Edith Houghton didn’t have her heart set on medical school. But after she graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1900, she packed her bags and headed for Baltimore. Her mentor, M. Carey Thomas, had taken an interest in Edith, who excelled in chemistry and math, and encouraged her to pursue further studies at Johns Hopkins Medical… Read more →
Tag: sex work
Death, Danger, and Decadence in 1920s Dublin: The Murder of Honor Bright
After the body of twenty-five-year-old Dublin woman Lizzie O’Neill, also known as “Honor Bright,” was found in June 1925, Irish newspapers jumped on the sensational story. The case had everything that readers sought at the time: a who-dunnit featuring the murder of a young, glamorous woman, a pair of unlikely well-off and respectable suspects (a… Read more →
Sex on the Border: Policing Women in Red Light Districts
In 2001, a Dallas Observer reporter stepped into a shadowy, smoke-filled room and narrowed his eyes to see through the blinking neon lights and deconstruct the American traveler’s fascination with the modern sex industry along the border. The image he projected, of women lined up against a crumbling wall in a run down bar, tells… Read more →