© Jerry F. Couch, all rights reserved

[From an earlier CVT story, reprinted with updates.]

If you think prostitution has ceased to exist in St. Paul, think again. It’s still here. It has always been here.  It will always BE here, unless the town dries up and blows away…

Let’s begin by defining prostitution: “Prostitution is the act of engaging in sexual intercourse or performing other sex acts in exchange for money, or of offering another person for such purposes.” To satisfy the purists among us, we will say the act of prostitution involves human beings. If space aliens are involved, we’ll create a separate definition. If you agree, buy and drink bottle of the cheapest wine you can find, preferably one with a strong, winey taste & smell along with a fortified alcohol content of no less than 20%.

Moral judgments aside, from a law-enforcement standpoint prostitution is considered a gateway crime. This is because it can lead to other, more serious crimes such as robbery, rape, assault, blackmail, and even murder. And if you think prostitution is mostly about women, think again. Years ago I did volunteer work for a public health organization in Newport News, Virginia. Among the organization’s clients were several female prostitutes who were recovering drug addicts. The director of the program told me that, statistically, each prostitute needed a minimum of four clients each day in order to support a drug habit plus have some money left over for the barest necessities of life. Consider those numbers and what they signify.

But…back to St. Paul: Today’s sordid tale comes from the court records of a divorce case which took place around 1920. At that time getting a divorce was not as simple as it is nowadays. If your husband loudly slurped his coffee at the breakfast table each morning and it drove you up the wall, your choices were pretty limited. You could either stay married to him or kill him. Some folks chose the latter. But I digress…the most common grounds for divorce in 1920 were adultery or desertion. In the divorce case to which I will refer, the wife was the plaintiff. Her attorney had summoned witnesses to give depositions proving her husband’s adultery. Two witnesses offered the following descriptions of a clandestine tryst they both observed. Here‘s what the first witness had to say:

Question: What do you know about G— committing adultery with one M—, a girl that lived at Flowers Restaurant in St. Paul, Virginia?
Answer: Along about the Fourth of July in the evening I saw this M— going down through the bottom to the river bank in the corn and bushes and in a little while I saw G— go on down there to the same place. G— waited at the restaurant until M— got across the bottom under the river bank and then he left and went to her. I live next to the restaurant. In about fifteen or twenty minutes this M— came on back and G— went on down the river. The trees and bushes are thick at this place and it was out of sight of everyone.

Pictured below is the shady bower on the St. Paul side of the Clinch River where the “tryst” mentioned in the deposition took place. Romantic? Ummmmm….no. The present-day St. Paul Virginia Railroad Museum can be seen between the trees at left. Greear Brothers & Hurt, publishers of the postcard you’re looking at, was St. Paul’s leading mercantile establishment. It was located in what was then the St. Paul National Bank building. It was also the store where the adulterous husband purchased the wearing apparel mentioned by the deponent.

Question: What was this M—’s reputation for a virtuous woman?
Answer: It was bad. She was considered a whore.

Then the other witness gave testimony concerning the same event:

Question: What do you know about G— committing adultery with one M—, a girl that stayed at Flower’s Restaurant in St. Paul, Virginia?
Answer: I saw this M— one day, it was about the last Fourth of July, coming from the store going towards Flowers Restaurant. She had on a pair of new shoes and I asked her where she got them and she said G— gave them to her and that he had just spent about $9 on her. She goes on to the restaurant and G— goes on down to the restaurant. This restaurant is on the river bottom. In a little while they went on down to the river and went down under the bank of the river out of sight. The bottom is in corn and the bushes and trees hid them from everybody. I don’t know how long they were there in that place.

Question: What sort of girl is this M—?
Answer: She was said to be a bad girl.
Question: What is G—’s reputation for running after women of loose morals and bad reputation?
Answer: I have heard that he was bad after the women.
Question: Where did G— see this M— that morning to give her the money to get the shoes and things?
Answer: There at the restaurant.
Question: She made him pay her before she would go down under the river bank with him?
Answer: I reckon so, for I know she got the stuff before she went down there with him.

Folks, just in case you’re wondering, the going rate in 1920 was $2, not $9. If this was television instead of print media, at this point we’d segue into Peggy Lee’s old song, “Hey Big Spender.”

There is a common misconception that the Western Front was the sole location of this type of activity, with saloons reminiscent of Miss Kitty’s Long Branch from the old television show, “Gunsmoke” (obviously I’m using oldspeak here – no young person has heard of Gunsmoke). Well, it wasn’t like that at all. About one third of the businesses located on the Western Front did not engage in the sale of alcohol or rent rooms to accommodate acts of prostitution.

Years ago, I had a series of conversations with several people who were in a position to know what actually took place in St. Paul after the streetlights were turned on. According to them, prostitution was never an organized enterprise in St. Paul. The trade was made up of a few free-lancers who might either be local or from who-knows-where. Some were married and had families. Some worked at low-paying jobs and turned to prostitution for much-needed extra income. Others were peripheral figures who had followed the railroad into St. Paul only to find themselves stranded with no money or means of employment available. Some drifted into St. Paul after their lives had been wrecked by domestic violence or alcohol abuse. In other words, the reasons “why” were as varied as the prostitutes themselves.

There are numerous local legends concerning prostitution (euphemistically referred to in St. Paul’s vintage arrest records as “illegal cohabitation”). Most of these legends have come to resemble faded photographs tucked away in a forgotten old album, and that is as it should be. Confirming some of these legends would be difficult or impossible now because they weren’t common knowledge at the time. For example, there is the story of a prostitute who drifted into St. Paul and was murdered a few days later. Her battered body was found at the western end of St. Paul. The crime was never solved. And there is the story of a prostitute who nearly bled to death as the result of botched “kitchen table” abortion – unwanted pregnancy being occupational hazard of her trade. There is a story of a prostitute who was shot in the face by a jealous lover in an upstairs room of a joint on the Western Front. Her boyfriend couldn’t resolve his feelings for her with what she did for a living. These legends are just a sampling; there are more.

In bygone days, St. Paul’s economics were a complex thing. Outsiders without the support network of family or friends had a hard time surviving here. There was a social taboo against married women working outside the home. Employment was looked upon as an indication the woman’s husband wasn’t a good provider. Women were expected to be wives and mothers, not wage-earners. A study of the U. S. Census shows a small number of St. Paul women working as laundresses, cooks, maids, seamstresses, store clerks, and school teachers. Except for teaching, these jobs were drudgery and the pay was low and unreliable. There were times when there was no work to be had.

While the Western Front was far from being the equal in reputation or fact of Cinder Bottom in Keystone, West Virginia, it had its moments. Prostitution tended to be concentrated on the Western Front because of its proximity to the train station and bus station. Also, there was the age-old law of supply and demand. During the daytime hours, things were pretty quiet on the Western Front. Small restaurants catering to railroad travelers did a brisk business. But on Friday and Saturday evenings, things changed. Men from near and far came to the Western Front to get drunk. They didn’t stop after just a drink or two; they drank until they were staggering, puking, passing-out drunk. Once their inhibitions had been sufficiently lowered (in most cases they were pretty low to begin with) they began to consider other things they might purchase. A woman in a beer joint or shot house without a male escort meant exactly one thing. She might as well have been carrying a sign.

What about law enforcement? Well, St. Paul only employed a “town sergeant.” With so much going on, he couldn’t be everywhere at once. Also, the town sergeant’s salary was paid out of fines imposed upon people who had been convicted in the town’s magistrate court. If a person didn’t have any money and wasn’t actively engaging in assault or murder, they probably would not be arrested. There was an unwritten rule that went like this: As long as questionable behavior was somewhat discreet and confined to the appropriate side of the railroad tracks, that behavior might be overlooked. It was reasoned that people would do what they’ve always done – and if they didn’t do it in St. Paul, they’d just do it somewhere else. The money that changed hands on the Western Front on weekends was then re-spent in the town’s stores on Monday. As long prostitutes weren’t soliciting on Fourth Avenue and as long as drunks weren’t lying unconscious on the sidewalks of Russell Street, business could go on as usual. That’s all most people cared to know.

Today, young people have never heard that hackneyed old phrase, “It’s a man’s world.” These days it isn’t a man‘s world. However, it was a man’s world back then and men had the power to make trouble for single women living on the edge of poverty. Male authority was enforced without regard for whether the enforcer was in a moral position to do so. A single woman trying to live without “male protection” was looked upon with suspicion and she was a potential target for abuse.

Fortunately, times have changed, even if people’s base instincts have not. Financial crises are now much less likely to force women into lives of prostitution. Think about the words of Reba McEntire’s song “Fancy,” where a dying woman pushes her young daughter into prostitution: “Here’s your one chance, Fancy don’t let me down.” For some women, prostitution was their only chance. Those who criticized had neither walked the streets in her shoes, nor missed many meals.

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