Free Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott Page A

knew better. Still, mistakes happened, and older women, usually retired madams, ran baby farms for prostitutes’ children. Girls died from all manner of horrid abortion procedures, and syphilis was a dreadful hazard.
    “It is claimed that this disease originates in the underworld,” mused a madam named Josie Washburn, who worked in Omaha shortly before the sisters, “which is not wholly true, as it can be found scattered among all classes. The underworld is obliged to be on its guard all the time to elude it.”
    There were precautions one could take, sheaths made of animal skin, but clients often balked—“wet, flabby sheep’s gut,” as one man put it. Leave it to the French to improve upon the idea, offering products supposedly pleasing to both parties, with fanciful names like “le Conquérant” and “le Porc-epic.” But even when harlots were appropriately vigilant, they often emphasized efficiency instead of fantasy—the “anti-Balzacs,” as the Everleighs might say.
    One laborer’s experience in a modest brothel in New Orleans’s Storyville was typical:
    “You wouldn’t believe how fast those girls could get their clothes off. Usually they’d leave on their stockings and earrings, things like that. A man usually took off his trousers and shoes. New girls didn’t give you a second to catch your breath before they’d be all over you trying to get you to heat up and go off as soon as possible…. When it came to the actual act, though, the routine was standard…. I think the girls could diagnose clap better than the doctors at that time. She’d have a way of squeezing it that, if there was anything in there, she’d find it. Then she’d wash it off with a clean washcloth. She’d lay on her back and get you on top of her so fast, you wouldn’t even know you’d come up there on your own power…. I’d say that the whole thing, from the time you got in the room until the time you came, didn’t take three minutes…. Most all the married women you run across are just a different kind of whore. But a man keeps looking for somebody he can just feel—well, like he isn’t always alone.”

     

    T he sisters packed their finest dresses, lists of influential clients, and collections of butterfly pins and set off, two country girls eager to return Chicago’s thrilling embrace. On the way, sitting face-to-face in their Pullman Palace car, they determined to enforce the same standards that elevated their Omaha resort—no wringing a client’s body as if it were a piece of wet laundry. Courtesans would be encouraged to perform orally as often as possible; there was less risk and more money involved. A man who came to their house would see everything he wanted to and nothing he didn’t, and he would never feel rushed or cheated, disillusioned or alone.
    The sisters also edited the story of how they became madams and planned to redefine what it meant to be one. A rejection of their impeccable standards would mean nothing less than war—against both prostitution as it should be and the invented histories they longed to have.

 

    THE STORIES EVERYONE KNEW

 

    All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
    —H AVELOCK E LLIS

    A s the century drew to a close, white slavery narratives began spreading beyond midwestern lumber camps. The sheer volume of stories bolstered the notion of a “traffic in girls”—especially in bustling urban centers like Chicago.
    “Never before in civilization,” wrote Hull House founder Jane Addams, “have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon the city streets and to work under alien roofs.” The city’s status as a major rail center made it an ideal location for unscrupulous madams and procurers. How easy it was to feign a welcoming presence at the train stations, to talk of opportunities behind counters or desks, of stardom on stages. The