Speaker 1: School of Humans. Do you guys want to hear some
Speaker 1: podcasts tea, So, well, you're gonna hear it whether or
Speaker 1: not you want it. If you don't want to, fast
Speaker 1: forward like a minute and a half and the episodes
Speaker 1: will start. But we had to update the American Filth
Speaker 1: Podcast description because it said things like fuck boy and
Speaker 1: cox and anal And apparently I didn't realize this, but
Speaker 1: the podcast auto populates on some news websites and so
Speaker 1: they were getting we were getting complaints that they're just like,
Speaker 1: oh god, we just just says fuck boy on our website. Whoopsies.
Speaker 1: So we updated the description because the thing is, I
Speaker 1: love I love filthy stuff, and I really appreciate all
Speaker 1: of y'all who are listening who like filthy stuff. But
Speaker 1: I also understand maybe it's not polite to just, you know,
Speaker 1: assault unsuspecting website perusers with words like cocks. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're trying to enjoy their Wednesday or whatever. So
Speaker 1: we updated the description, but don't worry, the spirit of
Speaker 1: the podcast remains the same. And so this is episode six.
Speaker 1: I think something that's fun about this is this is
Speaker 1: another episode about boats, and for anyone who is perhaps
Speaker 1: a little bit more historically rigorous than I am. There
Speaker 1: might be some good fodder to look at this trend
Speaker 1: of the the intersection of filthiness and boats, because it
Speaker 1: seems like things are happening on boats, like what is
Speaker 1: up with boats? Like maybe it's more of a psychological
Speaker 1: study or something, but we got there's some there's something
Speaker 1: up with boats. I think. Here's another historical theory that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pause. It that maybe if people with Wieners
Speaker 1: had ever understood that they could, you know, control their horniness,
Speaker 1: maybe fewer people would have been oppressed. This is that's
Speaker 1: a huge theory, I know, but this is an episode
Speaker 1: about how a lot of women got displaced because dudes
Speaker 1: were too horny and they were like a gain, do
Speaker 1: nothing about it anyway, Thanks for listening. Let's just get
Speaker 1: into the episode. Imagine you're a bird flying over the
Speaker 1: Ohio River in eighteen sixty three. Are you there? Are
Speaker 1: you a bird? When you hear in the distance the
Speaker 1: sound of a man complaining, I'm a man and I'm complaining. Complaint, complaint, complaint.
Speaker 1: You love getting in other people's business, so you swoop
Speaker 1: down closer and closer until you finally make out what
Speaker 1: he's saying. He whinds, what are these motherfucking hoes doing
Speaker 1: on this mother fucking boat. Yeah, it's not a direct quote,
Speaker 1: but also it could have been. We don't know. The
Speaker 1: entirety of human history is not recorded. But that is
Speaker 1: exactly what Samuel L. Jackson would have said if he
Speaker 1: was cast in a movie about the captain of a
Speaker 1: ship called the Ida in eighteen sixty three. It's a
Speaker 1: brand spanking new steamboat, captain by a man named John Newcombe.
Speaker 1: This boat is supposed to help people travel down the
Speaker 1: Ohio and Cumberland Rivers. It's supposed to make John Newcombe
Speaker 1: so much money. It's supposed to be a good god
Speaker 1: fearing vessel for good god fearing people. But unfortunately for
Speaker 1: mister Newcomb, the Union Army had ordered him to put
Speaker 1: on board his ship the most unwelcome of cargo. It's
Speaker 1: his ships made in voyage, and on board are about
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten sex workers from the streets of Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And on today's episode of American Filth, how all these
Speaker 1: ladies got on that boat? This is American Filth, and
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you
Speaker 1: a filthy story from American history in today's episode, Vicious
Speaker 1: White Women. Okay, guys, it's the nineteenth century, it's the
Speaker 1: Civil War, it's America. We're going down to Tennessee. Now
Speaker 1: Tennessee it was the last state to join the Confederacy,
Speaker 1: but then Nashville. It was taken back by the Union
Speaker 1: in February of eighteen sixty two. The man in charge
Speaker 1: at the time of the army was General William Rosecrans,
Speaker 1: or as he was called Old Rosie. He was one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful men in the army and he
Speaker 1: was a tough dude. Unlike other generals. He liked to
Speaker 1: get up into the guts of the battle. And for him,
Speaker 1: Nashville that's a great place to have the Union Army
Speaker 1: as access to water, trains, infrastructure is a good place
Speaker 1: to train troops on the Western Front. But he didn't
Speaker 1: think about one issue. Most of the Union soldiers at
Speaker 1: the time were like eighteen to twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: They were away from their families for the first time,
Speaker 1: ready to have some fun, doing some war, doing some drinking,
Speaker 1: and doing some sex. There was a huge demand for banging,
Speaker 1: and lucky for the boys, there was an influx of supply.
Speaker 1: To put it into perspective, before the Civil War, Nashville
Speaker 1: had about two hundred prostitutes, but once the Union Army
Speaker 1: was there, there was more than fifteen hundred of them.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason for that was that during
Speaker 1: the Civil War a lot of women couldn't make enough
Speaker 1: money to support themselves. Basic goods were getting super expensive,
Speaker 1: and then their husbands and their dad's war salaries were
Speaker 1: pretty low, so they had to take on jobs like sewing,
Speaker 1: but then that wasn't bringing in enough cash, so some
Speaker 1: of them, as a side hustle, took up prostitution. And
Speaker 1: a lot of these women are coming to Nashville because
Speaker 1: they know that's where the soldiers are, and then they're
Speaker 1: all pouring into one small part of the city, Smokey Row.
Speaker 1: Smokey Row was an area about two blocks wide and
Speaker 1: four blocks long. I think even before the Civil War
Speaker 1: this was a place to go and have a good time.
Speaker 1: Most of the women who worked here were poor white women,
Speaker 1: usually about thirty years old, usually widowed with kids, living
Speaker 1: just above the poverty line in a small apartment. But
Speaker 1: there were also some very fancy body houses or parlor
Speaker 1: houses or houses of ill fame and the ill repute,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them. One was run by
Speaker 1: sisters Eliza and Rebecca Higgins. They had seventeen prostitutes working
Speaker 1: for them in the house, which was worth a whopping
Speaker 1: at twenty four thousand dollars. But the richest Madam of
Speaker 1: Smokey Row was Martha Reader. She was actually one of
Speaker 1: the richest people in Nashville before the war. She had
Speaker 1: about fifteen thousand dollars in personal money. Strong independent women
Speaker 1: who were also pems. So then during the war, these
Speaker 1: streets of Smokey Row, they were packed out, ladies hanging loose,
Speaker 1: and various states of undress, ready to make a real
Speaker 1: Union soldier out of you. One Union soldier said, there
Speaker 1: was an old saying that no man could be a
Speaker 1: soldier unless he had gone through Smokey Row. Women had
Speaker 1: no thought of dress or decency. They say Smokey Row
Speaker 1: killed more soldiers than the war. I mean that's not
Speaker 1: exactly true, but it did cause some serious problems. Like
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, about seventeen percent of Union soldiers got injured,
Speaker 1: but in the sheets eight percent of soldiers got syphilis
Speaker 1: and gonnerrhea. And yet it wouldn't always kill you, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't good, you know. And at the time, really
Speaker 1: the only treatment for these diseases was mercury, and that
Speaker 1: always put dudes in retrograde, making them totally useless on
Speaker 1: the battlefield. That gave rise to this fun expression, A
Speaker 1: night with venus, a lifetime with mercury. And now so
Speaker 1: many soldiers were getting messed up with ScDs in Nashville
Speaker 1: that it was becoming a state of emergency in US
Speaker 1: Major General Rose Kranz. He was pissed. He was pissed
Speaker 1: about the STDs. He was pissed about the lack of morality,
Speaker 1: and he was pissed about losing soldiers on the battlefield
Speaker 1: to frivolity. And so he got to thinking, and he
Speaker 1: was like, well, there is literally no way I can
Speaker 1: get these horny boys to stop visiting the ladies at
Speaker 1: houses of ill repute. So I guess we gotta get
Speaker 1: rid of the ladies. Duh, You can't do anything about
Speaker 1: a man's wien or can you nothing? Oh? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he went about getting these ladies of the night out
Speaker 1: of Nashville. The first big push to get them out
Speaker 1: of the city was in the winter of eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: hundreds of the women on Smokey Row were gathered up.
Speaker 1: As one Union captain wrote, they were compelled to leave,
Speaker 1: and they were put on a train and sent up
Speaker 1: to Louisville under guard so they couldn't escape. But the
Speaker 1: thing is this problem wasn't unique to Nashville, so when
Speaker 1: they got to Louisville, the officials there were like, what,
Speaker 1: we don't want your harlots. We have plenty of them already.
Speaker 1: But because it was under Old Rosie, they eventually came
Speaker 1: around to it. I guess they were also compelled, and
Speaker 1: so very temporarily the sex work problem in Nashville was solved.
Speaker 1: One Union captain wrote, Nashville was afterward all the happier
Speaker 1: and better off for their conspicuous absence. This guy sounds
Speaker 1: like a fun time and old Rosie I can imagine
Speaker 1: at the time he was like, yes, go me, I
Speaker 1: did it. I got the prostitutes out of Nashville. I
Speaker 1: am a genius. The problem was that soon after these
Speaker 1: women were deported, they all came hustling back. Because the
Speaker 1: thing about trains, they go both ways, and the problem
Speaker 1: was just as bad as bo So Old Rosie he
Speaker 1: enlisted Nashville Provost Marshall George Spalding, a former school teacher,
Speaker 1: a man filled with duty to deal with it. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back after these soothing ads. Nashville Provost Marshall
Speaker 1: George Spalding was a former school teacher, and he was
Speaker 1: to become the great hope to General Rosecrans to deal
Speaker 1: with all these dang prostitutes of Nashville. Rosecrans commanded him
Speaker 1: to deal with the problem in July eighteen sixty three, writing,
Speaker 1: without loss of time, sees and transport to Louisville all
Speaker 1: prostitutes found in this city known to be here, because
Speaker 1: you guys know what the solution to a problem is,
Speaker 1: just do the same thing that you did before that failed.
Speaker 1: So Spalding made a plan. He was like, well, we
Speaker 1: already tried to get these gals out of town on
Speaker 1: a train. Well what about this time we put them
Speaker 1: on a boat. And the boat he intended to use
Speaker 1: for this plan was a brand spanking new steamboat belonging
Speaker 1: to John Newcombe, the Idaho. Faulding was like, Hey, as
Speaker 1: ordered by General Rosecrans, We're going to commandeer your vessel
Speaker 1: to get some of these hose out of Nashville. A
Speaker 1: Newcomb was like, hey, that's a terrible idea for me,
Speaker 1: because this is a new boat and if you put
Speaker 1: some hose on it, no one will want to get
Speaker 1: on my boat ever again, because it has very bad vibes.
Speaker 1: And Spalding was like, well, no worry about it. We're
Speaker 1: going to compensate you for your troubles, and I am
Speaker 1: sure that the reputation shall not be tarnished. Spoiler Spalding
Speaker 1: technically never pays him, and the boat's reputation was in
Speaker 1: fact quite tarnished. So Spalding enacted his plan. He began
Speaker 1: gathering up some of the most notorious sex workers and
Speaker 1: putting them on the ship. They rounded up one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten people in total. We know that of the
Speaker 1: women on board, all the ones they rounded up were white.
Speaker 1: Some of them indeed had venereal diseases. There's even a
Speaker 1: few children. Very neat I love war. Some of the
Speaker 1: women did resist. The Nashville Daily Press reported that one
Speaker 1: woman called it one of the most notorious cyprians. She
Speaker 1: quickly married a dude to quote unquote some scamp, hoping
Speaker 1: that this marriage would get her out of being boted away.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately that didn't stop Spalding. His men still forced her
Speaker 1: to get on that boat. As the article said, she
Speaker 1: is on her way to banishment. On July eighth, eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty three, Captain Newcomb got the notice that was time
Speaker 1: for him to leave. It said to the captain of
Speaker 1: the steamer Idaho, you are hereby directed to proceed to Louisville, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: with the one hundred passengers put on board your steamer today,
Speaker 1: allowing none to leave the boat before reaching Louisville. So
Speaker 1: Captain John Newcomb and his crew of three set sail
Speaker 1: as a bunch of Nashvillians waved it away, saying good
Speaker 1: riddance to these ladies of ill repute. The Idaho cruised
Speaker 1: up the Cumberland and Ohio Rivers to their destination. They
Speaker 1: were supposed to reach Louisville in five days, and indeed,
Speaker 1: just like he thought, havoc ensued. Newspaper articles described people
Speaker 1: on the side of the river laughing at the boat,
Speaker 1: and men swimming over to the boat to try to
Speaker 1: get a piece of tail, and it didn't help, but
Speaker 1: the women on board were encouraging it. But just like
Speaker 1: last time, the thing about having a boat filled with
Speaker 1: prostitutes who you intend to dump in another city. Is
Speaker 1: that the other city will figure that out and be
Speaker 1: like we don't want your prostitutes. We already have our own.
Speaker 1: You already tried this once Nashville. We're not gonna let
Speaker 1: it happen again. When the Idaho arrived in Louisville, none
Speaker 1: of the women were allowed to get off the boat.
Speaker 1: The Union Army officers stationed there were like, no, thank you,
Speaker 1: and the general in charge of the army there was like,
Speaker 1: get out of here. I will not take your cargo.
Speaker 1: He placed some military guards on the boat and was
Speaker 1: like go to Cincinnati, and Newcombe was probably like fuck.
Speaker 1: The women on board were also pissed. A few of
Speaker 1: them snuck off the boat and swam to the shore.
Speaker 1: A lot of those women then ended up in jail
Speaker 1: in Louisville, but they were allowed to leave and they
Speaker 1: were given one free ticket on a train back to Nashville.
Speaker 1: Now they're headed to Cincinnati, and the supplies on the
Speaker 1: boat had run out. Remember they were only supposed to
Speaker 1: be on the boat for five days and now they're
Speaker 1: just sailing to another city. Once Newcomb got the boat
Speaker 1: over to Cincinnati, they were just like, you can't even
Speaker 1: dock here, go across the river to Kentucky and just wait.
Speaker 1: I hate being told I have to wait in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: So Captain Newcombe his crew of three, the sex workers
Speaker 1: who hadn't escaped, and then the guards from Louisville, they
Speaker 1: just have to wait on that boat and they're there
Speaker 1: for thirteen days. Thirteen days off the shore of Kentucky
Speaker 1: sounds like the worst country song you've ever heard. At
Speaker 1: this point, none of the women were able to get
Speaker 1: off the ship, and some of them were just like
Speaker 1: fed the fuck up. A newspaper called The Cleveland Morning
Speaker 1: Leader wrote, the majority are a homely, forlorn set of
Speaker 1: degraded creatures. Having been hurried on the boats by a
Speaker 1: military guard. Many are without a change of wardrobe. They
Speaker 1: managed to smuggle a little liquor on board. Several became
Speaker 1: intoxicated and indulged in a free fight, which resulted without
Speaker 1: material damage to any property, although knives were used freely.
Speaker 1: What just knife fights on the ship. There's not enough food.
Speaker 1: A lot of them need medication because of their diseases,
Speaker 1: so now Captain Newcomb has to go out of pocket
Speaker 1: to provide that for them, and some of them were
Speaker 1: so frustrated that apparently some of them were yelling off
Speaker 1: of the side of the boat to try to get
Speaker 1: Confederate forces to help them escape. So again everyone's pissed.
Speaker 1: It's also July, so it's probably hot as fuck. No Column,
Speaker 1: his crew, the women, they've been on the worst carnival
Speaker 1: cruise for stranded. They've run out of supplies. Ninety eight
Speaker 1: women and six children remain on board, underguard from the
Speaker 1: Louisville soldiers to make sure they don't get off the boat.
Speaker 1: But then finally newcomb gets in order, and it's really
Speaker 1: annoying because basically it's like, hey, we've realized this was
Speaker 1: a bad idea, so just come back to Nashville and
Speaker 1: get back here quick because we got even bigger river
Speaker 1: fish to fry. Because the thing is. Spaulding and his
Speaker 1: crew had rounded up all these sex workers, but there
Speaker 1: were plenty of other people to take their places, especially
Speaker 1: black women, which the union army liked even less. Here's
Speaker 1: what the Nashville Daily Union wrote, This sudden expatriation of
Speaker 1: hundreds of vicious white women will only make room for
Speaker 1: an equal number of black strumpets. Another Nashville newspaper said,
Speaker 1: so bare face are these black prostitutes. They parade the
Speaker 1: streets and even the public squares day and night. So
Speaker 1: the Idaho sales back down the river, and by August
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three, twenty eight days after it had departed,
Speaker 1: these vicious white women were back in Nashville, and Newcomb's
Speaker 1: pissed because the journey whist for nothing and his boat
Speaker 1: is messed up. When they dock, one of General Rosecran's
Speaker 1: men did an inspection of the Idaho, and in his report,
Speaker 1: what he said was that the ship had been badly damaged,
Speaker 1: the mattresses badly soiled. To cover all the expenses, including
Speaker 1: the medicine and food that Newcomb had to get out
Speaker 1: of pocket, the guy recommended that he'd be paid fifty
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars. But whatever, that's so boring. Who cares
Speaker 1: about that in a time like this. George Balding was like,
Speaker 1: this dude is so annoying. Who cares we had to
Speaker 1: use your boat? I have bigger issues, like figuring out
Speaker 1: what to do with these prostitutes, because now we have
Speaker 1: even more than what we started with. Old Rosie is
Speaker 1: gonna be so mad at me. So what did George
Speaker 1: Spalding do an unprecedented action. He was like, our boys
Speaker 1: won't stop visiting Smokey Row, and we can't get the
Speaker 1: ladies out of Nashville, so instead, let's regulate it. That's right,
Speaker 1: Spalding made prostitution legal in Nashville. Basically, how it worked
Speaker 1: is that every sex worker had to have a license.
Speaker 1: It costs five dollars, and to keep it, they had
Speaker 1: to see a union doctor every couple of weeks to
Speaker 1: make sure they didn't have any diseases, and then the
Speaker 1: ladies would be charged in additional fifty cents for those visits.
Speaker 1: If a sex worker did have a disease, she was
Speaker 1: then sent to a military hospital to be treated. And
Speaker 1: these hospitals were nice. They had a living room, they
Speaker 1: had nice beds, they had a cook, and a woman
Speaker 1: couldn't leave until she was perfectly cured. One doctor described
Speaker 1: one of these hospitals as a house in a secluded
Speaker 1: part of town with upper rooms obtaining good light. The
Speaker 1: women to be examined enter a reception room which is
Speaker 1: comfortably furnished and in cold or disagreeable weather, well heated.
Speaker 1: They pass in time from this apartment to an adjoining
Speaker 1: room in which there is a bed, a table, and
Speaker 1: all the necessary appliances for examining them. Some of these
Speaker 1: hospitals even treated black sex workers, which is one of
Speaker 1: the first times in the US that medical care was desegregated.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, the soldiers would also get punished, like if
Speaker 1: they visited an unlicensed sex worker, it was thirty days
Speaker 1: in jail, but then the sex worker would also have
Speaker 1: to spend thirty days in jail. Whatever. And basically through
Speaker 1: this program it took like six thousand dollars to operate,
Speaker 1: and that's how much money they made off of the
Speaker 1: sex workers for the licenses. So just like paying for itself.
Speaker 1: What is this? Is this like public healthcare? That's crazy?
Speaker 1: It works. No, it's better for everyone. No, stop it.
Speaker 1: And less than a year after this licensing program started,
Speaker 1: the number of STD cases dropped dramatically. The Surgeon General
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, this is doing pretty good. He said.
Speaker 1: Under these regulations, a marked improvement was speedily noticed in
Speaker 1: the manner and appearance of the women. When the inspections
Speaker 1: were first in forced. Many were exceedingly filthy in their
Speaker 1: person in apparel and obscene in their language, but This
Speaker 1: soon gave way to cleanliness and propriety that it was a
Speaker 1: great success. But unfortunately for Spalding it this did lead
Speaker 1: to an influx of sex workers in Nashville because they're like, damn,
Speaker 1: they really treat you well in Nashville, and I can
Speaker 1: go see a doctor. But then the thing is the
Speaker 1: war ended, and they're just like, hey, even though this
Speaker 1: program works really well and keeps everyone safe, let's just
Speaker 1: not do it anymore. That was just like a silly
Speaker 1: war thing. We're not gonna license sex workers. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna care about people's welfare, we're not gonna care about
Speaker 1: the public bi So they abolish it. No more licenses,
Speaker 1: no more regulation, and that was the end of legal
Speaker 1: prostitution in Nashville. And now this whole time while prostitution
Speaker 1: was legal in Nashville, Captain Newcombe of the Idaho is
Speaker 1: in a big old tizzy because this whole time he
Speaker 1: hasn't been reimbursed. It had been two years since he
Speaker 1: had had those hundred vicious white women on his boat,
Speaker 1: and still nothing. He was so frustrated that eventually he
Speaker 1: went over the head of Spalding an old rosy directly
Speaker 1: to the Secretary of War. He was finally like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should probably reimburse you. Newcomb got six thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: But even with that, sure it could pay for the
Speaker 1: damage down on his boat, but it could never repay
Speaker 1: the damage that had been done to its reputation. It
Speaker 1: never again cruised down the rivers of the southeastern United States.
Speaker 1: Newcombe said, I told them it would forever ruin her
Speaker 1: reputation as a passenger boat. It was done, so she
Speaker 1: has now and since known as the floating Whorehouse. Every
Speaker 1: episode on American Filth we learn a lesson, and I
Speaker 1: think the lesson that we learn here is that you
Speaker 1: should never get a boat that can fit a lot
Speaker 1: of people on it. Otherwise people are going to ask
Speaker 1: you to borrow it and you'll never be able to
Speaker 1: use your boat again. American Filth is a production of
Speaker 1: School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This episode was hosted, written,
Speaker 1: and scored by Me Gabby Watts. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Jesse Niswanger and Me. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock,
Speaker 1: and our executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Virginia Prescott, and
Speaker 1: Brandon Bark. Thanks so much for listening. Please like, subscribe, review, etc.
Speaker 1: The pod wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also
Speaker 1: follow along with the show on Instagram at American Filth Pod.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. Talk at you next time.
Speaker 1: School of Humans