"Keeping a Very Bad House" - A Snapshot of 18th and Early 19th Century Prostitution in Massachusetts Seaports

From time to time, the Nerds receive requests to discuss prostitution and its connection to Colonial and Federalist-era Massachusetts seaports. While some research has been conducted on the topic, surprisingly, there isn’t as much as expected when it comes to prostitution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Most available research focuses on activities in London, Philadelphia, and New York-based brothels. However, some surviving documentation, particularly newspaper accounts and petitions to local selectmen, suggests the activities of Massachusetts prostitutes mirrored their counterparts.

Prostitution was a common part of life in 18th and 19th-century New England seaports, and Boston, Salem, Portsmouth (NH), and Newburyport were no exception.

For some, prostitution was treated as a transitional meant to support themselves during difficult economic times in their lives. Some eventually married or found another occupation. For many others, theft rather than sex was the main object of their trade.

Many Massachusetts prostitutes, especially those who operated from the streets, picked the pockets of the men they solicited. Prostitutes kept an eye out for inebriated customers stumbling out of taverns, whom they could easily rob. They usually plied their trade in pairs, partly for the company and for mutual protection and partly so they could overpower and rob men.

18th and 19th Century prostitutes faced many dangers attached to their professions. Pregnancy and contracting venereal disease were common risks. Similarly, their health and personal grooming were often failing. According to the English reformer Francis Place, he observed many English prostitutes in the 1780s who "had ragged dirty shoes and stockings and some no stockings at all…many of that time wore no stays, their gowns were low round the neck and open in front. Those who wore handkerchiefs had them always open in front to expose their breasts….and the breasts of many hung down in a most disgusting manner, their hair among the generality was straight and hung in rats tails over their eyes and was filled with lice.”

Worse, there was the risk of being robbed, assaulted, kidnapped, raped or even killed. Mr. Place described many of the prostitutes he encountered as being drunk and with black eyes, as they fought regularly with each other and unknown men who defended themselves during attempted robberies. They were also regularly raped and beaten by clients.

For this reason, many girls would choose to work in a bawdy house or brothel, which an older prostitute typically ran. Some 18th- and 19th-Century New England brothels were also organized by tavern or coffee house owners.

In a basic sense, brothels were inhabited by from two to possibly twenty prostitutes whom the older prostitute managed in a communal or family-type arrangement. The advantages of working from a brothel were that prostitutes had stable shelter, food, the support of the other prostitutes, and security, often in the form of a man employed by the bawd to control both unruly clients and disobedient women.

Still, it also had its disadvantages, the most obvious one being that the bawd rather than the prostitute took most of the money the client paid.

Bawd prostitutes often operated in small groups to lure their customers into the establishment. Similar to their street counterparts, once inside, prostitutes would ply their intended victims with alcohol and then rob them of money and personal valuables. Thus, bawds earned most of their money not from the sexual activities of the women working there but by fencing their stolen goods.

Colonial bawdy houses came in many different types, from the cheap ones in poorer areas of seaport towns, where the prostitutes were often diseased and dirty, to the more exclusive brothels in the richer parts of the community.

Blind eyes were often turned away from the “higher-end” bawds. As for the poorer brothels, local authorities often kept a close watch on these because these houses were known as places where criminals would congregate or were locations of considerable disorder.

An early 19th-century description of a Boston North End bawd house noted, “The whole street is in a blaze of light from their windows. To put them down, without a military force seems impossible. A man’s life would not be safe who should attempt it. The company consists of highbinders, jail-birds, known thieves, and miscreants, with women of the worst description. Murders, it is well known, have been committed there, and more have been suspected.”

In 1753, Bostonian Hannah Dilley was arrested for running a bawd with her husband. She pled guilty to permitting men “to resort to her husband’s house, and carnally to lie with whores.” She was sentenced to stand on a stool “at least five feet in height” outside the courthouse and holding a sign detailing her crime.

Another example was found in Newburyport. On the eve of the American Revolution, the seaport community had several bawds in full operation. On August 1, 1774, residents submitted a petition for the town to take action against the “widow Mace,”her two daughters and “Moses Davis his wife and two daughters” for “keeping a continual disturbance in the neighborhood where they live, & keeping a very bad House, in the Night Season & that the house is to much out of repair that the Neighborhood is in danger of being set on Fier by the said house if is not put in Better Repair therefore we the subscribers Desire you take the matter in to your Consideration & act in the affair as the Law Directs.”

It should be noted “Keeping a very bad house in the Night Season” was a period colloquialism referring to a bawd or brothel.

Victims of bawd-related thefts occasionally attacked bawdy houses in retaliation. In 1734 and 1737, Boston residents rioted and destroyed a pair of bawd houses that had been a continuous source of aggravation and disruption for the neighborhood.

Prostitution continued to thrive in Massachusetts seaports after the Revolution.

By the 1790s, the presence of prostitutes increased as Massachusetts seaports economically prospered. As a young child, Newburyport’s Sarah Smith Emery recalled how militia musters in the 1790s not only attracted local militia units but "drew a motley crowd, vendors of all sorts of wares, mountebanks and lewd women; a promiscuous assemblage, bent upon pleasure."

A warning in the August 16, 1799 edition of the “Newburyport Herald And Country Gazette” warned sailors and young, impressionable men to avoid “lewd women” and the consequences of “lying ingloriously in the lap of a Harlot.” An anonymous letter that appeared in the November 10, 1801 edition of the same newspaper openly complained about the many “lewd women” of the community. It warned that unless they became “respectable,” they must “yield to that infamy which well regulated societies universally throw upon impure females.”

By 1802, many seaport communities pressured the Massachusetts Legislature to pass laws to punish “the rogues … and lewd persons” that frequented their communities.

Reform efforts were undertaken in the 1820s through the American Civil War to curb the presence of prostitution in Massachusetts communities. Unfortunately, the efforts failed, and the “oldest profession” continued to thrive in Massachusetts seaports well into the 20th Century.

New Bedford’s Reverend Francis Wayland, recognized that not just sailors, but whalemen spent time with prostitutes. In the 1830s, he lamented, “these heroes of a three year campaign…come home to fall into the hands of harpies, to be stripped in grog shops…they land, and are adrift.”