Harlots of the Barbary Coast by Herbert Asbury

CALIFORNIA LEGENDS

Harlots of the Barbary Coast

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By Herbert Asbury

There was such a dearth of females in the San Francisco of gold-rush days that a woman was almost as rare a sight as an elephant, while a child was an even more unusual spectacle. It is doubtful if the so-called fair sex ever before or since received such adulation and homage anywhere in the United States; even prostitutes, ordinarily scorned and ostracized by their honest and respectable customers, were treated with an exaggerated deference. Men stood for hours watching the few children at play; and whenever a woman appeared on the street, business was practically suspended. She was followed through the town by an adoring crowd, while self-appointed committees marched ahead to clear the way and to protect her from the too boisterous salutations of the emotional miners.

One of the many soiled doves who worked the saloons of the Old West .

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

Once while an important auction of city lots was in progress in a Montgomery Street building, a man poked his head into the auction room and shouted: "Two ladies going by on the sidewalk!” The entire crowd immediately abandoned the auction and rushed into the street to watch the women pass. It is related that they bared their heads in reverence, but that part of the story is probably the added touch of the incorrigible romancer.

According to one historian, there were only fifteen white women in San Francisco in the spring of 1849, but his estimate may be doubted, for San Franciscans were inclined to regard as white only natives of the United States and of a few European countries. In any event, however, the female population probably did not exceed three hundred for at least a year after the beginning of the gold excitement. Of this number, perhaps two-thirds were harlots from Mexico, Peru, and Chili. Together with male natives of these and other Central and South American countries, they were known in San Francisco by the generic name of Chilenos, or, contemptuously, "greasers.” These pioneer prostitutes occupied tents and board shanties in the vicinity of Clark’s Point, about where Broadway and Pacific Street run into the Bay, and on the eastern and southern slopes of Telegraph Hill, a three-hundred-foot elevation west and north of Yerba Buena Cove, from the summit of which the arrival of ships off the Golden Gate was signaled to the town in the valley and along the beach. Sometimes as many as half a dozen Chileno women used the same rude shelter, receiving their visitors singly or en suite, with no regard whatever for privacy, and no furniture excepting a wash-bowl and a few dilapidated cots or straw pallets. A few made pretense of operating wash-houses, but there were scarcely any who did not devote the nights to bawdy carousal and to sexual excesses and exhibitions. And the days, also, if there was opportunity. Many of the men who had brought them to California had gone on to the gold-fields, but others had remained in San Francisco, where they dwelt promiscuously with the harlots. They lived off the earnings of the women and what they could steal from the men who frequented the district. They also operated a few small, crooked gambling houses.

During the first six months of 1850 approximately two thousand women, most of whom were harlots also, arrived in San Francisco from France and other European countries and from the Eastern and Southern cities of the United States, principally New York and New Orleans. Thereafter they came on every ship, and within a few years San Francisco possessed a red-light district that was larger than those of many cities several times its size. Moreover, it was at least as cosmopolitan as the remainder of the population; it has been said that by the end of 1852 there was San Francisco by at least one prostitute.

San Francisco, California, 1849.

In October 1850 the Pacific News announced that nine hundred more women of the French demi-monde, carefully chosen from the bagnios of Paris and Marseilles for their beauty, amiability, and skill, were expected, and in the same issue delicately informed its readers that in the mines Indian women were available "at reasonable prices.” Unfortunately only fifty of the French women arrived, but that was a sufficient number to cause considerable commotion among the miners, who were naturally eager to determine for themselves if the ladies were as adept in the practice of their profession as was popularly supposed.

Most of these accomplished courtesans were attended by their pimps, whom they called macquereaux, a designation which the forthright San Franciscans soon shortened to "macks.” These unsavory gentry are still so called in San Francisco, although the red-light district was officially abolished some twenty years ago, and the city now, of course, has no prostitutes.

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Photo Art - Images include collages, photographs with with watercolor and poster effects, colorized black & white photos, and digital enhancements to improve the composition of the finished product. The vast majority of the original photographs were taken during Legends of America's travels; however, a few are enhanced vintage photographs. Artwork by Kathy Weiser-Alexander.