History of Prostitution

History of Prostitution in the American West

In the middle of the nineteenth century, America experienced a boom of expansion and development. Miners in pursuit of gold and riches raced across the country, establishing mining and frontier towns along the way. A lot of these towns or settlements had high populations of men, like miners and army garrisons. With a rise in these developments, the West also experienced a rise in prostitution. Prostitution is defined as the contractual relation in which sexual services are exchanged for a sum of money (Davis, 1937). Prostitution in the early West was a cutthroat business. Predominantly a female occupation, many women, including those from overseas, were often forced into the lifestyle and found it very difficult to leave the profession (Oharazeki, 2013). Due to the skewed gender role expectations in the nineteenth century American West, female prostitutes often experienced abusive masters, pitiful wages, and an overarching poor quality of life.

In the nineteenth century American West, women’s employment options were often limited by society’s expectations of the female’s role in the household (Rosen, 1986). According to Rosen (1986), “prostitution [has been] tightly yoked to the social and economic history of women and the family” (p. 91). If woman’s skills are no longer needed or employed, she can be hard pressed to support herself economically. During this time in the nineteenth century, rural families no longer needed the domestic skills of women (Rosen, 1986). As a result, many young women left home in order to try and find work. When many women had difficulty finding work in the traditional public sphere, they turned to prostitution to support themselves and their children (Rosen, 1986). Once contracted to work as a prostitute, most women were subject to harsh treatment from their masters. Masters often resorted to physical violence to keep prostitutes from running away (Oharazeki, 2013). Most prostitutes did not...