It came as no surprise to John Sloan when in 1910 the National Academy of Design refused to exhibit his painting 3 a.m. (Fig. 1). Its subject matter must have appeared to the academy jury, as Sloan later said, rather “like a pair of men's drawers slipped into an old maid's laundry.” It is apparent that the critics of the day, who deemed the work “too frank and vulgar,” could hardly have overlooked the fact that the seated woman, sipping a cup of tea, is a prostitute. Indeed, the other woman, who is busily engaged in cooking her a meal, would appear to be one also. During the Progressive Era, it was common for prostitutes to share tenement flats like the one in 3 a.m., as numerous muckraking newspaper articles and tracts on the social evil were beginning to make plain. The reformist zeal for which the period is presently noted may have succeeded in closing down a number of brothels; but the world's “oldest profession” continued to flourish, as journalists were constantly reminding an apprehensive but nevertheless titillated American public. In 1910 prostitutes were more visible than ever. Operating independently out of tenements like the one in 3 a.m., they worked on the streets and out of dance halls, saloons, and cheap restaurants.
Measuring “the social evil”: The incidence of venereal disease in interwar Scotland