Images of Sex Work in Early Twentieth-Century America by Mollie LeVeque;

Author:Mollie LeVeque;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781786724823
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Boundaries between decent and indecent behavior, categories of respectability and the illusion that crime was specific to certain classes and genders of people (namely the lower classes and, often, poor women), were all issues during the 1892 Cream trial. Having already been confronted with a serial murderer of prostitutes who went unknown and unnamed – except for a newspaper moniker that stuck – the American public was enthralled by a pernicious doctor who also targeted these women. It was, though, more indignant about the other individuals he compromised or killed.

Assessing and asserting the ‘right’ kind of victimization became of paramount importance within the media. A ‘unified front’ was created ‘against Cream and the prostitutes’35 so that police, detectives, and doctors would not be discredited by the actions of a select person of their ranks that had gained infamy. In other words, even though Lou Harvey, a sex worker who escaped Cream by pretending to swallow a poisoned pill he gave to her, testified in court, this was not meant to generate sympathy for her ilk or suggest that the murdered women were more victimized than anyone else had been. They, instead, were more like living photographs or taxonomies to be used for restoring proper order and bringing justice.

As women, they were already at a social disadvantage, but as sex workers they were just as, if not more, unlawful and immoral than Cream. After all, they were the perpetrators of criminal acts that put gender and family identities at risk. They compromised physical safety, too. Therefore, they could not possibly be victims to the same degree of severity as anyone else. Although the press cast Cream as a renegade (not to be thought of alongside other physicians), the prostitutes who testified against – or were murdered by – him were still, in many ways, less trustworthy. These social dynamics were echoed in popular fiction well into the 1900s. Assisting Mr Sherlock Holmes, one fictional artist’s model and mistress was to bring an abusive, murdering ex-lover to justice. While scholars like Reiter have acknowledged the influence of Cream’s trial on Doyle’s fiction, specifically citing the vitriolic Dr Grimesby Roylott of ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ as a caricature of Cream, ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’ (1924) retains a high and directly recognizable number of the same figures and tropes. Furthermore, parallels between the story and Bellocq’s rediscovered portraits exemplify the preconceived notions about maker and models that they still carry.

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