The Problem of the Ages: Prostitution in the Philadelphia Imagination, 1880-1940
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THE PROBLEM OF THE AGES: PROSTITUTION IN THE PHILADELPHIA IMAGINATION, 1880-1940 A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by James H. Adams May, 2009 ii © by James H. Adams 2009 All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Title: The Problem of the Ages: Prostitution in the Philadelphia Imagination, 1880-1940 Candidates Name: James H. Adams Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2009 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: Mark Haller An ever-present figure throughout much of the nineteenth century, the prostitute existed in a state divorced from “traditional” womanhood as a shadowy yet “necessary” evil, and was largely seen as a static element of the city. The archetypes of the “endangered maiden” and the “fallen woman” were discursive creations evolving from an inchoate form to a more sharply defined state that were designed to explain the prostitute’s continued existence despite the moral objections voiced by religious and social reformers. These archetypes functioned in an agrarian/proto-industrial society; however, under pressures of urbanization, industrialization, and population mobility, these archetypes were gradually supplanted by sharper, more emotionally loaded archetypes such as the “White Slave” and the trope of the “Vice Syndicate” to explain the prostitute. In this manner Progressive-Era social and moral reformers could interpret prostitution in general and the prostitute in particular within the framework of their understanding of a contentious social environment. In moving away from a religious framework towards a more scientific interpretation, the concept of prostitution evolved from a moral failing to a status analogous to a disease that infected the social body of the state. However, because the White Slave and the Vice Syndicate were discursive creations based upon anecdotal interpretations of prostitution as a predatory economic system, their nebulous nature encouraged a crisis mentality that could not survive a concrete examination of their “problem.” Realities of race, class, and gender, as well as the fluid nature of the urban environment as well as non-moral concerns rendered the new iv archetypes and tropes slippery, and applicable to any reform-oriented argument. By the later years of the Progressive Era anti-vice discourse ceased to advocate moral arguments calling for the rescue of the prostitute and instead became a vehicle to articulate non-moral concerns such as political reform, social order, and female economic suffrage. After the First World War, the archetype of the White Slave collapsed in the face of women’s suffrage and sexual agency, and the prostitute once more reverted to a state analogous to pre-Progressive cultural interpretations of prostitution. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................ iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. vii CHAPTER 1. SCHOOLS OF VICE OR VIRTUE: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PROSTITUTE AND THE TENDERLOIN.................................................................................................................................... 1 2. REFORM THROUGH ETERNAL VIGILANCE: THE WHITE SLAVE AND THE VICE COMMISSION ............................................................................................................................... .40 3. THE COLOR OF VICE: “NEGRO TENDERLOINS” IN CAMDEN AND BETHEL COURT ........... 79 4. ARGUING SUCCESS: THE DECONSTRUCTION OF THE VICE SYNDICATE .......................... 120 5. THE POLITICS OF PROSTITUTION AND THE RISE OF THE “CHARITY GIRL” ...................... 158 6. BACK TO BASICS: THE UNSEEN PROSTITUTE, 1919-1940 ............................................... 195 EPILOGUE .................................................................................................................................... 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................ 246 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration Page 1. Picturesque America, Anywhere in the Mountains ................................................................. 16 2. The two faces of sexualized danger in the Tenderloin ........................................................... 23 3. Three faces of the threat prostitution posed towards domestic purity ................................. 49 4. Jacob Idleman ......................................................................................................................... 54 5. Mantegazza’s Ranks of Men ................................................................................................... 85 6. “When You Go Home…” ....................................................................................................... 167 7. “Steady buddy – There’s a come-back!”............................................................................... 191 8. Female Posed ........................................................................................................................ 212 9. At 5 A. M. .............................................................................................................................. 215 10. Philadelphia Briefs cover, December 20, 1933 ..................................................................... 228 vii INTRODUCTION From the earliest days of colonial America until present, the prostitute has been a shadowy figure existing discursively in a state removed from the wider, “respectable” society. A cause for concern to those advocating moral, legal, and/or social cohesiveness, she existed in an inchoate state in which her presence was acknowledged but seldom accepted, a distasteful yet inevitable feature of western civilization. Throughout the whole of the nineteenth century prostitution was a system that was simultaneously vilified yet grudgingly accepted as “necessary” for the social health of the community; the prostitute provided a safety valve for male sexual passions that allowed upstanding, moral women to exist in a state of chastity and purity. The goal of anti-prostitution reformers in the nineteenth century was not to eliminate prostitution but rather to reform the prostitute, uplifting her in a manner similar to the civilizing of “uncivilized” peoples. Women could fall from a state of purity, but exposure to middle-class morality and religious education provided an avenue away from dissolution. The dawn of the Progressive Era changed this paradigm. Seemingly overnight, prostitutes evolved from tragic figures in need of rescue to disease-carrying menaces to the body politic. Simultaneously, the view that prostitution existed as a necessary evil that in some vague, inchoate way benefitted society shifted to a belief that the trade was an immoral, predatory system designed to profit corrupt capitalists at the expense of women’s purity. The urban spaces of the United States became pits of vice and shame that threatened the whole of American society. Faced with such a threat, Progressives reacted in the only way they knew – by standing vigilant against prostitutes and tirelessly campaigning for their elimination from the public space. In their opinion, reforming the prostitute was less important than eliminating her viii influence upon the social well being of the nation. Their unceasing campaign against urban sexual degeneracy seemed to bear fruit; by 1920 the prostitute had indeed vanished from the public space, reduced to a shadowy nether-world further outside of society than ever before. Most studies of prostitution during the Progressive Era follow this similar historiographic arc; regarded with grudging toleration in the nineteenth century, the prostitute was “discovered” by the Progressives who, after 1900, worked to banish her from society, and whose tireless efforts resulted in the end of urban red-light districts by the end of the First World War. Yet did the Progressives actually accomplish a feat that had eluded religious reformers for hundreds of years? This dissertation argues that they did not. Focusing on Philadelphia and the surrounding counties, it will argue that proponents of moral reform based their understanding of prostitution upon cultural archetypes and tropes of race, class, and gender that they created to categorized individuals, and these tropes in turn shaped reformers’ perceptions of urban social conditions. Concepts of prostitution and the urban “Tenderloin” (vice district) as understood by Progressives were actually a culturally discursive creation mobilized by reformers not only to curb vice but to impose a Progressive world view on an urban space4 that seemed to be the inverse of their ideal society. The Progressive-Era reformers of the Delaware Valley looked to Philadelphia’s suburban communities, and saw only wholesome, moral, domestic, heterosocial bliss; conversely, when they cast their gaze upon the city itself, they perceived only decay, corruption, deviance, and commercialized vice. Driven by fears of working class sociability, of interracial marriages and sexual encounters, women’s sexual agency, machine politics, class inequity, and social unrest, reformers created