St. Joseph Prostitution, Part Two: How It Worked

   Last time, in discussing Mollie Williams and St. Joseph prostitution, I mentioned, or at least implied, that, even though prostitution was nominally illegal, a sort of de facto licensing system existed whereby prostitutes and keepers of bawdy houses were periodically fined but then allowed to go right back to doing business as usual. I thought I might go into a little more detail this time about the extent of prostitution in St. Joseph in the late 1800s and how the ladies of the night were treated by law enforcement.
   A St. Joseph Herald newspaper article from February 1889 sheds quite a bit of light on this question. The reporter suggested that while St. Joe was rightfully proud of its educational institutions, churches, and charitable organizations, the town was also "cursed with a population that numbers into the hundreds, that are entirely without the pale of society--the courtesan." The reporter's estimate of the number of scarlet women is probably not an exaggeration, because nine years earlier the 1880 census listed at least 27 women with the occupation "prostitute." Not only had the number probably increased since 1880, but those listed in the census with the title "prostitute" obviously represented only those that openly practiced their profession and did not include those women who were still trying to maintain a veneer of respectability.
   The Herald reporter was not particularly alarmed by the fact that prostitution existed in the city. In fact, he thought the extent of prostitution in St. Joe was no greater than it was in almost any other city of comparable size. However, the fact that prostitution had spread throughout the entire city and was not confined to a certain area was an evil that called for a remedy.
   Only four established houses of prostitution existed in St. Joseph at the time of the article. The "landladies" of these places were Minnie Dixon at 777 Jule Street, Mollie Williams on Main Street between Francis and Jule, Ellen Hardy on Jule between Main and Second, and "Dutch Ella" at 317 Main Street. Minnie's place had eight or ten inmates, Mollie's had six or seven, Ellen's had between ten and twelve, and Ella's place housed ten girls.
   These women were arrested every three months. The keepers were fined $50 each, while the prostitutes were usually fined $8 each. This brought in a total of about $2,000 per year for the city coffers. The police chief told the reporter that these four places were "properly kept" with disturbances rarely occurring at them. In addition, these four houses were all located within a radius of one or two blocks of each other in an old, downtown part of the city where very few families resided and where not much business was transacted.
   The problem, as the reporter saw things, was that it was very difficult to confine prostitution just to this relatively small area. Although the four places mentioned above were the only ones openly doing business as places of prostitution, numerous boarding houses throughout the city had become assignation spots for freelance prostitutes who roomed in those houses. In fact, when the reporter asked a police official whether the prostitutes at the four downtown houses represented the bulk of St. Joe's scarlet women, the official replied, "No, not one-tenth of them. They are scattered from one end of the city to the other. They may be found next door to the millionaire, the minister and the merchant."
   The police official complained that it was difficult to control these freelance prostitutes disguised as "roomers" unless they engaged in boisterous conduct or broke the law in some other manner that drew police attention. The reporter thought the best way to deal with prostitution was by instituting a licensing system that legalized the "social evil" but confined it to a certain area of the city and cracked down on those who tried to expand it to other parts of the city.
   In 1890, there apparently was an attempt to crack down on prostitution in St. Joseph. First the amount of the fine that madams had to pay quarterly was increased to $200 instead of $50. Then, a local judge ruled that the "landladies" would no longer be allowed to simply plead guilty, pay their fines, and go back to the sporting life. Instead, they would have to face trial. The new law, however, had little practical effect in reducing prostitution or punishing offenders, because when the madams were tried for the first time after the judge issued his ruling, at the summer 1890 term of court, the jury assessed the same fine ($200) that the women had previously been accustomed to paying.
   In the fall of 1890, five madams, including the four mentioned above, were arrested and charged with keeping bawdy houses. Four of the five, including Mollie Williams, were allowed to plead guilty and pay fines of $262.50, while Ellen Hardy escaped having to pay a fine by dying. So much for the judge's new rule requiring that the madams face trial by jury.