Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847-1918 Rating :
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One for the Sinners
By Val Holley
The richness and diversity of Utah history tends to be obscured by Mormon history. So much energy is expended canonizing Utah's saints that few resources remain for celebrating and preserving the capricious, ironic, and improvisatory. ("[In Utah] people talk only of the Prophet, hogs, and Fords," cracked Bernard DeVoto in 1926.)
In New York City, for example, A. J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell chronicled gorgeous demotic street scenes for the ages. But as far as I know, nothing comparable in Utah literature ever emerged. The stories a Liebling or Mitchell might have dug up had they toured Utah, however, are at least hinted at in Jeffrey Nichols's study of prostitution in Salt Lake City (and Ogden) during the years just before and after statehood (1896). (In fact, as Nichols tells us, a very young Harold Ross covered the red-light district for the Salt Lake Tribune two decades before founding The New Yorker.)
Despite the unique religious and moral strictures in Utah's criminal code, prostitution as an industry had no better or worse luck surviving in Salt Lake than elsewhere. If other cities experimented with regulation but then gravitated toward total suppression, Nichols shows that Utah moved in lockstep with the rest of the country. A few hilarious bits bubble up through the book's erudition. One sumptuous brothel flourished for a time inside the Brigham Young Trust Company building. Later, a high-profile madam included the governing councils of the Mormon Church among the Utah dignitaries to whom she sent engraved invitations to the opening of her Palace bordello.
For Utah history buffs, Nichols's bibliography and notes alone are worth the price of the book.
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This book reveals insights into the complex history of prostitution in Salt Lake City. After the transcontinental railroad opened Utah to large-scale emigration and market capitalism, hundreds of women in Salt Lake City began to sell sex for a living and a few earned small fortunes. Some of the city's best-known businessmen and politicians developed a financial stake in brothels and prostitution, which was regulated by both Mormon and gentile officials. Jeffrey Nichols examines how prostitution became a focal point in the moral contest between Mormons and gentiles and aided in the construction of gender systems, moral standards, and the city's physical and economic landscapes. Both groups used prostitution as a weapon in the battle for political and economic power during the city's formative years. Gentiles likened polygamy to prostitution and accused polygamous Mormons of violating Christian norms of family structure and sexual behavior. Non-Mormon women in particular denounced plural marriage as a double standard that exploited women and favored men. Defending their church and its ideals, Mormons blamed gentiles for introducing the sinful business of prostitution into their honorable city. The controversy waned when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began to move away from polygamy in the 1890s, but resurfaced with the rise of the anti-Mormon American Party that sponsored the Stockade prostitution district. Nichols traces the interplay of prostitution and reform through World War I, when Mormon and gentile moral codes converged at the expense of prostitutes. He also considers how polygamy and religious conflict distinguished Salt Lake City from other cities struggling to abolish prostitution in the Progressive Era.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1366324 in Books
- Published on: 2002-09-05
- Original language:English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
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