The installation of an elaborate alarm system proved to be very effective for whenever the police ventured out, they found the stockade dark and deserted. The stockade had three entrances, each guarded to both keep children and “undesirable” guests from entering as well as to warn of the periodic police raids. A curtain divided the crib in two, with a washstand and chair in the front part and a white enameled bed in the back with the girls paying one to four dollars a day for their “residence.” Within the stockade there were also larger parlor houses and storehouses for liquor–an essential component of the stockade operation. Square with a door and window, and built in rows. The stockade consisted of nearly 100 small brick “cribs” which were ten feet They basically were given three choices: leave town, go to jail, or reside in the stockade. Soon after completion, on the evening of December 18 city police told prostitutes that they had until 4:00 a.m. The West Side Citizen’s League was formed to abolish it, but many also found it a very practical way to deal with prostitution. The community reacted in many different ways. During the summer of 1908, she created the Citizen’s Investment Company and purchased land where it would have, “as little negative effect as possible.” They chose the area between 500 and 600 West and 100 and 200 South because the were railroads on three sides of it, it divided two school districts (so children wouldn’t have to walk past it), and because, “the ‘foreign element,’ (Greek and Italian workers) had so destroyed the area that establishing prostitution there would not harm it any further and could even be rationalized as catering to the immoral foreigners.'” Topham, Utah’s notorious “Belle London” of Ogden’s “Electric Alley,” to form a corporation, buy a block of land on Salt Lake’s westside and establish a stockade.
Topham “Belle London” Madame of the Stockade Bransford said, “I propose to take these women from the business section of the city and put them in a district which will be one of the best, if not the very best, regulated districts in the country.”ĭora B. Salt Lake City mayor John Bransford along withthe city council adopted a “stockade” policy in 1908, planning to build a sort of compound where the denizens could practice their inevitable trade freely, but discretely. Starting in 1903, calls to purge Commercial Street of its sordid establishments began, citing that it soiled the main business district and decreased property value. Each month, the girls paid a ten-dollar fine which supplied much of the city’s revenues.
RED LIGHT CENTER 2 REGISTRATION
By 1908 a formal registration system existed where police kept track of the names and addresses of madams and their houses and in turn, the madams supplied current lists of their girls. Police regularly conducted raids of the establishments, fining, arresting, and even sometimes conducting physical examinations of the women. Miss Helen Blazes and Miss Ada Wilson were each madams of these types of establishments. Parlor houses along the street housed legitimate businesses usually liquor or tobacco stores, and held “female boarders” in the upper parts of the houses.
Laws existed mostly to satisfy middle-class morality, but normally, it was confined to a specific part of town called a “red-light” district where it could be observed and controlled.Ĭlearly, by the 1870s, Commercial Street, (today’s Regent Street between Main and State Streets and 100 and 200 South) in downtown Salt Lake City was the center of the red-light district. The general feeling at the beginning of the 20th Century considered it as a “necessary” evil that could never be eliminated, but merely controlled. Commonly referred to as “the oldest profession,” prostitution holds a long and intriguing position in Utah history.