The Vice Bondage of a Great City; or, the Wickedest City in the World — John Shaqi
The Vice Bondage of a Great City; or, the Wickedest City in the WorldHarland, Robert O.
History
The Vice Bondage of a Great City; or, the Wickedest City in the World
Harland, Robert O.
Chicago (Ill.) -- Moral conditions; Prostitution -- Illinois -- Chicago
Then he makes his first flesh payment at that moment to the mistress of a
dozen women's bodies. He strolls down to the lobby and waits. A few
moments later he is "paged" by a bellboy and a note is given him. If we
should follow him we would find that the note named the rendezvous and
that the purchased woman waited for him there to do his bidding during
the night of shame.
This is not fiction but shuddering fact.
In a Jackson boulevard hotel, there is a "Miss Harris," who is the
procuress of girls of every description, character, temperament and
physical type, for men of wealth.
There are a dozen of such women with headquarters in Chicago's big hotels.
They are the fashionable panderers for the rich human beasts, who live or
stop at the hotels or who go there to find their victims.
These places in the criminal world have a name. They are named "Houses of
Call." They are employment agencies for young and old prostitutes. If a
man is willing to pay the price demanded, the woman, "Miss Harris," or
other such women, will produce for his pleasure, a young virgin and turn
her over to the merciless, insane lust of human Satan.
These places are the fashionable flesh-markets, the slave blocks where
women are sold to men of wealth.
That is another phase of the great Vice Trust, for those women panderers,
and those girl slaves pay tribute to carry on their traffic to the great
kings of the underworld. Of the relation of these classes of criminals to
their protectors we shall speak later.
"Miss Harris"--we shall use her as a type--has a secret directory to the
covert, hidden but expensive haunts of vice.
After Mr. Edwards departs, we might see another caller on a similar
mission. He is not a new customer. He is an old one. He makes his demand
without hesitation. He wants a young girl of innocence. He wants a girl in
the first flush of maturity, a girl who fears the things of sin, but who,
paradoxically, craves for the cloying sweet things of life.
The girl is found for the monster. His crime must be committed in the
dark, in a secure and safe place, in a place where no one shall see him
committing his soul-murder.
Again "Miss Harris" comes to the front. She directs her customer with the
trembling, wondering and frightened girl, to the "Arena," a pretentious
residence in Michigan avenue near Fifteenth street.
His coming is known before his arrival. "Miss Harris" has informed the
"Madam" that a "live wire with a young kid" is on the way to the place.
The man and his victim are received politely and ushered into a
luxuriously furnished room, delicately scented with perfume and stripped
of any suggestion that it is a crime-chamber where sin is intangibly
present, waiting for the next victim.
The desecration of soul and body begins and ends in that room. If the man
wishes it, supper with delicate morsels of food and wines of choice and
expensive brands are served. The atmosphere wooes to sleep the last moral
rebellion and all is lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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