Commercialized Prostitution in New York City Part 2

"Signed (Mrs.) ----

"Sunday, May 28th."

Call-houses are usually cozy and homelike, presided over by a woman who dwells upon her efforts to make her customers happy and comfortable. She declares that there are so many "nice respectable men" who are lonely in a big city and who want places where they will feel absolutely safe, where they can meet pretty girls, spend the evening, and get a few drinks. The stock in trade of such a house is usually a collection of photographs of the girls who are "on call." In addition, the madame exhibits a description of them, with measurements to show their physical development; the prices are appended. Her victims are variously procured: sometimes in restaurants frequented by girls who are employed in offices and stores: again, her place of operation may be the ladies' retiring room, where she enters into conversation with girls, inviting them to a meal or to spend an evening in her apartment. If she sees a girl alone at a table, she asks whether she may sit down with her and urges her to have a "little drink."

Thus acquaintance springs up and "dates" are made for the theater, the madame paying the bill. At other times she goes to a department store and selects a girl, from whom she makes her purchases. The girl may be flattered by evidences of interest and friends.h.i.+p, or tempted by the prospects of fine clothes, leisure, and opportunities for pleasure. The danger is especially great if she has previously lapsed.

On certain streets on the East Side below 14th Street and in Harlem there are a number of cider "stubes" in the bas.e.m.e.nt of tenement houses. In these "stubes" foreign girls act as waitresses, serving small gla.s.ses of cider or other soft drinks to customers. While serving, the girls solicit their customers to enter small rooms in the rear of the bas.e.m.e.nt. The keepers of these "stubes" are constantly advertising in the foreign papers published in New York for waitresses, offering to pay five or six dollars a week for such service. There is no doubt that many ignorant foreign girls are thus lured into lives of prost.i.tution. One keeper who had a waitress about 38 years of age told the investigator that she expected to have two or three young girls in a few days. Another proprietor tried to secure the custom of the investigator by saying that he expected to secure two nice young girls for his "stube." Both were advertising in a German paper for help at the time. Such an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a very disreputable "stube" on East 4th Street appeared in a German newspaper on March 29, April 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, and 19.

Our records abound in material ill.u.s.trating the foregoing account. For example, on May 19, 1912, at 7 P. M., and again on May 20, 1912, at 8 P.

M., the investigator visited a vice resort in a tenement in West 43rd Street.[40] There were four inmates in the receiving parlor, all claiming to have medical certificates. The madame[41] declared, however, that if none of them suited she would for a larger price call up a young girl who was not "a regular sport." Thereupon she summoned the girl by telephone.[42] The newcomer appeared to be about eighteen years of age.

While talking with the investigator, Irene said she had been in the "business" since last September but worked in a department store in Brooklyn.[43] Previously to this she had been employed in a store on Sixth Avenue. About one and a half years ago--so she says--her sweetheart, a s.h.i.+pping clerk, who makes $12 a week, seduced her, promising marriage: he does not know that Irene is making money "on the side" in this manner. Her aunt, with whom she lives, is very strict with her, requiring her to be home at ten o'clock every night.

The investigator pretended not to be satisfied with Irene; thereupon another girl, Margie, spoke up: she knew a "kid" that would suit, but the price would be ten "bucks" (dollars). From other remarks made, the investigator believes that the "kid" referred to is her sister. Margie leaves the flat at 5.30 P. M., for her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her parents. They are under the impression that she is employed through the day in a wholesale millinery store downtown. The madame still insisted that if the supposed prospective customer really wanted young and pretty girls she could get them: "but," she added, "these girls come high, five and ten dollars."

On November 6, 1911, a woman who was afterwards employed in this investigation received a letter concerning a cider "stube" in a tenement in East 5th Street.[44] The letter read as follows:

"Reading of your good work in lending your services to a.s.sist the unfortunate creatures, I hope you will give your undivided attention, for this certain woman[45] is engaged in this business for the last seven years and is too shrewd to be caught. You will have to watch carefully her movements. She keeps a cider store on East 5th Street, New York.... Look up her record and you will see she was arrested a few times.... She just was sentenced four months over the Island....

Please I beg you to look into this matter. I would give you my name, but it is impossible for me to do so. I am a citizen of the U. S. A.

I know this place ruins many young girls."

At 12.30 P. M., February 22, 1912, the investigator found two women in this place, by both of whom he was solicited to go to a rear room for immoral purposes. When they failed in their efforts, the proprietor said that she could get him a young girl if he preferred. Two days later the resort was visited by another investigator, who found two women acting as waitresses, by one of whom he was similarly solicited.

The various establishments above mentioned were all repeatedly visited in order to show their relatively permanent character and their freedom from interference: one[46] on Broadway was visited nine times in five weeks: another,[47] in West 29th Street, five times between February 8 and August 19; a third,[48] in the same neighborhood, five times in four months.

(2) a.s.sIGNATION AND DISORDERLY HOTELS

The parlor house and the tenement vice resort are, like shops, fixed places for the carrying on of prost.i.tution as a trade. There is, besides, an enormous amount of itinerant prost.i.tution utilizing mainly disorderly hotels. These places are commonly called "Raines Law" hotels.

The history of the creation of the "Raines Law" hotels in New York City is exceedingly interesting. The primary object of the framer of the law was to minimize the evils connected with saloons. As pointed out in the report of The Research Committee of The Committee of Fourteen, issued in 1910 under the t.i.tle of "The Social Evil in New York City, a study of Law Enforcement,"[49]

"from the pa.s.sage of this law dates the immediate growth of one of the most insidious forms of the Social Evil. This growth was due to a heavy increase in the penalties for a violation and the expected increased enforcement of the law by state authorities beyond the reach of local influences. To ill.u.s.trate, the license tax was raised from $200. to $800., and the penalty of the forfeiture of a bond was also added.[50] To escape these drastic penalties for the selling of liquor on Sunday in saloons, saloon keepers created hotels with the required 10 bedrooms, kitchen and dining-room. The immediate increase was over 10,000 bedrooms. There being no actual demand for such an increase in hotel accommodations, the proprietors in many instances used them for purposes of a.s.signation or prost.i.tution, to meet the additional expense incurred. In 1905 there were 1407 certificated hotels in Manhattan and the Bronx, and of these about 1150 were probably liquor law hotels. In 1906 an important administrative provision was added to the law. This amendment, known as the Prentice Act, provided that hotels must be inspected and pa.s.sed by the Building Department as complying with the provisions of the law, before a certificate could be issued to them. As a result of this new legislation, 540 alleged hotels were discontinued in Manhattan and the Bronx. A large number of these places, however, continued under saloon licenses."

Since that time the fight against these vicious hotels on the part of the Committee of Fourteen has been constant and effectual. As a result, the business of prost.i.tution as formerly carried on in them has been well-nigh suppressed. Very few of the hotels found to be used for "a.s.signation" and "disorderly" purposes during the present investigation are ten-room establishments. In 1912, 400 of the 425 ten-room hotels which now exist were conducted as hotels for men only.[51]

A disorderly hotel, as we use the term, is one which violates Section 1146 of the Penal Law (keeping a disorderly house) by admitting the same woman twice in one night with two different men, or by renting the same room twice in one night to two different couples, or by regularly admitting known and habitual prost.i.tutes. An a.s.signation hotel is one doing business with transient couples, the women not necessarily being habitual prost.i.tutes.

According to the official records, there were 558 hotels in Manhattan in 1912 which were certificated under the Liquor Tax Law. This number includes the legitimate commercial hotels as well as those which were the outgrowth of the Liquor Law. During the period of this investigation in 1912, 103 hotels were found which are cla.s.sed as being a.s.signation places, disorderly, or suspicious. Evidence was discovered which proved that habitual prost.i.tutes were openly soliciting men on the street and elsewhere to go to 65 of these hotels for immoral purposes. A woman investigator discovered 25 additional hotels where prost.i.tutes declared they could freely take customers or have them openly visit their apartments or rooms. This gives a total of 90 different hotels in Manhattan which may be cla.s.sified as "disorderly." In addition to these, seven different hotels were discovered which prost.i.tutes claimed to be able to use for immoral purposes, though admitting that they had to be careful not to frequent them too often. In some of these places prost.i.tutes are not allowed to use a room more than twice during every twenty-four hours, once during the day and again at night. There are six very high-cla.s.s hotels which prost.i.tutes a.s.serted to a woman investigator they had used, or could use, under certain conditions. It is no uncommon thing for the more prosperous and well-dressed prost.i.tutes to solicit trade in the lobbies of these hotels.

The hotels above referred to are situated in the following sections of Manhattan: Sixth Avenue from West 23rd Street to West 46th Street; Eighth Avenue from West 116th to West 125th Streets; the side streets between Broadway and Sixth Avenue from West 34th to West 53rd Street; Lexington, Third, and Fourth Avenues, and Irving Place. The centers where soliciting for these hotels is most flagrant are as follows: East 14th Street and Third Avenue, and north on Lexington Avenue; Sixth Avenue and West 28th Street; Seventh Avenue and West 35th Street; Longacre Square to the east; Columbus Avenue from West 60th to West 62nd Street; Eighth Avenue from West 116th to West 125th Streets.

Of these resorts many are weather-beaten buildings, dirty and unsightly without, unsanitary and filthy within. The small rooms are separated by thin part.i.tions through which even conversations in low tones can be heard. The furniture is cheap and worn with constant use. A dilapidated bureau or dresser occupies one corner; a rickety wash-stand equipped with dirty wash bowl and pitcher stands in another. Cheap chromos hang on the wall, dingy with age. A small, soiled rug partly covers the floor which is seldom, if ever, scrubbed with soap and water. The air is foul and heavy with unpleasant odors, for the windows are rarely opened. The awnings that shut out the light are seldom lifted; they are sign-posts to the initiated, hanging mute and weather-beaten all the year round.

During the fall of 1907 a large number of parlor houses in the Tenderloin were raided and closed through the combined efforts of the Police Commissioner and the District Attorney's office. Some of these houses had been operated by men who subsequently transferred their activities to "hotels," where they continued to practise their former methods. Others took their women with them, lodging them in the "hotels," paying them certain commissions, and treating them in the same manner as in the house.

A group of women thus attached to a "hotel" solicit for it on the street or in the rear rooms of saloons.

Between the proprietors of these "hotels" there is great business rivalry. They constantly try to induce prost.i.tutes attached to other resorts to patronize their place of business and become "regulars." They even go so far as to hire young men to make friends with the women and to offer them large commissions and better protection than they can secure elsewhere. At times, saloon keepers who allow prost.i.tutes to solicit in their rear rooms do so on condition that the women take customers secured in their places of business to friendly hotels. For instance, the owner of a notorious saloon in East 14th Street demands that the women in his rear room take their customers to a certain hotel on Third Avenue. If one should break the compact and go to a rival place, she would be thereafter debarred, as if she had violated a code of honor.

Most of the solicitation for "hotels" is nowadays done on the street. Even here the proprietor attempts to keep his women in line. He sets spies at work to see that they take the trade where it belongs. The young men so employed are often the "pimps" of the street walkers, keen to see that their women do not "get away with any money" by going to a strange hotel, from which they cannot collect the commission. A young man of this character stations himself near the entrance of a certain hotel on the Bowery and, as his woman enters with a customer, carefully takes a pin from the right lapel of his coat and puts it on the left lapel. Woe to the woman if she fails to produce the money represented by the acc.u.mulation of the pins in the left lapel, when the business of the night is over!

When the street walkers of certain hotels are arrested, the proprietor hastens to court to pay the fines, should such be imposed, or offer bail so that the girls may return to their "duties." In some cases he insists on repayment of the money he has advanced; and the girl is grateful because he has saved her from the Island. If a girl "breaks away" from a hotel and goes to a rival place of business the proprietor will go so far as to have her arrested again and again to teach her the lesson of "loyalty." In some cases she is glad to return to his good graces, especially if she finds herself on the Island.

There are many street walkers who are "free lances," taking their trade to the hotel which offers the best inducements. They realize that they are adrift--with no one but their "pimp" to protect them. And "pimps" are usually admirable protectors, masters of the art of "saving" their women from the hand of the law. They are keen, wise young men, well grounded in the business of exploiting the girls of the street at the least possible expense. Some of them are known as "gun men," "strong arm guys,"

"guerillas," and do effective work for politicians.

The prost.i.tutes who are attached to certain hotels, as well as those who go from place to place with their trade are often given "rebates" or "commissions" on all the business they bring in. The rebate system was found to exist in 21 of the 65 hotels to which investigators were solicited to go for immoral purposes. If a customer pays $2.00 for a room, the prost.i.tute receives $1.00 as a rebate. If, when in the room, he orders wine or beer, the girl receives another rebate or commission on the amount of the bill. Sometimes it is ten per cent, sometimes twenty-five per cent: this, in addition to her own price, which varies from $1.00 to $5.00, or as much as she is able to persuade the customer to give her.

Many hotels have rebate clerks whose duty it is to keep the accounts of the girls and pay them the commissions due them. This is a very important branch of the business; for if the solicitor is satisfied and is making "good money," she feels like continuing her patronage and "hustling" all the harder for her hotel.

Some of the disorderly hotels have two registration books, one of which is used for entering single visits during a period of twenty-four hours, the other to register the number of times different rooms are used during the same period. The first book is the one displayed to inquisitive investigators or inspectors. In some resorts there is a regular office, as in a legitimate hotel, where couples register at the desk; in others, a small window is all that can be seen. The clerk pushes the book through the opening and the man registers, often without seeing the clerk's face.

The woman is not seen by the clerk at all, as she stands in the shadow away from the window.

Disorderly hotels offer a comparatively safe place in which to commit crimes of one kind or another. A well-known hotel referred to on another page has been the scene of murder. But the chief crime is stealing. The most successful prost.i.tutes who solicit for these hotels are "gun mols,"

that is, pickpockets. They use all manner of subterfuges to "lift" the "roll" from the pockets of their customers. When their victim is heavy and sleepy from drink, they usually succeed, getting away before he realizes his loss.

But the hotel is utilized not only by the criminal prost.i.tute: it is too often the scene of first seduction. A young, weak, and foolish girl is induced to dine, then to drink, with a comparative stranger who has first taken pains to ingratiate himself with her: without recollection of what has taken place in the interval, she awakens next morning amid the totally strange surroundings of a hotel of this character.

A brief description of a typical a.s.signation and disorderly hotel will ill.u.s.trate some of the general observations above made:

A Third Avenue hotel[52] has had an interesting and varied history. The ground is owned by citizens who are well known in social and financial circles. The name of the place has been changed since 1906-7, but the same proprietor conducts the establishment. Once he ran a house in the old Eldridge precinct, later another in East 9th Street. When these places were suppressed, he opened the hotel here in question. He and his manager[53] were both members of the Independent Benevolent a.s.sociation in 1909. For some years this hotel has been on the Police List as under "strict surveillance"; now and then it has been raided. As far back as 1906 one of the agents of an investigation then in progress was told by a prost.i.tute that detectives had informed the girls that if they resorted to this hotel they would not be molested; whether this is true or not, the fact remains that the hotel was still doing business during the period of this investigation.

On January 26, 1912, an investigator was solicited in the rear room of a notorious saloon on East 14th Street by "Pearl," who said she would have to take him to the hotel in question. Knowing the history of the resort, he accompanied the girl to the sitting-room in order to see if conditions were still the same; while there he talked with two other girls who are attached to the place. Thus he ascertained that the proprietor has two relays of solicitors, one group on the street from early morning until night, the other group on duty all night. To see that they attend strictly to business, a young man is employed to watch them at their work. If the girls enter into a dispute with customers over terms, the a.s.sistant endeavors to straighten out the difficulty. If they are arrested, he informs his employer, who, in turn, goes to the court and does what he can to secure their release. Mamie and Mary both stated that the rebate clerk gives them all amounts over $1.00 which their customers pay for rooms. In case customers buy wine at $5.00 per bottle, the girls receive $2.00 per bottle as a commission.[54]

(3) FURNISHED ROOM HOUSES

In addition to the more elaborate establishments already described, furnished rooms frequently serve their occupants as vice resorts. During the period of this investigation 112 furnished room a.s.signation houses were discovered. The majority of these are within the following boundaries: First Avenue, Houston Street, the Bowery, and Avenue B; Second Avenue, 27th Street, Seventh Avenue, 31st Street; 33rd Street, Seventh Avenue, 42nd Street; Third Avenue, 27th Street, Seventh Avenue, 31st Street; Eighth Avenue, 33rd Street; Seventh Avenue, 42nd Street. The places are particularly dangerous because a stranger, seeking inexpensive board and lodging, has no way to ascertain their character: an innocent girl may thus unwittingly find herself in the most demoralizing surroundings.

Prost.i.tutes do not necessarily live in the furnished room house. They may simply have an understanding with the madame, who, in reality, conducts an a.s.signation house run on the same principle as a hotel, but without register or clerk. The price of the room is determined by the "privileges"

for which the girl stipulates,--usually to the effect that, though not resident, she may bring "friends" there at any hour of the day or night.

In some houses the prost.i.tute pays $2.00 per night; elsewhere the landlady demands as much as $3.00 per night, or half of what the prost.i.tute earns.

In this way a large weekly rental is secured for very inferior quarters.

Once possessing such a room with "privileges," the prost.i.tute solicits or picks up customers on the street, and in public places of all sorts, such as dance halls, restaurants, and the rear rooms of saloons.

The women who use the furnished room houses are divided into three cla.s.ses. The first are the occasional or clandestine prost.i.tutes, to whom the furnished room offers a more secret place than the hotel for both the woman and the man. The second are regular prost.i.tutes who use hotel and room alternately. They prefer to go to the hotel, as they declare it is safer. "We are protected in the hotel," they say; "the proprietor knows us and you won't be molested." But customers who object to hotels are taken to her furnished room if the girl is not suspicious. The third cla.s.s, who use the furnished rooms almost exclusively, are women who are nearing the end of their vogue as professional prost.i.tutes. Rejected by hotels because they are dirty, diseased, or in the last stages of drug and liquor habits, these outcasts from the prosperous marts of trade escort their prey to their own miserable quarters.

A few ill.u.s.trations of the manner in which the furnished room trade works will suffice:

A house of this character in West 31st Street[55] is one of the most notorious in the city. Late at night, August 23rd, 1912, it was entered by a large number of couples from a dance hall near by; subsequently, one of the men, about forty-five years of age, complained to the investigator that he had been robbed there that night. Four evenings later, eight different prost.i.tutes entered with their customers in the course of less than five minutes. Shortly after, a colored maid from the house applied to a saloon near by to change two five-dollar bills. During the conversation she told the bartender, from whom she frequently bought liquor for the guests, that the rooms in the house were nearly all taken.

At 11 P. M. on March 19, 1912, several prost.i.tutes were soliciting on Third and Lexington Avenues for a furnished room house in East 116th Street.[56] They each pay the landlord $2.00 per night for room and "privileges." One of these women appeared to be about twenty-one years of age. "I pay $2.00 per night for my room," she said, "and bring in as many men as I can grab. Whenever I am ready to quit for the night I meet my 'fellow' and we go there to sleep."

A furnished room house in West 40th Street[57] is surrounded by tenements in which many white and colored families are living. On February 9, 1912, two colored women stood in the doorway, soliciting men as they pa.s.sed by.

As the investigator approached, two white children about ten and twelve years of age respectively, stood a few feet away listening to what was said.

(4) Ma.s.sAGE PARLORS

The ma.s.sage parlor, so-called, is the last of the resorts to be dealt with. It is estimated that there are over 300 so-called ma.s.sage parlors in Manhattan, a large part of which are believed to be vice resorts: only 75, however, were actually investigated in the course of this study and this is the number used in calculating the number of vice resorts in Manhattan.