5. Even the Prostitutes Were Fancier and More Scandalous
The Gilded Age coincided with the rise of the women’s suffrage movement; as such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that women, even the wealthy women who could flaunt their wealth with snowy egret feathers and gold toilets, were pretty much viewed as their husbands’ property and had few rights of their own. As such, the men frequently visited brothels, which were fancier and more scandalous than their predecessors. After all, prostitution was still legal at the time, and money talked. Big time.
Enter Soubrette Row, a famous street in the New York Tenderloin District, just down the corner from the Metropolitan Opera House. A soubrette was a saucy, flirtatious girl and was slang for a prostitute, and French madams usually ran the houses where they worked. In fact, the soubrettes of Soubrette Row were known to perform acts so scandalous and indecent that the other prostitutes didn’t want to associate with them. But that was of no concern to the robber barons who visited them. They could easily enjoy an evening at the opera and then turn the corner to have all of their fantasies fulfilled. If their wives didn’t approve, there wasn’t much that they could do or say, seeing as women didn’t begin achieving their rights for a few more decades.