Award Date
12-1-2024
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
First Committee Member
Elizabeth Nelson
Second Committee Member
Joanne Goodwin
Third Committee Member
Todd Robinson
Fourth Committee Member
Michael Green
Fifth Committee Member
Deirdre Clemente
Sixth Committee Member
Gregory Borchard
Number of Pages
285
Abstract
Mining towns in nineteenth-century Nevada grew at a rapid rate with the discovery of a new mine and, in most cases, disappeared almost as quickly when miners moved on to the next big strike. At their height, these boomtowns offered miners shelter and entertainment and made the urban speculators who built these towns profits that rivaled those of the miners. The territorial government, and after statehood, the State Legislature, left the regulation of vice in these towns to local officials, who passed ordinances that raised revenue and organized urban space to regulate gambling halls, brothels, cribs, and saloons. Most boomtowns created a designated red-light district to limit the visibility of these businesses, which were deemed essential to the success of the town. This dissertation examines the role prostitution had in the formation of the urban environment through Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and print culture analysis revealing that it was impossible to separate the red-light district physically, economically, and socially from the remainder of the town. The organization of prostitution in the urban environment is paramount to understanding versions of prostitution that were not solely under persecution, but rather an integral and accepted part of boomtown life.
In Nevada, unlike the surrounding Western states, prostitution remained legal. Politicians at the local and state level regulated prostitution to produce revenue. Boomtown newspaper editors frequently discussed the economic importance of brothels and cribs, and treated madams and prostitutes, who paid their taxes and abided by the ordinances, as regular citizens of the community. News about prostitution sold papers. Newspaper editors reported on fights, suicides, and murders that took place in the red-light district. While they often attributed the suicide of a prostitute to remorse about her fallen condition, they also defended the civil and legal rights of prostitutes to ply their trade as part of a thriving urban economy. Much of the existing scholarship on prostitution has defined the acceptance of prostitution, as a tacit acceptance of a necessary evil. In contrast, Nevadans embraced the economic engine of brothels and cribs as a necessary part of boomtown life; they understood and accepted the benefits that the trade provided in the reality of boomtown life. In Nevada boomtowns, prostitution was a community issue, one that officials, newspaper editors, and residents debated over the years. Although there were limited attempts at eliminating prostitution by moral reformers, especially in the early years of the twentieth century, the Christian moral reform groups that wielded considerable social power in eastern cities did not gain any meaningful traction even in the established cities in Nevada. Nevadans distinguished “voluntary” prostitution from what they considered “forced” prostitution, like Chinese prostitution and white slavery. Nevadans followed federal laws, like the Mann Act, and passed state laws to protect women who had been coerced into prostitution, without taking any steps to outlaw “voluntary” prostitution. Resituating Western prostitution in these ways creates an understanding of prostitution as something necessary to the formation of boomtowns in the West and not just a by-product of the existence of boomtowns.
The ordinances that had regulated and protected prostitution in boomtowns continued to regulate prostitution even in towns that survived the boomtown phase. As Nevada cities grew, the State Legislature passed new laws limiting the visibility of prostitution by outlawing it in counties first with a population of 200,000 and more recently with a population of 700,000. What had begun as an urban institution had become a rural one by the mid-twentieth century. Despite this shift, the regulation and control of the visibility of prostitution in early urban areas created a legal and economic foundation for brothels that underpins the current regulation of prostitution as a viable trade in Nevada today.
Keywords
Gender; Geographical Information Systems; Moral Reform; Prostitution; Race; Urban History
Disciplines
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Gender and Sexuality | History | Women's Studies
File Format
File Size
1364 KB
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Lamoureux, Christina M., "“Vice Cannot Afford to Have Virtue Dictate All the Terms of Its Existence”: The Viability and Visibility of Urban Prostitution in Nevada, 1859-1923" (2024). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 5184.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/38330396
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/