[Rarebooks] FS: Rare Work on NYC Prostitution

[Kaaterskill Books]

We offer for Sale:

McDowall, J. R. (John Robert) MAGDALEN FACTS. NO. 1 [ALL PUBLISHED]. 
New York: Printed for the author, 1832. 104 pp. Illus. with 2 b/w 
drawings. 8vo. Disbound.  First edition. An important tract on 
prostitution.  Sabin, 54367n. Checklist Amer. Imprints 13487.

When John Robert McDowall arrived in New York in 1830, an Amherst 
graduate and Princeton Divinity student, prostitution had become ever 
more ubiquitous; in the Five Points girls in "varying stages of 
undress paraded ...[in windows]... to lure street trade," while 
judges and merchants went to their "parlor houses" and visiting 
businessmen felt illicit sex, tacitly approved, was their due. "Into 
this civic conspiracy of masculine silence stepped John Robert 
McDowall, loudly blowing the whistle. Not surprisingly, his Magdalen 
Report was greeted with an avalanche of criticism, which the Evening 
Post summed up by saying 'the report should never have been printed, 
and being printed should be speedily suppressed.' Gentlemen of 
standing argued that McDowall's lurid picture of urban vice was 
itself prurient and pornographic -'a disgraceful document'- said 
Philip Hone. Even more shocking, as William Cullen Bryant observed, 
its statistics of whoredom had been read out at a public meeting 
'composed three-fourths of respectable females.' City boosters 
protested its slandering of New York's fair name and pronounced it 
bad for business. Workingmen and freethinkers denounced it as yet 
another theocratic initiative by church and state busybodies," 
Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 535). A grand jury was convened, and 
McDowall was hounded by the courts, his financial backers withdrew, 
his periodical declared a nuisance, and he resigned his chaplaincy. 
The double standard held, and though McDowall did garner support a 
second time, the outcome was identical and the movement did not gain 
traction again until the second half of the 19th century. An 
important document in women's rights and quite uncommon. OCLC shows 
only 11 copies.

Wrappers lacking, chip to top corner of first two leaves, not 
affecting text, foxing throughout. A good solid copy removed from a 
large collection.  [27348]  $250

http://www.kaaterskillbooks.com/img/27348.jpg


Regards,

Charles Kutcher
Kaaterskill Books
P.O. Box 122
East Jewett, NY 12424.
Phone: 518-589-0555.
Email: books at kaaterskillbooks.com
Member of I. O. B. A.


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