was by avoiding body odor. Two white glass ointment jars with “MUM Mfg Co Phila PA” molded on the base were found at the site. The first commercially produced deodorant introduced in 1888, MUM was a wax-like cream with a slightly antibacterial zinc oxide that was used on the underarms, feet (it was hoped that the antibacterial properties of the cream would help expensive silk stockings last longer), and on sanitary napkins during menstruation to prevent odors (MUM 2014). MUM’s official website states that deodorant awareness grew and the company used the aforementioned
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makers mark in the 1920s, and that the company was sold to a different manufacturer in 1932,
which indicates that these particular jars probably date from the early 1920s to 1932 (MUM
2014). An ad for MUM that ran in Good Housekeeping magazine in June 1935 features a mock
letter from a man to a “Lady Editor” begging her to talk to women about perspiration odor. She
replies that she constantly warns women of this “danger” and that MUM “protects” them and its
use will keep them “safe all day, every day ” (Good Housekeeping 1935). Presumably the
“danger” is offending a man that could be a potential husband or mate. The ad goes on to say
“Sanitary Napkin Use MUM is such a real source of comfort in this use! It dispels all doubt or worries over the possibility of unpleasantness” (Good Housekeeping 1935). Apparently prostitutes were aware of the possibility of repulsing clients with various body odors, and were concerned enough to utilize MUM deodorant.
Of all of the cosmetics present at the site, none are as prevalent as cold cream containers,
49 of them having been recovered from the site (Figure 30). Cold cream was “the basis for specialized preparations containing a host of unusual ingredients-turtle oil, vitamins, hormones, even radium – to bleach, firm, or ‘nourish’ the skin” (Peiss 1998:102). This face cream did not carry the stigma that most cosmetics did before the 1920s. Instead, it was seen as a skin protectant that women of all ages and walks of life used to achieve the pale complexions that were in vogue at the time (Peiss 1998:99). Most cold creams had similar ingredients and formulas, so despite the variety of brands most women were using similar compounds (Peiss
1998:104). Cold cream is most associated with white, “milk” glass jars. Milk glass jars could hold a variety of contents, but they were used primarily for lotions and cosmetic creams (Lindsey
2014a).
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Othine, 1 Elcaya, 1 Woodbury, 1 Chesebrough, 1 MUMs, 2 Melba, 1
Pond's, 7
No Identification, 35
FIGURE 30. Milk glass jars recovered from 8ES34 by company (Figure by author, 2014)
Most of the milk glass jars and fragments of jars recovered from the site originally had
paper labels that have not survived and their original contents’ can no longer be identified, but
the size and shape of the jars indicate that they likely contained cold cream or a similar cosmetic
lotion. Of the forty nine intact or fragmentary milk glass jars, 35 could not be identified, seven
were Pond’s brand, one was Melba brand, two were MUMs deodorant, one was Chesebrough
company, one was Woodbury brand, one was Othine brand, and one was Elcaya brand.
The most famous cold cream, and the most numerous identified at the site, was made by the Pond’s Extract Company. At least seven jars with Pond’s labels were found at the site. The company started in 1846 by marketing a cure-all known as Pond’s extract that was used for “an aftershave lotion, a dentifrice, and … a contraceptive douche, Pond’s Extract was also hawked as a treatment for sore throats, catarrh, diphtheria, neuralgia, earaches, and insomnia” (Riordan
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2004:170). After declining sales, in 1891 an advertising survey indicated there was a growing demand for skin care products so Pond’s restructured itself to meet demand (Peiss 1998:99). By
1914 the original elixir was no longer advertised, and the company’s Cold Cream and Vanishing
Cream introduced in 1904 had become their most lucrative products (Peiss 1998:99). In 1916 the company began selling the two creams as a beauty regimen to increase sales: Cold Cream was to be used to cleanse the face in the evening while Vanishing Cream was supposed to be used during the day to protect skin and act as a base for any powders used (Peiss 1998:121). An earlier ad from 1912 claimed that the Cold Cream also reduced fine lines and wrinkles, and prevented hair growth (Dade 2007:11). Unfortunately, based on Pond’s advertising, Cold Cream and Vanishing Cream were sold in the same containers with only paper labels to distinguish which cream was contained in the jars, so determining whether or not prostitutes were engaging in the recommended daily regimen use of both creams is impossible (Dade 2007:11).
Pond’s is still on the market today, but by looking at ads a trend in packaging emerges that allows Pond’s jars to be given a rough date range. Based on Pond’s advertising, square- shaped jars were advertised from about 1919 through 1934, oval-shaped jars date from 1934 through the 1950s (Bennet 2014g). Of the Pond’s jars identified in the collection, six are oval shaped and one is square (Figure 31). However, at least one of the oval jars is made with very thick glass that indicates it was made before glass was rationed in manufacturing during WWII
(Lindsey 2013a). Therefore, it can be surmised that prostitutes along the Line did not start using
Pond’s extensively until 1934 or later rather than right after the products were introduced in
1904.
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FIGURE 31. Pond’s jars. Left, square jar 13N-45 dating from 1919-1934 right, oval jar 13N-44 dating from 1934-1950s (Photos by author, 2013).
Another brand of skin cream found at the site was Elcaya. Little could be found about this company except for what was stated in its advertising. An ad from a 1921 Lady’s Home
Journal states that Elcaya was first introduced in 1900 and was used as a face protectant and
foundation before applying powder, much the same as Pond’s Vanishing Cream (Currie 1921).
An internet search for Elcaya ads found that the earliest ad was from 1905, while the latest found
was 1928, with the majority of the ads from the 1920s, suggesting this was when Elcaya was at
its most popular.
Melba was another brand of cream found at the site. Named after the famous Australian
opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, the company was most well-known for its line of face powder,
but sold cold cream as well (Compactstory 2011). The company started using the crown-shaped
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M in its logo present on this jar in 1913, and the Melba line was discontinued by 1931
(Compactstory 2011).
Othine had a slightly different niche in cold creams. Othine was specifically advertised as
a freckle remover that used mercury as its active ingredient (Bennet 2014e). Again, little else
could be found on the company besides advertisements, and the author’s internet search yielded
ads from 1914-1928. It does not appear that the company lasted after tanned skin became more
popular than pale complexions starting in the mid-1920s through the rise of leisure culture (Peiss
1998:150).
Woodbury’s was another type of cream recovered from the site. Ads from 1927-1945 advertised a variety of skin care products including soaps, powders, facial, and cold creams
(Bennet 2014c). Judging by these ads and the shape of the jar, this jar was likely the facial or cold cream. From 1876 through the 1910s Vaseline also made a cold cream that came in tubes or white glass jars like the one found at the site, indicating that prostitutes’ brand loyalty extended past birth control.
Other small clear jars also contained cosmetic creams and medical ointments (Lindsey
2013a). However, without embossments or remnants of paper labels, it is virtually impossible to tell what the jars contained or what ways their contents would have been used. At least three clear jars with elaborate molded art-deco designs (which came into style around 1905 and stayed extremely popular until the early 1940s) are most likely cosmetic ointment containers because the jar styles are so much more elaborate than medical jars, which were typically plain (Lindsey
2013a). One jar that could be identified was embossed “Trial Size Gourard’s Oriental Cream.”
Gourard’s Oriental Cream was advertised as being able to whiten, soften, and clear skin
(Compactstory 2010). Apparently the advertisement was at least accurate about its ability to
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whiten skin. In 1907 and 1912, the state chemist of New Hampshire tested the cream and found that it contained high levels of mercury (Compactstory 2010). The recipe was not altered until
1936 (Compactstory 2010). Gourard’s was available in mid-sized to small towns, which means it could have been purchased easily in Pensacola (Peiss 1998:21). This particular bottle dates from the 1910s to 1929, which pre-dated the decrease of mercury in the product’s formula (Fike
2006).
A wide variety of face creams were recovered from the site. Although a few of the bottles had specific uses, such as freckle removers, most of the creams served the basic functions of blemish removers, cleansers, protectants against the elements, and foundation for powder application. The sheer number of cosmetic jars recovered indicates that prostitutes took care of their faces and pride in their appearances. Although most of the jars that can be dated fall in between the 1900s and the 1950s, the trend of jars that can be more precisely dated indicates that prostitutes were primarily using cold cream during the 1920s and 1930s at the site, which is the same time women in mainstream America were primarily using facial creams (Peiss 1998:102).
Once vanishing cream was put on, loose face powder was often applied by American women in the early 20 th century to mask blemishes and reduce shine (Bennet 2014f). Face powder had been used by American women since the 19th century (Bennet 2014f). While white complexions with rosy cheeks was the facial beauty ideal up through the 1920s, the over- application of rouge to intensify the redness of cheeks was still considered a prostitute’s calling card; leading most women to try to blend face powder and rouge to look as natural as possible
(Peiss 1998:181).
It appears that prostitutes living in Pensacola also used face powder. Nine artifacts related to face powder were recovered from the site, including at least seven powder makeup dispenser
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tops and lids. Often molded or cut into fanciful designs, powder shakers look much like salt
shakers, but their closures are fitted rather than threaded since they were not meant to be reused
as often as salt or pepper shakers. Their metal lids featured larger holes for the powder to be
dispersed and they had a hinged metal cap to protect the powder from impurities. Two large
makeup containers were also recovered. One still contained a flesh-colored powder. It is difficult
to determine if the contents were originally powder or if the contents had dehydrated over time.
The other is a large aluminum jar lid with a beach scene molded into the top. While this lid may
have been used for other purposes, its construction, large size, and elaborate design indicates that
it would have been associated with a cosmetic container rather than a food jar.
As noted earlier, two compact lids and a fragment of compact mirror were also discovered at the site. While the compacts yield insight as to brothel workers’ mobility, they also indicate that prostitutes were wearing possibly controversial cosmetics outside of red light district boundaries. Although one of the compact lids could not be identified, the other bears the logo from the Armand Company. Founded in 1916 and out of business by the 1960s, the Armand
Company manufactured one of the leading face powders of the 1920s (Bennet 2014a). The
Armand Company became popular due to its inclusion of cold cream into its face powders and rouge; therefore their cosmetics lasted longer after application (Bennet 2014a). Unfortunately it could not be determined whether this compact held face powder or rouge specifically. Although there is clear evidence that prostitutes living in Pensacola wore face powder and perhaps rouge, it remains unclear whether they blended their makeup to what would be considered the appropriate level for most average American women or over-applying it to fit into their stereotype as prostitutes. However, the absence of rouge at the site predating its widespread accepted use in
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the 1920s suggests that prostitutes were more likely keeping up with current cosmetic trends at
the same pace of average American women.
Although body hair removal is an integral part of American women’s beauty routines
today, it did not become a social norm until the late 1920s. One straight razor found at the site
indicates prostitutes likely removed unwanted body hair as well. Women started worrying about
unwanted hair in the mid-19 th century, but their focus was on facial and arm hair (Riordan
2004:136). Coinciding with the rise of social Darwinism, facial hair became a symbol of male virility and masculinity, while “a lack of hair (except on the head and in the pubic area) indicated a woman’s worthiness as a reproductive specimen” (Riordan 2004:119). However, women did not start getting rid of underarm or leg hair until much later. Coinciding with new fashions of sleeveless gowns and gradually rising hemlines, the first advertisement aimed at specifically removing underarm hair did not surface until 1915, and the first advertisements concerning leg hair did not appear until around the 1920s (Riordan 2004). As early as 1922 beauty advice books recommended that women start shaving their legs (Riordan 2004:143). Most advertisements recommended Gillet’s new safety razor or hair removal creams, but neither of these items were found at the site (Hansen 2007).
Despite the introduction of the safety razor, straight razors continued to be used until the
1950s (Hansen 2007). Although razors and even the term “shaving” was seen as masculine at the beginning of the upswing in women’s body hair removal (Hansen 2007), one straight razor was recovered from the site. The razor in question is rusted iron with a plain, black bakelite handle which indicates that it postdates 1927 (Lindsey 2013b). This date is much too late for the razor to belong to the mariner’s hospital context, and instead is most likely from the red light district occupation. The razor was also recovered from a unit that was located behind a building that was
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used consistently as a brothel throughout the district’s operation. Due to the brief nature of men’s encounters in brothels, it seems unlikely that men would have brought any toiletries with them.
Barber shops were established in Pensacola by 1880, hence it is unlikely that a traveling barber
(of which there are no records of within Pensacola) would be in a city trying to compete with established local business instead of catering to a more rural and wide spread clientele (Wilson
2014).
It seemed that prostitutes living along the Line kept up with current hair trends; numerous hair dye bottles, all of dark pigments, were recovered from the site. One major difference between beauty standards from the early 20 th century and the late 20 th century was a preference for hair color. While platinum blonde became the American ideal of beauty after icons like
Marilyn Monroe became popular in the 1950s, brunette hair was more desirable prior to that time. The turn of the century ideal known as the Gibson Girl had a narrow waist and large hips and bust (provided by the corset) and dark wavy hair (Pointer 2005:155). This trend of dark hair continued with the Flapper of the 1920s, who “cropped her hair, dyed it black, rolled down the stockings on her pencil-thin legs, and painted her lips cardinal red” (Riordan 2004:90-91).
Of the nine hair dye bottles recovered from the site, three were Walnutta brand. One dates from 1907-1915 while the other two date from 1915-1929 (Fike 2006). Walnutta came in three shades: black, dark brown, or light brown, but not blonde (Fadely 2014). One bottle labeled
“Mrs. Potter’s Hygienic Supply Co. Cincinnati Ohio” dating from 1907 also claimed to dye hair brown with a walnut juice stain (Fike 2006).
Hair dye “Guilmard Eau Sublime” seems to be the preferred brand, with at least 5 bottles recovered from the site. All but one of these bottles dates from 1899-1912, with the other dating from 1905-1912 (Fike 2006). Dark brown residue present in one of these bottles indicates that
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this dye was also used to darken hair (Figure 32). In addition to dying their hair, prostitutes seem to have invested in keeping it healthy as well. A small bottle with a bakelite lid exhibiting the
Chesebrough Manufacturing Company logo appears to match a bottle in an advertisement for
Vaseline Hair Tonic which claimed to stop dandruff and stimulate hair growth (Bennet 2014b).
Although advertised towards men, this bottle dates from 1927-1950s, which means that either prostitutes were using it prior to 1941 or it was used during a later residential occupation (Bennet
2014b).
FIGURE 32. Guilmard Eau Sublime hair dye bottle 86D8-11-76 (Photo by author, 2013).
Prostitutes emphasized the appearance of their lips as well, which was indicated by the presence of lipstick tubes in the assemblages. The cosmetic that underwent the biggest transformation from artificial and risqué to acceptable and natural in American society was lipstick; “considered the most artificial cosmetic in everyday use, it connoted the come-on, a sexually assertive, public pose that trifled with bourgeois conventions” (Peiss 1998:154). The type of woman that would have been the most likely to be sexually assertive and trifle with bourgeois conventions was a prostitute. Biologically speaking, flushed lips signal sexual interest
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in both men and women, which would be an advantage for prostitutes to attract potential clients
(Riordan 2004:34). However, thanks in part to creative advertising, by the 1920s the use of lipstick had become mainstream in American culture (Dade 2007:15). Along with compacts, flappers found lipstick tubes to be essential accessories as portable cosmetics (Pointer 2005:158).
By the late 1930s, women applied lipstick more often and regularly than they brushed their teeth
(Riordan 2004:46).
Two lipstick tubes were recovered from Pensacola’s red light district. One, labeled
“Dorothy Gray Ltd. Distributor New York”, dates from 1927 to 1967 (Bennet 2014d). For most of the early to mid-20 th century, Dorothy Gray was the third most popular cosmetics brand behind Rubenstein and Arden (Bennet 2014d). There were only about 12 shades of lipstick customers could choose from before the 1940s (Bennet 2014d). It seems likely that one of those
12 shades was contained in the tube because it is a simple push-up tube and not a twist-up tube, which was introduced later (Riordan 2004:37). The second tube is also an earlier push-up, but has no discernable maker’s marks. However, the tube does contain some bright pinkish-red residue (Figure 33). Although the color alone might indicate that the tube dates anywhere between the 1920s and 1950s when deep, bright lip shades were most popular, its push-up tube indicates that it dates to the earlier portion of this range (Riordan 2004:37).
Another cosmetic mark of femininity, nail polish, was also represented in the archaeological record of the site. Before nail polish, the only way to reflect light and color with extreme intensity through bodily decoration was through jewelry (Riordan 2004:204); “this is what perhaps makes nail polish such an astounding invention. It transforms purely functional parts of a woman’s body-the fingernails but also the toenails- into shiny little baubles that grab hold of the flitting eye of the male” (Riordan 2004:204). Whether or not nail polish was used
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with the specific purpose of attracting male attention, there is no doubt that it became popular after its introduction in the early 1920s (Pointer 2005:156). Throughout the 1920s the only colors available were shades of light pink (Riordan 2004:207). During the summer of 1930, magazine photos of high society women basking in the Mediterranean sporting bright red nail polish sparked a new fad (Riordan 2004:209). The craze caught on like wildfire and soon nail polish was sold not only in deep, blood reds but in every color imaginable (Riordan 2004:209).
FIGURE 33. Lipstick tube with residue 86D8-3-93 (Photos by author, 2014).
Only one nail polish bottle was recovered from the site. Remnants within the bottle are a deep matte-red, which indicates that the bottle post-dates 1930. The maker’s mark “V” on the bottom of the bottle suggests it is from the Revlon Company. Although it could post-date the red light district occupation of the site, the color of the nail polish and its presence at the site indicates that it was likely to have been used by resident prostitutes.
Perfume was the most abundant cosmetic found at the site. This profusion is probably because people associated scent with sex. As late as 1960 Americans thought that the most effective perfumes emulated “sexual secretions” in humans (Ellis 1960). Therefore, perfume was
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used to sexually arouse and attract mates. This mentality was expressed in advertising. For example, “Chanel recommended applying perfume to those areas that the wearer wished to have kissed” (Pointer 2005:158). Obviously prostitutes would have benefited from sexually stimulating potential clients, and their archaeological assemblage indicates that they took full advantage of the opportunity perfume seemed to provide.
Twenty nine examples of bottles and stoppers from toilet waters and perfumes are present in the collections. Toilet waters are examples of early perfumes that had multiple uses. They are perfumed waters believed to have some remedial properties that were used on the hair and face
(Ellis 1960). Used daily, toilet waters were considered appropriate for women of all ages, including young girls while stronger perfumes were not (Sullivan 1994). Two bottles of toilet water from the site indicate that early prostitutes used the perfumed water. One bottle bearing the
Colgate & Co trademark dates from 1872 when Colgate started using the simplified trademark
(Perfume Projects 2014a). Although the bottle could have held Cashmere Bouquet, Colgate’s most successful scent, by 1906 the company offered over 800 products and used the same bottle for various scents (Colgate 2014). The bottle may date to as late as 1928 when the company merged with the Palm-Olive company, but Colgate had phased out most of its perfumes to focus on toothpaste at that point, and the use of toilet water had gone out of popularity by the early
1920s (Colgate 2014). A bottle of Florida Water was also recovered from the site. One of the most popular toilet waters in the United States, Florida Water was a mixture of Lavender Water and eau-de-Cologne, featuring a more floral scent than most of its European counterparts (Ellis
1960). It was first introduced in the 1870s and by 1919 this particular bottle shape was discontinued (Sullivan 1994). By the late 1910s Pensacola prostitutes had started purchasing other types of scents.
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The most common perfume present at the site is Hoyt’s Eau de Cologne. E. W. Hoyt started manufacturing his cologne in 1870 and dubbed it “E. W. Hoyt’s German Cologne” (Hoyt and Hoyt 2009). However, he was forced to drop the “German” upon the United States’ entrance into WWI, when Germans ceased to be “exotic Europeans” and were now considered “hated
Huns” (Hoyt and Hoyt 2009). In the early 1900s Hoyt introduced a nickel-sized bottle of perfume that became widely popular. Its popularity extended to women living in the red light district. No less than eight nickel-sized bottles have been recovered from the site. The bottles come in two types: embossed and plain. It appears that plain bottles with paper labels were used most frequently on earlier bottles, perhaps before “German” was removed from the title (Hoyt and Hoyt 2009). There are only three embossed bottles from the site, two labeled “Hoyt’s Nickel
Cologne” that must post date 1918, and one labeled “E W. Hoyt & Co Lowell Mass” that according to its maker’s mark, dates to 1930 to about 1940 when a new bottle design came into production (Lindsey 2014b). Two of the blank bottles also date from about 1930 to 1940 based on their Owens-Illinois Glass Company makers’ marks (Lindsey 2014b). Another blank bottle dates from 1915 to 1929 (Lindsey 2014b). The remaining two blank bottles have no distinguishable makers marks and can therefore date anywhere from the early 1900s to around
1940. Due to the large number of small Hoyt’s cologne bottles present at the site and the lack of larger Hoyt’s bottles, it seems that prostitutes preferred to spend small amounts of money on this particular perfume instead of buying it in bulk.
Most of the bottles and stoppers could not be traced to specific companies or scents to determine their value. Consequently, the author categorized perfumes into three groups: inexpensive, medium-priced, and expensive based on the quality of the glass, the intricacy of the design, the size and shape of the finish, and any company or fragrance information that could be
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found associated with the bottles (Figure 34). While subjective, this method at least allowed
rudimentary analysis of the perfumes to determine possible consumer patterns for Pensacola
prostitutes.
FIGURE 34.Perfume bottles. Left, inexpensive Hoyt perfume bottle 86D8-32-14; middle, mid- priced perfume 86D8-41-60; right, expensive perfume 86D8-46-70 (Photo by author, 2014).
Of the 29 perfume bottles and stoppers identified, 12 were categorized as inexpensive including the eight Hoyt’s bottles. Only one had a maker’s mark, and it dates to 1923-1927
(Lindsey 2014b). Two bottles probably date to the 1930s judging by the size of the molding on
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one and the plastic lid on the other (Lindsey 2013b). The final inexpensive perfume item is an applicator. The perfume came with a machine-made glass stopper that also functioned as an applicator rather than a ground-shank stopper/applicator. Ground-shank stoppers were more expensive to make because each had to be hand-ground to match individual bottles (Lindsey
2014c). Because the applicator is not hand-ground, it indicates that the applicator came from a less-expensive perfume. The applicator’s extremely small size indicates that it dates to around the 1920s when small, portable perfumes came into vogue (Groom 1997).
Six perfume containers are categorized as medium-priced. One square machine-made bottle had a discernable maker’s mark that dates it from 1920 to 1950 (Lindsey 2014b). Another bottle with “Lander” on the base is from the Lander Co established in 1920 that still makes bath and personal care products to this day (Lander 2014). These perfumes were widely available in five and dime stores from the 1930s to the 1950s (Lander 2014). Three bottles have more intricate, art-deco designs that are made from low-grade glass, which suggest that they are mid- priced perfumes and date from the 1920s to the 1940s (Lindsey 2013b). One brown stopper is a ground shank that was made for a specific bottle (Lindsey 2014c). This stopper created a seal that was more or less airtight, which indicates that the contents were not meant to be used all at once (Lindsey 2014c). The medium size of the shank suggests a larger perfume bottle, which means the perfume was bought in bulk. The plain design on the top of the bottle points to a middle-of-the-line perfume rather than an expensive perfume with an intricately designed stopper (Lindsey 2014c).
Nine perfume containers were categorized as expensive due to their shape and contents.
Three bottles were molded in highly intricate art-deco designs and had stopper finishes, which indicate that they date from 1905 to the early 1940s and were expensive (Lindsey 2013b). One
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manganese bottle with its finish broken off is molded in a very stylized art-deco manner, including on the base. Its manganese color and art-deco style indicates that it dates from about the late 1910s to the 1920s (Lindsey 2013b, 2014a; Lockhart 2006). One bottle with an elaborate art-deco design and stopper closure dates from 1920 to 1943 based on its makers mark (Lindsey
2014b). Two bottles and two stoppers can be linked to specific perfumes. One machine made, ground shank stopper with a crown molded onto the top is from the Crown Perfumery. The
American branch of the Crown Perfumery started in 1885, and this particular stopper looks very similar to a stopper pictured in an ad for “Gem of the Antilles: Flaming Hibiscus” that ran until
1939 (Perfume Projects 2014b). Another bottle had the maker’s mark “Faberge” on the base.
Faberge was established by F. Eugene and Alexander Faberge in Paris in 1922, and opened in
New York in 1936 (Perfume Intelligence 2014). This bottle dates from 1938 to 1950. While there is no paint residue left on the bottle, it most closely resembles early bottles for Faberge’s
Tigress scent, an expensive perfume introduced in 1941 (Faberge Colognes 2014). The most easily recognizable perfume bottle from the site is Arlequinade by Paul Poiret. Poiret was a
Parisian fashion magnate who started his Rosaline line of perfumes (named after his deceased daughter) in France in 1918 (Perfume Projects 2014c). The scent was introduced to the United
States in 1923 and the Rosaline line was discontinued sometime in the 1950s (Perfume Projects
2014c). Most popular in the 1920s, the bottle was modeled after a harlequin’s triangular costume pattern and hat (Takasago 2011). This designer bottle of Parisian perfume is an expensive collector’s item today, and would have been an expensive purchase in the 1920s when it was first sold.
A pewter crown-shaped, gold-painted, threaded perfume stopper was also recovered from the site. The interior of the lid had a broken portion of the applicator that would have been used
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to apply drops of perfume at a time. This lid is indicative of Crown Top German porcelain perfume bottles that were made in a wide variety of shapes by a variety of companies from 1920-
1939 (Turco 2013). Highly collectible today, these bottles of perfume would have probably been expensive at the time of their original purchase as well.
While the inexpensive Hoyt’s cologne makes up the bulk of the inexpensive perfume assemblage and was an obvious favorite scent for prostitutes, 15 of 27 of the perfume bottles recovered were considered medium or expensive, based on their bottle shape and brands (Figure
35). Two additional bottles were inexpensive toilet waters that could be used for scent or
9
8
7
6
5
4 Toilet Water 3
Perfume Frequency Inexpensive Perfume 2 Mid-Priced Perfume
1 Expensive Perfume
0
Type of Perfume
FIGURE 35. Perfume frequencies by price (Figure by author, 2014). cleanliness. The higher number of expensive perfumes than inexpensive scents indicates that prostitutes were investing in expensive and possibly more effective perfumes in attracting
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clients, than they were in less-expensive, small perfumes that could be purchased for a nickel.
The dates of the bottles are also informative. While early prostitutes were using toilet waters that
were considered appropriate for all American women and were less expensive than perfumes,
beginning around 1920 prostitutes appear to be spending more money on scents and wearing
more perfume in general. The kinds of perfume prostitutes chose to purchase follows the trend of
how average American women used perfume as well.
Although prostitutes were commonly stereotyped as wearing what would be considered
excessive and inappropriate makeup to advertise their profession during the late 19 th through
mid-20 th centuries, it seems that prostitutes living and working in Pensacola did not follow such stereotypes. The archaeological record of cosmetics present at the site indicates that rather than using cosmetics such as lipstick and rouge that should have been prostitutes’ trademarks before their use became mainstream in the 1920s, these items were not present in the assemblages at all before 1920. The complete lack of what would have been considered scandalous makeup at the time indicates that prostitutes living along this portion of the line were more interested in portraying themselves as respectable ladies than in celebrating their identity as prostitutes through the use of cosmetics. The small, portable nature of the cosmetics remnants such as compacts and lipstick tubes that do postdate 1920 suggest that while prostitutes wore makeup in public like most American women did at the time, they were also out in public, rather than sequestered to the district as social outcasts. If prostitutes were completely sequestered to the four-block radius of the district then they would have little reason to purchase items specifically made to be portable and used in public. Clearly prostitutes in Pensacola were not only a fixed portion of the Pensacola community, but were mobile within it and actively navigated their way through Pensacola’s social landscape as well.
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Personal Adornment Items
In addition to cosmetics, prostitutes used fashion in the form of jewelry, shoes, and
clothing to adorn themselves. Prostitutes would have adorned themselves for a variety of reasons
including their desires to display their identity, display their wealth, and to be as attractive as
possible to entice clients (Gensmer 2012:32). Several beads and fragments of jewelry recovered
from the site indicate that prostitutes in Pensacola wore a variety of different kinds of jewelry
(Table 4).
TABLE 4 BEAD DESCRIPTIONS
Artifact Number Material Type Kidd Classification/Description Count 00P-18-37 Glass lc4 S op Black 6 ends ground 1 00P-20-51 Glass Wld2 DO S op Maple 1 00P-20-52 Glass lc4 S op Black 5 sides 17 00P-21-16 Glass la8 VS tr Citron 2 00P-21-31 Glass lla12 C S tr Oyster White 1 13N-186 Plastic Black Bead with White Poseidon Figure 1 00P-21-18 Unknown Thin, Spherical 2 00P-94-23 Plastic Wlb2 R L op White; Faux Pearl 1 00P-21-17 Glass Black Faceted 1
An assortment of 33 beads were discovered from the site, however only 27 beads recovered in the 2000 excavation are associated with features from the appropriate time period.
Dating the other six glass beads to the brothel occupation is virtually impossible because glass bead manufacturing techniques have remained the same for hundreds of years (Kidd and Kidd
1970). One black plastic bead with an engraved image of Poseidon painted white is indicative of ancient revival style which was popular in the 1920s (Bell 2008:226). Of the 27 remaining beads found within features, one is a round dark brown seed bead (according to Kidd and Kidd’s 1970 bead classification system, Wld2 DO S op Maple), one is a white seed bead (lla12 C S tr Oyster
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White), 17 are pentagonal black tubular beads that have been broken off into shorter lengths (lc4
S op Black 5 sides), two are white tube beads (la8 VS tr Citron), one is a black hexagonal tube bead (lc4 S op Black 6 ends ground), two are thin, hollow spherical beads that are not made of glass, and one is a faux pearl (Wlb2 R L op White) (Kidd and Kidd 1970). The final bead is black, faceted on one side and plain on the other, and has two parallel holes running width-wise indicating that it was used for jewelry, probably a bracelet or necklace. While the use of seed, tubular, and pearl beads for decorating clothing and jewelry has been popular throughout
American history, their presence in the late 19th century through early 20th century features suggests that they most likely date to the same occupational time as the red light district. The beads also indicate that prostitutes enhanced their appearance through jewelry or beaded clothing.
A variety of jewelry was also found at the site including bracelets, lapel pins, pendants, and rings. None of the jewelry was made of precious materials and therefore was probably not very expensive. During the 1920s, “jewelry was used to complement the dress and soften the effect that short hair had on the features. Dangling earrings, long ropes of beads, and a multitude of bracelets… everything that glittered or dangled captured the imagination. Crystal and rhinestones became fashionable” (Bell 2008:216). Two brass aglets typical of the long necklaces of the time and a rhinestone setting link of a bracelet found at the site emulate the 1920s fashions.
The most temporally diagnostic piece of jewelry found at the site was a pendant in the shape of an Egyptian bust profile. Made of a delicate copper alloy featuring a green glass rhinestone attached to where the ear of the bust would be, the pendant included holes at the top and the bottom of the profile (Figure 36). The holes indicate that more beads were strung above
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FIGURE 36. Egyptian revival pendant 00P-20-54 (Photo by author, 2014). and below the profile, a common feature of 1920s necklaces (Bell 2008:250-260). When Howard
Carter discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922, the riches of the tomb and the world-wide press the find received transformed the fashions of the decade; “by the time the burial chamber
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was opened in February 1923… women were wearing Tut hats and jewelry bearing his likeness.
Stones used in King Tut’s jewelry, lapis lazuli, cornelian, and chalcedony, became popular.
Egyptian motifs such as the falcon, vulture, and scarab were seen on everything from belt
buckles to pendants. At first these unusual materials and designs were used in copies of the
ancient articles, but it was not long before they were assimilated into the Art-Deco style” (Bell
2008:226). The pendant probably dates to the later 1920s in that its use of the cut green glass
stone and necklace pendant shape are more indicative of the art deco style than the ancient
designs.
An amethyst pin in a wagon wheel shape also typifies the glitter of the twenties, but this
shape and geometric design characteristic of the Art Deco movement indicate that it probably
dates from the 1920s-1930s (Bell 2008:226). Another pin in the shape of an arrow with clear
rhinestones along its point and feathers likely dates to the 1920s and 1930s. These pins could
have been worn on clothing or hats, as was suggested in Country Life in 1926 “the small plain hat has created the need for jeweled hat ornaments, which were not necessary when hats had more trimming, such as feathers and flowers” (Bell 2008:216). Two straight pins, most often used on blouses in the 1900s and 1910s, were also recovered from the site. One is a high quality gold, while the other is brass with a flower motif on the top with a red plastic Bakelite center.
Bakelite was used in jewelry during the 1920s to the 1940s, which suggests that the flower pin probably dates to the period when straight pins were being phased out of popularity (Bell
2008:230). A complete Bakelite bangle bracelet recovered from the site also dates from the
1920s to the 1940s. An off-white ivory color with molded flowers and foliage with remnants of pastel pink and green paint, this floral design is more characteristic of the feminine styles of the
1930s than the geometric shapes most popular in the 1920s (Bell 2008:224). Also indicative of
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the 1930s is a molded swan clip. Probably used as a hat accessory, this clip dates to the 1930s
instead of the 1910s. Hats during the 1910s used only natural items such as flowers and feathers
as decorations unlike synthetic or bejeweled clips that were used after the 1920s (Bell 2008:225).
Hat decorations also suggest the mobility of resident prostitutes in that hats were worn
outdoors during the day to protect women from the sun and to be seen by others as a fashion
accessory rather than being worn indoors (Bell 2008:225). A prostitute would not have owned
many hats (which would make hat decorations less likely to be found in the archaeological
assemblage) if she rarely ventured outside of the district. The frequency but relative low-quality
of the other jewelry found at the district indicates that prostitutes were keeping up with current
fashions and adorning themselves, but they were not necessarily able or willing to afford
expensive designer jewelry made of precious gems and materials.
Perhaps the most curious pieces of jewelry recovered from the site are two rings that
appear to be wedding rings one the right size for a man, the other for a woman. The female ring,
measuring 1.7cm in diameter in the center (which is a size six and three quarters in United States
ring sizes), is a gold-plated brass ring that is molded with the phrase “Let Love Abide Forever”
(Ringsizes.co 2014, Figure 37). Golden wedding rings for women date back at least as early as
the 16 th century, although this ring obviously dates later (Howard 2006). The intricacy and detail of the molding indicates that it was machine made, probably dating from the 1900s to the 1920s based on similar rings available for purchase through Sears and Roebuck Catalogs (Schroeder Jr.
1908).
The male ring, measuring 2.2cm in diameter (a size 12 ¾ US), is a plain band of gold plated brass (Ringsizes.co 2014). Men were more irregular about wearing wedding rings throughout history. Around 1917 Elite London society debated whether it should become mandatory for men
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to wear wedding rings so women could readily determine if men were available or not (Kunz
1917). However, in the United States, men’s wedding rings did not become popular enough to be advertised as such until the 1920s, and the double ring ceremony did not appear in a wedding etiquette book until 1937 (Howard 2006:60). Therefore, the male ring probably dates from the
1920s.
FIGURE 37.Wedding ring. Above, detail of women’s wedding ring, “LET LOVE ABIDE FOREVER”; below, whole women’s wedding ring 13N-170 (Photos by author, 2013).
Clearly, love did not “Abide Forever” in these cases as the rings were discarded.
Although it would be speculation to determine exactly how two wedding rings ended up in a red light district, there is some insight to be gained. For a wide variety of reasons, married men were commonly clients of prostitutes in red light districts (Rosen 1982). This apparent infidelity is unsurprising in that married men have engaged prostitutes throughout history. What is perhaps
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more surprising is the number of married women who became prostitutes. Due to a lack of
employment options for women at the time, marriage was viewed by women as an opportunity
for upward mobility during the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries (Rosen 1982). Often women from broken families or impoverished situations saw marriage as a way to improve their situation, but if the marriage did not work out or they were abandoned by their husbands, women with no support systems or marketable skills found themselves destitute (Rosen 1982). Despite its social stigma and health risks, for many of these women prostitution was the best option.
Brothel life offered steady income that was higher than they could expect from other occupations, a social support system of the madam and other prostitutes, relative safety over street walking, and even the opportunity to meet other eligible men and potentially marry again
(Rosen 1982).
As can be witnessed through census data, this ambiguity in marital status was true for several Pensacola prostitutes living on the Line (Figure 38). In 1900, of the women living in households that are most likely brothels, nine were listed as currently married, five were widows, and two were divorced (United States Census Bureau 1900). In 1910, the year prostitutes listed their occupations as “Sporting Women”, ten were on their first or second marriages, 28 were widows, and two were divorced (United States Census Bureau 1910). Of the few potential prostitutes identified on the 1920 census, none were married, four were widows, and none were listed as divorced (United States Census Bureau 1920). Only one potential prostitute was married in 1930, but 48 were widows, and none were divorced (United States Census Bureau 1930). The
Great Depression took its toll on families as well. By 1940, 14 women identified as probable prostitutes were either on their first or second marriage, six were divorced, and three were
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widows (United States Census Bureau 1940). While the wedding rings present at the site could
60
50
40
30 Married Divorced
20 Widowed Numberof Prostitutes
10
0 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 Census Year
FIGURE 38. Non-single prostitutes (Figure by author, 2014). have become part of the archaeological record in a variety of ways, they are tangible evidence that marriage did play an important role in life at the red light district.
Three footwear related artifacts were also recovered from the site. Although these items are ambiguous as far as what gender would have used them, if they belonged to prostitutes then they are further indicators of the women’s mobility. Still used today, shoe horns assist both men and women with slipping their feet into tight shoes. One such shoe horn made of iron was recovered from the site. The short shape and plain design of this shoe horn indicates that it dates from the 20 th century (Brandon 1984:16). During the early 20th century women wore tight-fitting shoes that required shoe horns and button hooks to put them on. By the 1920s women wore black shoes with one leather strap over the top of the foot known as “bar shoes” that also required shoe horns to ease them on (Brandon 1984:17). Due to the hurried nature of sexual encounters in 127
middle class brothels it is more likely that this object belonged to one of the residents of a brothel rather than one of its patrons. The presence of a shoe horn at the site suggests that prostitutes invested in products that extended the life of their shoes. Another type of item recovered are two bottles of shoe polish. The polish sold by the Everett & Berron Company was sold in similar bottles from 1902 to the 1940s (Whitten 2005). If the shoe polish belonged to the prostitutes, then it is not only additional evidence that prostitutes invested in their personal appearance, but also that they were mobile within the community. If prostitutes did not venture out and about in the rest of the city, then they would not need to polish their shoes if they were staying within their designated district.
Another object recovered from the site, a pearl-handled pocket knife, could also indicate the mobility of red light district residents if it belonged to prostitutes. The knife is 7.2cm long when closed and features a spear-shaped knife blade on one side and a nail file on the other.
Although its size, handle material, and nail file indicate that it was probably a ladies knife, similar knives were also advertised for men (Stewart 2010). Hundreds of pocket knives were made and marketed toward men, but very few were marketed toward women (Stewart 2010).
Unfortunately the knife could not be exactly matched to a specific manufacturer, but the
Winchester Company offered knives the most similar to the one found at the site.
Known for its munitions, Winchester branched out into making cutlery in 1919 to maintain its production after WWI and discontinued making knives at the onset of WWII in 1940
(Stewart 2010). If the knife is indeed a Winchester, it dates solidly to the red light district occupation. Pocket knives are constructed to be portable tools, so if this is indeed a lady’s knife, then a prostitute should not need a pocket knife if she were not leaving the red light district.
Simply, she would not need one at all since regular knives would be available in the brothel.
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Therefore, the possible presence of a ladies pocket knife indicates that prostitutes ventured outside of the red light district far and long enough to necessitate an investment in a pocket knife for utilitarian purposes.
Purses were also fashion accessories found at the site that were meant to be used and seen around town. Since pockets were only sporadically included in dress design throughout history, hand bags have been used by women since the 1500s to carry their small belongings (Foster
1982). In the mid-19 th century, women used small bags that were fastened around their waist to hold their belongings, but by the 1890s small handbags, carried independently, came into fashion
(Foster 1982). After WWI, cloth became the preferred purse material over leather due to its wider array of available colors and the decline of the German chemical companies that until
WWI had been the center of leather production for purses (Foster 1982). In about 1916 it became popular to carry purses around without straps, which led to the invention of the pochette, a small rectangular purse often featuring a clasp frame with no straps, which were popular through the late 1930s (Foster 1982).
Remnants of one such pochette was found at the site. The rectangular pochette frame features a snap closure in a bow shape and lacks attachments for straps indicating that it dates from the 1920s-1930s (Figure 39). Remnants of pink fabric are still visible in the frame as well.
The purse’s size suggests that it was used for special occasions rather than daily excursions.
Perhaps it was used on a trip to the theater, which was one of the only permissible places for prostitutes to frequent regularly in Pensacola outside of the red light district.
Two coin purse frames indicate prostitutes were interacting with the rest of the community on daily errands. Both frames are plain, snap cases with no remnants of fabric left.
One is silver in color and one is brass, but the lack of decoration or decorative closures suggest
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that the frames were meant for everyday use. Both the special occasion pochette and the
everyday coin purses reinforce the interpretation that prostitutes living in Pensacola’s red light
district were mobile outside of the district. Women who did not venture outside of the district
had little need for fashionable purses meant to be seen by others or common coin purses to carry
money. Therefore, the presence of these purses, as well as shoe accessories and pocket knives,
help support the claim that prostitutes living and working in Pensacola’s red light district were
mobile and interacted with the community in a variety of ways.
FIGURE 39. Pochette frame. Left, whole frame 86D8-84-93; right, detail of pochette fabric remnant (Photos by author, 2014).
Customers’ Personal Items
Another way the district can be seen to interact with the greater community is through the personal items of the Line’s customers. Men traveled both locally and from across the country to visit the district. The items they left behind from their encounters inside Pensacola’s brothels yield significant insight as to the identities and localities of the men who discarded them.
A keychain from a Philadelphia, Mississippi hotel illustrates how much communal and regional interaction occurred within the district. In operation from 1928-1976, the Benwalt Hotel is located 231 miles from Pensacola (Malvaney 2010). At some point in its operation, someone
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stayed in room 17 and deposited the room keychain in Pensacola’s red light district rather than in the mail box as the stamp on the keychain requested. While any more information as to how the keychain came from Philadelphia to Pensacola would be speculation, two scenarios present themselves. The keychain could have been in possession of a member of the district’s clientele when he visited the district, or it could have belonged to a prostitute who moved from
Philadelphia to Pensacola since many prostitutes operated out of hotel rooms. The latter scenario is less likely since the Benwalt appears to have been a nice establishment where prostitutes were not likely to operate. Therefore, the keychain was probably in the possession of a red light district patron when it became part of the archaeological record. In fact, a wide variety of artifacts present in the assemblage can be attributed to depositional activities of red light district patrons rather than district workers.
Tax tokens from multiple states reflect the geographic reach of Pensacola’s customer base (Figure 40). During the financial crisis of the Great Depression, several states imposed sales and luxury taxes. For items that cost only five or 10 cents, a one cent tax was a huge over-charge of the average tax of two or three percent (Malehorn and Davenport 1993:10). A penny was a significant amount of money during the Depression, but there was no United States currency for denominations lower than one cent. The solution to this problem was to break a cent into smaller values by using state-issued tokens, scrip, and punch cards in amounts that were the same as the tax on small items (Malehorn and Davenport 1993:10). By the end of the Depression, 30 states had issued luxury or sales taxes with some form of token system (Malehorn and Davenport
1993:10).
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FIGURE 40. Tax tokens. Above, Louisiana tax tokens 13N-179 and 13N-180; below Alabama tax token front and reverse 13N-215 (Photos by author, 2013).
Three tax tokens were recovered from the site. Alabama was the ninth state to issue a luxury tax (Malehorn and Davenport 1993:13). Alabama tokens were known as “Bibbies” after governor Bibb Graves who initially opposed sales taxes during his campaign but implemented a two percent luxury tax shortly into his term (Malehorn and Davenport 1993:14). One Bibbie dating from 1937-1938, a five mill token used as tax for a 25 cent purchase, was found within the red light district (Malehorn and Davenport 1993:17). Louisiana also issued a highly contested
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two percent tax. The tax was so hated, the opposition threatened to host a second Boston Tea
Party in Baton Rouge by tossing the tax tokens into the Mississippi river (Malehorn and
Davenport 1993:117). Both a one mill (used on five cent purchases) and a five mill token that both dated from 1936-1938 were found at the site. In 1938 Louisiana repealed the detested tax, making it the second state to do so (Malehorn and Davenport 1993:118).
The Great Depression was a time of transients in America. Men left their hometowns and travelled across the country for years looking for any kind of available work (McGovern 1976).
Pensacola fared much better than most of America during the Depression because of the economic boost of NAS (McGovern 1976). Therefore, Pensacola would have been a magnet for men looking for work or looking for an escape from their troubles at the beach, or, apparently due to the presence of the tax tokens in the assemblage, within the red light district. The tokens indicate that men from across the Gulf Coast still patronized brothels even when they were probably cash-poor, and that these men would have been temporary residents of Pensacola since they retained tax tokens from their respective states instead of leaving them behind or disposing of them as they would if they considered themselves to be living in the luxury-tax-free Florida on a more permanent basis.
Another item recovered from a red light district customer that traveled a great distance is a badge from a Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI) employee. TCI was founded in Tennessee in 1852, and after moving to Birmingham, Alabama in an 1886 merger, became the largest and most significant iron and steel company in the city known as “the Pittsburg of the
South” (Rikard 2012). The pin, which likely would have been owned by a highly ranked employee, reads “A – T.C.I. & R.R. CO – FAIRFIELD WKS – 2383.” Founded in 1917,
Fairfield was a company town created by TCI whose residents worked at TCI’s steel processing
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and fabrication plants, also located in Fairfield, Alabama (Maloney 2013). The Fairfield Works’ first business after opening was to make steel ingots for Mobile’s shipbuilding industry for
WWI, and by 1926 TCI had completed a lock system along the Tombigbee waterway to create a water route that connected their mills in Birmingham to their clients in Mobile (Rikard 2012).
This investment in a lock system suggests that TCI’s major clients before the Depression were located in Mobile. Therefore, it seems likely that after a business trip from Birmingham to
Mobile, at least one of TCI’s employees decided to make the extra trip to Pensacola for some specialized entertainment. A few contemporary accounts of Pensacola red light district customers detail the extravagance of high-end brothels and boasted that they were better than anything even offered in Storyville. The presence of the TCI pin in Pensacola’s red light district may seem to verify these accounts in that the TCI employee traveled all the way to Pensacola rather than staying in Mobile to patronize a brothel. However, this pin cannot be used as proof of customers’ preference for Pensacola’s district over Mobile’s because Mobile’s red light district was shut down in 1918, which pre-dates the likely deposition of the pin (Alsobrook 2014). Undoubtedly prostitutes still operated in Mobile after its district’s closure, but this customer, at least, must have preferred the brothel/red light district system since he made the 60 mile trip to Pensacola rather than seeking out streetwalkers or pimps in Mobile.
A campaign card was found at the site, indicating that local customers also frequented
Pensacola’s district. As early as the 1700s, taverns and bars have been a place for men to gather, discuss politics, and even vote (Smith 2008:64). Prostitutes have also always been a fixed presence in taverns and bars, but they have largely been viewed as mere entertainment in a male- dominated sphere (Smith 2008:74, Spude 2005). Likewise, politics were considered intrinsically a male concern that women either could not or cared not to understand, even after women gained
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the right to vote in 1920 (Collins 2003). When men went to brothels, it was assumed that their
sole intent was to seek sexual companionship (Rosen 1982). However, after further analysis, this
assumption is overly simplistic.
While from the prostitute’s perspective it is more beneficial to usher men in and out as
quickly as possible to maximize their earnings, from the customer’s perspective he wants to get
as much pleasure out of the outing as possible. Consequently it makes sense for the customer to
take advantage of other amusements such as alcohol, dancing, and sometimes meals before being
ushered out of the door. In a brothel having a sexual encounter is an eventuality rather than
merely a possibility as might be the case in a bar. Therefore, men can give more of their attention
to their own pursuits in a brothel rather than focusing on finding a receptive sexual partner in a
bar. Thus, the front parlors of brothels likely gave men opportunities to relax and socialize with
each other more than has been previously assumed.
Customer socialization is evidenced by a political campaign card for the Escambia
County state senator race found at the site. The campaign card features a portrait of candidate “J.
W. Kehoe Candidate for State Senator from Escambia County” on one side with a calendar and a reminder for the dates of the primary election on the other. Kehoe was a prominent defense lawyer in Pensacola who served as the State Attorney on the first Judicial Circuit from 1900-
1909 and from 1925-1926 (Sutton 1990). Due to his stints as State Attorney during those years, the possible years the calendar could have been from, and his apparent age in the photograph on the card, the card is most likely from 1910, which was a full 10 years before women had the right to vote. Therefore, either Kehoe or one of his supporters may have been campaigning for him to other men in or around brothels situated along the Line, meaning that men had the leisure and
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inclination to discuss politics while they were in the sex district rather than focusing only on their sexual encounters.
Since the city was founded, there has always been a military garrison in or around
Pensacola. It comes as no surprise then, that large amounts of military paraphernalia were recovered from the red light district. Regalia from every branch and every major conflict the
United States military engaged in during the district’s operation were present at the site (Figure
41). Even regional military schools contained red light district patrons.
One brass button from the site was issued to a student from the Gulf Coast Military
Academy. Featuring the motto “Send us the boy and we will return the man”, the academy was founded in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1912 and was shut down in 1953 (Casey 2014). Apparently some students chose to supplement their education on manhood with a 133 mile trip to
Pensacola’s red light district rather than a 78 mile journey to New Orleans’ red light district, or a
76 mile journey to Mobile’s district. The choice to visit Pensacola’s district over New Orleans’ or Mobile’s might indicate that the button post-dates both cities’ red light districts and the student preferred to patronize a brothel rather than streetwalkers who would have been available in either other city (and Gulf Port itself). If the button predated the closure of the other cities, then the button could indicate that Pensacola’s district was preferred above the closer New
Orleans and Mobile districts. Unfortunately, the button cannot be attributed with a tighter date range, leaving both possibilities as options. Or, more simply, the student could have been in
Pensacola on other business and decided to take advantage of the opportunity to visit its red light district.
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FIGURE 41. Military buttons. Upper left, Gulf Coast Military Academy button 13N-228; upper middle, US Revenue Cutter Service button 13N-241; upper right, US Navy button 00P-20-97; lower left, US Naval Aviator button 13N-242, lower middle, US Marine Corps officer’s button 00P-18-36; lower right, US Army pant button 13N-245 (Photos by author, 2013, 2014).
A button from the Revenue Cutter Service was also located at the site. Officially named the Revenue Cutter Service in 1894, the service was the predecessor to the United States Coast
Guard and conducted many of the modern day Coast Guard’s duties (including aiding navigation, law enforcement, environmental protection, and military readiness), until it was incorporated into the Coast Guard in 1915 (Scheina 1989). As part of its mission of military readiness the Service gave a great deal of support to the Navy during the Spanish American War in 1898 (United States Coast Guard 2014). This time period may have been when the button was
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deposited at the site since there were no Cutter ships stationed in Pensacola during times of peace.
The Navy, on the other hand, had a very long historical presence in Pensacola. The Navy operated a Navy Yard near Fort Barrancas from 1825 until 1911, opened NAS in 1914, and opened the Pensacola Shipyard after the United States entered WWI (McGovern 1976). One regular United States Navy button and one Naval Aviation button were recovered from the site.
The regular Navy button features an eagle perched on an upright anchor facing right, surrounded with 13 stars. Unfortunately, the button back has rusted to the point where any makers’ marks cannot be read, yielding the button undatable. However, its design is indicative of insignia featured on post-civil war naval buttons (Albert 1997). The military had its own hospital for personnel, therefore the button was most likely deposited at the site during the red light district occupation rather than at the earlier mariner’s hospital. The Naval Aviation button is also confusing. The button features an eagle perched upon a horizontal anchor above three cannonballs facing right. Its brown enamel coat indicates that it is a Naval Aviation button, but eagles did not face right on such buttons until the May 14, 1941 order for them to do so, which post-dates the district’s forced closure on March 27, 1941 (Albert 1997).
The marines were also no strangers to the red light district. A brass officer’s button with an eagle perched on top of a skewed anchor surrounded by 13 stars was discovered at the site.
The button bears the maker’s mark “Horst Mann Philadelphia” which dates it from 1893 to 1935
(Albert 1997). That the button belonged to an officer indicates the status of the resident brothels must have been middle to upper class. If the brothels along this portion of the block were lower class then officers would probably not have frequented them. Higher-class brothels indicated that the women inside were more likely to be disease-free and that a wider variety of services were
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available to customers (such as food, drink, or sexual acts) (Rosen 1982:87). Therefore, men
with higher pay, such as military officers, would be more likely to frequent nicer houses than
lower-class brothels, to at least avoid disease if not partake of extra services.
Army personnel also visited the district. While some were undoubtedly stationed at Ft.
Barrancas, others may have been passing through on their way to overseas deployment. One
four-holed aluminum button marked “US Army” found at the site was used commonly as the
main button for trousers in WWI (Militaryitems.com 2010). However, marines commonly used
army uniforms at this time to supplement their uniforms, so this button might have belonged to
either a soldier or a marine.
Two other artifacts indicate that the Army frequented the red light district as well:
military identification tags (Figure 42). In response to the difficulties of identifying and returning
soldiers’ remains after large conflicts, the United States military issued General Order No. 204
on December 20, 1906 regulating the first form of a personal identification system in the Army
(Braddock 2003:20). The earliest tags required the inclusion of the soldier’s name, rank, unit,
and “USA” stamped on their faces (Braddock 2003:20). Two of these early tags, from different
Army units, were recovered from the site. Neither tag includes a serial number, which were
assigned to personnel in 1918 and added to any older tags still in use (Braddock 2003:24). The
absence of serial numbers upon the tags indicates that the tags were lost between their issue in
1906 and 1918. The tag of a private in the 20 th Company of the Coastal Artillery would have been in use locally. The 20 th was stationed at Fort Barrancas as part of the Coastal Artillery’s mission to protect the United States’ shoreline from attack from 1904 to 1922 (Smith 2004). This assignment would have been especially important with the threat of submarine attacks on
American shipping during WWI.
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FIGURE 42. Army identification tags. Left, US Army 20 th Company Coastal Artillery tag 00P-6- 7; right, US Army 177 th Infantry tag 00P-21-34 (Photo by author, 2014).
The second tag belonged to a member of the 177 th Infantry brigade. The 177 th was part of the 89 th Division which fought on the front lines of France during WWI (Darst 1919). The 89 th was compiled of draftees from Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas,
Colorado, and primarily, Missouri. Mustered in 1917, at Camp Funston, Kansas, the division was shipped out to Europe the week of June 1, 1918 (Darst 1919). Once at the front, the division participated in multiple offenses of trench warfare, was subjected to gas attacks, and earned no less than seven Medals of Honor, tying the record for most Medals of Honor awarded to any division during WWI (Darst 1919). Due to its achievements, the 89th was chosen to be part of the
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army of occupation force and was finally disbanded in 1919 (Darst 1919). Since the 89 th was stationed in Kansas and was in Europe by the time identification tags were required to include serial numbers, this tag was likely lost when the unit was shipping out after a final night of pleasure. Although most of the records for this unit were lost in an archival fire in 1973, this tag’s owner does not appear on any of the casualty or medal recipient lists for the division that are known to exist, indicating that he probably survived the war relatively unscathed (Williams
2001). Whether he was an officer or not at the time of his deployment is difficult to ascertain.
Where his rank should be displayed, the abbreviation “SC. S.” is stamped. One possibility for this rank could be a Shoeing and Carriage Smith assigned to ferry and care for war horses
(Williamson 2014). While the 177 th did have a machine gun battalion that might have needed horses to transport the guns, the rank was commonly used by the United Kingdom, not the
United States (Williams 2001). Unfortunately no other information could be found to identify the abbreviation.
Prostitutes have serviced military men in times of peace and times of war since the first battles were fought. The women functioned to relieve the stress of shipping out or battle fatigue, and to relieve the boredom of monotonous camp life. Similarly for civilians, prostitutes were distractions from stressful or monotonous work and home lives. In both scenarios they were a boon the economy of Pensacola by attracting both civilians and military personnel from within the community and from hundreds of miles away to spend money in Pensacola.
Other Personal Items
Given the primary business activities that occurred within brothels, clothing fasteners were often lost and became part of the archaeological record. Three clothing fasteners were found at the site. A brass shirt stud, which would have been used to keep collars or cuffs in place
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on men’s shirts from the mid-1800s to the 1940s, was present at the site (Willett and Cunnington
1992). Usually found on dress shirts, this stud most likely came from a middle to upper-class customer (Willet and Cunnington 1992). There is also evidence of lower class customers. A clothing rivet labeled “I. S. & Co. Atlanta” was recovered from the site. Rivets were first attached to men’s work clothing in 1873 by Levi Strauss, resulting in the invention of blue jeans, which remain popular to this day (Levi Strauss & Co. 2014). Prior to the 1950s jeans were preferred by the working class. The rivet, therefore signifies that working class men frequented the red light district (Levi Strauss & Co. 2014). Zippers were not widely used on clothing until the late 1920s and early 1930s (Willett and Cunnington 1992). Before then, men’s pants were secured with large buttons or snaps. One such snap was located in the district. At 15.22mm in diameter, this was a large, heavy-duty snap that would have probably been used as the primary closure for a pair of men’s pants. It is brass, and the remnant of fabric attached to the top is a coarse, thick, black fragment that indicates that these were work pants rather than fashionable upper-class pants. If they were fashionable pants they would have been secured with a button that would have blended in with the fabric rather than with a brass snap.
An array of artifacts identified as suspender items (clips, hooks, and slide adjustments), garter items (clips, hooks, and slide adjustments), and overall items (hooks and slide adjustments) have also been found at the site. The presence of these items indicates that working class men who wore suspenders or overalls during this time period most likely frequented these brothels, and that prostitutes wore garters. Garters had replaced corsets from the 1920s to the early 1960s in the function of shaping women’s bodies, which also indicates that prostitutes were conscious of their appearance (Willett and Cunnington 1992). Two sets of hooks and eyes were present. Hooks and eyes are clothing fasteners that were first used in the 1700s and continue to
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be used today (Willett and Cunnington 1992). Primarily used for undergarments or fasteners that are not meant to be seen, the fasteners were most often used on corsets, and have been used on other clothing items since the corset’s demise as an every-day clothing item.
In addition to undergarments, women experiencing menstruation needed a sanitary, comfortable way to collect and dispose of bodily fluids. One artifact related to menstruation was found at the site. Beginning in the late 19 th century, the method most commonly employed by women was wearing belts to which sanitary napkins could be pinned or later, clipped (Finley
2007). One such clip, labeled “Gripad Johnson & Johnson Patented June 17. 24 June 24. 24” is from the sanitary belt offered by Johnson & Johnson (Figure 43).
FIGURE 43. Menstrual belt clip 86D8-19-66 (Photo by author, 2014). 143
In a 1927 ad for Nupak pads, Johnson and Johnson recommend “to wear with Nupak, choose the Gripad Belt, a sanitary belt that eliminates the use of safety pins. A simple mechanical device fastens gauze pads quickly, easily, securely. The belt is a dainty affair of flesh colored silk elastic fashioned with extreme care to insure perfect fit and comfort under all circumstances” (Potter 1927). At least one of the prostitutes living on the line employed the
Gripad for feminine hygiene purposes. In 1920 Kotex brand sanitary napkins were introduced and by the 1930s, had phased out Johnson & Johnson’s line of feminine hygiene products (Finley
2007). Therefore, this product was used between its introduction in 1924 through sometime in the 1930s.
Considered social outcasts at the time, prostitutes had limited outlets for social interaction outside of their work. As evidenced by dog licenses recovered from the site, prostitutes sought solace through owning pets. Respectable women refused to venture near the district, and men did not acknowledge prostitutes on the street, although many were undoubtedly their customers
(Rosen 1982). Maintaining relationships with other prostitutes was possible, but was still difficult given the constant competition for business. Prostitutes were even estranged from their familial relationships. In fact, almost all prostitutes changed their names once they entered the profession to avoid bringing shame upon their families (Rosen 1982:102). One way prostitutes obtained companionship was by owning pets. They were notorious for adopting stray dogs and other animals (Rosen 1982:105). Pets in the early 20 th century were seen to personify the idea of the domestic ethic of kindness, which dictated that cruelty to animals was an outward expression of inward moral collapse, and that animals themselves were emotional and moral beings that could be used as tools to teach people how to have and react to emotional responses appropriate for their society (Grier 2006:179). Used primarily to teach children, pets were also considered to
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be therapeutic for lonely adults because pets were thought to be emotional beings, “people could
even experience love through their relationships with animals” (Grier 2006:130).
Photographs provide some of the most tangible evidence that people of the past loved their pets. Photographs not only indicate the amount of time and money people were willing to expend to be photographed with a beloved animal, the physical closeness of people that posed with their pets demonstrated that people were emotionally close to their animals as well (Grier
2006:60). Many of the portraits of New Orleans prostitutes taken around 1900 by E. J. Bellocq include prostitutes’ pets in close proximity to their bodies (Bellocq ca. 1900). These photographs provide insight as to the emotional investment prostitutes gave to their pets.
Although no photographs exist of Pensacola prostitutes with their pets, it appears that the residents of the Line also had dogs. Three dog licenses from 1903, 1904, and 1929-1930 have
been recovered from the site and are direct evidence of animal companionship (Figure 44). By
1902 pet dogs in Pensacola were required to be licensed and wear a license tag which cost $1.25;
close to $33.14 in today’s currency (Jones 1902:87; Friedman 2014). This cost was a substantial
investment in licensing a pet, but the alternative was not pleasant; “any dog at large on the streets
without such tag shall be carried to the City pound by persons authorized by the Mayor, and, if
not released by the owner, said owner paying a fee of one and a half dollars for each dog so
impounded, within forty-eight hours, shall be killed by poison or drowning or otherwise as the
Mayor may direct” (Jones 1902:87). By the turn of the century, urban areas were inundated with
stray dogs. More than a nuisance, stray dogs were identified as the primary carriers for rabies,
which was fatal to humans. There were so many strays that during the summer (when rabies was
supposed to be at its most contagious), groups of men and boys hired by cities swept the streets
and beat to death any stray dogs they came across, creating the phrase “the dog days of summer”
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(Grier 2006:89). Therefore, for loving pet owners paying almost $35 was worth keeping their pet out of the streets.
FIGURE 44. Dog licenses. Upper left , 1903 license 13N-185; upper right , 1904 license 13N- 184; below, 1929 license 12P_ (Photos by author, 2013, 2014).
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Apparently dog 138 and dog 39 were worth that much to their owners. A third tag issued from 1929-1930 for a male dog was also found at the site. By 1920 Pensacola had begun to distinguish between male and female dogs for licensing, with male dogs costing $1 annually, which would be $13.45 in today’s currency; and females costing $2, or $26.89 today (Jones et al.
1920:145, Friedman 2014). There were also more ordinances regulating females. Owners of bitches had to keep the dogs off the street when they were in heat or “whether licensed or not … she shall be impounded, and unless the owner … pay(s) for her release the sum of twenty-five
($25.00) dollars, she shall be killed” (Jones et al. 1920:145). In 1929, $25 was the equivalent of nearly $337 today (Friedman 2014). Female dogs in heat were so much more expensive to have running loose because they were seen as the main problem for the overabundance of strays.
Ideally bitches could be kept inside when in heat, eliminating the possibility of their mating and increasing the population (Grier 2006:79). This extra cost for licensing and for the potential cost of the dog getting loose probably influenced the decision on the part of the owner of dog 155 to keep a male dog instead of a female dog as a companion.
Although prostitutes employed a variety of means to avoid becoming pregnant, oftentimes these measures failed. Prostitutes around the country are reported to have had children
(Rosen 1982:143). Sometimes these children were sent away to live in houses run by former prostitutes with other prostitutes’ children, and sometimes they lived in the brothels with their mothers (Rosen 1982:143). Despite the lack of archival evidence in the census records that children lived in the brothels studied in this research, there is some archaeological evidence that children were present (United States Census Bureau: 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940). Nine doll parts were recovered from the site, seven of which were bisque appendages. While these toys may have been the property of the prostitutes themselves as keep-sakes or ways to pass the
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time, the number of toys recovered from the site indicates that the presence of children should
not be discounted.
Bisque-headed dolls were manufactured from as early as the 1840s through the present
day, but bisque appendages were not attached to dolls’ soft bodies until around the mid-19 th century (Goodfellow 1993:50). Of the three arms present, two exhibit jointed composition hands dating them from 1875 to 1910, while the third has a simpler hand that dates anytime from the mid-19 th century to 1910 (Lavitt 1983:20). Four legs are present, two with high-heels featured on dolls from 1860 to 1900, one has a flat foot which can date from anywhere from the mid-19 th
century to 1910, and the final leg’s foot has been broken off, although the shoe was glazed which
is consistent with high-heeled boots (Lavitt 1983:20). Another small hand, which was made from
either rubber or plastic, dates from the 1920s to the present when rubber and plastic became
preferred for doll manufacturing because the materials were easier to sanitize and were more life-
like than their bisque predecessors (Fraser 1963:106). At least one large rubber or plastic doll
head, complete with synthetic hair and eyes, was recorded at the site through field photographs
as well, but unfortunately it was discarded as modern refuse.
A wide variety of marbles were also recovered from the site. Although marbles may seem undiagnostically uniform, limited date ranges can be attributed to marbles showing various characteristics. Marbles can be divided into two main categories: handmade and machine made.
Before glass marbles were produced starting in 1850, marbles were made of clay or dense ceramic. Ceramic marbles were replaced by glass marbles in the early 20 th century (Block 2012).
It is almost impossible to date clay or ceramic marbles without other associated artifacts. Due to the length of occupation at the site, the five clay and ceramic marbles found in the red light district are not included in this analysis. Of the remaining 22 glass marbles, two were identified
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as hand-made. The remaining 20 glass marbles were located in the Judicial Center display and had to be analyzed by photographs alone, so the tell-tale pontil marks of hand-made marbles could not be discerned. Despite the lack of diagnostic attributes, the patterning of these marbles indicate that most, if not all are machine-made.
Hand-made glass marbles were mostly made in Germany from 1850 until WWI, when the United States started manufacturing their own. Machine-made marbles phased out the hand- made around the 1920s (Block 2012). Machine-made glass marbles began to be manufactured from known companies in 1903 and are still produced today (Block 2012). Many machine-made marbles can be associated with their manufacturers through their designs, which can provide tighter date ranges. Of the machine-made marbles at the site three are solid colors that cannot be attributed to any specific company, six designs are too ambiguous to be attributed to a company, and one is a cat’s eye design that started to be manufactured in the 1940s (Block 2012). The remaining eight have designs that are consistent with the Akro Agate Company that was in operation from 1910-1951 (Block 2012).
Unfortunately, the toys recovered from the site are not diagnostic enough to put them solidly in the date range of the red light district occupation, but they do overlap at least parts of the district’s occupation. Dating these toys is more complicated because in an effort to clean up the neighborhood, the City of Pensacola purchased the southern portions of the lots on the western half of the block where the Innerarity mansion once stood and turned the area into a city park sometime in the early 1930s (Sutton ca. 1964). Consequently, toys dating after 1930 could have belonged to any children playing in the park rather than to brothel children specifically.
Therefore, the bisque doll appendages most likely pre-date the park, while the rubber or plastic doll hand and head could either pre or postdate the park. The hand-made marbles pre-date the
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park, while unfortunately none of the machine-made marbles were diagnostic enough to
determine if they became part of the archaeological record before or after the park was created.
However, from the sheer number of machine-made marbles present it is likely that some of them
pre-date 1935. During Sutton’s 1975 excavation, she mentions curious neighbors who recounted
stories about how they would play games such as “Tarzan” amongst the mansion’s ruins as
children (one even stated “when I was a barefoot boy I used to live down here and run errands
for some of the ‘ladies’”) (Sutton ca 1964:4). Local girls would go to the site to look into the wells to see a picture of their future husbands (Sutton ca 1964:5). Unfortunately Sutton did not record any of the informants’ names or ages in her account, so determining how early city children had been playing in the ruins is difficult. However, it is safe to assume that children would have been discouraged from playing so near the red light district and its seedy characters before the park was established. And the persistent children who went anyway would be more likely to be playing adventurous games such as “Tarzan” (which would have left relatively little archaeological evidence) amongst the mansion’s ruins rather than more common-place and sedentary games such as marbles or dolls that were recovered from the site. Therefore, while it cannot positively be proven that children lived in the brothels through the identification of bisque doll appendages and marbles alone, their presence at the site and the high failure rate of contraceptives at the time in conjunction with the nature of prostitutes’ work do suggest that at least some children may have been living with their mothers in the brothels of Pensacola.
The artifacts studied in this analysis, including medical paraphernalia, contraceptives, toiletries, cosmetics, personal adornment items, and other personal items have yielded great insight as to the daily life and mobility of prostitutes and their customers. Men from a variety of backgrounds and localities frequented the district, and the women who lived and worked within
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the district operated with a greater mobility than had been considered previously for red light district residents. Unexpectedly, prostitutes also took care of their appearance. This mobility and attention to appearance is reflected in the recollections of Pensacola resident Ann Thigpen:
“sometimes you’d see … the women walking downtown, buy something eh and uh they would have dyed hair and everything else and you’d know who they were. You could look at them and see who they were, yeah. Sort of tough looking” (Thigpen 2014).
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CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSIONS
Archaeology yields great insight as to how people in the past once lived. The archaeological
assemblage of Pensacola’s red light district is no exception. This analysis has shown that while
the prostitutes of Pensacola did engage in activities that were considered typical for prostitutes
across the nation, they also behaved in unexpected ways. For example, prostitutes were more
mobile within the surrounding community than had been presumed previously, as evidenced by
artifacts such as embossed pharmaceutical bottles, purses, cosmetics, and shoe polish bottles.
The supposed decline of the district’s prominence during the radical social changes that took
place in the Roaring 1920s was questioned by the discovery of a wide variety of personal items
that would have not been present if prostitutes were declining in socio-economic status, such as
expensive perfume bottles. Artifacts also revealed that Pensacola’s prostitutes did not conform to
stereotypes, in that they did not have or use cosmetics any differently than those used by average
American women during the early 20 th century.
Much was learned about red light district customers as well. At least in part, Pensacola’s vice district appeared to live up to its reputation, attracting men from hundreds of miles away.
However, whether these men chose Pensacola’s district over others remains in question since the artifacts relating to distant customers, such as tax tokens and the TCI pin, for the most part post- dated the discontinuance of the brothel system within red light districts in other cities. At a minimum, the presence of these artifacts suggests that men traveled great distances to have sexual encounters within brothels rather than engaging streetwalkers closer to their presumed homes.
These collections, although limited in provenience information, have yielded a surprising amount of information and insight into the lives of the prostitutes and patrons of Pensacola’s red
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light district. However, their potential is far from exhausted; many questions remain to be answered and many avenues of research remain to be explored. While the collections analyzed in this thesis contained the majority of artifacts recovered from the district from UWF’s collections, other unanalyzed collections may also contain materials associated with Pensacola’s red light district. Although time constraints made the inclusion of other collections in this thesis impractical, an overall study of the district that included these collections will give a better picture of the district as a whole. Specifically, collections from the lower-class brothels along the
300-399 block of South Baylen Street that were recovered during mitigation excavations (UWF projects 85B, 316 South Baylen and PROJECT CODE, the Chiller Plant) could yield new insight into the differences and similarities between mid-class and lower-class brothels. Still other unexplored collections include the 2012 WFHPI donations. Other research that could add to the analysis and narrative of the red light district might focus more on individuals through oral histories, grave sites, deed records of the brothels, court cases, and arrest records. Unfortunately the county archives where court and arrest records are stored in Pensacola were closed due to flooding at the time this research was being conducted.
The Pensacola district’s collections can also be compared to other district assemblages across the country to demonstrate how Pensacola’s district was similar to or different from national trends in red light districts. Regionally, Pensacola could be compared with cities like
New Orleans, Mobile, and Biloxi to determine what prostitution along the Gulf Coast was like at the turn of the century.
In addition to demonstrating how prostitutes and their customers navigated the social constructs of the red light district within Pensacola, this study has demonstrated that collections with little provenience information can still be analyzed for pertinent data on people of the past.
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Orphan collections with little provenience information are often bypassed when researchers attempt to study archaeological collections for new research. It is common practice in archaeology to keep all of the cultural material recovered from a site, whether or not it pertains to the research question that the excavation was originally undertaken to answer. The logic behind this collecting is that archaeology is inherently a destructive science, destroying the site in the process of studying it. Therefore, if all cultural material is collected with proper provenience information, it will be possible for future archaeologists to reexamine the collections with different research goals, thereby generating new valuable information about the site.
Like the sites that generate them, archaeological collections are also nonrenewable and unique resources; once they lose their provenience information, their usefulness for scientific study is greatly diminished (Childs and Sullivan 2004:4). Although this premise seems straight- forward in theory, utilizing older collections for new research is much more difficult in practice.
Often older collections are in disarray, in need of stabilization and rehousing, in various stages of processing or documentation, and potentially separated from their provenience information.
While daunting, these obstacles are by no means insurmountable. The results of this thesis prove that the challenges of utilizing orphaned collections can be overcome and yield viable, insightful information about underrepresented populations despite limited provenience information.
While historic red light districts present fascinating subjects to study, the people who lived and worked within them left behind little documentation outside of official records. This especially holds true for Pensacola’s red light district where no first-hand accounts of life in the district by prostitutes are known to exist. Similarly, the archaeological collections recovered from the red light district are also limited. Data recovery strategies from mitigation excavations, incomplete record keeping, and the separation of paperwork from some of the collections were
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circumvented by asking broader research questions that could be answered by qualitative rather than quantitative data. This study demonstrates that even collections with minimal provenience information, such as those from Pensacola’s red light district, can yield vast amounts of information. By studying the Pensacola district’s artifact assemblages, historical archaeology can help us understand how red light district inhabitants and customers during the late 19 th and early
20 th century went about their daily lives and interacted with the greater Pensacola community.
The result of this work has been not only to bring disenfranchised populations back to life, but disenfranchised collections as well.
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