II. HOUSES OF ASSIGNATION.
There are over one hundred houses of assignation of all kinds in the city known to the police. This estimate includes the bed-houses, of which we shall speak further on. Besides these, there are places used for assignations which the officials of the law do not and cannot include in their returns. These are the smaller hotels, and sometimes the larger ones. Sometimes women take rooms in some of the cheap hotels, and there receive the visits of men whose acquaintance they have made on the street or at some place of amusement. Very often the proprietor of the house is simply victimized by such people, and several respectable houses have been so far overrun by them that decent persons have avoided them altogether. One or two of the smaller hotels of the city bear a most unenviable reputation of this kind. Even the first-class hotels cannot keep themselves entirely free from the presence of courtezans of the better class. Rich men keep their mistresses at them in elegant style, and the guests, and sometimes the proprietors, are in utter ignorance of the woman’s true character. Again, women will live at the fashionable hotels, in the strictest propriety, and live by the proceeds of their meetings with men at houses of assignation.
The best houses are located in respectable, and a few in
fashionable neighborhoods. In various ways they soon acquire a notoriety amongst persons having use for them. In the majority of them, the proprietress resides alone. Her visitors are persons of all classes in society. Married women meet their lovers here, and young girls pass in these polluted chambers the hours their parents suppose them to be devoting to healthful and innocent amusements. There are many nominally virtuous women in the city who visit these places one or more times each week. They come in the day, if necessary, but generally at night. A visit to the theatre, the opera, or a concert is too often followed by a visit to one of these places. It is said by those who claim to know, that sometimes women of good social position even possess pass keys to such houses. The hot-house fashionable society, to which we have referred elsewhere, sends many visitors here. Some married women visit these places because they love other men better than their lawful husbands. Others sin from mercenary motives. Their limited means do not allow them to gratify their taste for dress and display, and they acquire the desired ability in this infamous manner.
The majority of the houses are well known, and are scarcely conducted with secrecy, which is the chief requisite. The better class houses are handsomely furnished, and everything is conducted in the most secret manner. The police have often discovered assignation houses in residences which they believed to be simply the homes of private families. All these houses bring high rents. Men of “respectable” position have been known to furnish houses for this use, and have either engaged women to manage them, or have let them at enormous rents, supporting their own families in style on the proceeds of these dens of infamy.
The prices paid by visitors for the use of the rooms are large, and the receipts of the keeper make her fully able to pay the large rent demanded of her.
The city papers contain numerous advertisements, which reveal to the initiated the locality of these houses. They are represented as “Rooms to let to quiet persons,” or “Rooms in a strictly private family, where boarders are not annoyed with
impertinent questions,” or “A handsome room to let, with board for the lady only,” or “Handsome apartments to gentlemen, by a widow lady living alone.” These advertisements are at once recognized by those in search of them. Families from the country frequently stumble across these places by accident. If the female members are young and handsome, they are received, and the mistake is not found out, perhaps, until it is too late.
Public houses of prostitution are bad enough, but houses of assignation are worse. The former are frequented only by the notoriously impure. The latter draw to them women who, while sinning, retain their positions in society. The more secret the place, the more dangerous it is. The secrecy is but an encouragement to sin. Were the chance of detection greater, women, at least, would hesitate longer before visiting them, but they know that they can frequent them habitually, without fear of discovery. Their outward appearance of respectability is a great assistance to the scoundrels who seek to entrap an innocent female within their walls. They form the worst feature of the Social Evil, and something should be done to suppress them.