Organized Righteousness Against Organized Viciousness: Constructing Prostitution in Post World War I Montreal

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Organized Righteousness Against Organized Viciousness: Constructing Prostitution in Post World War I Montreal
Abstract
The first decades of the twentieth-century featured a full-scale assault on prostitution and Red Light Districts in cities across North America. The author points out that the Committee of Sixteen's efforts to erase "commercialized vice" from Montreal reflected these moral regulation projects. The Committee's members, made up of Montreal's Anglophone elite - doctors, social reformers, religious authorities, business leaders and lawyers -, represented a range of commercial, feminist, social and religious institutions with various agendas. By examining the press of the time, as well as reports and speeches produced by the Committee over its seven-year history (1918-1926), the author reveals how members constructed prostitution as a symbol and scapegoat for multiple, sometimes contradictory, contemporary concerns and anxieties in the years following the First World War. She argues that this discourse served to further marginalize the very women the Committee ostensibly sought to 'rescue'.
Type
Master's Thesis
University
McGill University
Place
Montreal
Date
2005
# of Pages
iv-97p.
Language
en
URL
Citation
Herland, Karen. “Organized Righteousness Against Organized Viciousness: Constructing Prostitution in Post World War I Montreal.” Master’s Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/QMM/TC-QMM-83110.pdf.
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