Washington D.C. Whore, etc.

“

Murder Bay View of Red Light District on C. Street, N.W., near 13th, with Griffin Veatch, who was showing me around. No. 6 Special Messenger Service, 1223 New York Ave., N.W.; he lives 1643 Cramer St., N.E. He said he commenced the messenger service at 11 yrs. old. Has worked all night a couple of years, and now works until 10 P.M. Is known to Truant Officers. Family has had trouble with him. Says he is 17 but doesn’t look it. Quite profane, but (apparently) not very wise about this district although he says he goes to these houses occasionally. Location: Washington (D.C.), District of Columbia. (Library of Congress) Illustration of a perceived scenario of sexual misconduct in 1883 Tommy "Mann Act" Mann sent this delicious retrospective that he titled "Some things never change."  Actually they do change, a little.  Today, more often than not, it would be a male page sitting on Mr. Representative's lap.  And, there are no longer "close to 100 houses of prostitution" just east of the White House. Only 10, or so. The article itself is about an area of D.C. once called the "Murder Bay;" a 'hood with all the tone and tenor of Jack the Ripper London. Then the streets were unpaved, except certain of the principal thoroughfares; the houses were for the most part mean and straggling, while the moral atmosphere was almost in accord with the condition of the town itself. Gambling establishments, some of the highest order, and descending by gradations to dens of the lowest character, where life itself was frequently sacrificed on the turning of a card. Thieves and unprincipled men and women, as ready to cut a throat as pick a pocket, flourished and walked the streets in certain sections in open daylight, while at night they frequented the haunts of vice and selected their victims from among the unsophisticated without fear of law or justice. In those sections it was unsafe for any one with the slightest appearance of respectability to enter after nightfall. There were, of course, the respectable sections, and numbers of people lived here and mingled in society who knew little or nothing of the darker localities, except as they were brough to their attention through the newspapers; but to the people who saw down-town life, as it may be termed, after the town was buried in darkness, except for the straggling rays from dim street lamps or the light from the saloons and gambling places, Washington was a wild and weird place.    I've been around D.C. all of my life, sometimes, and never heard of Murder Bay.  I know about Bloody Point on the Cheasapeke, but not this.   Horry Clap.  I can find no mention of why Bloody Point os called Bloody Point.  Now I'll have to do that work too.  Stay tuned. Sheesh. Full Murder Bay

”