Nevada is the only U.S. state where prostitution is legally permitted in some form. Prostitution is legal in 10 of Nevada's 17 counties, although only six allow it in every municipality. Six counties have at least one active brothel, which mainly operate in isolated, rural areas. The state's most populated counties, Clark and Washoe, are among those that do not permit prostitution. It is also illegal in Nevada's capital, Carson City, an independent city.
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub parlours, studios, or by some other description. Sex work in a brothel is considered safer than street prostitution.
Betty Jean O'Hara was a famed prostitute in Honolulu's "vice district" during World War II.
Baltimore's The Block is a stretch on the 400 block of East Baltimore Street in Baltimore, Maryland, containing several strip clubs, sex shops, and other adult entertainment merchants. During the 19th century, Baltimore was filled with brothels, and in the first half of the 20th century, it was famous for its burlesque houses. It was a noted starting point and stop-over for many noted burlesque dancers, including the likes of Blaze Starr.
The Levee District was the red-light district of Chicago from the 1880s until 1912, when police raids shut it down. The district, like many frontier town red-light districts, got its name from its proximity to wharves in the city. The Levee district encompassed four blocks in Chicago's South Loop area, between 18th and 22nd streets. It was home to many brothels, saloons, dance halls, and the famed Everleigh Club. Prostitution boomed in the Levee District, and it was not until the Chicago Vice Commission submitted a report on the city's vice districts that it was shut down.
Pearl "Polly" Adler was an American madam and author, best known for her work A House Is Not a Home, which was posthumously adapted into a film of the same name. In 2021, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Debby Applegate published a comprehensive account of Adler's life and times entitled Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age with Doubleday.
Julia Brown was an American madam and prostitute active in mid-nineteenth century New York City. Brown has been described as "the best-known prostitute in antebellum America". Brown was known for playing the piano in her brothel and for being a guest at functions hosted by the best families in New York. She also had season ticket to two theaters, paid for pews in various churches and contributed generously to local bible societies. She became a popular subject of tourist guidebooks, and her name appears often in diaries from the period.
Adeline Miller, alias Adeline Furman, was an American madam and prostitute. According to her contemporary George Templeton Strong, Miller was active in New York City prostitution from the late 1810s. By 1821, she was running a brothel on Church Street, where she had accumulated personal effects worth at least $500.
Prostitution is illegal in the vast majority of the United States as a result of state laws rather than federal laws. It is, however, legal in some rural counties within the state of Nevada. Additionally, it is decriminalized in the state of Maine. Prostitution nevertheless occurs elsewhere in the country.
Prostitution in Ireland is legal. However, since March 2017, it has been an offence to buy sex. Third party involvement is also illegal. Since the law that criminalises clients came into being, with the purpose of reducing the demand for prostitution, the number of prosecutions for the purchase of sex increased from 10 to 92 between 2018 and 2020. In a report from UCD's Sexual Exploitation Research Programme the development is called ”a promising start in interrupting the demand for prostitution.”
Procuring, pimping, or pandering is the facilitation or provision of a prostitute or other sex worker in the arrangement of a sex act with a customer. A procurer, colloquially called a pimp or a madam or a brothel keeper, is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The procurer may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing and possibly monopolizing a location where the prostitute may solicit clients. Like prostitution, the legality of certain actions of a madam or a pimp vary from one region to the next.
Helen Jewett was an American prostitute in New York City who was brutally murdered. One of her regular clients, Richard P. Robinson, was tried and sensationally acquitted of her murder. Jewett's murder and Robinson's subsequent trial was one of the first sex scandals to receive detailed press reporting, notably in the New York Herald. Public opinion was divided between those who felt that Jewett had deserved her fate, and others claiming that Robinson had escaped justice through powerful connections.
Mattie Silks, or Martha Ready, was a prostitute and leading madam in the late 19th century American West.
Lulu White was a brothel madam, procuress and entrepreneur in New Orleans, Louisiana during the Storyville period. An eccentric figure, she was noted for her love of jewelry, her many failed business ventures, and her criminal record that extended in New Orleans as far back as 1880.
Mame Faye, born Mary Alice Faye, was a madam from Troy, New York. She ran a brothel at 1725 6th Avenue in the heart of the red-light district, which was known as The Line, from approximately 1906 to 1941. Her clients included politicians, factory workers and military men.
Josie Arlington was a brothel madam in the Storyville district of New Orleans, Louisiana. Arlington started her life as a prostitute at 17–18 years old as a means to support her family. Arlington used her experience to open a brothel in 1890, which she named "Chateau Lobrano d'Arlington". Shortly after Storyville was established as the red-light district for New Orleans, Arlington moved her business into this area. After her building was destroyed by fire in 1905 she moved her business into a saloon owned by Tom Anderson, which was known as 'The Arlington Annex'. Josie retired from the business in 1909 and sold her assets off to Tom Anderson. Arlington died in 1913 and was buried in Metairie Cemetery, where her grave had to be moved because it had become such a tourist attraction.
Dora Noyce was a Scottish brothel keeper ("madam") based in Edinburgh.
Jane Augusta Blankman, better known as Fanny White, was one of the most successful courtesans of ante-bellum New York City. Known for her beauty, wit, and business acumen, White accumulated a significant fortune over the course of her career, married a middle-class lawyer in her thirties, and died suddenly a year later. Rumors that White had been poisoned caused a public outcry, which forced an inquest into her death.
The Dumas Brothel was a brothel in Butte, Montana. The brothel was founded by French Canadian brothers Joseph and Arthur Nadeau in 1890 and named after the nominal owner, Delia Nadeau, née Dumas, who was Joseph's wife. It grew considerably through the years, with the miners employed by the city's copper mines often patronizing the establishment. After several changes of the "madams" and continuing pressure from authorities, the brothel closed in 1982, described as "a rare, intact commentary on social history". At the time of its closure, it was the longest operating brothel in the United States, having operated years after prostitution was made illegal. After closing, the brothel changed hands several times, eventually becoming a tourist attraction owned and managed by a series of Butte residents.
Young black women of the Harlem Renaissance lived with uncertainty of their rights and their roles at a time in which women began to question their sexuality in fear of facing the scrutiny. The women of Harlem began questioning their equal rights and freedom of sexual expression. One occupation that flourished was prostitution. In the early 1900s, New York City thrived with prostitution. Amidst the artistic spectrum of the Harlem Renaissance, the occupation of prostitution created an underlying tension for African American women and their right to solicit their bodies for profit. Preceding World War One, American ideology of sexuality was restrained by religion and denial. Sex was a private matter and was deemed taboo outside of procreation. Idealized notions of the sexual union, however, made non-procreative sex lustful and demeaning. This way of thinking immediately pushes prostitution into the spectrum of being a sinful act and portraying the act in a demeaning manner.
