The second class of assignation-houses are, to a great extent, private, but not so rigidly exclusive as the others. Their furniture is of the same luxurious style, but of a more gaudy character. Generally the same routine is observed in regard to entrance as in those of the first class. The principal portion of the females who resort to them are married women, most of whom are from the upper classes, whose sexual passions are not gratified elsewhere, or who resort to this means to obtain more money to expend in dress; kept mistresses, residing with their lovers as husband and wife in hotels or boarding-houses, whose attachment is not strong enough to keep them faithful to one man; occasionally the best class of serving-women, or shop-women, or females whose occupations, such as milliners, artificial florists, etc., lead them into contact with the fashionable classes. It is told on good authority that there are husbands cognizant of the fact that their wives visit such places, and who live wholly or in part upon money earned in this way. These cases are not supposed to be numerous, but it is to be hoped, for the credit of our national character, that the number will become still smaller. A few prostitutes of the upper grades sometimes visit this class of houses; they are known to the keeper, and she encourages them for the following reason: An habitué of the place will make an appointment to visit it at a specified time, and he tells the keeper he would wish to meet a female there. At the appointed day his wishes are gratified, the keeper having acted as negotiator with one of the girls mentioned. More wine is consumed in these houses than in the strictly select ones, probably from the different class who frequent them.
The third-class houses of assignation are not situated in such select parts of the city as are the other two classes. Some of them are managed with much privacy and seclusion, while others are simply houses of public prostitution on a large scale. Their principal female patrons are those prostitutes who have rebelled against the exorbitant charges made by keepers of fashionable houses, and shop-girls who resort to prostitution to augment their income. Many of these live some distance up town, and any one who is journeying downward in the after part of the day may see numbers of them going to these places in the cars and stages. This is another imitation of the French and English systems. Very little disguise is attempted about these third-class houses. Each has a parlor or reception-room, where a man can have a bottle of wine, and one or two of the girls named will join him. Of course many couples visit there, but a large number of men go alone, knowing that there are always women in the house. Fast young men about town are in the habit of keeping their mistresses at these houses, as more economical than boarding with them at hotels. Considerable disease is propagated in such places, a contingency from which the first and second classes are almost entirely exempt. Business is generally over here in three or four hours, commencing in the dusk of the evening; but it is unquestionably a source of considerable revenue to the keeper, particularly in those cases where she acts as procuress, since, in addition to the rent of the room which the man pays, she always receives a present from the woman.
There is another or fourth class of assignation-houses to which the commonest portion of street-walkers take their company, and these may be emphatically described by an old saying, “Cheap and nasty.” Dirty and insufficient accommodations are the equivalents for low prices, and such places are, in the general estimation of connoiseurs, very low and despicable. Notwithstanding this they thrive and multiply, from which it may safely be inferred that they are profitable in a business point of view, repulsive as they may be in their features and arrangements. Some of them are ingeniously arranged with a view to robbery, and are called “panel-houses.” The plan adopted is somewhat as follows: Some man, generally a countryman not very well informed in the tricks of the metropolis, meets with a prostitute, and agrees to ac-company her to an assignation-house. She is in league with the “panel thieves,” and therefore introduces her victim to one of their rooms. The apartment seldom contains more furniture than a bed and a chair or lounge, with the floor covered with a thick carpet. To make “assurance doubly sure,” the man himself locks the door by which he enters, and, when undressing, naturally throws his clothes upon the chair or lounge. The bedstead is placed so that the feet come toward the only apparent door in the room, with one side against the wall, and the head and other side hung with curtains, which the woman carefully draws as soon as the man lies down by her side. At the head of the bed, and of course concealed by the drapery from any one occupying it, is another door, which forms the secret entrance. It is so adroitly arranged, and so neatly covered with paper the same as the walls, that no one would suspect its existence. The hinges and fastening on the outside are oiled, so that no noise can be perceived when it is opened, and the operator steals with cat-like step over the carpet, and quietly examines the clothes without alarming the unsuspecting stranger. The thief completes his inspection, appropriates as much as he thinks proper, and the temporary occupant of the apartment resumes his clothes and prepares to leave. If his suspicions are excited by the circumstance that his wallet looks less plethoric than it did, and an examination reveals that some of its contents are missing, he knows not how to account for it. He is perfectly certain that no one has entered that room while he was there, and if he has “visited” much before meeting the girl, he concludes that he must have lost some of his money in his career, and that the only way is to take the loss contentedly, and avoid New York fascinations in future. Sometimes the loser has not enough philosophy for this, and if he can be certain that his money was right when he entered the room, will call in the police, and thus expose the secret arrangements of the establishment. This is comparatively a rare case, as most men would rather submit to a pecuniary loss than encounter the trouble and exposure attending a criminal prosecution, and the knowledge of this reluctance enables the “panel thieves” to pursue their operations almost with impunity.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
NEW YORK.—EXTENT, EFFECTS, AND COST OF PROSTITUTION.
Number of Public Prostitutes.—Opinion of Chief of Police in 1856.—Effects on Prostitution of Commercial Panic of 1857.—Extravagant Surmises.—Police Investigation of May, 1858.—Private Prostitutes.—Aggregate Prostitution.—Visitors from the Suburbs of New York.—Strangers.—Proportion of Prostitutes to Population.—Syphilis.—Danger of Infection.—Increase of Venereal Disease.—Statistics of Cases treated in Island Hospital, Blackwell’s Island.—Primary Syphilis and its Indications.—Cases of Venereal Disease in Public Institutions.—Alms-house.—Work-house.—Penitentiary.—Bellevue Hospital.—Nursery Hospital, Randall’s Island.—Emigrants’ Hospital, Ward’s Island.—New York City Hospital.—Dispensaries.—Medical Colleges.—King’s County Hospital.—Brooklyn City Hospital.—Seamen’s Retreat, Staten Island.—Summary of Cases treated in Public Institutions.—Private Treatment.—Advertisers.—Patent Medicines.—Drug-stores.—Aggregate of Venereal Disease.—Probabilities of Infection.—Cost of Prostitution.—Capital invested in Houses of Prostitution and Assignation, Dancing-saloons, etc.—Income of Prostitutes.—Individual Expenses of Visitors.—Medical Expenses.—Vagrancy and Pauper Expenses.—Police and Judiciary Expenses.—Correspondence with leading Cities of the United States.—Estimated Prostitution throughout the Union.—Remarks on “Tait’s Prostitution in Edinburgh.”—Unfounded Estimates.—National Statistics of Population, Births, Education, Occupation, Wages, Pauperism, Crime, Breweries and Distilleries, and Nativities.
The preceding chapters have given a statistical and descriptive account of prostitution in New York. Before considering what measures can be best applied for the amelioration of its accompanying evils, it will be necessary to ascertain the extent of the system, and this inquiry must include the number of abandoned women in the city, and the amount of venereal infection propagated through their agency.
It has been assumed in these pages that the two thousand women whose replies form the basis of the statistical tables, represent about one third of the aggregate prostitution of New York. This is allowing an increase of twenty per cent. during the winter of 1857-8, in consequence of the commercial panic of last autumn, and the resulting paralysis of trade, and suffering of the laboring community.