boarding house next to Petersen's

[Linda Anderson]

I don't believe that prostitution was illegal during the Civil War but the police still found ways to arrest the "working girls." It says a lot about employment opportunities for women that "working girls" is used as an euphemism for prostitutes.

I found the following information on this site: http://www.si.edu/oahp/nmaidig/start.htm

"According to the city's vagrant law, police had the authority to arrest "public prostitutes and all persons who lead a lewd and lascivious life;" however, most prostitutes were not arrested solely on the basis of their professions. 12 Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, police precinct records filed at the National Archives document that hundreds of prostitutes were arrested each year. In most cases, however, they were arrested for disturbances of the peace, such as drunkenness, profanity, disorderly conduct, and fighting, and occasionally for theft. They were generally fined a small, seemingly arbitrary, amount of money, and if they could not pay were sent to the workhouse for a month or two. 13 Most of the prostitutes who were arrested were probably streetwalkers, not the attractive denizens of discreet houses such as Mary Ann Hall's."