October 8, 1849—“We’re just trying to get along,” maintains Sally Jackson, a resident at the House of Rest, where a fellow bawd was murdered two nights past. “A girl needs a way to survive, and it ain’t safe anymore. It just ain’t right.” While no one appears to question the right of lewd women to hock their wares without enticing death, not everyone agrees that allowing such rowdy residences to exist legally is in the best interest of a city grown notorious for crime. Despite disgruntled area residents, official sources seem disinclined to take any action, and the police more often than not make no attempt whatsoever to seek out culprits in violent crimes. “One less to contend with,” seems to be their philosophy when the life of an unfortunate is snuffed out prematurely.

Yet even the police cannot disregard such a bloody and gruesome case as the death of Anne Donovan, slashed in a frenzy so brutal even her own mother would not recognize her in death. “I heard her yell out,” Molly Faye claims, from her position that night in the room next door. “But I didn’t think nothing of it. Figured it was business.”

Like the other girls in residence, Molly is afraid that the killer, still loose, may be wandering in and out of the house unimpeded, and in an effort to have their voices heard, the ladies of 25 Dauphine Street charged en masse into the second district police headquarters and demanded a more thorough investigation. It remains to be seen what the official response to such tactics will be.

October 9, 1849

To The Editor:

I believe I speak on behalf of the vast majority of residentsin what were formerly respectable neighborhoods when I say I have concerns over the direction vice is spreading. At one time contained to the docks and the immediate vicinity of Girod Street, now there is hardly an area in the city that isn’t affected by the rapid and licentiousgrowth of entertainment establishments. On my block alone, there are at least half a dozen homes (that once housed upstanding families) that are now given over to dens of iniquity, with laughter and music pouring out at all hours of night, men in and out, and outbursts of all nature occurring on the street. Now there has been this murder at number twenty-five, only blocks from where decent hardworking citizens live. Alreadyseveral neighbors have sold homes at a loss to escapethe scourge creeping in our direction, and I have no doubt that by week’s end another two or three will make the decision to sell their houses for less than they paid, simply to leave the rapidly declining area.

If left unchecked, the entire city will have the blight of drinking and promiscuity on every street, and there will be nowhere remaining for respectable citizens to live.

Signed,

Suffering Respectable Citizen

Chapter Three

Chapter Three