Taming Wild Girls: The Midnight Mission and the Campaign to Reform Philadelphia’s Moral Fabric, 1915-1918

Abstract

Fearful of what they believed to be rampant working-class sexuality, which they associated with prostitution, and convinced that the root of sexual vice lay not with those men who pursued and purchased the services of prostitutes but rather with the prostitutes themselves, Progressive reformers launched a campaign to rid the streets of those who they believed peddled disease and immorality. Police raided suspected brothels, closely monitored dance halls, and questioned unescorted (and occasionally escorted) women in public spaces all in an effort to protect the decent, moral public from those willing to offer their very bodies for money.