Prostitution Vs Street Prostitution

The anti-prostitution movement didn’t become a national issue in America until the turn of the 20th Century with the Progressive Era. Nearly every major city had unofficial vice districts operating with the full knowledge of the local police. In fact, the first American red-light district was located in Dodge City, KS. That city was a major stop for the railroad and a red light was left outside of the brothels to locate the train crews in case of an emergency. As red-light districts became more common in America some cities insisted that a red shade or curtains were in the windows of brothels during the day as a warning to passersby.

As some large and midsized cities established formal public health regulations, such as medical testing, it

The social evil ordinance didn’t allow for street prostitution and it funneled much that activity indoors. For instance, the Chief of Police, James McDonough, stated in his annual report of 1872 that the number of street prostitutes “have been almost entirely discontinued” and child prostitution “has been greatly diminished, if not wholly removed.” These results should have spurred further debate as to how to modify their regulatory system to include common-sense, middle-ground compromises to ensure the women’s basic rights. However, this experiment was too politically controversial for its time. Thus, the city discontinued this policy in 1874 largely due to organized lobbying efforts from religious and feminist leaders, including the wife of the St. Louis Police

To review, the Progressives of today are highly liberal, but they were the leading social conservatives of that era who pioneered the prohibition of alcohol. Therefore, San Francisco’s mayor became a symbolic target of the Progressives when the city established a regulation system similar to the one in St. Louis. From 1913 to 1915, prostitutes in San Francisco were examined every 4 days at a city facility, the Municipal Clinic for the Prevention of Venereal Disease. If they passed their tests they received a certificate and were exempt from legal trouble. However, the city didn’t impose draconian quarantine measures like St. Louis. Those women simply weren’t allowed to work as prostitutes if they had diseases and were provided with free health care. As a result, this was generally well supported locally, but opposition lobbyists coordinated across the nation to shut down the program. In the end, San Francisco’s mayor decided to close the city’s testing clinic due to political pressure because an organized group threatened to boycott the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (a world’s fair) held in San