Trivia question. What city in the United States was the first to legalize prostitution? If you answered Las Vegas Nevada you are wrong. It was Nashville Tennessee. There are many things that can reduce the effectiveness of an Army in wartime. The use of alcohol, drugs, and sexually transmitted disease. This is in any era. More soldiers died from disease in the Civil War than died from bullets. Besides sexually transmitted disease men died from measles, dysentery, chronic diarrhea, cholera, malaria, typhoid, typhus, and pneumonia. Surgeons using dirty hands while treating wounds and performing amputations caused infection and gangrene. Because of the Civil War medical officials began to realize that disease could be prevented by changing unhealthy practices and educating troops. This ratio of deaths from disease as opposed to combat wounds changed in World War 1. In every war since more men have died from combat wounds than disease. There were 750,000 deaths from both causes in the Civil War. In 1860 there were 207 prostitutes living in Nashville. The largest brothel housed 17 women and it was located on the river front near lower Broad & 1st Ave, or as it was called then, Front St. The average house had anywhere from one to three women. In 1860 Nashville had a population of 17,000. Five thousand of these were free blacks and slaves. When the war broke out thousands of Confederate troops passed through Nashville and then the city fell to Union forces on February 25, 1862. There were as many as 100,000 troops in and around Nashville at various times. Washington D.C. and Nashville had the biggest problem with prostitution because Washington was the headquarters for the eastern armies and Nashville was the headquarters for the western armies.
There was a four block area from present day 1st Ave. to 4th Ave. called "Smoky Row" which was the "red light district". The term hooker was in use before the war but it was popularized in relation to General Joseph Hooker who had a reputation for hanging out with loose women. Nashville actually acquired the nickname as the "city of 10,000 whores' but the actual number was estimated at 1,500. The rise of sexually transmitted disease became so bad that the army's chief medical officer rounded up as many prostitutes as he could find and put them on a new steamboat called the "Idahoe". Appropriate name for a boat carrying prostitutes. He sent them to Louisville and that city refused to take them in. They eventually made their way to Cincinnatti where they also were also not wanted. These ladies trashed the steamboat in the meantime. The steamboat Captain gave up and returned to Nashville. The black prostitutes had been picking up the slack for the missing white prostitutes. After this failed attempt at curing Nashville's prostitution problem a notice was issued to the prostitutes that they had until August 20, 1863 to be examined by a Army surgeon. Upon paying a license fee of 5.00 dollars they would be issued a permit to ply their trade. The new ordinance stated that they must be re-examined every 10 to 14 days. By April 30, 1864, 352 women had been licensed. Thanks to legalization only 30 of the first 999 soldiers to contract a sexually transmitted disease contracted it in Nashville. Syphilis before the discovery of penicillin was the 19th century's version of AID's. They treated it with salts of mercury. Mercury is extremely toxic. This treatment led to the saying that "a night with Venus means a lifetime with Mercury". There were 23 military hospital's in Nashville during the war and there was a hospital for soldiers suffering from STD's. One hospital was for white prostitutes, and another was for black prostitutes. Because of the success achieved at Nashville Memphis became the second city to legalize prostitution.
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| First dress parade of occupying Union troops on the city square in March 1862 |
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| Hospital for prostitutes at present day 2nd Ave. and Jo Johnston |
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| Soiled Dove |
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| A soldier with syphilus |
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| A prostitutes license to ply her trade |
HISTORY UNDERCOVER: SEX IN THE CIVIL WAR
Part 1 : Nothing but sympathy for men, who cannot discipline their lust but only criticism for women who made themselves available for men , so as to stay alive or profit or enjoy the sexual liaisons with many men...or all three. Politicians Central bankers and religious leaders in their role as satanic minions create wars for profiteering. In those wars and other mayhem mankind and women are thrown back to their primitive....whilst the grand offer of 'death as a martyr' to the war for one's flag or some other pathetic symbol which purports greatness whilst hiding satanic evil. These symbols are indoctrinated into citizens to manipulate them as serfs and cannon fodder while the rich grow richer and politicians and Bankers which create war for the benefit of financiers politicians and "religious" stay safe. Men carry the venereal diseases from homosexual relationships or from heterosexual relationships to prostitutes and other sexual opportunity but these undisciplined vermin escape criticism...'poor boys....needing a woman...or a man...we all "understand"...." but that woman is the target of disdain perhaps just trying to stay alive, feed her kids in a atrocity almost invariably evil "men" create. American soldiers in Iraq used women who'd turned to prostitution to survive and then turned them out to the street with no protection, knowing from experience those women would be murdered soon-after.I allow that there are also women for whom prostitution is a fulfilment of sexual lust and for others an excuse to kill....those expose yet another dark shadow of humanity. I am an experienced man and do I think prostitution reduces rape?...no in fact I think it encourages it. So also does erotic literature in which a woman who says 'no' means 'yes', where women are just awaiting a 'man' to 'initiate them' to 'take' them to 'teach' them. and for many the urge to be purely loved leads to sex with children and pre-pubic but sometimes willing youngsters. continued to part 2
ReplyDeleteI've told you many times, do not stop taking your medications!
DeletePert 2 :Then recently exposed is a 'boy lover' group, one of many in which boy children are groomed from the cot, to engage in sex with men and so be transported around the world in child- sex swaps and photo shoots. Dominantly these are homosexual groups. While society abuses women and dwells in pornography and violence and has had an upsurge of massive proportions (initiated from where??) to support homosexuality as a legitimate alternative to marriage and family this is not the making of a better society, nor was the abuse of homosexuals. Abuse stopped need not require promotion of homosexuality or homosexual adoption for fair play towards homosexuals. Homosexuality in its basic form is not evil but it is used for evil and encouraged by people with an evil purpose. The reason people look outside the earth for heaven is because our earth is dominantly controlled by satanic politicians posing as Christians or other sects and which ignore Jesus and turn to "god" or "allaha" or some other mental proxy to justify and commit evil. It isn't accidental. It's because the Tanakh houses satanic authorisations taken up by Christians which follow James' version of Christianity being an extension of "Judaism".....which as Paul argued fiercely, it is not. Jesus made it quite clear, the simplicity which leads to happiness. I have ended in this manner because of the abuse of women by religious corruption and satanic evil going way back into early 'Judaism' (they are descendants of the murderer Cain whom Satan, not any decent 'god' protected) and its psychopath heroes. That abuse was highlighted as it still is in millions of cases, by the treatment of the Magdalen which the Tanakh accuses of prostitution and seeks to gets its monkey-male 'rocks-off' in 'god's' name by stoning her to death. Jesus..."let him who is without sin, cast the first stone"...."no man condemns you nor will I" If that approach was used today the world would be a happier place by far and women would not be victims, however willingly some may be , of the evil of men in power and those serving men in power.
ReplyDeleteI'm not arguing any of this but do you have any citations for your statistics and findings?
ReplyDeleteThe book Sex In The Civil War
DeleteThe book Sex In The Civil War
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ReplyDeleteHow would one go about finding the locations of Nashville's U.S. hospitals?
My G-G-G grandfather, Alanson M Bowen, was enlisted in the 8th Confederate Cavalry, Co. H, riding with Roddey, Forrest and others in North Alabama and Southern Middle TN.
He deserted by late summer 1864, apparently deathly ill. Later I find he's listed as a prisoner in a Union prison hospital in Nashville. It's said the illness/injuries he suffered during the war eventually killed him, prior to 1880.
Is there a list of Union prison hospitals, their locations, in Nashville?
Thank you.
Hello cousin,Alanson M.Bowen is my 4th great grandfather on my mother’s side.
DeleteA good source would be James Hoobler who wrote Cities Under The Gun. I met him a few years ago and if I am not mistaken he is the state historian for the Tennessee. You can probably find out by contacting the Tennessee state government and they can direct you to him if he is still alive or working for the state. I can't think of a better source of knowledge on this period.
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