Abstract
In addition to her brothel, Robinson owned her personal residence next door, as well as other property throughout the city. In 1874, after operating her brothel for over eight years and accumulating over eighty arrests on charges of keeping a house of ill fame, she announced her retirement and sold the brothel's contents at public auction. A woman of more than ordinary ability, she remained in the city, actively pursuing her real estate interests.1 Robinson appears to fit one of the stock roles in the history of Victorian prostitution: the shrewd madam who saved her earnings, invested wisely, and retired to a life of comfort. Few women took this career path, but authorities disagree over whether the typical prostitute died in misery or returned to respectability. Sanger, drawing on his pre-Civil War survey of 2,000 New York prostitutes, argued that women entered prostitution in fashionable brothels and proceeded through a series of progressively shabbier
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