You Can Make It Illegal, But You Can't Make It Unpopular: History of Brothels and Prostitution in Mississippi River Towns

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From the brothels of post-Civil War-era St. Louis to the streets of New Orleans' Storyville, this episode traces the history of prostitution along the Mississippi River — and the endless tug-of-war between tolerance, regulation, and suppression that has defined it.

We start with Eliza Haycraft, a remarkable St. Louis woman who arrived penniless by canoe in 1840 and built a fortune running brothels, becoming one of the city's most generous philanthropists — and one of its most socially shunned residents. Her story opens a window into how 19th-century river towns grappled with an industry that was everywhere and officially nowhere.

The episode moves through St. Louis's short-lived Social Evil Ordinance of the 1870s — a bold experiment in regulated prostitution that sparked fierce debate, drew powerful opponents like Washington University co-founder William Greenleaf Eliot, and ultimately collapsed under the weight of corruption and public backlash. Then it's downriver to New Orleans, where Storyville's cleverly worded 1897 ordinance created a ten-block entertainment district that boomed for 20 years before the federal government forced it shut in 1917.

We also stop in La Crosse, Wisconsin and Winona, Minnesota, where local officials spent decades cycling through raids, crackdowns, quiet reopenings, and willful blindness. Throughout it all, one theme keeps surfacing: no matter what officials decided, the industry simply adapted and carried on.