Tuesday, Sept. 24, 1918 100 years ago in The Record
Rensselaer County district attorney John P. Taylor vows to hold Troy property owners accountable when their buildings are used for prostitution, The Record reports. The people who get arrested for running “disorderly houses” in Troy’s downtown red-light district and elsewhere usually don’t own the buildings they occupy. While the actual owners may not be actively involved in prostitution, Section 1146 of the state penal code states that any “owner, agent or lessor” who “knowingly or with reason to know” allows prostitution on his property is guilty of a crime. Following the latest round of disorderly house trials in county court, Taylor sent letters to the owners of each of the buildings raided. The letters remind the owners that “the suppression of such houses … and the removal of inmates [i.e. prostitutes] from this and other communities is a wartime necessity. “The war department of our government insists that for the moral well being and physical fitness of our soldiers, these places of contamination be destroyed. It is imperative that you do your part in these activities and I await your report, as the owner of such premises with knowledge of the existing conditions, as to what you have done to abate the matters complained of,” the prosecutor writes. For now, the letters serve as a warning to property owners. Should disorderly houses resume operation on their properties, they face arrest, trial and public shame.
Campaign 1918
Whether New York State will prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages next year is one of the hot-button issues of this year’s legislative races. The Anti-Saloon League, one of the largest lobbies in favor of nationwide prohibition, is pressing legislative candidates in Rensselaer County to take a stand on the issue.
Troy’s incumbent state senator, George B. Wellington, led an unsuccessful effort at the last session to force a ratification vote on the federal prohibition amendment. Opponents of the amendment believe that New York voters should decide by themselves, through a referendum, whether or not to ban alcohol in the Empire State.
Wellington’s Democratic challenger is John J. Mackrell. Today’s Record publishes his reply to local Anti-Saloon League leader William H. Anderson, who has asked candidates, as “the accredited agent of numbers of your constituents,” whether they will support the federal amendment against all alternatives.
“If the Anti-Saloon league is the accredited agency for any of such constituents, its views will at all times receive my respectful consideration,” Mackrell answers. Declaring himself a “total abstainer from intoxicating beverages,” he vows to vote on prohibition “solely and only in accordance with the wishes of the constituency I represent.”