Prostitutes and Law Enforcers

The biggest factor in determining the impact of laws on the prostitute was her relationship with law enforcers, especially with the

police officers on the street, who represented law-enforcement authority at the level with which the prostitute had the most day-to-day contact. In most cases it was the local police who determined whether a prostitute was to be recognized as such, was breaking the law and should be arrested, or was inoffensive and could operate free of legal interference.

New York was not a well-policed city in the nineteenth century, and twentieth-century notions of police professionalism are distant from the police organization that prostitutes of the time encountered in New York City. For the first few decades of the century, New Yorkers were still close enough to the period of British rule to be suspicious of any form of "military" authority or control in their communities, so they rejected the idea of a well-organized permanent police force. Citizens preferred to depend on police supervision that was casual and sporadic and that was supplied by fellow members of the local community. The result was an inefficient but very personalized form of law enforcement, where many decisions involving conflicts between prescribed law and local customs and communal attitudes were left to the discretion of the neighborhood police. Police discretion defined who was deviant and how deviants should be controlled, and this discretion involved discrimination in the form of selective law enforcement. Thus, nineteenth-century New Yorkers' desire for a limited formal institutional police power resulted in an unchecked informal discretionary police power.^[2]

Although by 1830 New York's population and urban problems had increased to the point that many New Yorkers felt that the social controls of a stable society had broken down in many areas of the city, police organization remained much as it had been in the late eighteenth century. Officials such as the mayor, high constable, constables, marshals, and night watch all bore some responsibility for the police protection of the community, as did members of the Common Council and police justices. The mayor was the chief police officer, taking charge at fires, riots, and other breaches of the peace. Constables were elected from each ward annually. It was not always easy to find people who were willing to undertake the arduous duties of the constable's job, but any citizen who refused to accept his election as constable was fined. Occasionally, someone could be found who was eager to serve because of the fees that could be earned or the power conferred by the office. Marshals were appointed by the mayor and held office at his pleasure. Both constables and marshals had the common law duties and powers

of peace or police officers, but they did not wear uniforms or carry identifying badges or emblems. They did not receive regular salaries but were compensated by fees for services performed according to a schedule established by the state legislature. Critics of this form of job compensation argued that police officers devoted their time to what was likely to earn the largest fees, not to what was most important, that they made unnecessary arrests of the poor and powerless to collect fees, and that honest officers often earned very little money under the system.^[3]

Night watchmen, who patrolled the city at night, did not have police powers and could arrest free from reprisal only if a crime were committed before their eyes or if they were acting under the direction of a police officer. By 1830 there were 512 watchmen in New York, who were paid on a per diem basis; shifts were arranged so that watchmen could also hold daytime jobs, with the result that only 128 of them, one-fourth of the force, were on the streets at any one time. The pay for watchmen ranged from 75 cents to 87-1/2 cents per night. Watchmen owed their appointment and tenure in office to the mayor, aldermen, and assistant aldermen, who competed over the years for power in controlling this valuable patronage. The watch was an ancient institution, as its long history (and the age of its members) attested, but it did not have much prestige since many thought it inadequate and its members incompetent. Watchmen wore leather helmets while on duty and were thus derisively known as leatherheads. If a watchman's helmet was taken from his head twice while asleep on duty, he was to be dismissed. Citizens often joked, "While the city sleeps, the watchmen do too," a jibe borne out by statistics. Men chosen for the watch were often of a low caliber, people who had few other means of earning a living.^[4]

Between 1830 and 1845, a marked upsurge in crime, vice, and disorder plus the model of the recently restructured more "professional" London police force spurred efforts to provide a similar police organization for New York City. The number of complaints entered at the police courts in 1835 was 10,168, more than five times the number that had been recorded three decades before. All citizens worried about the growth in violent crimes, and moralists complained about the great increase in the crimes of prostitution, gambling, and intoxication. In 1835 there were almost 3,000 licensed drinking places in New York City, a ratio of one for every fifty persons in the city over the age of fifteen. Riots also greatly increased in the 1830s; there were so many in

1834 alone that it was long remembered in New York City history as the year of riots. At riots in both 1834 and 1835, local law enforcement officials were unable to suppress rioters, a failure that led the mayor to call in the militia. These outbreaks dramatically highlighted the weakness of the city police force.^[5]

In the decade and a half after 1830 citizens also worried about the potential for corruption by police. Police appointments were regarded as patronage plums, and thus any changes in the party in power meant an influx of inexperienced men. Policemen were considered entrepreneurs more than public servants, in a system with many openings for bribery and not many rewards for diligence. Reliance on fees rather than salaries was an evil that had grown over the years; in cases involving stolen property, for example, officers were not overly concerned about apprehending offenders, since recovering the property for rewards was far more lucrative. Some New Yorkers believed that police officers made deals with criminals in which the thieves turned over stolen property in exchange for being set free. The competitiveness of the fee system also discouraged cooperation among police officers in the apprehension of offenders. A policeman received 50 cents for each unlawful citizen committed to jail, a seemingly small sum but one that was equal to two-thirds of a watchman's nightly pay.^[6]

Between 1830 and 1845 there were a number of formal proposals for reforming the police, but political parties' competition for control of the police as patronage prevented innumerable plans from being adopted. Finally, a reorganization and reform of the New York City police was accomplished in May 1845 by a bill passed in the state legislature and endorsed by the Common Council. Two of the major reforms were the abolishment of most of the existing police offices, with all police functions to be performed by a new "Day and Night Police," and the elimination of the fee payment system by the establishment of set salaries. Although the new plan provided for a better organized and unified police structure, the force retained its "political" orientation because policemen of all ranks were appointed by elected officials. The reform established the basic structure of the New York police for the rest of the century, though some changes were made over the years. In 1857 the city police force was put under the auspices of the state legislature, remaining in the state's control until home rule was once again established in 1870.^[7]

New York City's personalized and localized form of law enforcement gave the prostitute the opportunity to establish a working relationship with local law enforcers and reduced the likelihood of a large, citywide vice structure that might victimize the prostitute. As vagrancy and disorderly persons cases make clear, the police arrested and jailed prostitutes under the law, but their toughest enforcement seemed directed more at the poor and less "established" streetwalkers than at prostitutes living in neighborhood brothels. Distressed citizens charged that prostitution was allowed to exist because police received monetary payoffs from brothel operators. In the spring of 1844, when pressure was strong for a police reform, the Tribune ran an expose by a writer called "L" on the corruption of the police. The article claimed that thieves, harlots, and other depredators paid off public officials to avoid prosecution.^[8] It is likely that some prostitutes were permitted to work in a neighborhood because of payoffs or bribes to police, but, other than public complaints about suspected bribes, there is no evidence that an extensive system of prostitution payoffs existed in the early and middle part of the century. Theoretically, if a policeman collected a bribe for leaving a prostitute alone in the years before police reform, he would then have few other opportunities to collect scheduled fees for legal proceedings against that prostitute. It is more likely that individual prostitutes paid to be kept out of jail after being arrested so that an officer who arrested a prostitute might get a bribe for dropping the charges. If there were a time when brothels paid for protection, it was probably after 1845 when police salaries replaced the fee system—even though salaries were supposed to eliminate police corruption which many believed was caused by the fee system.

Historians have often mentioned payoff practices in the antebellum period but have not clearly documented them. Some have cited as evidence for payoffs the legal system of fees and fines that existed before the police department was restructured. Aside from misconstruing the fee system, however, sufficient documentation has not been presented and examples typically are cited from the post-Civil War era. One contemporary with firsthand knowledge, former police chief George Walling, wrote in the 1880s that police blackmailed poor prostitutes, and he argued that a policy of segregating prostitutes in specified sections of the city would help prevent this practice. Walling did not state if his claims of blackmail applied to the earlier period as well as the 1870s and

1880s, nor did he state how widespread the practice was.^[9] Available evidence suggests that the systematic and organized control of commercialized sex through payoffs was not characteristic of New York City until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.^[10]

Most sources indicate that prostitutes and prostitution houses were allowed to operate in local neighborhoods because law officers did not perceive them to be "criminal" or a major problem in the community. The women managing and living in these houses were treated as neighborhood citizens operating local businesses, unless their establishments became too disorderly.^[11] In 1849 Samuel Prime noted that "nice" houses were protected by the police and even were allowed to exist "next door to police stations," a reference to the brothel of Kate Hastings at SO Leonard Street, next door to the fifth ward station house.^[12] Thus, prostitutes associated with police officials as members of a local neighborhood, and they established a working relationship with law enforcers because their professions interfaced in several ways. Prostitutes were a source of official fees for legal actions taken on their behalf, such as arresting rowdy guests or serving processes, and prostitutes also gave police payments or "tips" for other types of services performed, such as recovering stolen property or helping in various private matters. Whereas prostitutes might have resented a payoff system as harassment, they could regard fees and tips for services as positive rewards for assisting them. Furthermore, prostitutes often furnished information to officials about investigations or other police business, and in some cases the association of prostitutes and police even reached a "friendship" level.^[13]

The working relationship between prostitutes and law enforcement officials was brought to the public's attention during the Jewett murder trial in 1836. Officer Dennis Brink, who had arrested the suspect the morning after the murder, testified in court about the nature of his relationship with Rosina Townsend, the madam for whom Jewett had worked. Brink pointed out that he had known Townsend for three years, had been in her brothel about six times, but had not been there as a client or as a participant in a card game. He had served processes against Townsend's boarders and against her servants on different occasions, and he had received the regular fees for these services. One of the processes he served had been against a boarder for assault and battery. Brink also had been summoned on several occasions when there were disturbances in the house, but the rioters had always dispersed before he arrived. He

stated he had never paid Townsend money, but she "may" have paid him for legal fees or costs or for serving processes for her. Brink and several other officers had been paid $5 each for helping with Townsend's household sale a month before, but he denied that he had received two vases free from Townsend at the sale. Defense counsel Ogden Hoffman quizzed Brink on whether he had ever received money from Townsend for speaking on her behalf to the district attorney, or if he had ever gone to the district attorney to intercede on Townsend's behalf in regard to an indictment pending against her. When Brink said he could not remember, Hoffman asked him to name the district attorney at the time of the case in question. Brink answered that it had been Hoffman.

Hoffman then questioned Brink's involvement with other prostitutes. Brink acknowledged that on several occasions he had received money from Mrs. Berry for services rendered in suppressing troubles at her brothel, and he estimated the payments to have been approximately $1 each time. He also acknowledged receiving money from a gentleman for settling a case that was pending in the Court of General Sessions against two prostitutes who had torn the clothing of a third prostitute.^[14]

Although Brink appears to have had frequent involvement with prostitutes, his actions were not always on their behalf. In several cases brought before the Court of General Sessions, Brink had been the officer on duty who brought charges against a house of prostitution, and on one occasion Brink brought charges of assault and battery against a prostitute, Margaret Ryerson, for "violently seizing hold of him and tearing his shirt while in the execution of his duty" at her disorderly house.^[15]

Police often testified alongside prostitutes in court trials, especially in cases of divorce, since adultery was the major grounds for divorce. A policeman usually was asked to verify that a female witness was a prostitute because of his knowledge of her or her house, and this testimony almost always indicated that the police had had amicable relationships with the prostitute. In the 1852 divorce trial of Edwin and Catherine Forrest, eleven active or former policemen were called to testify about Caroline Ingersoll, who had operated several assignation or prostitution boarding houses in the city. Policeman Lorenzo Savage testified he had been to Ingersoll's house before with two other policemen, and he said that he "did not stay but they did." Officer Jacob Carlock noted that he knew Ingersoll because he lived up the street as a neighbor, and he gave descriptions of the types of men and women

who entered and left her residence. Another officer, Augustus Goodrich, said he had only been to Ingersoll's once as a policeman, but since he was a cabinetmaker by trade, he had done a few carpentry jobs for her there.^[16]

In the case of Mary Fowler, who was charged with operating a disorderly house, one ward captain and four other policemen testified indirectly on Fowler's behalf. All of the officers were acquainted with her and admitted to seeing men and women going in and out of her house as late as 3 A.M ., but none of them "knew" if it was a disorderly house, and none had ever "seen anything improper there." In summarizing the case, the presiding judge pointed out the obvious by noting that disorderly houses "exist in all parts of the city, . . . even the most respectable neighborhoods, and are indirectly countenanced by the police."^[17]

Evidence of the close association of legal officials and prostitutes in the day-to-day investigations of the police is found in the diary of Robert Taylor, a police justice for eight years who had earlier served as a captain of the watch. In the early 1840s, Taylor had played an active role in pushing for police reform, and after the adoption of the reorganization plan in 1845 he had prepared the manual for the new force.^[18] In his advice to police, Taylor, advocating an active, investigative force over a responsive one, wrote: "The prevention of crime being the most important object in view, your exertions must be constantly used to that end."^[19]

The year and a half of entries in Taylor's diary indicate that he viewed himself as an investigator as well as a judge, actively pursuing wrongdoers and seeking their punishment. The diary catalogues his dealings with thieves, gamblers, drunks, liquor dealers, and prostitutes. The prostitutes with whom he worked, however, were regarded not as law violators but rather as neighborhood resources for his investigations. Nor did Taylor consider himself corrupt in any way for not interfering with the prostitution operations. He mentioned having seen a daybook and register that "gave proof that corruption exists to an alarming extent with many officials connected with the administration of criminal law in the city," but he obviously did not regard his own relations with prostitutes in this category.

Taylor recorded over fifty routine visits to brothels. His references include names of twenty-five different prostitutes, six of whom are

mentioned from three to six times each. Taylor always took one or more companions on his brothel visits—as co-investigators, as voyeurs, or possibly as witnesses to protect his reputation.^[20] Taylor went to the brothels seeking information on cases involving divorce, death, abortion, counterfeiting, or theft, but he also noted that on one occasion he took Justice Ketchum for a tour because Ketchum had never visited a brothel before. After seeing what went on in eleven different brothels, Ketchum apparently was fascinated enough to return with Taylor on another evening that included visits to nine brothels.

In most cases the prostitutes appear to have been very cooperative in helping Taylor or in giving him information. Taylor made return visits to those houses where the women were most cooperative, such as the brothel of Adeline Miller on Church Street. In one instance, however, Miller refused to help get information for Taylor because he was investigating her son, Nelson, who had taken a shawl from his own wife. Apparently, Miller felt comfortable enough with her relationship with Taylor to refuse to help him instead of claiming she had no knowledge of the affair. When Miller would not help, Taylor persuaded another woman in the house to assist in locating the shawl, and she later notified Taylor where it had been pawned.

While Taylor was at church one day, a woman called at his home, a visitor he assumed to be prostitute Fanny White, who had promised the night before to get some information for him. That White would make a Sunday morning visit to his house did not appear to surprise or embarrass Taylor.^[21]

Establishing a working relationship with a law officer was obviously to the advantage of a prostitute: it allowed her to operate freely in a neighborhood and gave her a contact on the police force in case customers, boarders, or rowdies caused problems in her brothel. Adeline Furman, alias Adeline Miller, summoned the watch to her Elm Street brothel because four men were being disorderly and refused to leave. Officer Harvey forcibly evicted them and ordered them to "be peaceable and go away." The men still lingered outside the house, threatened to prosecute Harvey, and told him it was "a damned shame a watchman should receive pay for protecting whore houses." Harvey then arrested and brought charges against the four men.^[22]

Even if a police officer or watchman acted against a prostitute's interests and arrested her, the New York City legal and court system

provided her with ways to avoid further legal restraints. Police justices, or magistrates, presided over police court, the first level of administration of the criminal justice system. Before 1848 justices were appointed to office, and after that date they were elected, thus involving them even more in the partisan politics of the city. Few, if any, of the police justices had legal training, and they conducted their courts with little regard for the niceties of legal procedure.

Aldermen and assistant aldermen were elected representatives from each ward to the city council, or Common Council, and they, with the mayor, had the power to make appointments to the police force. Aldermen also possessed magistrates' powers, and many used this power to hold court in the station houses. Thus, a policeman might arrest a prostitute, and an alderman or magistrate could release the prisoner without any sort of hearing. An 1853 law modified this practice by no longer allowing aldermen to bail or discharge persons committed by other magistrates, but aldermen retained the right of releasing a prisoner before a magistrate had committed her or him, and they could also release a prisoner between the time of arrest and an appearance before a magistrate. Although the concurrent jurisdiction of the legal system lowered the morale of court officials, since they could countermand each other's authority, it offered prostitutes alternatives for escaping the heavy hand of the law—alternatives they apparently used to their advantage.^[23]

The Advocate of Moral Reform frequently voiced complaints about the close relationships between prostitutes and officials. The paper reported that an attractive prostitute from ward five, mother of two children, had sneered at the reformers' threat that the law would root out her vice, and she informed them that "men of the first distinction in the city are the ones who pour from $50 to $400 a week into her treasury." The prostitute told reformers that a judge had offered his name and money if she ever needed it. The reformers further confirmed their suspicions of collusion between prostitutes and officials when two prostitutes and two men were seen walking from the noted brothel of Patience Berger to the home of a judge not far away. In the period before restrictions were put on aldermen's judicial powers, the Police Gazette reported an incident in which a sixth ward alderman came with two friends to the station house to order the release of two prostitutes. Because he was drunk, the police locked him up, a response to his

disorderly behavior as well as a possible indication of their resentment of the alderman's power to countermand their orders. The press also reported the case of Mary Berry's husband, Francis, who was charged with robbing a man in their Duane Street brothel. Berry offered to return one-third of the "booty" knowing, according to the Advocate , that the law usually required the return of much less. The judge refused the offer, but Berry's bail was immediately provided by an ex-alderman.^[24]

Samuel Prime also noted the tolerance of legal officials for prostitutes and their close association with the women in neighborhoods: "Hundreds of [disorderly] houses close by the houses of our magistrates spread their allurements before the eyes of our youth and tempt them into the vortex of hell, and the shield of law protects the portal, though all that enter, enter to be damned."^[25] At times, however, the close association or neighborhood proximity of prostitutes and officials could cause strain. One of the houses owned by Adeline Miller and managed by a Mrs. Brown backed up to the house of Alderman Erben. As disturbances at the brothel became more frequent, the Erbens became more annoyed because, whenever watchmen were called to Brown's house, the riotous parties "effected their escape by taking the liberty of scaling the Alderman's fence, rushing through his hall, and making their exit at his front door." Finally after one of these late-night "unannounced visits," the Sun reported that Erben "had the inmates of the house all removed to the watch house," in the hope of breaking up the "nest of prostitution and iniquity, which he has so long tolerated directly under his own magisterial nose."^[26]

The result of New York City's localized and personalized law enforcement was that it was selective, supporting both discretion and discrimination on the part of officials. Prostitutes understood this and hoped that either a lack of true concern or leniency by officials would allow them to escape harassment, arrest, or punishment. Sometimes prostitutes found that policemen's actions crossed the boundary between law enforcement and abuse. Elizabeth Dairey, sent to the Tombs for stealing, reported she had been kicked by an officer. Others noted incidents of sexual harassment and abuse. Emeline Frisby, a black woman who worked in a "house of polluted reputation" in Reed Street, was arrested and put in prison for taking $164 from her "sister." The Sun reported that officers had "compelled" Frisby to strip and submit to a "considerable search." Mary Moore, from a brothel in Broome Street,

filed charges against watchman John Ostrander for entering her room and attacking her while she was asleep. He was tried but discharged by the jury. Another prostitute from the late 1860s reported she had been taken to an oyster house by an officer who then raped her and threatened to send her to prison if she told.^[27] Though some policemen may have believed that a woman in the "unlawful sex trade" was fair game for whatever treatment they meted out, their abuse also may have reflected a disdain toward those prostitutes and other women who were poor and at the bottom of the ethnic hierarchy.

The police were not completely insensitive to prostitutes in the lowest echelons of the trade, however. Many "down and out" prostitutes who felt they could no longer support themselves in prostitution turned to policemen for shelter, food, and medical assistance. There are a number of cases where prostitutes came to police asking to be sent to the penitentiary because they had been turned out of their brothels, had nowhere to go, or were sick and needed medical help. One twenty-three-year-old woman, who said she had been in the profession since she was a child, was committed to prison after having been out of the penitentiary only three days. When given a six-month sentence, she expressed her gratitude and said she would gladly take another six months at the end of her term. In 1850 the Herald reported the death of seventy-year-old "English Nance," who had been mentioned in the press for decades and who, at a much earlier age, was said to have had the extraordinary strength to be able to "beat off half a dozen officers attempting to arrest her." After reaching middle age, or for the last thirty years, the Herald noted that she had been a constant visitor in prison, "averaging more than half her time there."^[28] "Jail as home" was not an unusual choice for these women. There were few public agencies at the time, other than the police, who would have assisted these women in any meaningful way because, on the whole, public assistance was sparingly supplied to anyone in need, prostitute or not. Furthermore, while some might interpret their seeking out law enforcers and imprisoners as a perverse form of psychological dependency, it is also possible that previous interaction with police had established that they could respond to the necessities and limited options of unfortunate prostitutes as well as, if not better than, anyone else in the community. Both familiarity with the police station and personal interaction with legal

officials may have made the police the community agency with which many prostitutes interacted most comfortably.

In spite of some examples of police discrimination and abuse, New York's law enforcement system based on officers' personal discretion enabled prostitutes and other law violators to manipulate the system to their benefit. In a letter to Governor Fish in November 1849, New York City Judge J. W. Edmonds complained that "police magistrates and aldermen discharge at pleasure even after conviction anyone with influence enough to procure discharge."^[29] This influence occurred in many forms. Usually it was helpful if a prostitute came from one of the "better" brothels. Emma Place, alias Allen, was arrested for robbing a man of $40 while he was at Jenny Sweet's well-known brothel on Church Street, but the justice at her arraignment dismissed the case after she claimed that the complainant was drunk when the alleged robbery occurred. Prostitutes also resorted to the use of monetary rewards to create influence. An example of such a case involved a prostitute who was arrested and sent to jail for assaulting a gentleman while he was with his family at the theater. According to the Tribune , the woman was freed after only a few days' confinement because she distributed $25 among the police officers.^[30] The Herald reported influence of a different kind in a case involving two third ward prostitutes who were arrested for soliciting. One, Kitty Bracket, was described as very ugly, while the other, Emma Howard, was said to be very attractive and well built. Howard's good looks elicited much comment among policemen at the stationhouse but did not prevent the captain from locking her up in the cell next to Bracket. During the night Howard requested a drink of water and was said to be safely in her cell, but by morning she had managed to escape while friend Kitty was sent on to Blackwell's Island. The Herald commented that those "who knew more of human nature and the power of a pretty woman" were not astonished by the miraculous escape.^[31]

Kate Ridgley was another woman who understood that the power of a pretty woman and friendly relations could be factors in a court case. Ridgley, "a dashing looking woman," managed a house at 78 Duane called the "palace of mirrors," which was said to have sixty superbly furnished rooms. Ridgley filed a complaint against two "sporting men" who visited her house and "alarmed her boarders" by threatening to

damage her furniture. She took her case before the mayor to have a decision rendered, bringing along with her six "very fine looking young witnesses" who were "decked out in the tip of the fashion with silks, satin and jewelry." These witnesses "were seated near the mayor, to be called upon in order to substantiate the accusations." The defendants shrewdly hired a well-known political figure to protest their innocence, and even though the mayor found the two men guilty, he demanded only that they each post $100 bail to keep the peace. Ridgley seemed satisfied with the decision, and she and her boarders, "after chatting a little while with some of their old friends, left the office for the quiet of home."^[32]

If a prostitute failed to be shown leniency by police, aldermen, or justices, she had one final recourse if her case went to trial: the jury. In describing prostitution and disorderly house cases in the 1850s, Chief of Police George Walling wrote that "as a general rule, juries have something almost amounting to an aversion to convict in such cases, and especially is this so when the jury is made up largely of elderly men; they seem to sympathize, strangely enough, with the elegantly accoutred and apparently repentant Delilah, who sometimes sheds 'crocodile' tears, or else looks as prim and demure as a Puritan maiden fresh from the Mayflower."^[33]

Given the informal and personal nature of New York City's law enforcement in the mid-nineteenth century, it is understandable that prostitutes would view law enforcement officials as more important than the law itself in the functioning of their daily lives. Officials decided whether the prostitute faced restrictions or freedom, punishment or accommodation, censure or camaraderie. The discretion allowed legal officials in the execution of their duties could mean a prostitute would be sent to the penitentiary for six months with little or no regard for legal due process or her individual rights, or it might mean she could operate her business in a neighborhood with little interference because she used working relationships, sympathy, personal and sexual favors, or monetary rewards to accomplish this end. Prostitutes understood that their well-being often depended on tenuous and unequal relationships with law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, many nineteenth-century prostitutes effectively avoided the punishments of the legal system and openly and smoothly practiced their profession by a tactful manipulation of the personalism of the system.