Hemphill, Katie M. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Over 20 years ago, Timothy Gilfoyle challenged historians of prostitution to explore the flow of capital between urban brothels and the formal and informal economies of the city.
Katie M. Hemphill has now responded to these challenges. Here, Black and white women, often as a stopgap measure, resorted to selling sex. From this disorganized trade, brothels emerged in the s as premier sex sites favored by well-to-do men. Brothels were designed to echo middle-class domestic spaces; they promised men not only sex but also an affective sociability centered on the parlor. The trend toward the establishment of brothels and professionalized sex work promoted segregation as Black women increasingly found themselves pushed into the street trade or, if remaining in the house, into the role of domestic servants.
Brothels pumped money into a broad range of urban economic activities including real estate, retailing, publishing penny press and pornography , patent medicines, and quack medical practices offering venereal disease treatment. Real estate interests, as Hemphill shows, were the conspicuous beneficiaries of the bawdyhouse trade.
Since most madams did not have the capital to purchase houses, they were obliged to rent from landlords who could inflate rental charges for those engaged in illicit activities. To provide an inviting sexual experience for prosperous clients, madams were obliged to lay out funds for luxurious decor, fine liquors, Black domestic staff, and sex workers clothed in genteel fashions. Merchants, like landlords, also charged far above the going rate for goods and services. Sex workers themselves poured money into the local economy by patronizing the restaurants, cafes, and theaters where they sought clients.
The Civil War ushered in such a tremendous expansion of the sex trade that the prospects for brothel prostitution appeared boundless. The problem, however, was that even though prosperous men may have profited from brothels, perhaps also enjoying the company of the residents, they did not want the bawdy houses encroaching on their own respectable neighborhoods. Hemphill points out that although the city allowed brothels to thrive, a growing middle-class opposition argued that the houses not only posed a threat to public morality, but also to property values.
