Corlear’s Hook, New York City
In what is now known as the Lower East Side, there is a point of land on the East River that was once known as Corlear’s Hook under both Dutch and British rule. It was named after the schoolmaster Jacobus von Corlaer who settled a plantation on the land in the 1600s. As early as 1816, the street was notorious for “streetwalkers” or sex workers. The Christian Herald noted that the neighborhood served as “a resort for the lewd and abandoned of both sexes” and its “streets abounding every night with preconcerted groups of thieves and prostitutes.” The 1859 Dictionary of Americanisms defined hooker as “A resident of the Hook, i.e., a strumpet, a sailor’s trull. So called from the number of houses of ill-fame frequented by sailors at the Hook (i.e., Corlear’s Hook) in the city of New York.”
The ferry terminal and shipyards of the district became exceptionally well known for their high concentrations of sex workers. It appears the sex workers began to be referred to as “hookers” by the 1820s, in reference to the neighborhood’s name. This connection is a more likely source for the term in its printed use in 1845 since, as referenced above, General Hooker was not yet a well-known figure. Conversely, Corlear’s Hook was famous in New York City due to being the site of some of the first tenements ever built in the city. It also served as the site of a cholera hospital during the New York summer of cholera in 1832.
The neighborhood continued to be a site of poverty with waves of immigrants arriving from Germany in the late 19th century. So many came that it was referred to as “Little Germany” for a time; however, other groups of immigrants started to arrive soon after. Italians, Romanians, and Eastern European Jews were just a few of the many ethnic groups that settled in the area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1935, the neighborhood became the home of the first public housing project in the US. The community has been strongly gentrified within the last 20 years.
16th Century Thieves
An even older etymological possibility comes from the 16th-century use of the word hooker to mean pickpockets or petty thieves. As prostitution has almost always been illegal and considered harmful, it isn’t too far-fetched to think a term for a petty criminal could be expanded to include the trade of sex workers. The use of hooker for thieves was part of the thieves’ cant or peddler’s French, that thieves used in Great Britain at the time. Hooker specifically referred to thieves that used poles with a hook on the end to steal goods. The association with hooks feeds into another possible etymology: fishing.
Hooking a Fish
Even in modern English, one can find references to “hooking” or “landing” a spouse, both of which come from the practice of fishing. The verb “to hook” can be defined as “catching hold and drawing in” which certainly could be applied to the art of seduction in flowery prose. The continued association between romance and catching a fish even today could hint at a much older origin of the term hooker than even Corlear’s Hook. However, it is an interesting coincidence to note that the highest concentration of sex workers in that neighborhood was located in shipyards, which may have housed many fishing vessels. Such incidents often give rise to false folk etymologies.