Phoebe Doty (died June 9, 1849) was an American

prostitute Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penet ...

and

madam Madam (), or madame ( or ), is a polite and formal form of address for Woman, women in the English language, often contracted to ma'am (pronounced in American English and this way but also in British English). The term derives from the French ...

. In 1821, she started her career in a

bordello 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 par ...

in the Five Points neighborhood of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Over the next three years, she accrued $600 in personal belongings.Gilfoyle 72. For the next decade or so, Doty moved from house to house, eventually settling in a brothel on Church Street. There she was valued at $800. Doty had an adopted daughter, Sal Wright, who also became a prostitute. By 1839, Doty had opened her own brothel on

Leonard Street Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate from the Old High German ''Leonhard'' containing the prefix ''levon'' ("lion") from the Greek Λέων ("lion") through the Latin '' ...

. At decade's end, she was valued at $2000. During the 1840s, Doty was a prominent prostitute and madam. She held lavish balls at her brothel to attract new customers and to mingle with the upper classes. Her high profile earned her notoriety in the

penny press Penny press newspapers were cheap, tabloid-style newspapers mass-produced in the United States from the 1830s onwards. Mass production of inexpensive newspapers became possible following the shift from hand-crafted to steam-powered printing. F ...

. The ''

Libertine A libertine is a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour ob ...

'' suggested that Doty and another madam,

Adeline Miller Adeline Miller, alias Adeline Furman (1777 – August 24, 1859), 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 w ...

, should rent the Park Theatre and talk about their lives. It predicted that "the house would be crammed if the ''entrance'' was five dollars a ''head''. The bigger the harlot now-a-days the more money is made."Quoted in Gilfoyle 73. Emphasis in the original.

Notes

References

* Gilfoyle, Timothy J. (1992). ''City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790—1920''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Criminals from New York City American prostitutes American brothel owners and madams Year of birth missing 1849 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople 19th-century American businesswomen {{Sex-work-stub