ASSIGNATION HOUSES.
There are over one hundred houses of assignation in New York, known to
the police. Besides these, there are places, used as such, which the
officials of the law do not and cannot embrace in the general term.
These are cheap hotels, where women hire rooms without meals, and
receive visitors, with whom they make appointments on the streets, or
in the places of amusement. Some really good houses have been ruined in
this way. By tolerating one or two women of this kind, they have drawn
to them others, and have finally become overrun with them to such an
extent that respectable people have avoided them. Even the first-class
hotels are kept busy in purging themselves of the evil.
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. Hundreds of nominally virtuous
women visit these places one or more times each week. They come
sometimes in the day, but generally at night. A visit to the theatre,
opera, or concert, is too often followed by a visit to one of these
places, to which some women of high, social position possess pass-keys.
Some visit these places because they love other men better than their
husbands; others from mercenary motives. Married women, whose means are
limited, too often adopt such a course to enable them to dress
handsomely.
The rooms are hired from the proprietor at so much per hour, the price
being generally very high. If refreshments are desired, they are
furnished at an enormous rate.
In other houses, women rent rooms and take their meals outside. They
bring their male friends to their rooms at any hour, as they have pass-
keys to the house. These establishments pass in the neighborhood for
reputable lodging-houses.
Men of "respectable" position frequently furnish houses for this
purpose, and either engage women to manage them, or rent them, out at
enormous sums. They live in style, and support their families on the
proceeds of these dens of infamy.
The city papers are full of advertisements of these places. 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.
Respectable families are frequently victimized by having dwellings sold
or rented to them which have been formerly used as houses of this kind.
A Mexican Minister to the United States was once caught in this way
rather curiously. Being a stranger in the city, he saw in print the
notice of a splendid house, with the furniture for sale, in West
Twenty-seventh street. He went up and saw it, and was pleased with the
location, the house, the furniture, and even the price. He bought it,
and moved in with his family. He was not located there twenty-four
hours until he found that the house he had bought had been a notorious
house of assignation, and that he was sandwiched in between two equally
notorious houses. Many an oath came from his mouth, when a young or an
old grayheaded Hotspur rang the bell; and many an old patron of the
house has been astonished at being most abruptly told to go further
than the next door for what he wanted. The old Mexican managed to stand
it out six months, and a real estate agent, who had an eye to business,
knowing that he could be tempted to sell out, advertised for a house in
Twenty-seventh street, in the Spanish paper. The bait took--the
diplomatist was happy to sell it for the half of what it was worth;
thinking somebody would get burned, he was glad to get rid of it at any
price. In a few weeks afterward, the house was re-sold for double the
money paid for it, and converted back to its old purposes.