Toleration of Sex Work in East-Central Indiana, 1880–1900

Abstract

From 1880 through the gas boom period (1887–1900), several east-central Indiana towns and small cities hosted thriving brothel scenes. Toleration existed alongside campaigns to arrest and fine sex workers and their clients. Newspapers played an important role in the toleration dynamic, narrating efforts to regulate and suppress sex work, while cultivating public knowledge about sex
workers and brothel locations. Exploring reportage of sex work and the municipal preference for fines over expulsion, trends emerge of the careers and migration of sex workers. In contrast to the 1858 prediction of New York City physician William Sanger that sex-worker careers lasted only a few years, newspapers reveal some women working for over a decade. Long careers signal toleration, which undermines the traditional narrative of gender-ratio imbalance prompting the arrival of sex workers in boomtowns. Mapping brothels and arrests in Muncie, Kokomo, and Elwood, Indiana, also challenges the existence of a single vice
district in each city, revealing the integration of sex workers into the urban fabric.