There are over one hundred houses of assignation of all kinds in the city
known to the police. This estimate includes the bed-houses, of which we
shall speak further on. Besides these, there are places used for
assignations which the officials of the law do not and cannot include in
their returns. These are the smaller hotels, and sometimes the larger
ones. Sometimes women take rooms in some of the cheap hotels, and there
receive the visits of men whose acquaintance they have made on the street
or at some place of amusement. Very often the proprietor of the house is
simply victimized by such people, and several respectable houses have
been so far overrun by them that decent persons have avoided them
altogether. One or two of the smaller hotels of the city bear a most
unenviable reputation of this kind. Even the first-class hotels cannot
keep themselves entirely free from the presence of courtezans of the
better class. Rich men keep their mistresses at them in elegant style,
and the guests, and sometimes the proprietors, are in utter ignorance of
the woman's true character. Again, women will live at the fashionable
hotels, in the strictest propriety, and live by the proceeds of their
meetings with men at houses of assignation.
The best houses are located in respectable, and a few in fashionable
neighborhoods. In various ways they soon acquire a notoriety amongst
persons having use for them. In the majority of them, the proprietress
resides alone. Her visitors are persons of all classes in society.
Married women meet their lovers here, and young girls pass in these
polluted chambers the hours their parents suppose them to be devoting to
healthful and innocent amusements. There are many nominally virtuous
women in the city who visit these places one or more times each week.
They come in the day, if necessary, but generally at night. A visit to
the theatre, the opera, or a concert is too often followed by a visit to
one of these places. It is said by those who claim to know, that
sometimes women of good social position even possess pass keys to such
houses. The hot-house fashionable society, to which we have referred
elsewhere, sends many visitors here. Some married women visit these
places because they love other men better than their lawful husbands.
Others sin from mercenary motives. Their limited means do not allow them
to gratify their taste for dress and display, and they acquire the
desired ability in this infamous manner.
The majority of the houses are well known, and are scarcely conducted
with secrecy, which is the chief requisite. The better class houses are
handsomely furnished, and everything is conducted in the most secret
manner. The police have often discovered assignation houses in
residences which they believed to be simply the homes of private
families. All these houses bring high rents. Men of "respectable"
position have been known to furnish houses for this use, and have either
engaged women to manage them, or have let them at enormous rents,
supporting their own families in style on the proceeds of these dens of
infamy.
The prices paid by visitors for the use of the rooms are large, and the
receipts of the keeper make her fully able to pay the large rent demanded
of her.
The city papers contain numerous advertisements, which reveal to the
initiated the locality of these houses. They are represented as "Rooms
to let to quiet persons," or "Rooms in a strictly private family, where
boarders are not annoyed with impertinent questions," or "A handsome room
to let, with board for the lady only," or "Handsome apartments to
gentlemen, by a widow lady living alone." These advertisements are at
once recognized by those in search of them. Families from the country
frequently stumble across these places by accident. If the female
members are young and handsome, they are received, and the mistake is not
found out, perhaps, until it is too late.
Public houses of prostitution are bad enough, but houses of assignation
are worse. The former are frequented only by the notoriously impure.
The latter draw to them women who, while sinning, retain their positions
in society. The more secret the place, the more dangerous it is. The
secrecy is but an encouragement to sin. Were the chance of detection
greater, women, at least, would hesitate longer before visiting them, but
they know that they can frequent them habitually, without fear of
discovery. Their outward appearance of respectability is a great
assistance to the scoundrels who seek to entrap an innocent female within
their walls. They form the worst feature of the Social Evil, and
something should be done to suppress them.