Sex in the Second City

Prostitution and brothels in turn of the 20th century Chicago.


As I am about to famously say, prostitution is porn without cameras, and by that measure goes back further in American culture than New York in the 70’s when The Industry as we know it started to flourish.

Sin in the Second City is Karen Abbott’s new book about turn of the century Chicago brothels centred on The Everleigh Club. In short the authorities looked the other way, everyone was at it, and the women in charge died with colossal fortunes. Frankly, I’m astounded.

A great interview with Abbott
is up at the Freakonomics blog. Glad to see them putting the ‘Freak’ back into that title.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Filed Under
14 comments ↓
Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This Month's Top 10

Recent Comments

Sponsored links