Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women

Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans

Judith Kelleher Schafer

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780807144350
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Winner of the 2009 Gulf South Historical Association Book Award
When a priest suggested to one of the first governors of Louisiana that he banish all disreputable women to raise the colony's moral tone, the governor responded, "If I send away all the loose females, there will be no women left here at all." Primitive, mosquito infested, and disease ridden, early French colonial New Orleans offered few attractions to entice respectable women as residents. King Louis XIV of France solved the population problem in 1721 by emptying Paris's La Salpêtrière prison of many of its most notorious prostitutes and convicts and sending them to Louisiana. Many of these women continued to ply their trade in New Orleans.
In Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women, Judith Kelleher Schafer examines case histories from the First District Court of New Orleans and tells the engrossing story of prostitution in the city prior to the Civil War. Louisiana law did not criminalize the selling of sex until the Progressive Era, although the law forbade keeping a brothel. Police arrested individual public women on vague charges, for being "lewd and abandoned" or vagrants. The city's wealthy and influential landlords, some of whom made huge profits by renting their property as brothels, wanted their tenants back on the streets as soon as possible, and they often hired the best criminal attorneys to help release the women from jail. The courts, in turn, often treated these "public women" leniently, exacting small fines or sending them to the city's workhouse for a few months. As a result, prosecutors dropped almost all prostitution cases before trial.
Relying on previously unexamined court records and newly available newspaper articles, Schafer ably details the brutal and often harrowing lives of the women and young girls who engaged in prostitution. Some watched as gangs of rowdy men smashed their furniture; some endured beatings by their customers or other public women enraged by fits of jealousy; others were murdered. Schafer discusses the sexual exploitation of children, sex across the color line, violence among and against public women, and the city's feeble attempts to suppress the trade. She also profiles several infamous New Orleans sex workers, including Delia Swift, alias Bridget Fury, a flaming redhead with a fondness for stabbing men, and Emily Eubanks and her daughter Elisabeth, free women of color known for assaulting white women.
Although scholars have written much about prostitution in New Orleans' Storyville era, few historical studies on prostitution in antebellum New Orleans exist. Schafer's rich analysis fills this gap and offers insight into an intriguing period in the history of the "oldest profession" in the Crescent City.

1

SELLING SEX AND THE LAW

In the antebellum period, most American states did not consider selling sex a criminal act. However, the states often used vagrancy laws or other charges—such as disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, obscene language, drunkenness, and lewd behavior—to punish public women for practicing their profession. State law and city ordinances punished those who managed brothels under the general rubric of nuisance laws. The states did not criminalize selling sex in the United States until the Progressive Era. Accordingly, selling one’s body for sex did not constitute a distinct criminal act in antebellum New Orleans. A city ordinance of 1817 noted that any woman or girl “notoriously abandoned to lewdness” who committed scandal or disturbance of the peace could incur a fine of twenty-five dollars for each offense or, if she could not pay the fine, a confinement of one month in prison. Thus the ordinance did not prohibit prostitution as long as no scandal or disturbance occurred. An 1818 Louisiana law made it a criminal offense to keep “any disorderly inn, tavern, ale-place, tippling house, gaming house or brothel,” an offense punishable by either a fine or imprisonment at the discretion of the court. A Louisiana statute of 1855 reiterated the 1818 act. The city of New Orleans prohibited individuals by ordinance from renting rooms to or “harbor[ing]” a woman or girl “notoriously abandoned to lewdness” if she caused a nuisance in the neighborhood. The penalty for this offense consisted of a fifteen-dollar fine for each twenty-four hours that a person provided lodgings for such women.¹

An 1845 city ordinance forbade “lewd women” to enter cabarets or coffeehouses; nor could they have a drink in one of these establishments. Violation of this ordinance resulted in a twenty-five-dollar fine or a month in the workhouse for those who could not pay the fine. This ordinance required the police to apprehend any women in violation of this ordinance and bring them before one of the city’s recorder’s courts.²

According to another city ordinance, passed in 1846, people who violated nuisance laws and public decency were subject to a fine of $50. In August 1850 brothel owner Harry Wilson appeared before Justice of the Peace Alexander Derbes to answer to a charge of “keeping a disorderly brothel on Gallatin street” in violation of the 1846 ordinance. Derbes fined Wilson fifty dollars, and Wilson appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana. His attorney, Henry Train, argued that the city did not have the right to pass such an ordinance and therefore it was unconstitutional; he also asserted that the ordinance could not be legal because the same offense constituted a criminal act under state law. The supreme court rejected this reasoning, affirmed Justice Derbes’s ruling, and ordered Wilson to pay the fine. This ruling would allow New Orleans city officials the discretion to prosecute brothels that the city deemed “disorderly” while allowing others to continue their business. In order to get a city official to proclaim a brothel “disorderly,” people had to present proof that the inmates of the brothel had frequently disturbed their sleep or disrupted their businesses.³

Under general nuisance laws, police arrested public women on many occasions. Often prostitutes found themselves facing recorders for being “drunk, lewd and abandoned” or for drinking in a barroom. For example, in 1854 the New Orleans Daily Picayune reported that “Harriet Kennedy, Mary Smith, Johanna Wright, Catherine Kane, and Helena Cotibo, four [sic] lewd and abandoned women, were arrested on Phillippa street last night, for being drunk, disturbing the peace and halloing [sic] murder. These women created more noise and disturbance than fifty men could possibly have done.” The recorder sentenced two of the women to a fine of ten dollars or twenty days in the workhouse and the other three to a fine of five dollars or ten days’ imprisonment. Few women would have chosen going to the workhouse if they could pay the fine. One grand jury report indicated that the workhouse buildings were “insufficient and in bad condition” and noted that “women are seated on the damp floor of their cells, there being no benches or even bunks, they all sleep on the floor.” In the same report, the grand jury noted that “requisitions for food and materials for steady work were not furnished, disorder and insubordination results.” In 1853 the Picayune, under the headline “Rowdy Women,” reported that three other women, “Mary Branay, Mary Nolan and Mary O’Brien (what a pity that the name of Mary should be so disgraced!) were yesterday fined $10 each by Recorder Winter, for being found drinking at a grog shop, and for not having that chastity of character and manner that become true women.” The recorder sent them to the workhouse for sixty days. The newspaper also noted the arrests of “two vagrant white women [who] were fined $3 for being caught coming out of a drinking shop in Phillippa street,” a street known for its large number of brothels.⁴

Often police arrested public women under the city’s general “Nuisance and Offenses” ordinance, an 1856 consolidation of a number of acts prohibiting certain kinds of behavior. Police arrested both women and men for indecent exposure. Section 24 of this act prescribed arrest and a fine for anyone who “shall strip naked for bathing, or show himself naked, or in any indecent apparel, or bathe in the daylight in the Mississippi River.” For example, under the headline of “Another Venus,” the Picayune reported with a decidedly mixed metaphor that Mary Connor “was arrested on Montegut street, last night, for exhibiting herself to the gaze of the astonished residents of that quiet street in a costume similar to that of Eve in Paradise, before she thought of the fig leaf.” Another woman, Catherine Sheehan, had to face the recorder for being drunk and “indecently exposing her person.” Police brought thirteen women “of bad reputation” before the recorder in 1852 for “making an indecent exposure of themselves at the doors and windows of their residences.” The recorder sent them to the workhouse for thirty days. A neighbor’s complaint sent Suzanne, a free woman of color, before the recorder for “keeping a house at the corner of Royal and St. Peter street, which is contrary to the ordinances made and provided for public decency. The females who live with Suzanne are said to expose themselves on the balcony in a little too much of that simple attire known as the ‘Georgia costume.’” The Picayune defined a “Georgia uniform” as nothing but “a shirt collar and spurs,” a slang expression for partial or total nudity.⁵

Not surprisingly, all the arrests for indecent exposure occurred in the warmer months of the year, and the Picayune delighted in describing the offenders as “prowling about” in various stages of nudity. Police arrested Mary Foster in June 1854 for “being drunk, disturbing the peace, using obscene language and indecently exposing her person.” The recorder ordered her to serve sixty days in the workhouse. In July 1854 a neighbor complained that five “ladies of easy virtue … are in the habit of prowling about the streets in attire which, however comfortable in this hot weather, can hardly be termed decent.” The Picayune reported another group of women residing on Burgundy Street as “being lewd and abandoned and prowling about the sidewalks in indecent attire.” In August 1854, another neighbor stated that a Mrs. Dixon could be seen “prowling about in indecent attire, and in some instances, when the nights were very warm, dispensing with all attire and exhibiting her fair proportions to vulgar gaze.” The following month the Picayune reported that “a nocturnal Venus,” Emeline Kiezer, walked down Gravier Street in the nude. In July 1857 the newspaper reported that “four females of Perdido street were arrested for rudely and nudely making model artist exhibitions of themselves, to the great scandal of the neighborhood.” The following month, Recorder Gerard Stith sentenced Eliza Hughes for “being drunk and exposing her person.” Police arrested three women in separate incidents for public nudity in October 1857. In an article entitled “A Sad Wicked World,” the Picayune reported that police took a nameless female to the watch house “in a state of almost entire nudity, followed by a crowd which, regardless of the rain, seemed determined to get a glimpse of this humiliating spectacle. Five year ago the woman in question was one of the fairest in the city, but recently she added the sin of intemperance to her other failings.” Apparently she had been involved in a fight with another woman in the course of which “all her clothes were stripped off with the exception of a portion of one undergarment.” The next day, police arrested Ann Brown for “being drunk, lewd, abandoned and almost naked on the public streets.” Recorder Stith ordered her to pay twenty dollars or go to the workhouse for two months. She managed to bargain him down to a fine of ten dollars. Two weeks later one Mrs. Helsinger faced arrest for indecent exposure for “raising her dress to an immoderate height when crossing from street to street.” In September 1855 police arrested Mary O’Neil for “making a beastly spectacle of herself by running through the streets as a model artiste. Mary ought to be ashamed of herself.” That same month, the Picayune noted that Mary Sheridan, “uncovered except over her shoulders,” received a ten-dollar fine or fifteen days in the parish prison. One couple, John Legendre, alias Sunday Sam, and Maria Hellman, faced a charge of together “violating the rules of public decency.” In 1854 the Picayune reported that James Campbell and Bridget McGraw “saw fit to expose their persons to the public gaze with the free and easy manner of dress very acceptable in the Fejee [sic] Islands but not at all suitable to the rules of decency which govern this community.” The couple each received a fine of ten dollars and a “stern lecture.”⁶

Officials also arrested men who indecently exposed themselves. In August 1854, police arrested two men charged with “bathing in contravention to the ordinances, indecently exposing their persons.” In January 1858, the Picayune reported one John Murphy as having taken an “air bath on the public streets. … The full dress of a Georgia major would be decent compared with the primitive garment worn by Murphy.” The recorder sentenced him to six months at hard labor in the workhouse. Police arrested several other men in the 1850s for indecent exposure. Sentences varied from five to twenty-five dollars to a month in the workhouse.⁷

An 1806 act of the Louisiana territorial legislature had made it illegal to use obscene language under penalty of a twenty-dollar fine. An ordinance of the city of New Orleans in 1856 prohibited “indecent or vulgar language” in any public place, including streets, cemeteries, public squares, and levees. City officials occasionally used laws against obscene language to get public women off the streets. For example, in 1859 the Picayune reported that “Mary Smith, a lewd and abandoned woman, who indulges in obscene language in the streets, without regard to the chaste care of the more virtuous of her sex, will pay ten dollars fine or go to the Workhouse.” In 1856, Recorder J. L. Fabre fined a woman named “New York Mary” five dollars “for a too free use of her tongue.” Two women faced Recorder Gerard Stith on the same day in 1857 for using bad language. Mary Spencer, “who called Mary Wright, of Carondelet street, some of the worst names in the vocabulary of Billingsgate [a London market famous for fish and foul language], had to pay a fine of $15 or go to prison for twenty days.” Sarah Cook, “for uttering words unfit for ears polite … was politely requested to pay a fine of $20, and the request was made in so pressing a manner that she found it impossible to refuse.” Ellen Lewis, who had already paid a fine of ten dollars for “improprieties of conduct,” faced the recorder again, this time for using obscene language. The recorder fined her fifty dollars and required her to post a peace bond of five hundred dollars. In 1861 the Picayune reported that “Mary Ann Williams, Bridget Nicholson, Bridget Galagher, Helen Wilson, four traviate of Conti street, were arrested for insulting Harry Pardo and wounding his feelings with their obscene language.” The two Bridgets went to the parish prison, and the other two posted peace bonds. Adelaide Balfour and Kate Wilson, “two of the hooped frailties of Perdido street,” faced Recorder Stith for “obscenity in word and deed.” Eliza Sickles, “a frail specimen of humanity,” when charged with being drunk and using obscene language, went to the workhouse for sixty days. Police arrested a few men for obscene language, but the authorities used these charges mostly against public women as a way of getting them off the streets, at least temporarily. The fines paid by these women can be seen as something akin to a tax on sin.⁸

New Orleans recorders also punished people—both men and women—for dressing as members of the opposite sex, under the general nuisance laws that forbade improper conduct. Six men faced charges for dressing as women in the 1850s. In 1851, Paul Small created quite a sensation by dressing in a “Bloomer” costume and parading through the streets. The Picayune observed that he has “unsexed himself” by “promenading in the streets in women’s apparel.” Police caught Alexander F. Marchi wearing women’s clothes in 1853. The Picayune reported that “the charge does not specify what the man attempted while wearing the female toggery, but the mere fact of assuming that costume is contrary to the ordinances.” The same month, the authorities arrested Patrick McCarty for being disguised in women’s clothes “for some bad purpose.” The following year Joseph Henry faced Recorder Peter Seuzeneau for wearing women’s clothing. He attempted to run to avoid being caught, but “not being accustomed to the petticoats, he tripped and fell, and before he could recover himself, the strong grip of the law was upon him.” The following year, a Third District policeman observed something suspicious about what the Picayune termed “a strapping female” and arrested her, only to discover that “she was a he.” Finally, Daniel Neill received a fine of twenty-five dollars or thirty days in jail for wearing women’s clothing. The newspaper accounts of men being caught in women’s clothing do not indicate why they may have worn feminine attire. Three of the six arrests for this offense occurred during the Mardi Gras season, and so possibly these men wore these garments as a masquerade. Three other cross-dressers clearly wore Mardi Gras costumes. The Picayune reported in 1856 that two women and one man left prison after paying jail fees. The reporter observed that the three, all jailed for cross-dressing, were “belated masqueraders who had been keeping up Mardi Gras.”⁹

Women arrested for the same offense present quite a different picture. For one thing, many more women faced arrest during the 1850s for cross-dressing. Twenty-one instances of arrests for wearing men’s clothing occurred, and some involved more than one woman. According to one historian, cross-dressing was a long-lived tradition of Mardi Gras. Police arrested several women in men’s clothing each Mardi Gras, women who “dressed in masculine apparel … beyond the boundaries of even Mardi Gras propriety and license.” The Picayune’s reporters, all men, clearly enjoyed making fun of women caught for this offense. But the newspaper accounts also gave indications as to why women chose to cross-dress. Overwhelmingly, women assumed male attire as a survival strategy, to protect themselves, to make more money than they could as women, to go places they could not go as women, or to evade restrictive laws against women. The reason that cross-dressing aroused such disapproval was not so much that the women were overtly sexy but that they were assertive: dressing like men, smoking cigars, riding in open carriages. More than simply masquerading as men, the prostitutes were making savage fun of their customers.¹⁰

One of the most detailed accounts of feminine cross-dressing involved a woman named Charley, whom a Lafayette Square patrolman arrested because he suspected that Charley, attired in men’s clothing and smoking “vigorously behind a twisted roll of the Virginia weed,” was really a woman. “The disguised nymph” tried to convince the policeman that “he was mistaken as to the gentle character of her sex,” to which the patrolman replied, “You can’t fool me—you’re no boy, or I never was one.” When examined by the First District recorder, Charley confessed and told him the story of her life. It seems that her parents died when she was quite young, and her guardians lived in New York. They took her to Boston, where she had an love affair that did not end well. She claimed that after this disgrace her relations and guardians persuaded her to assume male attire and go to sea. She made three voyages from New York to Liverpool as a cabin boy, after which she worked in a barber shop, a grocery store, as a barkeeper in a taproom, and as a “spotter” for the New York police. She asked the recorder “to go easy on her.” Surprisingly, the recorder stated that as she had committed no “impropriety of conduct … to dress was altogether a matter of taste. Especially among the ‘strong minded women of the North,’ and as she had no female apparel, he was sure that he would not force her to take off what she had—although she was sailing under false colors.” He did advise her to return to “her own sex” and bade her “Godspeed.” Six days later, Charley faced a much less sympathetic recorder, Peter Seuzeneau of the Third District, who sent her to the workhouse. The next day the Picayune observed, “Since Charley Smith, the celebrated female in pants, has been sent to the Work-House, another interesting female in like habiliments has been caught by the police. … She called herself Ellen Smith. Probably the Recorder will send her on a visit to Charley.” The following year, another recorder, Recorder Fabre, fined Charley ten dollars for wearing male attire, which the recorder termed “sailing under false colors.” The Picayune reported that Charley had returned to New Orleans after spending six months in New York. She claimed, the reporter stated, to have lived a “virtuous life” in New York, but he observed that she “is still dressed in masculine toggery and struts behind a cigar with the grace of an incipient gallant.” The Picayune liked to blame women who cross-dressed on what one reporter called “the strong-minded women of the North.” These northern women, the writer observed, “have lately elevated their ideas and skirts to a wonderful degree. Here some of the weaker sex have lately figured at one dash in breeches, several cases having been reported. Yesterday, Recorder Ramos fined Catherine Ware $10 for presuming to appear in public in man’s attire.”¹¹

Two women who assumed male attire clearly did so as a method of economic survival. “Billy” came before Recorder Stith in 1856 for dressing...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Selling Sex and the Law
• 2. “Disgusting Depravity”: Sex across the Color Line
• 3. The Sexual Exploitation of Children
• 4. Infamous Public Women
• 5. Larceny and Robbery among Prostitutes
• 6. Violent Lives
• 7. The Murder of a “Lewd and Abandoned Woman”: State of Louisiana v. Abraham Parker
• 8. Keeping a Brothel in Antebellum New Orleans
• 9. “An Ordinance Concerning Lewd and Abandoned Women”
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Illustrations