Those of you who have spent any time with me (and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for? Get thee to my booking form!) know that I can be a big nerd, especially about history, especially about sexy history! So I had to share when I recently stumbled upon a fun fact: in St Louis, prostitution was legal between 1870 and 1874, making it the first city in America to legalize sex work.
Now while I love the spirit of this, it was definitely problematic for many reasons. The legalization, inspired by libertine Paris, was partially motivated by how widespread sex work was at the time in St Louis, a holdover from the Civil War days (by the way, did you know that the term Hooker originated from a Civil War general who thought sex workers encouraged his soldiers?). If you just count those who registered, there was 1 sex worker for every 23 men of any age in the city of St Louis.
So they kind of thought, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. But it also was motivated by a stigma of STDs, and by the whole “all men are rapists” idea. Some of the non-sex workers who successfully argued for the legalization believed that sex workers played an essential role in helping those awful men get out their violent urges (which, just, is awful for so many reasons!) so they could restrain themselves around “respectable” women.
In any case, the euphemistic “social evil ordinance” passed. At that time, owners of bawdy houses were required to pay to register every month and providers had to undergo weekly (also paid) medical examinations. Should they be found guilty of having an STD, they’d be treated at the brand new “Social Evil Hospital” (yes, that was seriously its name), paid for by their own registration fees. The Hospital later became the Women’s Hospital and then was destroyed in the early 1900s, now the site of Sublette Park. (But fun fact: Josephine Baker was born there!)
The experiment ended because of many problems. Many sex workers understandably were not interested in, or could not afford, to register and undergo forced medical examinations. The requirement to work in registered brothels left independent providers with no option but to fly under the radar. It disallowed sex workers from soliciting in public view, even from windows. Doctors were caught filling out inspection forms weeks in advance for a hefty fee. And the icing on the cake was that when a group of state legislators visited to see the law in action, newspapers reported that they woke up with “practical knowledge” of the ordinance at the infamous high end bawdy house of Kate Clarke. Naturally, the johns were embarrassed and repealed the law.
This wasn’t to say that detractors hadn’t been campaigning against it the whole time. William Greenleaf Eliot argued that it was discriminatory against women because it did not regulate male prostitutes. (He was TS Eliot’s grandfather!) The usual proto-SWERFs argued that sex work was damaging to women all around, and they should be offered other opportunities (which they were, at the House of Industry, right next door to the Social Evil Hospital, promising to teach sex workers domestic skills — but it closed down quickly because of a lack of interest).
The repeal did not criminalize prostitution however, and sex workers were overjoyed, until prostitution was again banned in 1879. And now here we are! Today, the sex work legal debate continues. MO Ho Justice Coalition is but one organization fighting for the rights, decriminalization, and destigmatisation of erotic laborers in Missouri.
