City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920W. W. Norton & Company, 1994 - 462 pages Prostitution in New York City flourished throughout the 19th century, offering high profits to landlords and fueled by immigration, low female wages, political corruption, and the sexual mores of the age. Gilfoyle's study, based on his 1987 Ph.D. dissertation, analyzes New York prostitution's growth and ultimate decline, its operation, its opposition, and (perhaps rather too minutely) its geographical distribution. He points to the political system that supported red light districts and to the overlap of commercialized sex with socially respectable entertainment. |
Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS | 11 |
INTRODUCTION | 17 |
HOLY GROUNDS | 23 |
THE WHORE ARCHY | 55 |
BROTHEL RIOTS AND BROADWAY PIMPS | 76 |
SPORTING MEN | 92 |
HALCYON YEARS | 117 |
AGAY LITERATURE | 143 |
COMSTOCKS NEW YORK | 179 |
SEX DISTRICTS REVISITED | 197 |
CONCERT HALLS AND FRENCH BALLS | 224 |
SYNDICATES AND UNDERWORLDS | 251 |
WHITE SLAVES AND KEPT WOMEN | 270 |
UNDERMINING THE UNDERWORLD | 298 |
Appendixes | 317 |
BAWDY HOUSES | 161 |
Common terms and phrases
American Annual Report Anonymous antebellum Anthony Comstock Anthony Street April Avenue behavior blocks Bowery Broadway Buntline century Charles Church Street Clippings commercial sex Commercialized Prostitution Committee of Fourteen concert saloons CSS Papers Culture Diary of Strong district Ellington example female Five Points George George Templeton Strong girls Hall Helen Jewett Hewitt Hotel houses of prostitution idem James John July June Kneeland Lexow Committee Livingston Lower East Side madams male Manhattan March Mary McCabe Moral Reform neighborhood Nevins percent Philip Hone Police Commissioner political preventive societies proprietors prosti prostitutes Prostitution Exposed Raines Law Record of Assessments rent Report New York residents Sanger Sept sexual Similarly Social SPCC Street brothel Street house streetwalkers Tammany Tenderloin tenement Theater Univ urban vice Walt Whitman Ward West William women York City York New York York Sporting Whip York's young