The medical certificates obtained under the circumstances described are, of course, worthless. According to the best medical opinion the inmates are all dangerous,—in many of them disease is in an acute stage. When external indications develop, the women are sent to a hospital. One girl, in such a condition as to be utterly useless in the house, was removed by her cadet, who, covering up the signs of her disease, put her on the street. An equally unconscionable and characteristic incident is the following: A young traveling salesman was assured that an inmate was free from disease and a medical certificate stating this fact was shown to him. As a matter of fact, she was at that time under treatment by the very physician who had given her the certificate. The visitor contracted venereal disease. When he complained to the madame, she gave him a card of introduction to the same doctor, in order that he too might receive treatment.
Since the general closing of parlor houses in 1907[13] it is a matter of common complaint among owners that business is not what it was before. The falling off is explained by an alleged increase of disorderly flats in tenements and of massage parlors. An owner who conducted a house on West 24th Street before and after the cleaning up in 1907 declared that his receipts, before that date $3,500 per week from 25 women, have gradually declined until now they are about $2,000 per week. Another owner, in West 36th Street, gave the reason for this falling off: He had visited disorderly flats and had there seen the men who had formerly been his customers. “Why do the authorities bother us?” he remonstrated. “We are locked within four walls. Nobody sees anything; nobody hears anything. They pass tenement house laws. Why don’t they raid the flats and let us alone?”
There is therefore a constant effort on the part of the keepers of parlor houses to undermine the business done by women on the street, in flats, and in massage parlors. They write anonymous letters to the Police Commissioner and the Tenement House Department; they send men to the flats to persuade their inmates to leave and enter the parlor houses on the pretense that much more money can be earned thus; street walkers are frightened away from the vicinity of these houses by threats of the police. The madame of an establishment in West 28th Street drove away a street walker who was soliciting men for a nearby tenement house by telling her that she would make a complaint against her for using a tenement for immoral purposes. There are cases on record where keepers have had officers on the beat and plainclothes men arrest street walkers; they have also been known to “beat up” girls loitering near their places.
If the getting and holding of attractive inmates is one important qualification in a madame, getting and holding trade is its necessary counterpart. Madames are selected who are known to be expert in soliciting trade and “keeping it in the house.” They gradually accumulate lists of names and addresses of men and boys, keeping them up to date, and at stated intervals they send announcements of change of address or a veiled suggestion as to the “quality” of “goods” on display. One ingenious owner has a very neat printed folder reading, “Kindly call at our old place of business, as we have a Beautiful Spring Stock on view.” Occasionally—as in the accompanying circular—no object at all is alleged:
“Dear Sir:—Kindly call at your earliest convenience at the below address.
“Respectfully yours,
“X 1. W. 36th Street.”
This notice was sent to a long list of patrons—to sailors on board certain war vessels, to business men, and to clerks.
Runners, lookouts, lighthouses, and watchboys—the names involve overlapping duties—also figure largely in procuring trade. The chief business of the lookout is to stand on the curb in front of the house or near the door and warn the inmates who solicit at the windows, or the madame in the house, when officers or suspicious-looking strangers approach. He opens the doors of cabs and taxis and conducts prospective customers to the entrance of the house. If a stranger appears to be “green,” the lookout urges him to visit the resort, at the same time describing the inmates and the prices charged. One of his important duties is to see that street walkers do not solicit in front of his employer’s house and “take the trade away.” Together with the runner or lighthouse, the lookout is supplied with cards advertising the house, which he gives to men and boys in the street. He also goes wherever men and boys congregate—to saloons, restaurants, entertainments, prize fights, wrestling bouts, lobbies of theaters, hotels, and other public places, to distribute cards and to drum up trade. For example, on March 7, 1912, a runner, who was paid twelve dollars a week and tips for his services in behalf of a “fashionable house” on West 46th Street, went to the Sportsman’s Show at Madison Square Garden to advertise his establishment. On June 24, 1912, a runner for a house on West 25th Street stood on the northwest corner of West 24th Street and Sixth Avenue, describing its attractions to passersby. At the noon hour or at closing time he stands in front of entrances to factories, department stores, and other places of business to accost the workmen and distribute cards.
These young men are usually pimps or ex-pimps, former waiters in saloons and restaurants, ex-prize fighters and wrestlers, gamblers, crooks, and pickpockets who have lost their nerve.[14] They form a class by themselves. They are the “down-and-outers” in the underworld, eager for any job no matter how poor the wage. Some of them are well known and take pride in their ability to “run in” a lot of customers. Saturday, July 15, 1912, one of them, Max by name, claimed that he had “hustled in” sixty-five customers that day. When an argument arose between him and a competitor as to who had been more successful, the latter produced a slip on which his business was recorded: for June 15, 16, 17 and 18 it showed $142, $117, $68, and $97, respectively.
Chauffeurs and cabmen also do a thriving business in soliciting customers for vice resorts,—a service for which they receive an ample commission. Standing at street corners or in front of hotels and restaurants, they urge men in low tones to go to houses or to “ladies’ clubs,” as they are sometimes called. “I know some good houses,” “I’ll take you to see the girls,” “I know where there are a lot of chickens,” are among the familiar expressions employed. In occasional instances, customers can gain access only if escorted to the door by the cabman, who tells the maid that the man he has brought is “all right.”[15] “Louie,” one of the most aggressive of these solicitors, is married to a woman[16] who herself conducts an assignation house: she has recently served thirty days in jail for participation in the robbery of a guest.