Hartley Neita, Contributor
DURING THE 1940s and 1950s, numerous resolutions were presented by citizens organisations and prominent individuals to the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation demanding that action be taken against the many houses of ill-repute which existed in the Corporate Area.
At first, these houses were in downtown Kingston, on Port Royal, West, Pechon, Hanover and other streets. The most famous were the Houses of Strolley, three or four houses beside each other, on Hanover Street. These, according to the late Morris Cargill, who once decided to conduct a personal survey of the brothels in Kingston, were lavishly furnished with large, soft couches and chandeliers and mirrors.
At that time, the families of elite society lived and worked below North Street, and the men found it convenient to have these houses in close proximity to these houses. After a hard day's work, they met at these houses for drinks in the company of beautiful ladies who were imported senoritas from Cuba in the Caribbean, and from Venezuela and other South American countries. Other brothels of lesser quality brought girls of German descent from St. Elizabeth and Westmoreland, and Indians from St. Mary and other sugar cane estate parishes. Gentlemen of upwardly mobile St. Andrew society took their mid-teenage sons to these houses on their birthdays for initiation. Many of these young men fell in love and had to be sent away to England and the U.S.A. Others remained and got married to these women and found them to be good wives and mothers.
MANY DEBATES
Many were the debates in the KSAC about getting rid of these houses. Keble Munn, for example, was most upset when residents on upper Mountain View Avenue brought to his attention that houses in this area were being used as brothels. Other councillors representing other areas such as Rae Town, and lower Maxfield Avenue, protested their presence, to no avail. The licence paid by the owners and managers of these premises was Ten Shillings per year which allowed them to sell beer to customers, in what they renamed Beer Gardens and Beer Joints.
There were two types of brothels. One had permanent lady residents such as the Houses of Strolley. The other was for transient couples. An example of the latter was the Bamboo Club on Duke Street where the waiter discreetly placed beside the gentleman's drink, a key to a room to relax in for his after-drinking pleasure.
There was also streetside prostitution where girls hung out on side roads and invited the men who sought their services to join them for five minutes of pleasure on cardboard inside properties such as Devon House and on school grounds such as Kingston College and Priory.
During World War II when the Americans occupied an air and naval base in southern Clarendon in the 1940s, the U.S. authorities found it necessary to place some nightclubs and bars in Clarendon, St. Catherine and Kingston and St. Andrew off-limits to their sailors and soldiers. Owners of these places had to provide the girls who habited them with weekly medical certificates declaring them to be free of venereal diseases to get in the good books of U.S. officials.
ATTEMPT TO LEGALISE BROTHELS
An attempt was made during the 1950s to legalise brothels in Kingston. To provide information necessary to enact the necessary regulations, special policemen were assigned to inspect every small hostel to assess the standard of their sanitary conveniences. In addition, the medical office in charge of the Venereal Diseases Clinic on Higholborn Street and an Inspector of Police visited brothels every Saturday morning and tested the resident women. Those found without VD were provided with clearance cards with their names, ages and addresses which gave them licence to practise their profession. Those with the disease had to receive treatment and be tested before being allowed to continue with their jobs.
The procedure was too cumbersome and was a temptation to policemen and young male medical technicians at the clinics. The idea of regulating these bawdy houses was therefore abandoned.
Today, prostitution is now big business in Jamaica. Girls are being imported from as far away as Russia. Some have even married their benefactors. Globalisation has destroyed the upward mobility of the young women of St. Elizabeth and St. Mary. They are now only being brought to Kingston for one-shot appearances in videos, and then abandoned.
