Storyville Prostitutes

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Early History of Storyville

Storyville is a neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA that in its origins was a red-light district where prostitution was legal between 1897 and 1917. Colloquially named after Alderman Sidney Story who initiated its creation in containing prostitution in New Orleans (among other businesses like saloons) to one area, when the city council of New Orleans implemented an ordinance in 1897. The district officially opened on January 1, 1898, geographically taking up approximately nineteen blocks in a part of New Orleans referred to as “back of town.” Upon its designation, Storyville became home to houses for prostitution ranging from brothels costing a quarter to finer places on North Basin Street.

Along with the draw of prostitution in Storyville, the neighborhood became a place for other vices with popular saloons and bars. Famed musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton and Tony Jackson got their start performing in these establishments, in turn granting the district the title of ‘the birthplace of jazz.’ Other public figures who had already reached levels of notoriety were patrons and visitors of the district, such as Babe Ruth and P. T. Barnum.

At the United States government’s decision to enter World War I in 1917, an ordinance banning prostitution districts located within 5 miles of military sites shut down Storyville as a red-light district. Though the residents and businesses did not engage in intensely violent protest, they attempted to overturn the order all the way at the level of the US Supreme Court, but to no avail.

People of Storyville

Sex Workers

Most of the sex workers, known at the time as prostitutes, were Louisiana natives. Some of the sex workers were international, coming mostly from Europe and Canada, but also islands such as Cuba and Jamaica.

Some women were married and had children, although most were single. Of those who had children, it was not uncommon to see the child of the sex worker, if female, to be advertised in business with her mother.

Jazz Musicians

Another big draw to Storyville was the music. Because of the liveliness of the various types of establishment in Storyville, many musicians were able to find work playing in the brothels of Storyville. These musicians were generally jazz musicians, including famous musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and Tony Jackson. The musicians that performed at the Storyville brothels and bordello’s commanded the majority of the musical talent in the Red Light District. Inside the brothels were pianos available for artists to use. They were hired to play through the night to create an atmosphere of class and add to the club like energy that some madams wanted to create. At cribs, lower end brothels, men could come in and out quickly, or could stay with a sex worker for the entire night at a higher end bordello. Jazz musicians catered to both of these services. It was ‘honky tonk’ style at the cribs. The jazz musicians in the nicer bordellos were often called ‘professors’ and played to make the bordello seem more like a hotel.

Separate from the brothels were dance halls, where groups of musicians played, and could expect to earn up to two dollars for the entire night of music.

Clientele

Generally, the frequenters of the higher end bordellos were white and well established white collar workers. Sailors were also common customers of the brothels of Storyville. After arriving in New Orleans, many would make their way straight to the room of a Storyville sex worker.

Managers

The Storyville ‘pimps’ and ‘hustlers’ were men who managed the sex workers of the district. The managers of The Pimps Club would pay a dollar per week in order to belong to the club, and once a member, would have access to protection from the law. This money would pay fines incurred by members, lawyers’ fees, and police when they were able to be bought off.

The managers of The Pimps Club would bring their own “girls” in to Storyville to work as sex workers. A manager would instruct his women on how much to charge with each customer, and took a cut of their pay. The managers would infiltrate different businesses in the areas, like places of rest, restaurants, and other establishments, in order to make it impossible to work as a sex worker without connection to a manager. They then were able to control the pricing of goods and services in the area, forcing the participation of the people around them. Managers were also known to beat their women under their management to ensure cooperation. They would meet the women after their night shift.

Madams

The madams of Storyville were in charge of the bordellos and cribs. They were responsible for the flow of customers and managing the women who worked in the houses.

The madams were also responsible for educating their sex workers in several aspects of life. There are accounts of madams teaching sex workers how to be safe around and abstain from drug use, how to save their earnings and use them to provide for their family, as well as the workings of their trade. They recruited and trained new workers, and were generally in charge of the education of the sex workers.

Some madams, like Nell Kimball, became madams after mastering their trade as sex workers. Other madams moved in to Storyville as ex-prostitutes, and began their own houses upon settling in the Red Light District.

The madams of the various cribs and bordellos were responsible for keeping their establishments safe from the police. A madam had complete control over her house, from decorations to bills, tasked also with creating an atmosphere that would attract clients. They had to also learn how to negotiate with their customers and employees, often liaising between the two. They would pair up certain women with clients after learning their sexual interests.

The Brothels and the World Beyond Them

The Impact of History and Jim Crow

Existing within the era of Jim Crow, Storyville used the political and social climate to its advantage. With brothels modeled to reflect the extravagant architecture popular in the South before the civil war and the encouragement of services from sex workers of color, the industry worked to appeal to its white male market. By catering to the internalized hypersexualization of women of color and the nuances of complexion attached to that–women of color with fair complexions being in higher demand–allowed for madams to better control prices and thus maximize profits.

The legalized segregation of public spaces additionally promoted the establishment of red-light districts as the law worked to redistribute and limit access to certain spaces. To maintain and enforce systemic inequalities, areas of New Orleans were separated into white and non-white communities, but as tourism became a more popular pastime of the American populace and as “professional urbanites” became a growing social stratum, the sex industry found a profitable space to thrive.

The Impact of Class

The biggest recruitment asset for Storyville and prostitution on the whole was the lack of alternate options for both stable employment and considerable pay. If more traditional jobs were unavailable or not enough to provide adequate support, many women would turn to sex work to make ends meet.

The income brackets of the Storyville patrons were significant influences toward the lifestyle and working conditions of the sex workers. Servicing wealthier patrons afforded the workers time for leisure-focused or self-oriented activities while servicing wage-earning patrons forced a more demanding schedule. The resultant higher earnings of the former subset allowed for advertising opportunities in distributed Blue Books, publications that informed clientele of the whereabouts of various brothels and the services they offered. Women who could not afford the advertisements even after work were unable to reach the wider market, and the divisions of class were thus maintained

Aftermath of Closing

Decline of Storyville

The Storyville district faced significant challenges before its end in 1917. The Gay-Shattuck Law liquor licensing law was passed by the state legislature in 1908. Along with removing women and musical instruments from New Orleans saloons, the law prohibited the serving of liquor to racially integrated clientele. The law was enforced in January of 1909; however, owners quickly discovered how to circumvent the statute through the use of non-compliance permits and serving food in their establishments. The state tried unsuccessfully to forbid sex-workers from soliciting on the street, a rule that was often ignored.

In the early 1910’s Phillip Werlein was a vocal critic of the vice district and proponent of segregation. He believed that black prostitutes and madams, such as Emma Johnson, Willie Piazza, and Lulu White were a “shame and a disgrace.” Werlein stated that:

“The filthy hovels in which the negro and French women live are distasteful to the women who conduct their houses in better style and they leave the district and take up residence elsewhere in the city. . . .. The negro woman must be stamped out of the district.”

Werlein was ultimately unsuccessful in racially segregating Storyville in 1910 because city officials were resistant to altering the vice district at this time.

In 1917, Commissioner of Public Safety, Harold Newman, led a targeted operation against women of color working as prostitutes in Storyville. He successfully enforced both the 1908 Sunday closing law, which banned live music on Rampart street, and a law that prohibited the sale of liquor to mixed-race clientele. Five-day eviction notices were delivered to sex-workers working outside the district. Newman also campaigned against the practice of renting out cribs on a nightly basis to black women, which left sex-workers of color without access to shelter or livelihood and forced many to solicit on the street or beg.

Ordinance 4118 C.C.S, proposed by Newman, made it “unlawful for any prostitute or woman notoriously abandoned to lewdness, of the colored or black race, to occupy, inhabit, live or sleep in any house, room or closet” within the vice district, mandating that nonwhite prostitutes leave Storyville and move uptown. City Council passed the ordinance unanimously on February 7, 1917 and they demanded the departure of “colored” or “octoroon” women by March 1st, 1917. Some women left without a fight. Others tried to prove they were exempt from the ordinance by claiming they were “of Indian extraction,” and not of “Negro” status. At least twenty-five nonwhite madams, including Lulu White and Willie Piazza, sued the city.

In the City of New Orleans v. Willie Piazza case, the city defended Ordinance 4118 by claiming that Piazza’s status as a successful, property owning madam of color was “as rare as white blackbirds" and therefore could not be a valid consideration for altering the legislation. In turn, Piazza’s attorneys argued that “the area the city set aside for Piazza and the other prostitutes of color was a ‘section of African iniquity... wholly inhabited by colored prostitutes and criminals of the lowest type.’” In the end, the Louisiana Supreme Court sided with Piazza because the ordinance had been too restrictive in determining where sex-workers were allowed to live. However, the damage had already been done. Before Storyville was closed down in 1917, the district had already experienced a massive decline. Only 450 sex-workers remained in Storyville by 1917.

Closing in 1917

Leading up to World War I, New Orleans became host to a large number of military encampments, soldiers, and sailors, as well as a draw for tourists. The increasing amount of soldiers led to concerns from men and women in rural Louisiana about the dangers Storyville and prostitution posed to young soldiers in the form of moral conundrum and venereal diseases. As a result, Secretary of War Newton Baker mandated that the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA) implement a "rigorous policy of vice suppression,” focused on distributing posters and pamphlets that detailed the dangers of patronizing prostitutes and providing soldiers “wholesome recreational and social opportunities.”

Storyville faced its end when Section 13 of the Selective Service Act was enacted, outlawing prostitution within 5 to 10 miles around military camps. New Orleans’ mayor, Martin Behrmam, attempted to plead the case of Storyville before Newton Baker in August 1917. However, Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniel, eventually sent Behrman direct orders to close the district. Storyville’s last day was November 12, 1917. Following the closure of the district, sex-workers scattered to various different city districts, concentrating in the French Quarter, Julia Street, Tulane Avenue, and North Rampart Street. Prostitution again became a underground activity not publicly seen or advertised.

Famed Basin Street enchantress, Lulu White, continued to discreetly run her business from Mahogany Hall until 1918, when she and two of her workers were indicted for “unlawfully receiv[ing] and permit[ting] to be received for immoral purposes.” White served several months in prison before having her sentence commuted by President Woodrow Wilson, with the help of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. After being released from prison, White continued to operate a brothel located on the second floor of 1200 Bienville Street.

Notable People

Violet

Violet was a Storyville prostitute working until the closing of the district in 1917. She was interviewed by Al Rose for his famous book Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red Light District. Though the interview and book itself are contested about their depictions of the women of Storyville, she did provide Rose with information that otherwise could not have come to light. Born in 1904, Violet was the daughter of a Storyville prostitute and a john. After growing up watching her mother engage in this lifestyle, she recalls being sold in a ‘mother-daughter act,’ which was not uncommon at the time given the high price that came in exchange. Though her mother stayed at the house of a madam ‘Edna,’ Violet first engaged in prostitution at the brothel of infamous madam Emma Johnson, known for crude and sadistic ‘circus’ acts. At age twelve, she was sent regularly to perform in the circus, making around $100 a night, along with another girl her age, Liz, who would ride ponies with her in the Johnson yard during the daytime. Around this same time, she and Liz were auctioned off for their virginities by the same man at $775 each. During this occasion, she recounts engaging in “the dyke act” with Liz, something they had performed during the circus and even in privacy amongst themselves due to enjoyment. Retroactively, Violet regards her stint in prostitution as something that does not deserve the shame granted by feminists and progressives of the like, comparing the experience to a “kid whose father owns a grocery store. He helps him in the store.”

Norma Wallace

Norma Wallace began her sex worker career within the Storyville brothels, offering services in her youth in order to provide for herself and her loved ones. She was incredibly vocal and observant over the course of her work, she identifying systemically perpetuated influences that supported the Storyville industry when she said:

“I never was a little girl . . . when you’re poor you grow up fast . . . I didn’t have enough education. In those days it was alright if you went to school and if you didn’t it was still all right . . . I don’t remember going over maybe one year or two.”

After years of active participation and employment, she eventually entered an informal apprenticeship with the madam of her brothel to begin learning how to manage the administrative branch of sex work. This exchange acts as a prime example for the constant exchange of knowledge that occurred between older and newer members of the Storyville brothels.

After acquiring the proper information and skill, Wallace was able to sustain the sex industry of New Orleans after the close of Storyville, opening her own brothel and profiting in a less competitive market.

Carrie

Carrie’s parents were slaves. She cannot read. She is unsure of her age and birthday, but she estimated herself to be born around 1872 or 1873. She assumed her mother was also a sex worker, but was not able to substantiate.

Carrie says she began having sex since before she could remember, and charged for it as well. “Wit d’ kids in da street. I done it fo’ pennies.” Yet, she officially moved to Storyville and became a sex worker in the year 1901. She moved in to a crib on Robertson Street and paid twenty cents a day to board there. For a typical customer on a weekday, Carrie would charge twenty five cents for a night time visit and ten cents for a daytime visit.

At one point in her career in Storyville, Carrie was taken by several white men from her room, tied to a post, physically violated, and forced to perform sexual acts on the men who abducted her. After she had finished performing what she was told, the men gave her twenty dollars and brought her back to her home. This was the most money Carrie had ever made at one time.

When Carrie was not working, she would spend her time enjoying the company and music of the jazz musicians in Storyville. She eventually became seriously involved, romantically, with a dark-skinned carpenter, to whom she gave her income to spend for himself. He put most of the money in a bank, but when he and Carrie were chased out of Storyville with the police, he took the money he stored and left town with Carrie. They moved into an apartment above a bar, which they also bought. She began working behind the bar, and only performed sexual acts for pay occasionally if she and her boyfriend were short on cash.

Throughout her career, Carrie gave birth to at least nine children.

Olive Noble

Born in Kansas in 1875, Olive Noble worked as a prostitute in Storyville under the professional name “Ollie Russell.” In 1898, she entered into a relationship with Tom Alexander, who was mayor of Storyville at the time. Olive soon began living in an apartment above Anderson’s Arlington Restaurant on Rampart Street and referred to herself as “Mrs. Anderson.” At this time Tom Anderson was still married to his second wife, Kate Anderson, formerly Catherine Turnbull, who was also a young sex-worker when she met Anderson.

Olive became embroiled in a violent conflict when one night, after hearing news of Tom Anderson consorting with other sex-workers, she confronted him with a small pistol and accidentally shot herself in the foot. Following this altercation, Kate Anderson filed a successful divorce suit against Tom Anderson, referencing Olive’s shooting as evidence of infidelity and grounds for settlement.

Olive Anderson fell ill in 1907. She and Tom Anderson were married by a judge at her deathbed in Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. The Catholic Church refused to perform the ceremony because they did not recognize Tom Anderson’s divorce from Kate. Olive died on December 26, 1907.

References

This article "Storyville Prostitutes" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Storyville Prostitutes. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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