Item Detail
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12120
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2
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0
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English
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Prostitution and Polygamy : The Contest over Morality in Salt Lake City, 1847-1918
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University of Utah
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Ph.D. diss.
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"This study explores the interplay of reform and prostitution in Salt Lake City, Utah, from its founding until 1918. Prostitution in Salt Lake City shared characteristics with other western cities, including San Francisco and Denver. In Salt Lake, however, prostitution became often the focus of the bitter Mormon-gentile conflict and the "Americanization" of Utah. Salt Lake City's pioneer Mormons barred prostitution until substantial numbers of non-Mormons settled after 1870. Mormons saw prostitutes as corruptors of Zion and attempted unsuccessfully to drive them out. Subsequently, they tolerated prostitution as a largely gentile vice. Gentile (non-Mormon) men considered it an ineradicable and necessary element of urban life. From the mid-1870s through 1918, both Mormon and gentile officials regulated prostitution. Authorities allowed a segregated district which divided along racial, ethnic, and class lines. While a handful of women prospered, most lived difficult and dangerous lives. Mormons and gentiles used prostitution as a weapon in their struggle for moral and even political authority. Gentile women especially equated prostitution with Mormon polygamy while Mormons maintained that prostitution proved gentile immorality, making cooperative reform difficult. Some citizens founded homes to "rescue" prostitutes through immersion in a maternalistic atmosphere. These private efforts failed due to inadequate funding, community opposition, and Mormon-gentile antagonism. City growth brought new economic and social opportunities for women, which worried many. Progressive-era reformers saw prostitution as a hazard to young people and sought repressive legislation against such dangers. Prostitution and the Mormon-gentile conflict intersected again in the early twentieth century. The American party, which revived anti-Mormonism, sponsored the "Stockade" prostitution district, opening the party to accusations of immorality. The Stockade's closure and the American party's fall brought reconciliation and a common commitment to fight regulated prostitution. The federal government joined the repressive effort with the 1910 Mann Act and wartime regulations banning prostitution near training camps. By that time, Mormons and non-Mormons had cooperatively turned to the state to enforce a newly shared moral code." [Author's abstract]