Selling Sex

An Enquiry into the Condition and Influence of the Brothels in Connection with the Theatres of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Published for the Booksellers, 1834. (Gift of Dr. John Bell)

Theatrical entertainments became one of the most popular activities in urban America, attracting people of all classes who sat in the boxes or stood in the pit according to the ticket they could afford. Prostitutes, who could be counted on to bring in paying customers, were often admitted for free or at a discount. For privacy, they took their companions to the secluded “third tier.” The more brazen went to “the pit.” Here, a “Friend of the Drama” complains that Philadelphia’s theaters “swarm” with “crowds of painted prostitutes,” “open and undisguised as the broad glare of the lamps . . . exhibit their shamelessness.”