1754

Madam Dell Bawdy Token

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Exonumia - Tokens Start Price:50.00 USD Estimated At:100.00 - 500.00 USD
Madam Dell Bawdy Token
SOLD
275.00USD+ (53.63) buyer's premium + applicable fees & taxes.
This item SOLD at 2014 Sep 15 @ 11:00UTC-7 : PDT/MST
If you want to see an enlarged image, click on the thumbnail image in the lower left of the main image.
You can download a higher resolution image by clicking on the title below the enlarged image.
You can request extra images to be added by contacting HWAC at uwe@fhwac.com or by calling 775-851-1859
A nineteenth-century Chicagoan looking for a prostitute could easily find one in any of the city's wide-open vice districts. Like gambling, brothels and streetwalkers clustered in selected areas, partly because they were convenient for customers, but mainly because of selective law enforcement. Public officials and many private citizens viewed prostitution as a necessary evil that should be segregated into a few poor neighborhoods to protect the rest of Chicago. When Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., ordered the police to clean up one section of crime and prostitution at South Clark Street because prostitutes were visible from a new trolley line in 1903, That left the newer Levee as the place to go for wild entertainment.
The lowest part of the Levee was “Bed Bug Row.” It was a group of 25 cent brothels mostly occupied by black girls. The section was at least as bad as the cribs of New Orleans or the cow-yards of San Francisco. It had gangs of panderers and white-slavers, classes in which young girls were taught various methods of perversions. It also provided entertainers for stag parties. Bed Bug Row was located between Dearborn and Federal and 19th and Archer. Armour Avenue was its main thoroughfare.
Armour Avenue ran through the heart of Bed Bug Road. Madame Dell was working at 2008 Armour Avenue. (Today Armour Avenue is called Federal Street and 2008 does not exist.) Madame Dell (who seems to have been lost to history) must have run one of those low-end Houses. In our history of running over 150 brothel tokens this company has never seen one of these. [http://chicagology.com/, http://www.npr.org/]
City: ChicagoCounty: State: ILDate: c1905