Red Hook and hookers

[Joel S. Berson]

George,

At 10/5/2009 05:22 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>Red Hook was a Sailortown when my father was a merchant seaman, and
>working in the rum-fleet, but in the 1830s Brooklyn may have still
>been a village, and I doubt that Red Hook would have been a part of
>the port or that New Yorkers (i. e., Manhattanites) would be much
>concerned with whatever lewdness might have gone on there.

Gee -- Sounds like your father was a seaman in the 1700s days of the
rum and molasses trade!  And did he tell you there were no brothels
in Red Hook in his time?  8-)

I concede that a New York court case (at least if it was a city or
county court, not a state court) would likely not have involved a
"hooker" from Red Hook, since Brooklyn did not join New York City
until 1898.  What was the NY Transcript reporting?  (What database is
the article available in?)  But as for a port --

Are you sure about the 1830s?  In the 18th century ferries ran
between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and people (perhaps a different class
than at Red Hook) went out to summer houses on Long Island and to
horse races at Hempstead (which began there in 1665).  Hamilton
writes of the ferries (Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr.
Alexander Hamilton, 1744, ed. Carl Bridenbaugh, 1948).  Hamilton
actually reached New York from New Jersey by crossing the Bay first
to Brooklyn and then back to Manhattan, and later crossed the river
from Manhattan to Brooklyn on his way on to New England.

Also, my sense from some of the browsing I did on Red Hook (Google,
19th C. American Newspapers) is that it was a waterfront center early
on; a site of military encampments; and in the first decade of the
1800s a potential if not an actual site of defenses against the
British.  It  might have been an attractive alternative to the lower
East River -- ships would have a shorter voyage against the current
(although tides might have been more significant) and also not have
to navigate a narrow entry into the river.

Joel

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