Throughout the nineteenth century, prostitution was rife in American cities. In 1820 there were an estimated two hundred brothels in New York, growing to more than six hundred after the Civil War. By the early 1840s the city was the nation’s whoring capital, its own Gomorrah.
Most houses of assignation before the Civil War were owned and controlled by women. Some madams made spectacular careers, nobody more so than Fanny White whose Mercer Street brothel was, from 1851 onward, a meeting place for Congressmen, dignitaries and diplomats – a Manhattan whoreocracy. [Read more…] about Manhattan ‘Flash’ Culture: Madams and Sporting Men
Chaja Rubinstein was born in December 1872 in a Krakow ghetto, the eldest of eight girls. Having escaped from an arranged Orthodox Jewish marriage, she would become a dominant personality in business circles in London, Paris, and New York. 
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, at Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, was founded in 1859 by inventor and industrialist Peter Cooper, a progressive member of New York’s Board of Aldermen.
Charles Evans Hughes and Al Jolson shared a small stage at Marion, Ohio in 1920 as part of Republican presidential candidate Warren Harding’s “front porch” campaign.
A significant aspect of the 1920s in London was the proliferation of unlicensed clubs that operated on the fringe of criminality. Lawmakers were determined to crack down on out-of-hours drinking, but youngsters beat them by organising all-night bottle parties.