Rev. Parkhurst Goes Slumming: The Birth of Modern Sexuality by David Rosen Why, I wouldn't stay in that house for all the money in the world. Rev. Charles Parkhurst Slumming morality, temperance and good- government. On March 5, 1892, three sloppily attired but unmistakable gentlemen In 1894, Gardner published a popular visited the Golden Rule Pleasure Club, tell-all, The Doctor and the Devil, Or, a unique sex “resort” on West 3rd The Mid-Night Adventures of Dr. Street, near Greenwich Village’s Parkhurst, about his work uncovering Washington Square Park. Coming the sins of the city. Among the two- through a basement entrance, “Scotch dozen vice dens the three visited, none Ann," “a pretty woman, tall, black- compared to the Golden Rule. "The haired and of a graceful form,” greeted basement,” Gardner recalled, “was our men-about-town.1 She introduced fitted up into little rooms, by means of them to a world of immoral cheap partitions, which ran to the top debauchery that would scandalize the of the ceiling from the floor.” He city.* described what greeted the upstanding citizens: “Each The three visitors were men room contained a table and on a mission, out to a couple of chairs for the discover the true nature of use of customers of the vice and corruption defiling vile den.” The resort’s Gotham. The explorers of residents drew his the modern underworld, of attention. “In each room Dante’s fin de siècle sat a youth, whose face secularized hell, were the was painted, eyebrows Rev. Dr. Charles Parkhurst, blackened, and whose airs the pastor of the Madison were those of a young Square Presbyterian Church and head girl,” he observed. “Each person of the Society for Prevention of Crime talked in a high falsetto voice, and (SPC); John Langdon Erving, one of called the others by women's names.” Parkhurst’s zealous, young The Revered was appalled. parishioners, nicked-named “Sunbeam” for his innocence, a Van Parkhurst was mortified to learn that Rensselaer in his lineage and a clerk at the "female" residents were actually the “high-tech” Mexican Telegraphy young males wearing dresses, with Company; and Charles Gardner, a painted faces, blackened eyebrows and private investigator hired for his speaking in high-pitched voices to special knowledge of the city’s sound like girls. Gardner, a far more underworld. The three undertook their traveled man-of-the-world then the research through the auspices of SPC, Reverend, explained what was playing a citizens group promoting sexual out before their gaze. As he reported: "The Doctor instantly turned on his heel and fled from the house at top * speed. ‘Why, I wouldn't stay in that Photo: Library of Congress Sex Matters Parkhurst & Modern Sexuality house,' he gasped, ‘for all the money legal and the adult sex industry is in the world.'”2 estimated to be a $50 billion business. In the 1890s, Parkhurst, along with Parkhurst’s battle against vice and other upstanding citizens, felt that corruption signaled a shift in the traditional city life was under attack. nation’s belief system, the transition He insisted that the threat came from from “suasion” to “regulation.” He, an apparent increase in drinking, along with most leading 19th century gambling and prostitution festering in moralists, long believed that the power the city’s over-crowded immigrant of moral injunction -- of being able to slums and enjoyed by men of means. convince someone to be a better, God- More troubling, he argued that the fearing person -- could change a threat was facilitated by the pay-to- person’s unacceptable behavior. This play system of corruption that belief was giving way to one in which lubricated city life, permeating Christian conservatives sought to use municipal government and the police. the power of the state to enforce moral order, whether involving The Reverend’s two-week slumming unacceptable practices or expressions. escapade into the city’s underworld Parkhurst’s campaign was, became an almost legendary tale, metaphorically speaking, a finger-in- retold by many authors. 3 It was a the-dike effort to forestall the “tipping point” in the political struggle inevitable, the emergence of the between Tammany Democrats and modern, 20th-century marketplace- insurgent progressives, leading to the mediated sexual practices. This new establishment of the Lexow sexual culture would transform New Committee, a state commission York and, in time, become the new investigating police corruption, and normal. culminated in the 1894 election of William Strong as mayor. Virtue tested Parkhurst and his fellow reformers won The Golden Rule was but one of the key battles but lost the great morality two-dozen venues of vice Parkhurst war; they succeed politically, but failed and his associates visited during their socially. They helped shape the late-night explorations into Gotham’s nation’s formal moral order for underworld. He ventured into up-scale decades: in 1910, their call for sexual bordellos and down-market boarding- abstinence helped secure passage of house brothels as well as popular the Mann Act barring interstate sex concert saloons and seedy opium dens. trafficking; in 1919, their temperance The undertaking was, as one campaign culminated in the adoption commentator later described it, a of the 18th Amendment (it was “journey into the hell of New York’s repealed in 1933); and, in 1920, they nocturnal depravity.”4 Parkhurst was a contributed to the adoption of the 19th man on more then a mission of Amendment granting women the right discovery; it was a mission of to vote. Nevertheless, the U.S. is no redemption, his own. longer the country it was during fin de siècle era; the Christian right’s culture On Sunday, February 14, 1892, wars, while repressive in terms of a Parkhurst gave a sermon at his woman’s reproductive rights, has lost Madison Square Church assailing the most its moral authority as abortion widespread proliferation of vice remains legal, homosexual marriage is throughout the city and the complicity of the city government in the sin © David Rosen, 2016 page 2 Sex Matters Parkhurst & Modern Sexuality trade. He decried the moral state of the city: "...New York [is] a very hot Whatever the count, vice dens spread bed of knavery, debauchery, and throughout Manhattan’s “red-light bestiality... [where] there is not a districts.”* Many were clustered young man so noble, nor a young girl “uptown” in the Tenderloin district, so pure, as not to be in a degree from Madison Square Park on 23rd infected by the fetid contamination."5 Street and Fifth Avenue to 48th Street The sermon led to Parkhurst’s gravest between Fifth and Ninth Avenues. professional and personal humiliation. Others were located “downtown,” on the West side in today’s SoHo and The Reverend’s sermon was a Greenwich Village as well as on the sensation, reprinted and discussed East Side along the Bowery to Houston throughout the city. District Attorney Street and into the Lower East Side. De Lancey Nicholl ordered him to Concert saloons were a leading appear before a Grand Jury on the 28th attraction, offering cheap beer and a and, at the hearing, he forced the good time, welcoming all male comers. Reverend to admit that his accusations Pool halls, gambling dens, tattoo were based not on first-hand, personal parlors, basement dives and rat pits experience but on newspaper were common. Brothels, backrooms accounts. On March 1st, the Grand and private rooms, offered other Jury ruled against Parkhurst. He was pleasures. Dance halls welcomed censured and mocked out of the working-class single men and women courtroom; Joseph Pulitzer’s World as well as couples out for a good time. denounced him for “bearing false And theatres offered live witness.” Parkhurst was shamed and entertainment, some of it scandalous, vowed revenge.6 as well as the notorious 3rd tier reserved for prostitutes. Gotham had Many respectable New Yorkers become Gomorrah on the Hudson. believed they lived in a wicked city. In the 1890s, as one historian argues, The virtuous Rev. Parkhurst was one “New York reigned as the vice capital of those who found the emerging of the United States.” Estimates vary urban culture unacceptable, a threat to as to the scale of the vice trade. traditional moral order. At 50 years, James McCabe, author of the 1881 he was a handsome, athletic reformer, study, New York by Sunlight and an Amherst graduate who had studied Gaslight, claims that there were 600 in Europe and knew Latin and Greek. houses of prostitution, 900 In the sermon on February 14th, he “assignation houses” (i.e., hourly went further than most moralists who brothels) and 5,000 professional simply railed against the ills of vice. prostitutes in the city. Another source He linked what he believed was the speculates that by the ‘90s 8,000 wide-scale presence of immorality to saloons, hundreds of hotels, low-life the Tammany political machine and dives and illegal casinos operated in the Democratic Party. He denounced the city. The Mail and Express, a Mayor Hugh Grant, the District leading anti-Tammany paper, reported Attorney and the police as part of an that 600 saloons, hundred of brothels, 250 faro banks and 720 policy games * The term “red light” is apparently derived from did business in Manhattan. Parkhurst the early days of prostitution in Kansas City estimated that, in ’92, hundreds of when a railroad brakeman posted a red light brothels operated and an estimated outside a whorehouse while he was engaged 30,000 prostitutes plied their trade in inside. [Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: 7 Prostitution in America, 1900-1918 (Baltimore: the city.