A Court of Public Opinion: American Sex Work in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Abstract

Late nineteenth-century sex workers in the United States left behind few written records. In contrast, men and women not involved in the sex work trade made their opinions well known. To peacefully exist in the public sphere of society, Gilded Age women relied on being perceived as good, moral, and pure. From the dawn of the Gilded Age through the Progressive Era, from approximately 1870 through 1920, the American public perceived a lack of goodness and morality within sex workers, making their visible presence in society unacceptable. This conclusion by the American public that sex workers lacked morality was based in part on religion but also on the legality of the profession and generally held notions of respectability. This perceived lack of morality and respectability led to sex workers growing more socially ostracized than ever before as the Gilded Age ended at the turn of the twentieth century. Using legal proceedings, widely circulated publications, private correspondence, and other forms of communication, sex workers were exploited by many individuals as tools for their personal political agendas and without sincere concern for sex workers’ well-being. During the Progressive Era, the crusade against sex work intensified as the solution to the problem of prostitution evolved from regulating the profession to seeking its extermination. Scholars can draw more nuanced conclusions concerning these discourses related to sex work by recognizing the lack of female-authored manuscripts in archives and by analyzing the male-authored sources that are available. Historians, including but not limited to Barbara Hobson, LeeAnn Whites, Judith Walkowitz, and Sharon Wood, have published landmark texts reflecting on nineteenth-century politics, prostitution, and social reform that closely relate to the topic of this thesis. The State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri Valley Special Collections, and the Kansas Historical Society possess several collections containing materials reflecting on the American sex work industry during the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras. These materials include newspapers, ledgers, essays, correspondence, census records, pamphlets, and photographs. Though these materials were not the only primary sources consulted, they are the sources that most shaped the analysis of this topic. The purpose of this thesis is to identify how public opinion shaped the legal and social treatment of sex workers over an approximate fifty-year span, and whether early twentieth-century efforts at reform could ultimately be considered successful. After analyzing available primary sources and secondary literature related to this topic, this thesis concludes that sex workers in the United States were depicted by specific groups of individuals as sinful and inherently corrupt in an aggressive attempt to advance extensive social reforms, though in the end, these attempts at reform failed.