Speaker 1: School of Humans. Do you guys want to hear some podcasts? Tea? So, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear it whether or not you want it.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to, fast forward like a minute
Speaker 1: and a half and the episodes will start. But we
Speaker 1: had to update the American Filth Podcast description because it
Speaker 1: said things like fuck boy and cox and anal and
Speaker 1: apparently I didn't realize this, but the podcast auto populates
Speaker 1: on some news websites and so they were getting We're
Speaker 1: getting complaints that they're just like, oh god, we just
Speaker 1: just says fuck boy on our website. Whoopsies. So we
Speaker 1: updated the description because the thing is, I love I
Speaker 1: love filthy stuff, and I really appreciate all of y'all
Speaker 1: who are listening who like filthy stuff. But I also
Speaker 1: understand maybe it's not polite to just, you know, assault
Speaker 1: unsuspecting website perusers with words like cooks. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: they're trying to enjoy their winsday or whatever. So we
Speaker 1: updated the description, but don't worry, the spirit of the
Speaker 1: 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're a gain and do nothing
Speaker 1: about it. Anyway, Thanks for listening. Let's just get into
Speaker 1: the episode. Imagine you're a bird flying over the Ohio
Speaker 1: River in eighteen sixty three. Are you there? Are you
Speaker 1: a bird? When you hear in the distance the sound
Speaker 1: 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 Idea 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 ship's 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 stay 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
Speaker 1: banging and lucky for the boys, there was an influx
Speaker 1: of supply. To put it into perspective, before the Civil War,
Speaker 1: Nashville had about two hundred prostitutes, but once the Union
Speaker 1: Army 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, and even before the Civil War, this
Speaker 1: 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 ill repute, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call them. One was run by sisters
Speaker 1: Eliza and Rebecca Higgins. They had seventeen prostitutes working for
Speaker 1: them in the house, which was worth a whopping at
Speaker 1: twenty four thousand dollars. But the richest Madam of Smokey
Speaker 1: Row was Martha Reader. She was actually one of the
Speaker 1: richest people in Nashville before the war. She had about
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars in personal money. Strong independent women who
Speaker 1: were also pemps. So then during the war, these streets
Speaker 1: 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 killed
Speaker 1: more soldiers than the war. I mean that's not exactly true,
Speaker 1: but it did cause some serious problems. Like on the battlefield,
Speaker 1: about seventeen percent of Union soldiers got injured, but in
Speaker 1: the sheets eight percent of soldiers got syphilis and gonnrhea.
Speaker 1: And yet it wouldn't always kill you, but it wasn't good,
Speaker 1: you know. And at the time, really the only treatment
Speaker 1: for these diseases was mercury, and that always put dudes
Speaker 1: in retrograde, making them totally useless on the battlefield. That
Speaker 1: gave rise to this fun expression, A night with venus
Speaker 1: a lifetime with mercury. And now so many soldiers were
Speaker 1: getting messed up with ScDs in Nashville that it was
Speaker 1: becoming a state of emergency, and US Major General Rose
Speaker 1: Kranz pissed. He was pissed about the STDs. He was
Speaker 1: pissed about the lack of morality, and he was pissed
Speaker 1: about losing soldiers on the battlefield to frivolity. And so
Speaker 1: he got to thinking, and he was like, well, there
Speaker 1: is literally no way I can get these horny boys
Speaker 1: to stop visiting the ladies at houses of ill repute.
Speaker 1: So I guess we gotta get rid of the ladies. Duh,
Speaker 1: You can't do anything about a man's wien or can
Speaker 1: you nothing? So yeah, he went about getting these ladies
Speaker 1: of the night out of Nashville. The first big push
Speaker 1: to get them out of the city was in the
Speaker 1: winter of eighteen sixty two hundreds of the women on
Speaker 1: Smokey Row were gathered up. As one Union captain wrote,
Speaker 1: they were compelled to leave, and they were put on
Speaker 1: a train and sent up to Louisville under guard so
Speaker 1: they couldn't escape. But the thing is, this problem wasn't
Speaker 1: unique to Nashville, so when they got to Louisville, the
Speaker 1: officials there were like, what, we don't want your harlots.
Speaker 1: We have plenty of them already. But because it was
Speaker 1: under Old Rosie, they eventually came around to it. I
Speaker 1: guess they were also compelled, and so very temporarily the
Speaker 1: sex work problem in Nashville was solved. One Union captain wrote,
Speaker 1: Nashville was afterward all the happier and better off for
Speaker 1: their conspicuous absence. This guy sounds like a fun time
Speaker 1: and Old Rosie I can imagine at the time he
Speaker 1: was like, yes, go me, I did it. I got
Speaker 1: the prostitutes out of Nashville. I am a genius. The
Speaker 1: problem was that soon after these women were deported, they
Speaker 1: all came hustling back. Because the thing about trains, they
Speaker 1: go both ways, and the problem was just as bad
Speaker 1: as before. So Old Rosie he enlisted Nashville Provost Marshall
Speaker 1: George Spalding, a former school teacher, a man filled with
Speaker 1: duty to deal with it. We'll be right back after
Speaker 1: these soothing ads. Nashville Provost Marshall George Spalding was a
Speaker 1: former school teacher, and he was to become the great
Speaker 1: hope to General Rosecrans to deal with all these dang
Speaker 1: prostitutes of Nashville. Rosecrans commanded him to deal with the
Speaker 1: problem in July eighteen sixty three, writing, without loss of time,
Speaker 1: sees and transport to Louisville all prostitutes found in the
Speaker 1: city known to be here, because you guys, know what
Speaker 1: the solution to a problem is, just do the same
Speaker 1: thing that you did before that failed. So Spalding made
Speaker 1: a plan. He was like, well, we already tried to
Speaker 1: get these gals out of town on the train. Well
Speaker 1: what about this time we put them on a boat.
Speaker 1: And the boat he intended to use for this plan
Speaker 1: was a brand spanking new steamboat belonging to John Newcombe,
Speaker 1: the Idaho. Faulding was like, Hey, as ordered by General Rosecrans,
Speaker 1: We're gonna commandeer your vessel to get some of these
Speaker 1: hose out of Nashville and Newcomb was like, hey, that's
Speaker 1: a terrible idea for me, because this is a new
Speaker 1: boat and if you put some hose on it, no
Speaker 1: one will want to get on my boat ever again,
Speaker 1: because it has very bad vibes. And Spalding was like, well,
Speaker 1: no worry about it. We're gonna compensate you for your troubles,
Speaker 1: and I am sure that the reputation shall not be tarnished.
Speaker 1: Spoiler Spalding technically never pays him, and the boat's reputation
Speaker 1: was in fact quite tarnished. So Spalding enacted his plan.
Speaker 1: He began gathering up some of the most notorious sex
Speaker 1: workers and putting them on the ship. They rounded up
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten people in total. We know that
Speaker 1: of the women on board, all the ones they rounded
Speaker 1: up were white. Some of them indeed had venereal diseases.
Speaker 1: There's even a few children. Very neat I love war.
Speaker 1: Some of the women did resist. The Nashville Daily Press
Speaker 1: reported that one woman called it one of the most
Speaker 1: notorious Cyprians. She quickly married a dude to quote unquote
Speaker 1: some scamp, hoping that this marriage would get her out
Speaker 1: of being voted away. Unfortunately, that didn't stopped Spalding. His
Speaker 1: men still forced her to get on that boat. As
Speaker 1: the article said, she is on her way to banishment.
Speaker 1: On July eighth, eighteen sixty three, Captain Newcomb got the
Speaker 1: notice that it was time for him to leave. It
Speaker 1: said to the captain of the steamer Idaho, you are
Speaker 1: hereby directed to proceed to Louisville, Kentucky, with the one
Speaker 1: hundred passengers put on board your steamer today, allowing none
Speaker 1: to leave the boat before reaching Louisville. So Captain John
Speaker 1: Newcomb and his crew of three set sail as a
Speaker 1: bunch of Nashvillians waved it away, saying good riddance to
Speaker 1: these ladies of ill repute. The Idaho cruised up the
Speaker 1: Cumberland and Ohio Rivers to their destination. They were supposed
Speaker 1: to reach Louisville in five days, and indeed, just like
Speaker 1: he thought, havoc ensued. Newspaper articles described people on the
Speaker 1: side of the river laughing at the boat, and men
Speaker 1: swimming over to the boat to try to get a
Speaker 1: piece of tail, and it didn't help, but the women
Speaker 1: on board were encouraging it. But just like last time,
Speaker 1: the thing about having a boat filled with prostitutes who
Speaker 1: you intend to dump at another city. Is that the
Speaker 1: other city will figure that out and be like, we
Speaker 1: don't want your prostitutes. We already have our own. You
Speaker 1: already tried this once Nashville. We're not gonna let it
Speaker 1: happen again. When the Idaho arrived in Louisville, none of
Speaker 1: the women were allowed to get off the boat. The
Speaker 1: 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 we are a homely, forlorn set
Speaker 1: of degraded creatures, having been hurried on the boats by
Speaker 1: a military guard. Many are without a change of wardrobe.
Speaker 1: They managed to smuggle a little liquor on board. Several
Speaker 1: became intoxicated and indulged in a free fight, which resulted
Speaker 1: without 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 days, stranded, they've run out of supplies. Ninety
Speaker 1: eight women and six children remain on board, underguard from
Speaker 1: the Louisville soldiers to make sure they don't get off
Speaker 1: the boat. But then finally newcomb gets in order, and
Speaker 1: it's really annoying because basically it's like, hey, we've realized
Speaker 1: this was a bad idea, so just come back to
Speaker 1: Nashville and get back here quick because we got even
Speaker 1: bigger river fish to fry. Because the thing is. Spaulding
Speaker 1: and his crew had rounded up all these sex workers,
Speaker 1: but there were plenty of other people to take their places,
Speaker 1: especially black women, which the Union army liked even less.
Speaker 1: Here's what the Nashville Daily Union wrote, This sudden expatriation
Speaker 1: of hundreds of vicious white women will only make room
Speaker 1: for 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 whis 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 Rowe, 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 health care? 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, so 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. So they abolish it. No more licenses, no
Speaker 1: more regulation, and that was the end of legal prostitution
Speaker 1: in Nashville. And now, this whole time while prostitution was
Speaker 1: legal in Nashville, Captain Newcombe of the Idaho is in
Speaker 1: a big old tizzy because this whole time he hasn't
Speaker 1: been reimbursed. It had been two years since he had
Speaker 1: had those hundred vicious white women on his boat, and
Speaker 1: still nothing. He was so frustrated that eventually he went
Speaker 1: over the head of Spalding an old rosy directly to
Speaker 1: 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 on his boat, but it could never repay the
Speaker 1: damage that had been done to its reputation. It never
Speaker 1: 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 when 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 Barr. 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, thanks for listening. Talk at you next time.
Speaker 1: School of Humans