Prostitution in New Orleans
Storyville
While prostitution is not legal in Louisiana, it once was in New Orleans in a place called Storyville. Storyville was the Red Light District of the United States from 1897-1917. A mere 20 years of legal sex work, but prostitution is nothing new to societies around the globe, and certainly not anything new to the city of New Orleans, where we les bon temps rouler (French for “let the good times roll”)! Sex workers in New Orleans were originally scattered throughout the city. However, Storyville (originally named “The District”), was founded by Sidney Story (STORYville) and was made up of 38 blocks in entirety. Its borders were Basin, St. Louis, Iberville, and N. Robertson streets. Most data found lists the founding as July 6, 1897, just a few days after Independence Day. What a great way to celebrate! The purpose of relocating sex work to one district (modeling after European and Dutch districts of the same sort), was that the city authorities could regulate and monitor such “indecent” activity to one focal point. This rid the rest of the city from such “degenerates” and making the city more “appropriate”, appropriate being a term most would never use in referring to The Big Easy.
Credit: Library of Congress
Blue Books
This area became so popular with sex work, that eventually Blue Books were printed. These books catalogued sex workers by race (white or black), and also from madams/brothel owners vs prostitutes. Some of the ladies were so popular that they even had their photos printed in them. Scattered throughout the Blue Books were advertisements mostly liquor and tobacco/cigar ads. Typically, these books were discarded after one found the woman of their choice, so original copies are very hard to come by and collect a pretty penny, like many of these women did in this era. Today, you can find replicas of the Blue Books. Just this month I came across a few copies at Garden District Book Shop. (Contact Garden District Book Shop for your replica, roughly $15 plus tax.) Original copies at the time of printing cost a mere $0.25. What helped make Storyville a success was that it was directly on the train route and easily accessible to any visitors to La Nouvelle-Orléans.
Credit: Steven Foley
These Blue Books reminded me of my time in Berlin, Germany in July of 2011 when I was studying abroad. I would like to insert that while I lived there, a brothel was located directly across from my hostel (apartment building used for tourists, particularly college kids). Much to my American ignorance, the building had a giant sign with the brothel’s website on it. When one logged on to the site, you could search for the exact type of woman you wanted (hair, eyes, breast size, height, etc.). However, the thing that I was most surprised with, aside from being able to shop for your sexual partner like a piece of clothing online, was that each of these women not only had universal healthcare, that covered medical, dental, optical, but also covered STD testing that they were mandated to do on a regular basis. The STD testing was not primarily for the customer, but for the sex worker themselves!
Jazz
The sex district known as Storyville was not known just for its catalogue of women to choose from, but also, for its music. Many jazz musicians not only frequented these brothels, but some even grew up in them, including the most famous jazz musician of all time, Louis Armstrong. Even today, so many great musicians come from this area, now known as Treme. But that’s an entirely other topic that I already am working on covering.
Credit: Gilles Petard/Redferns
Future of Sex Work in New Orleans
Legal prostitution in New Orleans, Louisiana ended in 1917. However, big shock, sex work did not end, and probably never will. It is also interesting to me to see in the research that the verbiage used is blatantly geared to female sex workers, and not the males. When there is mentioning of a male regarding prostitution it is in the active role of the male seeking a female sex worker. In a city with its famed “Fruit Loop” (local nickname for the gay district in the French Quarter), there are countless gogo boys (as the males are regulated to specific rules as opposed to female “dancers”) see NOLA.com article for those rules. I know quite a lot of male sex workers in the city, and like most female focused items, the men are held with less restrictions.
In January of 2018, the New Orleans police, and the ATC (Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control) raided a slew of strip joints and bars in the French Quarter, almost all exclusively on Bourbon Street, of course. This resulted in the revoking of the business’s liquor license, which took a hard hit on these venues profits and foot traffic of customers. One of them, Hunk’s Oasis, was the only all male nude strip joint in the French Quarter. This venue was geared towards women (homosexual or heterosexual didn’t matter), but if you were a male (especially homosexual, you needed a female escort to get you in, even if you offered to pay a door fee!). While the gay bars in the Fruit Loop do offer male dancers, none of them are nude, none of the gay bars are legally allowed to offer nude male dancers. The Corner Pocket is the only venue in the Fruit Loop (albeit, technically just outside of the Fruit Loop), that features dancers on a regular basis (cash bar only y’all!).
Research
So, to answer the original question presented from @bralynnkerrythedeitydarklight on Instagram, “Does new Orleans have more hooker or decrease? Is new Orleans more violence?”: Well, let’s see what the research says.
Ultimately, this is not an easy question to answer. The reason being is that there is no list that compiles how many sex workers were active from one time period to the next. This also does not take into the consideration of what gender of sex workers are we trying to look at data for. Additionally, are we looking at heterosexual sex workers, of LGBTQ sex workers (who are tried much more harshly for sex work than their heterosexual counterparts). In 2021, a bill was presented to help decriminalize sex work in Louisiana, but it failed to make any lee-way, known as HB 67.
Prostitution, I think, will always be a battle of morality vs male domination. It’s like any other business, one person offers a product, and the other is the consumer offering payment. Any person should have the right to do what they want/to their body while giving consent. After all, consent is sexy! And you can thank the Navy for shutting down Storyville (WWI Secretary Newton Baker didn’t want the Navy boys to get distracted in New Orleans by the enchantresses of The District.).
What needs to be the true focus of prostitution, not just in New Orleans, is the movement to legalize sex work. Page, a local New Orleans health care worker, said:
Well, in all honesty, the “versions” have increased. There are a lot of situations nowadays that count as prostitution. Sadly, at least in the (S)toryville days, there was some regulation. I am an ER/Trauma RN, who worked her way through school by various means…I wish that legalization, regulation, and health cards were a real thing here. Sure would prevent some of the awful that I see in the ER. Sex work is real work. Period.
I informed her that I agreed with her whole-heartedly, she continued:
This is actually something I feel very strongly about. And I can speak for so many of our Emergency workers. Granted there are a lot who are not willing to say it publicly. But seriously. These workers are deserving of the same protections as anyone else, and on the same note, the people that seek their “services” deserve to know that they have a level of safety as well. I’ve treated so many between fire/E(M)s and now ER and ICU work. All humans deserve care. Period. And I strongly feel that red light districts (especially in “adult” tourism areas like NOLA, Vegas, L.A, Los Angeles—not to be confused with Louisiana for the sake of this article, NYC…etc) are a real thing. I’m just willing to say what many won’t because I see, care for and treat everyone. Period.
While some may think this is just to encourage anyone to have sex with anyone spreading STDs everywhere, the reality is that in making sex work a legal profession, it can:
- Encourage more sex workers to report sexual assault cases because they will not fear being punished, and then being further ashamed for sex work on top of being assaulted.
- Help with human trafficking issues.
- Foster safe heath prevention practices
Summary
Sex work is one of the oldest professions in the world, whether legal or illegal, the future of sex workers is bound to continue. From this research and the results I have compiled for you, it has generated another question in me: If sex work is legalized, again, would the amount of sex workers increase or decrease?
And for the user who posed the initial question, regarding violence, I will have to make that one an entirely separate topic, and one I have plenty to say on, and lots of data that can back that research up!
And a special thank you to Page, a frontline worker, who is speaking up for the sex workers who might find it hard to come forward for whatever reasons of their own.
References:
https://www.attorneycarl.com/blog/prostitution-laws-louisiana/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyville,_New_Orleans
https://www.nola.com/news/politics/article_ecab092a-9173-54e8-9970-b077ce47d25d.html
https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/article_533f35da-ad22-11eb-8018-9ff9cf06337b.html
https://www.gardendistrictbookshop.com/