Product Description

Winner of the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians and the New York State Historical Association Manuscript Prize.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166885 in Books
• Published on: 1994-03-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.43 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This scholarly yet ribald history of New York City's "whorearchy" (as early wags termed the ladies of the night) also sheds light on present mores. Gilfoyle, who teaches at Chicago's Loyola University, has produced a Baedeker of NYC's early brothels, concert saloons and bawdy assignation houses. He shows how "unprecedented demographic growth, residential transience, deplorably low female wages, new real estate patterns and a sporting-male ideology and subculture undermined older patterns of sexual behavior after 1820." The details--erotic or shocking, depending on one's point of view--are here. Virgin prostitutes commanded the most money; 16-year-olds were over the hill. Quotes from such 19th-century periodicals as Rake and Whip prove that the Playboy philosophy existed long before Hugh Hefner. Yesteryear's prostitutes, the author demonstrates, were equivalent to today's homeless people--and plenty of New York men said yes to the "gay girls" who swarmed over the streets. Although he maintains an objective tone, Gilfoyle evinces a muted libertine enthusiasm for the demi-monde. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
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. Though occasionally repetitious, his work is solidly researched, clearly organized, and a useful contribution to research collections. The manuscript won the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians.
- Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An original, impressively researched, and intriguing urban history--winner of the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians--that explores the intersection of sex and the market in the Big Apple of the 19th century. Making extensive use of demographic analysis, land records, and newspaper accounts of the era, Gilfoyle (History/Loyola Univ.) demonstrates how N.Y.C., considered free of vice in the infant days of the republic, was rapidly transformed into a free-floating sexual emporium after the War of 1812. In a boom-and-bust economy fueled by immigrants and emerging industries, prostitution provided madams and hookers with a chance to become the best-paid female workers of the city, landlords with a lucrative and dependable source of income, and ``sporting males'' with an outlet for sexual activity outside marriage. It was a profession in remarkable flux: from early streetwalkers who occasionally solicited to supplement meager factory or domestic salaries, to a structured institution that advertised in guidebooks and business cards and that was visible all over the city in brothels, masked balls, music halls, saloons, and even the ``third floor'' of theaters. Gilfoyle masterfully re-creates the culture that grew up around the profession: the ``whorearchy'' of pimps, madams, and brothel owners (including such illustrious names as Livingston, Fish, and Hearst); Tammany ward bosses and cops on the take who skimmed off brothel profits; and stripteasing ``model artists,'' abortionists, distributors of contraceptives, and pornographers. Ultimately, the institution was driven underground in the Progressive Era less by the muckrakers, civic reformers, social hygienists, and anti-vice crusaders who fought it than by urban redevelopment, changing attitudes toward marriage, and better salaries for women. A revealing peek at a Gotham that exceeded our own in anything-goes sexual license and urban misery. (B&w photographs-- not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.