The majority of these houses are situated in the business section of Manhattan, namely, on Sixth and Seventh Avenues from West 23rd to West 42nd Streets, and in residential sections on side streets from West 15th to West 54th Streets between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. A few of them are located on the East Side on residential streets east of Third Avenue, and on Second Avenue. A still smaller number were discovered on the extreme East Side near the river and below East 14th Street. Not a few of these houses are found in the vicinity of public schools, churches, and hotels; others occupy the upper floors over lunch rooms, jewelry shops, clothing stores, fur shops, and other business enterprises.
Private houses used exclusively for prostitution are usually three or four stories high; those of the cheaper type are in a dilapidated and unsanitary condition. For instance, the fifty-cent houses on the lower East Side are described as being practically unfit for human habitation. The rooms are dirty, the loose and creaking floors are covered with matting which is gradually rotting away, the ceilings are low, the windows small, the air heavy and filled with foul odors. The sanitary conditions in the majority of the one-dollar houses on the West Side streets between Sixth and Seventh Avenues are hardly less objectionable. No attempt is made to keep the houses clean. The floors are rotten and filthy; they sag as one walks across them. The small bedrooms are damp and unventilated; the atmosphere is heavy with odors of tobacco and perfumes, mingled with the fumes of medicine and cheap disinfectants.
Every step in the process of arranging for and conducting an establishment of this character is taken in the most businesslike fashion. Every detail is arranged in a cold, calculating spirit. It is first necessary to secure the consent of the owner or agent to use the property for the desired purpose. Negotiations may be conducted by the prospective keeper himself or through a go-between who is paid a bonus for securing a suitable building. In the majority of cases regular leases are drawn up and signed for stated periods. Usually two or more individuals enter into a regular partnership agreement to conduct parlor houses. In the course of this investigation interesting data were obtained respecting the purchase, sale, and value of these shares,[3] which constantly fluctuate in value. Important factors in determining their value at a particular time are public opinion and the attitude of the city authorities toward vice. If the law is rigidly enforced and frequent arrests are made, the shares depreciate and there is a scramble among the partners to dispose of their holdings. If the business is fairly undisturbed, the shares increase in value and can hardly be purchased.
The house once secured and the owners being ready to begin business, a madame or housekeeper is hired by the month or on a percentage basis to take personal charge of the enterprise. She is usually a former prostitute who has outlived her usefulness in that capacity. To her the owners look for results. Every day she reports to them when they call to “make up” the books after business is over—generally during the early morning hours.[4]
Servants are employed to aid the madame: one or more cooks, according to the number of inmates boarding in the house; and maids, usually colored girls, who look after the rooms, tend the door, and aid in the sale of liquor to the customers during business hours. A porter is employed to care for the house and run errands, a “lighthouse,” to stand on the street for the purpose of procuring “trade” and to give warning.
The prosperity of the business depends in the main upon the quality of the inmates. If they are young and attractive, and, as one madame was heard to say in another city, “especially womanly,” success is assured. Thus the value of the manager depends in the first place on her ability to secure and hold the “right sort” of inmate. The girls must be contented; they must be stimulated to please; quarrels must be avoided, jealousies nipped in the bud. In the art of management, the madame must exercise all her ingenuity. If a girl is a good “money maker” the madame attaches her to herself in every possible way. Some of these unfortunate inmates become “house girls,” remaining year after year, the unsuspecting victims of the madame’s blandishments and exploitation.
Certain of the women are well known as “stars.” Their reputation follows them wherever they go and madames vie with each other in securing them for their particular houses, in much the same way as a business firm is constantly looking for clever salesmen who have a reputation and a record for increasing business. The author has in mind a particular woman[5] whose customers follow her wherever she goes. There are in this business many such “stars” or “big money makers,” looked upon with envy by their less attractive and less prominent rivals. The secret of their popularity lies frequently in the perverse practices to which they resort.
The manner of carrying on the business has been somewhat modified in recent years. Formerly, the madame gave the girl a brass check for each customer. After business hours she cashed in her checks, receiving her share of the proceeds, usually fifty cents on the dollar. Nowadays, madames or housekeepers have a punch similar to those used by railroad conductors. When a customer is secured, the inmate hands the madame a square piece of cardboard, in which she punches a hole. Among the exhibits obtained during this investigation is a series of sixteen such cards with the names of sixteen inmates written upon them. They are literally filled with holes, all representing the business done on July 9, 1912, in a notorious one-dollar house on West 28th Street. The largest number of holes punched on a single card that day was thirty.[6]
The madames are alive to the importance of assuring their customers that every precaution is taken to guard the health of their inmates. Hence, in practically all the houses here referred to the investigators were assured that the girls have in their possession medical certificates signed by physicians, certifying that the bearer has been examined and is free from venereal disease.[7]
In many houses the “doctor” is said to come every week; he makes a hasty and superficial examination, for which he is paid one dollar, one-half of which sum he turns over to the owner of the establishment. Of these physicians, one, a member of the now notorious Independent Benevolent Association—a group of men individually interested either directly or indirectly in the business of prostitution in New York City—has a large practice among the inmates of the cheaper type of house. At times, physicians who make a specialty of this branch are also active in the local politics of their respective districts: these men are in demand, for the keepers hope thus to “stand in” with those “higher up.” On April 27, 1912, for example, the proprietor[8] of a house in West 36th Street[9] related the fact that he had recently employed a physician[10] who was being “mentioned” as the next leader in his assembly district. He tried to induce another keeper[11] to take the same doctor[12] because of political advantages to be gained thereby.