Conducting Herself As a Courtesan

In my newspaper reading, I have come across multiple instances of various crimes: theft (and lots of it); assault and battery, fraud and forgery, child abuse, selling liquor without a license, vandalism, adultery, leaving the scene of an accident, and all the way up to murder. But with respect to the world's oldest profession, I have found only one case in the ten years I've read so far, and for that one we have to go up to Lake Station.

It seems that a guy named Gust Nelson operated some sort of business establishment there, probably a saloon. He brought out from Chicago a woman calling herself Anna Johnson, to work in his place, I gather. He soon had cause to regret it.

As the Gazette put it, Anna spent several weeks "disgracing the sacred confines of Lake Station … by her disgraceful and immoral conduct." She was so bad that Gust himself came to Hobart around midnight on July 1, 1906, to complain of Anna's "conducting herself as a courtesan." Justice of the Peace John Mathews prepared the arrest warrant and Deputy Marshal Fred Rose went to Lake Station to serve it.

Rose brought Anna back to Hobart to appear before Judge Mathews. She was "about thirty years old and show[ed] her dissipation. She was supplied with stimulents [sic] and smoked cigarettes in a professional manner." Although there were several witnesses ready to testify, including Gust, no trial was necessary — Anna pled guilty. But then she refused to pay the $17.75 assessed against her in fines and costs, so they took her to the jail in Crown Point.

And that's it for that particular crime. As far as I know, the sacred confines of Ainsworth were never thus disgraced. Not yet, anyway.

Source: "A Good Riddance." Hobart Gazette 6 July 1906.