Inside the Brothels of New Orleans

Storyville was the red-light district in New Orleans, created in 1897. What was it like in this neighbourhood, and inside the brothels there? How was race and segregation a factor in Storyville? And what triggered the downfall of Storyville? Joining Kate today is the wonderful Dr. Alecia P. Long, Professor of History at Louisiana State University, to take us back to this time and place. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Cade Lister. Welcome back. Hello. Thank you for returning. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Is that what you're meant to do? Is this the podcast that you were meant to listen to today? Well, hurrah! And if it's not, just stay with us, because you might actually enjoy it. But before we can go any further, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things and an adulty way of going around adult subjects and you should be an adult too. Right, let's get on with it.

• 1:04Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. We are strolling down Basin Street in the heart of New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century. The air is thick with perfume and jazz spilling out from the brothels all along here, because in this part of New Orleans, sex work is given city sanctioned space to do its thing.

• 1:24Kate Lister?

  So who are the women who run this world? And what goes on inside the saloons and the brothels in the area known only as Storyville?

• 1:33Kate Lister?

  Well, come along with me and we are going to find out.

• 2:00Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. It's always fascinating to see how cities and towns try to control sex work. And if history has proven one thing, it's going to happen whether you want it to or not. And in Storyville in New Orleans, they attempted to regulate sex work by confining it to a small area and giving it its own set of rules. So did it thrive? Was that a success? Could we even consider it a success? And what caused its eventual downfall? Well, joining me today is the fantastic Dr Alicia P. Long, author and professor of history at Louisiana State University. And she is going to take us back to Storyville to find out more.

• 2:41Kate Lister?

  And while I'm here, I'm just reminding you again about the two Betwixt the Sheets live shows that are happening in May. We've got one in Edinburgh and we've got one in London. And tickets are available at fein.co.uk. Just search for Betwixt and I'd love to see you there. Right, let's do it.

• 3:04Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's our lead professor, Alicia Long. How are you doing?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  I'm very well. How are you?

• 3:13Kate Lister?

  Well, I'm fabulous because I get to talk to you about a particularly fascinating part in history of sex work in America. The history of Storyville. Now, you are a professor at Louisiana State University, but do you remember when you first heard the story of Storyville?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I was probably maybe 19 or 20 years old. And it was around the time I first went to New Orleans as a very young woman and fell in love with it. And, you know, you sort of learn things about a new city when you're there. And I think probably around that time was the first time I ever heard about the prostitution district in New Orleans. But it was only much later, I mean, maybe like a decade later, I thought I would locate there and write a book about the history of that prostitution district for my dissertation and then my first book. And that's what I did.

• 4:05Kate Lister?

  I've always wanted to go to New Orleans. There's something very magical and just like so exotic to a Brit like me about New Orleans. Is that right, or is it not like that at all?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  No, you know, I grew up in Upper East Tennessee in a town called Knoxville, which is being a very up-country, south Protestant. And when I first went to New Orleans, I mean, this sounds sort of hokey, but like it really kind of spoke to my soul. It's sort of like permissiveness and it's, you know, indulgent Catholicism and, you know, and it really, it fit me a lot better than where I grew up. And I still feel that way about the city. And although I live in Baton Rouge now because I teach at LSU and can't do that commute anymore. New Orleans is still, you know, an amazingly beautiful and culturally rich city. And it's a city with a lot of problems, you know, a lot of infrastructure problems and kind of violence that plagues a lot of places across the United States. But it has something very special about it. And it has

• 4:59Speaker 01

  a lot of really interesting and unique communities. And there's a whole lifetime of stuff to learn about New Orleans. And my interest has always been in the history of sexuality there. But it's a, it's an extraordinary city. And so you should visit, just don't come in August.

• 5:15Kate Lister?

  I've heard. It has a reputation as quite a sexy city as well. I wonder if that is part of its, its past, because it was, now, I don't know if it was the first city in America to try zoning as a way to regulate sex work. But what, tell me about how Storyville came to be.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Okay, so it is still a very sexy city and there's something very sort of, you know, make you want to swing your hips about like being in the French Quarter. I mean, there's something about the culture there that's very, makes you feel very indulgent. And that's not just me. So Storyville, you know, New Orleans is one of the first cities that has a very specific zoning ordinance for prostitution. And the earliest one they tried is in the 1850s. And they call it the Lorette ordinance. And that's even a reference to its French heritage because there was a, in, in Paris, near Notre Dame, de Lorette, there was a group of prostitutes who gathered and worked. So the first one they have sort of references that area.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Of Paris, but it's um, you know, it's a big section of the city and prostitution can be carried on in these big sections of the city. So long as it follows certain kind of rules, like it can't be on the ground floor and that kind of stuff. And over the course of say, the next four decades, there's a lot that changes in the city. But they keep trying these prostitution zoning ordinances. And they keep shrinking the boundaries within which prostitution will be tolerated during that period of time. And uh, so when you get to Storyville in eighteen ninety seven, that's actually the city's last vice district. And really it's kind of like most notorious vice district, but it's also its smallest.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  And so it really becomes notorious, I think, because there's so much prostitution crammed into this really small area. Um, and it's adjacent to the French Quarter, so it's on the backside of the boundaries of the original city. And about a decade into Storyville being there, they actually like run this train line. Ride along the front street of Storyville called Basin Street. And so people would ride into town into the Basin Street Station. And the prostitution district was, you know, right out of the windows on one side of the train.

• 7:23Kate Lister?

  When you say it's small, how big are we talking here? How big is this?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Maybe like um, it's like four or five blocks on each side, so about twenty square blocks of the city. And it's um, you know, it's probably in its boundaries about the size of the French Quarter itself. Sort of mimics that on the backside. And then there's a smaller slice. Um, that's also allows prostitution and that gets called uh, during that period of time kind of Black Storyville. And it's understood that that's the sort of section, particularly for black men to uh, you know, frequent black prostitutes. But there's an enormous amount of racial mixing um, in the boundaries of Storyville itself. But it's mostly white men who are able to access women of color.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Um, or women of mixed racial distinctions and and technically speaking, black men are not supposed to be frequenting houses in Storyville. I mean, we, we know that happens, but like, that's kind of the, you know, segregation that's observed there.

• 8:24Kate Lister?

  In the United Kingdom, and I've done, this is where I've done my research, in the 19th century, they were in a real old twist about sex work. It was known as the great social evil. There were papers calling it the great moral scourge. They were so worried about it and they had the Contagious Diseases Act where they were forcing women to submit to venereal examinations and they were really worried about it. What was going on in America at the time? Was it a similar panicked attitude about this? Because in the UK, they didn't come up with zoning, but they came up with different ways to attempt to regulate things. So what was going on in America that led somebody to go, I know, we'll put them all in a block over here?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Well, I think there are kind of two things often going on here. And one is the kind of interests of property holders and their concerns about the values of their property. And so if in a given neighborhood, there becomes a sort of concentration of brothels that begin to impact on property values for respectable citizens, that can lead then to complain about what's happening. But the other thing that's happening, and this is particularly true in the 1890s, is there's this social movement arising in the United States called progressivism. It's called the progressive era. And these are people who tended to respect education. They believed government could be used to solve social problems. They tend to be kind of behaviorally conservative and fairly judgmental.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  And there's not a big sort of groundswell of this kind of sentiment in New Orleans, but they win one big election. And they win it in 1896. So these progressives take this opportunity, when they're in office between 1896 and 1900, to use what to them looked like a progressive solution, to put all the prostitutes in a single district where you could observe them, where there could be police protection. The police could take advantage of them for graft. That's a big important part of how all this works. This group of progressives only stays in office for one term. And then they're followed back by these kind of machine politicians. And so these machine politicians then are able to kind of administer Storyville in a sort of more graft forward, you know, big city machine kind of way.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  And that's what it really turns into over the course of its lifetime. So ultimately, and kind of ironically, by the time it ends, it'll be progressive reformers at the federal level, as the United States sort of gears up to enter World War I, who are going to try to get rid of prostitution. But it's also originally progressives who are responsible for creating it in New Orleans in the first place.

• 11:04Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Alicia after this short break.

• 11:09Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that.

• 11:39Kate Lister?

  Right, let's get on with it.

• 11:54Kate Lister?

  So these progressives, they got in for one term and said, we're going to be progressive about this. You can do it, but you can do it over there. Then they're gone. And now New Orleans is kind of stuck with this system. That's what happened?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  I don't think it's really stuck with the system. I mean, I think actually Storyville is good for a lot of people, right? I mean, it's good for liquor purveyors. It's good for, you know, people who want to run nightlife establishments like concert saloons and, you know. I mean, so it's good for a lot of people, but so a couple of things are happening. One is there's kind of tension, and this is true even today, there's kind of tension between the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. And there are two things that are happening in Storyville that sort of offend the sensibilities of the more conservative upstate people. Uh, one is that there is a significant amount of race mixing um in Storyville.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Um, and so sort of for these people from the outside who are, you know, very uh interested in black, white segregation in a thoroughgoing way, that's a problem. The other problem is that there is among the conservative people in the state, and I'm gonna say upstate, but it's like, you know, sort of Baton Rouge, north, so the state capital north. These people are very Protestant. They um, a lot of them have prohibition sentiment. Um, and these people have a lot of influence in the state legislature. So it's also the drinking um in Storyville. Um, that's a problem for them. And so as prohibition sentiment rises upstate and there's, you know, sort of the offense around race mixing in Storyville, the state legislature starts to get involved and they'll

• 13:31Speaker 01

  pass a series of laws, like there's one in 1908, there's one in 1910, where they're trying to put all these behavioral restrictions on Storyville to better control it, right? And so there's always a tension there, inside, outside, about uh sort of continuing of this. Most of the leaders in the city of New Orleans, and I think the vast majority of New Orleanians uh were willing to accept and live with that. Um, but there's a very small number of very vocal reformers, uh wealthy, well-heeled people who um are determined ultimately to uh get rid of Storyville or change it um in ways that for them it's uh, you know, more acceptable.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And so there's always that tension going on during that period of time. Um, and you know, this may be rushing to the end, but ultimately it's the federal government that is successful at forcing the city to close Storyville. And the city then has to make an economic choice between being a sort of port of embarkation for soldiers and goods coming through that port to be shipped out to Europe for World War I, or to protect its prostitution district. And ultimately, it has to make that kind of difficult Economic decision and that's when you know it's 1917 when the city is really forced to close it and it's forced by you know a bunch of conservative progressives who are in the White

• 14:59Speaker 01

  House and who run the Department of Defense and all those things at that time is under Woodrow Wilson and you know it's a so it's America has become more conservative and its leaders have become more conservative in those 20 years.

• 15:11Kate Lister?

  That makes sense. Why was it called Storyville?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  So this is interesting. So the Reform Administration that comes in really has a sort of group of new men who begin to take control of the city and they are not part of the machine politics. They're really a part of old line families in New Orleans. So kind of like, you know, and and they tend to be descended from Americans rather than Europeans. So they would be kind of identified as Anglo rather than Creole. If that's some kind of, you know, and so they come in and they are going to try to change the city for the better. And the alderman who wrote the ordinance to create Storyville was named Sidney Story.

• 15:50Kate Lister?

  Ah.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  And so to in a way it's a lampooning of him to call it Storyville. Believe me that he was not thrilled by this, but that's, you know, that's the name that is ultimately given to the vice district is Storyville and it's his namesake because it's his legislation ultimately.

• 16:11Kate Lister?

  No, I can't imagine he was too pleased about that.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  No, he probably wasn't.

• 16:15Kate Lister?

  Do we know how the people in New Orleans felt about this and in particular the women that were selling sex in this district? Did they think that this was a good thing? Were they happy to be relocated there?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  So, you know, I think not initially because you know, when you force a big move like that, people who have property interests, some of them women are not happy about being forced into these new districts. But for other people, you know, who are in the know, who were, you know, lucky in when this change was made, it gave them a lot of economic opportunity. So I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know if happy unhappy is the way to talk about it, but certainly it provides economic opportunity for some people who get on the ground floor and are able to buy property and then build these really elaborate brothels on Basin Street and make a lot of money. And then the other thing I would say is,

• 17:06Speaker 01

  What Storybill provides women, whether we like it or not, was a kind of economic opportunity in a period of time when economic opportunities for women are extremely constrained. And that's particularly true for young women. And you know, what's, you know, the continuity that's weird or even kind of disturbing is that, you know, still the way for young women to make the most kind of money is to engage in some kind of sex work, right?

• 17:38Kate Lister?

  It's true.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And so now it's like OnlyFans or, you know, I mean, it's like, or, or stripping or, you know, um, you know, having a sugar daddy or all those kinds of things. But in a South where there was even less economic opportunity and even less educational opportunity for women, doing sex work for a period of your life was not unusual, particularly for lower class women. And I've documented cases where women come down from Mississippi and there are even women in New Orleans who go work in prostitution occasionally when their families get into problems. And then they go back out into their neighborhoods. So, you know, particularly because that district was there. I mean, in certain kind of families, this would have been a problem. But, you know, for families who are living very close to the edge,

• 18:22Speaker 01

  this is a way for young women to make money. And there's one other kind of class of women, and these are the women who kind of become the owners. You know, they become property owners and they become brothel maddens. And some of those women, and the numbers are small, but some of those women become extraordinarily wealthy. And so, you know, for people who got really lucky and were astute and good business people and willing to exploit other women, you know, in a small number of cases, those women do very well for themselves.

• 18:49Kate Lister?

  It's been the case since time immemorial that has is that sex work, although heavily stigmatized and dangerous and often illegal, Is something that there's no barrier to entry that anybody can do it. You can earn a lot of money in a very short space of time. And the population tends to be transient. They tend to move in and they move out again.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Right, right. There was that, you know, the story of the tragic prostitute in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And, and you work for, you know, two years and you're essentially are, I don't know if I can say this word or not. I mean, you're, you're essentially fucked to death is the story that's told, you know? And it's like, um, and, and that's not really the story for a lot of women. Some women do get venereal disease. One of the women who I wrote about in the Great Southern Babylon did have very long term, um, you know, syphilis that became sort of tertiary syphilis. And that's ultimately what she died from. So that is a fact of the matter about how that works. But that's not true for everyone. And for some people it is temporary, um, you know, provides them a kind of economic leg up. And in a world where women have far fewer opportunities, um, and we may be headed back there, right?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Sex work starts to look more attractive. Um, and so, yeah, we, this has been stigmatized historically, but I think it's very understandable economically.

• 20:04Kate Lister?

  Absolutely. Now generally when governments get involved and they zone where people can sell sex, they tend to go a bit further than that. They don't just say, right, you have to do it over there. They tend to bring in rules and regulations and, uh, you can do it over here, but you have to do it like this. Was that the case in Storyville?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  So the ordinance is written in such a way that it, it says, you know, outside these districts, so that outside is important. Outside these, you know, designated boundaries, sex work will not be allowed.

• 20:37Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  But then the ordinance also says, nothing in this ordinance should be construed to be saying that this allows for prostitution. So it's written in that kind of like gymnastic way. That's a lot, a lot of legislation is written. And in fact, the legislation itself, that ordinance goes all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Because there's a property owner on the edge of Storyville who's very upset about this. He has a huge, this kind of sprawling lumberyard and he doesn't want to be moved out of there. And so he keeps. Suing all the way up to the level of the United States Supreme Court. And because of the way the legislation is written, that particular ordinance, the United States Supreme Court passes on it.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Because they have this very technical reading of the law in which it says it's not saying you can have prostitutes. It's just saying you can only have it outside these boundaries. And of course, you know, like sometimes these things are written in a way to kind of like get a pass on legal judgment. And that's the way this was written. And so ultimately, what they did there in New Orleans was, you know, passed off on by the state's highest or the nation's highest court, and then other states follow suit. So something that's far less well known is that there were prostitution districts on that model in small towns in Louisiana, like Alexandria, Louisiana, and Shreveport, Louisiana. And Houston, Texas also copies that particular ordinance. So it kind of becomes a sort of model legislation

• 22:01Speaker 01

  for this kind of way of allowing a city to do something that many people might have an objection to, but the courts have said, you know, we'll pass on that.

• 22:11Kate Lister?

  Did they pass any rules and laws about things like ages of the people that were allowed to work there, venereal examinations, anything like that? Or was it just to kind of look, as long as it's happening here, it's okay?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's so there are madams who, you know, engage in regular medical care of and inspection of the women who work for them. And there were, there was an attempt at the time the storybook ordinance was passed to try to get medical examination to be a part of it. And I know this is also sort of what happens in the UK. And, and that really has to be kind of dropped away because it, that becomes quite controversial. Sort of like, you know, medical examination. And the age of consent in Louisiana at that time was 12 or 13. I'm not remembering exactly, but it was really quite young. So this is not a, you know, you need a social security card and you have to be 18 because there was no social security then.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  And people weren't on the grid and, you know, so, and in any of these kinds of situations, there, you know, turns out to be exploitation of people and sometimes animals in a way that, you know, we would likely find. Offensive in our contemporary world and probably unacceptable. But there are kind of, you know, extreme kinds of things sold and marketed. It's a very young girls or like virgin auctions or, you know, sort of like people talk about. And, and there's some photography, you know, some like extant photography of one madam who did a sort of performance with this very large dog, a Mastiff, I think.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  And so, you know, so there's some kind of extreme stuff being sold and marketed there.

• 23:56Kate Lister?

  Alicia, wow.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, early for that.

• 24:01Kate Lister?

  Well, I mean, yeah, okay, that's, but I'd like to think that that, that's gonna take me a moment to get past that.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've seen the pictures, believe me, I'll never be.

• 24:11Kate Lister?

  Oh, my God, there are pictures.

• 24:15Kate Lister?

  See, the only pictures I've seen of Storyville are the ones by.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  The Bellic, yeah, and those are lovely, yeah.

• 24:20Kate Lister?

  Oh, they're beautiful.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:21Kate Lister?

  There wasn't a dog in sight there.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  There are dogs, but they're pet dogs, you know, like they're little Malteses or Frenchies or, you know, whatever. It's like, so a lot of the women he takes pictures of actually have dogs with them, but pets. But this other picture is, the series of pictures is in a, a collection, actually at the University of New Orleans. And it's pornography, but it's, you know, in that case is very specific kind of pornography.

• 24:46Kate Lister?

  Holy moly, okay, so that kind of thing was going on. But one of the reasons that we know so much as, as we do about Storyville is the way that it was documented, not only by, you know, the photos by, by Bellic, which are beautiful, and I urge people to go and see them. But also the Blue Books, which are now, they're quite an infamous part of it. Tell us about the Blue Books of Storyville.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  You know, so essentially they were like the, what are they called, like the Foders or the Zagat gods, the Michelin gods of their day. And the Blue Books are, you know, very specifically focused on Storyville and other cities have these as well. But they are essentially sort of promotional books that, you know, particular houses list the names of their inmates, is what they're sometimes called. Or they're girls, you know, which is interesting in itself. Um, they can sometimes, they're sometimes delineated by, uh, race. Um, or particular kind of specialty, like there are these things called Octoroon houses, which focus on very light skinned, mixed race women.

• 25:48Kate Lister?

  What does Octoroon mean?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Octoroon means it's, it's a really early 19th century racial designation. Uh, when people used to talk about race mixing in terms of quantity of blood. And so like a white and a black person who have a child, that's a mulatto. And then a white person and a mulatto have a child and that's a quadroon. So that person is one quarter black. And then that person, another, yeah. And so then an Octoroon is one eighth black. So they're very close to white, but they're still light skinned mixed race women. And there's a particular kind of sexual penchant for that sort of thing. That's really associated with the city of New Orleans. So there are these Octoroon houses.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it's like, so, you know, racial kind of fetish is, you know, one of the things that gets marketed here. There are other kinds of things as well, but that's one of them. And, you know, some women are designated as C for colored, you know? And there are even some women who are very occasionally like documented as being Jewish. But these things are sort of created, there's a season, it, the sort of high season in Storyville. And it's called the, a winter racing season. So it begins in late October, early November. Um, and goes through April. And so these things then would be created in the late summer, early fall. And so they're essentially sort of like, you get off the train and you get one of these. And it's like, oh, I want to go here and I want to do this and I want to see that bar. And I want to, you know, do this thing.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  And, uh, so that's, you know, they're just little guidebooks, uh, to, to guide people around. And I would say people are interested in these, these have been digitized, um, by Historic New Orleans Collection. And so there's a huge collection of them available for free online that you can take a look at. And, um, you know, that's, if you're interested, they're very easily found online.

• 27:32Kate Lister?

  They are incredible documents as well. In the UK, in the 18th century, we had something called Harris's List, which was a guide to the women of London. And there's been an argument made that, yeah, they were accurate and that they were advertising, basically, but they were also operating as a form of pornography in and of themselves by people that would never actually go and see these women or use any of their services. They just sort of wanted to be part of it. Do you think the Blue Book operated a bit like that, too?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sure people took them as souvenirs.

• 28:02Kate Lister?

  Souvenirs.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? Or like younger guys in the city, you know? I mean, I'm sure it was something like passed hand from hand to, you know, adolescent boys. And, you know, I mean, it's, they have that kind of, you know, enticement function, I guess, and people probably use them that way. And, you know, we live in an age of, you know, really such sophisticated kind of moving image pornography, but then all the pornography is still image, right? And so like even, you know, pictures of a, you know, half naked woman or a topless woman would have been very enticing to people in that context. And so I think they're certainly probably used that way.

• 28:38Kate Lister?

  I can't stop thinking about the dog. No, I'm not. I'm going to, I'm going to move on.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  I'll send you those if you're, if you're interested.

• 28:43Kate Lister?

  Please, oh, God, I sound terrible saying, please do, but I really want to know what happened there.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:49Kate Lister?

  You've, you've touched briefly on race there, but I'm really interested into how does Storyville intersect with something like the Jim Crow era? Because Storyville was created in, was it 1897? But it's there until 1917. So that's quite a chunk of time.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what I argue in the book that I wrote, Great Southern Babylon, is that, you know, it's not really a surprise that if you think about the landmark United States Supreme Court that passes on racial segregation in law, it's called Plessy v. Ferguson. And that isn't a, it's a case out of New Orleans, actually. But Plessy v. Ferguson makes its way all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and it has to do with a segregation ordinance related to train cars. And the United States Supreme Court says, you know what? That's not inherently prejudicial. And so long as separate facilities are equal, they're not unequal. And so, you know, separate but equal becomes the law of the land. And

• 29:49Speaker 01

  some people are resistant to the characterization of a kind of apartheid. On that, but that's precisely what it is. I mean, it's it's set up to, you know, separate white and black. And despite what the United States Supreme Court said in an eight to one decision, it had everything to do with, you know, marginalizing people of color and valorizing white people. So Storyville is the year after Plessy v. Ferguson. And and what I argue in the book is that it really comes out of on the part of people who then sort of, you know, characterize themselves as progressives of thinking of segregation as a kind of progressive solution to what they identified as social problems. So to the degree that they think of, you know, of race mixing or racial integration as problematic, hey, segregation is our is our

• 30:34Speaker 01

  solution. To the degree that they think of prostitution as problematic, they come to segregation as a solution. And so Storyville is essentially a segregated vice district. That's how they talked about it at the time. And so it's, you know, it's conceptually consistent with what was happening. Now, what they didn't expect is that it would become a kind of place where there was an enormous amount of very permissive race mixing. And for people who criticize it, as well as sort of the alcohol use, which they object to, and the gambling, which they object to, all those vices that they find these, you know, upright people find problematic. You know, it's sort of an unforeseen consequence of of segregating this district so tightly. But that's the outcome in the end.

• 31:19Kate Lister?

  Was anyone policing that the mixing of of different races within Storyville? Did they ever get it's difficult to say into trouble because there's so much going on there that could trigger various crackdowns and condemnation. But did they get away with that?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  So what ends up happening is the vice district is policed like any other part of the city is policed, right? It's part of it, you know, it's a part of, I think it's the first district police at that at that period of time, those districts ship around over time. But, you know, so there are policemen who are on a beat in Storyville. They receive a lot of graft, right, to ignore things that they see in front of them. But I don't want to say it was anything goes inside Storyville because, you know, crimes took place there and, you know, murders took place there. And, you know, things that required police intervention took place there. But mostly, if it's just about kind of run of the mill sex work, you know, prostitution, so long as people are doing it in those boundaries, that's not considered a police matter.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  For women who get arrested inside Storyville, it's often for something beyond prostitution, like extreme intoxication, or fighting, or robbery, or burglary, that kind of stuff. Women only get arrested for prostitution outside those boundaries of Storyville. So that's where that can happen. The other thing that happens is, and again, it's related to prohibitionist sentiment growing upstate. Everybody knows that there's race mixing in these bars and restaurants, and even in some of the brothels. And so I think it's 1908 or so, the state legislature passes this thing called the Gay Shattuck Law. It's the name of the people who sponsored the legislation. I don't have anything to do with being gay.

• 33:03Kate Lister?

  I was gonna say, wow, that's very progressive.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Gay Shattuck is called the law. And what that required is that bars, and restaurants, and other places within Storyville declare themselves either as for white people, or for people of color.

• 33:18Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's not progressive at all.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  And so then there's a kind of racial segregation that takes place within the boundaries of the Vice District. Looking back, it seems very excessive and absurd. But you've got to remember, and it's easy to remember these days in the United States, how obsessed people were with race 120 years ago, because people are very obsessed with race in our country now. They just don't want to talk about it.

• 33:52Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Alicia after this short break.

• 33:59Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe, because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 34:42Kate Lister?

  You mentioned that you said that the police would get graft. What does that mean? Because in the UK graft means work. What does that mean?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Okay, so it just means sort of a bribery every week. They would get a kind of standard payment from, or you know, like a police commissioner or like a, you know, high level police officer might have an arrangement with a particular brothel, a particular bar owner, and they pay a certain amount of money each week and it goes to the station house and is divided up among the officers. And this continues in the Norrals Police for a very long time. You know, and so it's just, it's a kind of payoff. It's a sort of formalized, standardized payoff that criminal enterprises offer to, you know, stave off police interference or even like police interest in what it is they're doing.

• 35:26Kate Lister?

  I'm with you. Tell me about Lulu White, who is a woman that you can see photos of to this very day. And she's not a lady that I would like to cross. I don't think, she looks formidable.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, when she was young, I think she was actually very beautiful. But you know, I mean, that kind of work is not easy work. And I think managing that kind of work is not simple. And managing roving populations of men, often whom are intoxicated, is, you know, tough work. I think as she aged, she sort of lost that youthful glow that she has in many pictures of her as a younger woman. But she does very, very well for herself. I'd say she's in the top four or five earners over the course of Storyville. These are women who have to be extremely tough. I don't want to say necessarily mercenary,

• 36:20Speaker 01

  although I don't think that hurts when you're, you know, running a brothel. So I think that takes a toll on people. And I will also say there's another woman named Willie Piazza, who I probably studied more closely than Lulu White, but they have a lot in common, including that they're both light-skinned, mixed-race women who identify as Octoroon, right? They really are extremely tough business people.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  And they also sometimes have family members or people who are close to them. And those people live outside the district. Right. Because the district is where you do business. And this is business for them, you know. And, um, and so sometimes they live in a quieter place. You know, a few blocks away and they'll go into the district and do business. But these are, you know, these are hard. You know, hardcore business women. And, and working really hard all your life and managing a very difficult enterprise with, you know, a lot of potential for violence and disorder. Uh, certainly takes a toll on people and you had to be tough to be successful at that. And I certainly think she was, yeah.

• 37:22Kate Lister?

  What would it have been like to work in one of these establishments? Um, because Lulu White, hers was the most famous brothel, but there were other famous. Maybe it wasn't the most famous, maybe it's just the one I know.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  It's on Basin Street and these ones on Basin Street tend to be very elaborate. Houses and they tend to have themed rooms and they, you know, it's like, uh, kind of those Japanese sex hotels now. Like, you know, where they have like a certain kind of like themed room that you can rent. And, and the brothels were like this, particularly as public areas. Um, I think the private areas for the most part were, you know, much more kind of like, uh, business oriented. Having never been a sex worker, I've only ever read about this. But, you know, I think it was not unusual in the high season when it's a very busy period of time. For, um, women to sometimes, you know, have eight, 10 clients in the course of a day. And so that is work. Um, and just managing each one of those people and their expectations and, you know, having sex with them. And sort of then sorting yourself out for the next person.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  I mean, again, I don't, they don't call it sex work for nothing.

• 38:19Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's work.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  It's work.

• 38:21Kate Lister?

  Uh, it is, it's, and I think a lot of this depends on what kind of establishment you're dealing with. Is this something where they would be targeting the very rich clientele? Uh, somewhere like in France, for example, they had a system of regulated sex work and they had, I mean, it's, it's a hugely complex experience. They had places where the Prince of Wales would go, uh, to socialize with the richest of the rich. And then right at the bottom, they had establishments. Now, my French is appalling, so I won't attempt it, but they refer to them as the slaughterhouses. Because it was just a, a revolving door of clients. Is that the way it would, I mean, sort of the spread of difference? The class system, I guess, contained within this.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in those really elite brothels, you know, the women would have dressed up very beautifully, sometimes in evening wear, and you know, then they would go upstairs and there's a whole kind of, you know, elaborate kind of conceit around the thing. You know, in bar rooms and in these kind of like, single rooms called cribs, which individual prostitutes might have rented, you know, they just take a client back and, you know, whatever they agreed to do, they would do for whatever price that they did and then, you know, clean themselves up and move along to the next client. And, and there's even, there's a kind of dress that prostitutes wore during this period of time, and this is particularly true for like, you know, prostitutes at the lower end of the business. They wore these dresses that were called mother hubbards. And essentially, they were these kind of like loose dresses that you could tie up at the waist.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  And so that, you know, they had some kind of like, I guess fashionable aspect to them, but they're really practical because you just undo that tie and the skirt comes up, you know, and it's like, and so you can have sex, you'd have it in the street. You know, and not ever really get fully undressed, but also the client can have a lot of access to your body. So they're, they're, you know, fashion choices that help us understand how this operated if you were essentially a street prostitute.

• 40:09Kate Lister?

  I've read somewhere that there were curfews for some of these girls in these establishments. Is that, did they live there? Would they live in or would they come from outside to work there?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  At the, at those very fancy brothels, they would have lived in. And there could be behavioral rules and strictures around what they did and when they did it. And then there are also some strictures that develop on Canal Street, which is, is still, Canal Street is still a big kind of like shopping street, hotel street now, really.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  But it was the big shopping street. And so there were these kind of behavioral rules that the prostitutes could only go into the department stores on Canal Street on certain days. So they would not be sort of rubbing shoulders with the respectable women or the girls from Newcombe College uptown, you know, it's sort of like, you know, so there's that, there's kind of formal and informal restriction. And, and the period of time where that all kind of like falls apart is Mardi Gras. And, and that's true now, kind of like where all the rules kind of like, you know, are blown off. And so prostitutes will come out of Storyville during Mardi Gras and like, go out and parade in the regular streets with the regular people and, you know, all that sort of thing. But yeah, there is, you know, there is a way in which there are strictures around their behavior. And it's, it's really important, you know, if they're presenting as sex workers in any way,

• 41:23Speaker 01

  that they stay within the boundaries of the vice district.

• 41:26Kate Lister?

  Did that include the stripy stockings? I just remember those from the Belloc images. Almost every single woman has these stripy stockings on. And I've always wondered, is that the fashion of the time?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  That's a very particular moment. I think that's more like 1912 and 13, when those particular stockings. I mean, and even today, stockings and garters are considered really sexy. And I think that's a particular style at a particular moment. But I think showing your underwear at all, you know, or being nude, or like, you know, like showing any part of your body would have been unusual. And you just made me think of something else, too, which is, you know, I mean, most women are still wearing dresses that are mid-calf at the shortest, right? I mean, it's a period of time where hemlines are coming up and clothing is changing. But, you know, most women are really, really covered up. And they have a lot of underwear on, like layers of it. And so for women to show their legs and wear short dresses

• 42:22Speaker 01

  and to wear kind of stockings that people can see, that in itself would have been very risque. And there's a very short dress that some of these younger prostitutes would wear, and it's called a chippy. And it's, you know, it's, well, and it refers to children. I mean, it's the kind of dress that a little girl would wear. And so, you know, so like, adult women wore them, but they're kind of like short dresses. And it's not, it would not have been something you would have worn in the street. Right? It would have been the kind of thing a little girl would have worn. And so, you know, it becomes a kind of this sexualized look. But, yeah, so there's, you know, there are all these kind of like fashionable things. But any, you know, flaunting any part of your body was not considered respectable. Yeah.

• 43:02Kate Lister?

  What about jazz? Because there's an association between the birth of Storyville and the birth of jazz. How true is that?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Well, it's partially true. I mean, the thing is jazz as a unique American art form. Is definitely born in New Orleans during the same era. And there are people and groups of men mostly, although there are some women musicians in Storyville. But one of whom is a brothel owner, um, who plays the cornet. But you know, there's like, there are groups of people who are coming together in Storyville. Although this is also true in other parts of town. And they're playing music. And there are, you know, black people playing music. There are Italian immigrants playing music. There are people from Mexico playing music. There's sort of, you know, like European descended, uh, uh, people in New Orleans playing music.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  And what I think happens during this period of Tom is that it is all this kind of like social change that's going on and these people kind of like being pushed into proximity to each other and playing music. That leads to the creation of, of a very unique musical form. And the word jazz comes from a term, uh, that was used for having sex called jassing. J A S S I N G, right? And so like to even refer to the music as jazz or jassing is to make an association between that music and sexual activity. And so it certainly has a kind of origin in kind of sensual behavior and music and dancing.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Uh, and a kind of permissiveness, but it really comes out of that cultural mix in New Orleans. It's not all African American in origin. It's not all, uh, immigrant in origin. It's a mixing pot of things that lead to the creation of that kind of music. Although many of the early greats of that music performed in or around Storyville. And many of them migrate out because they don't want to be second class citizens anymore. Many, you know, like Jelly Roll Morton or Louis Armstrong or Disney. You know, there are other people who Sidney Bechet like comes out of New Orleans. I mean, there are all these people who are like landmark jazz musicians and they learn that musical style in New Orleans. But then it migrates upriver to Chicago, to Memphis. Uh, uh, ultimately people go to New York City where they, you know, record often.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  And so, you know, it becomes an, an American music, but there's no question. It has its origins in New Orleans. It's just that it does not have its origins exclusively in Storyville.

• 45:29Kate Lister?

  Okay, I'm with you. So what does for it then? Because this sounds like. I don't know, I don't want to say it's a success, but it sounds like it's found its place and that people are tolerating it and that people, you know, there's a kind of an uneasy, the police are on board, they're not prosecuting, but it's okay. It's sort of fulfilling its role. So what happens to close it all down?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  So there are a couple of things. One is, there is, as often happens with these sorts of things, there is an incursion of organized crime interests from elsewhere who want to come in and sort of control certain kinds of clubs or control the gambling. And there's a big sort of, there's a big shootout, you know, a big violent shootout that takes place in 1913 or so. And, you know, that's just an indication of how people are willing to fight over the spoils to be had out of the prostitution district. So that begins to kind of cause unease and put people off the Storyville solution. And it's also shrinking over time. Like in its first decade, it's very, very successful, but it's becoming

• 46:33Speaker 01

  smaller and smaller over time. And sort of that crime was a concern, particularly organized crime. There is the rising prohibition sentiment, not just in, you know, the conservative parts of Louisiana, but in other parts of the country, which is, you know, sort of cutting into the appeal of a place like Storyville. And then there is United States involvement in World War I. And all of these conservative people running federal organizations like the Department of the Army and the Department of the Navy, and they write these ordinances and say, if you have prostitution within five miles of any army encampment or Navy encampment, the United States government will not position soldiers or sailors in your

• 47:18Speaker 01

  city. And so ultimately, it is that economic choice about, you know, whether, I mean, there's a question of patriotism around it, I suppose. But I think it's really much more kind of bare bones economic question. And, you know, by the time you get to prohibition in 1920, the basic business model of these brothels is dependent on alcohol consumption.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  And so even though Storyville technically goes away in 1917, a lot of those women remain in that neighborhood, particularly the property owners, right? Like they, where are they gonna go? And so they start to run hotels, right? Or boarding houses. And so they sort of just changed the business model. But Lulu White, who you mentioned, who was one of those very prominent matters, she actually winds up in federal prison for prohibition violations. Yeah, and this is a woman historian named Emily Landau, who wrote a book called Spectacular Wickedness. And she actually sort of documents how the federal government ends up going after Lulu White. And it's ultimately the time she spends in federal prison on prohibition violations that really deteriorates her health. So, you know, it's like, you know, some women

• 48:24Speaker 01

  stay, they sort of change their business model, but also the form of prostitution is changing.

• 48:28Kate Lister?

  Of course. And it's interesting that you said that about the First World War, because there was a real concern, not just in America, but right around the world about how we're gonna manage venereal disease. And it was forcing governments to reckon with the subject of sex and sex for sale and women selling sex. And the Americans notoriously in that first conflict, their approach was stop doing it, and we're gonna just shout at you until you stop doing it.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Right. The phrase they use in the, in the literature and propaganda is, men need to be fit to fight. And I always just find it so absurd. It's like, we need you healthy so we could put you on the front line, so you could be mowed down and killed. You know, there's also a big reach on the part of the federal government and military authorities and military police who become very empowered to sort of monitor the behavior of women more generally. And there's a kind of policing function that moves into women who are behaving suspiciously. They can be incarcerated, they can be put into camps, they can be, you know, forced into treatment for venereal disease. And so there's, you know, there's also broadening of police powers in a way that starts to impinge on women who would

• 49:35Speaker 01

  not have seen themselves as, as sex workers, but who become identified as sex workers or bad girls by the federal government and military police who pick them up and sort of sanction them. So that is also, it kind of goes hand in glove. We don't always see that when we think about, you know, militarization, but getting women under control is very often a part of militarization.

• 49:58Kate Lister?

  So the final question then, what do you think the legacy of Storyville is in New Orleans?

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really interesting question. In the last few years, there's actually a museum that has opened up in the French Quarter called the Storyville Museum. And the only reason I don't think that's something entirely new is because Storyville has become a very romanticized part of the city's history. I think sometimes people are very nostalgic about it, and particularly because of its association with the origin of jazz. I'm not saying that people are nostalgic about prostitution or sex work per se, but there's something that I documented at the end of my first book, Great Southern Babylon, and it was that this, you know, this debutante party, so debutantes, right, this debutante party had a Storyville theme.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  And I thought, you know, let's just think that through. Because being a debutante is about, you know, sort of like, you know, being pure and virginal and being introduced to society so you can find the right kind of marriage partner.

• 51:01Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  And yet, the theme of it is, you know, about this prostitution district. And I think that's so kind of, you know, evocative of the way the reputation of Storyville has evolved over time. And so I think it, you know, has become a very romanticized part of the city's history. And, you know, New Orleans is a place that romanticizes itself all the time, past, present, and likely future. And so, you know, that doesn't seem to me out of line or unusual in the context of the way, you know, particularly like, popular history of the city has been written and understood.

• 51:35Kate Lister?

  Alicia, you have been marvelous to talk to. Thank you so much.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  You bet.

• 51:40Kate Lister?

  If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  They can find me at just Google Alicia P. Long, and you will be able to connect with books I've written and papers I'm given and videos that are available online. And it's just Alicia P. Long. You Google that and you'll find me.

• 51:56Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You've been marvelous.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Okay, you bet. Nice to talk to you.

• 52:03Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Elisa for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along whatever it is you get your podcasts. I know everybody says that, but it does actually help us. Coming up, we'll be hearing more about the sex life of the Marquis de Sade of all people, as well as taking you inside the Moulin Rouge. And if you would like us to explore a subject off your toilet to say hello, please email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer is Freddy Chick. Join me again at Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.