(by Student #25 AMH 2010 1115)
For my
research, I have a man by the name of Irving K. Schloss who was imprisoned for
“White Slavery”, which means prostitution. I didn’t expect to find much when I
first read over the profile but once I started digging I found some crazy
things. I created a hypothesis once I started doing research, the hypothesis
was that Irving K. Schloss actually pimped out woman to homosexual men so that
the men could hide the fact that they were homosexual. Once I realized this I
started looking for more.
In the beginning,
I just started by looking through ancestry and found out basic things from his
prison files. Irving was 5’3 and 32 years old. He weighed 134 pounds which was
a bit above average for the current time period. He had black hair and a fair
complexion with light brown eyes. He was convicted of white slavery in
Portland, Oregon on December 20, 1912. He was sentenced to three years with no
fines or bonds. His sentence began on January 28, 1913 and expired on May 20,
1915.
I became
curious about the type of prostitution that Irving was distributing when I
realized that all the men who were his “clients” were single men. Of course,
this all sounds like it makes sense, right? Single men having prostitutes
sounds about right, but after taking a look at the census’ I found that all of
his clients actually died without wife or girlfriend of any sort. In each
census, the total people in the household was consistently one. These people
were clearly loners and presumably ashamed. My suspicion for this was that they
were homosexual men who didn’t want the other people around to know since being
homosexual was not exactly tolerated and understood.
For this
next part I had to venture outside of ancestry and the prison records. In order
to really find out if my hypothesis was correct I looked up how gay men were
treated on the west coast to see if these men would actually be ashamed of
their sexuality. Long story, short, the treatment they would’ve gotten was
unbearable. I went to a website called “myheritage” to find more about the
clients and Irving himself. When I found the clients, I found that most of them
actually knew each other which furthered my curiosity to a point where I
assumed this was all a big plot or club of some sort. Basically, to not be
outed as gay to the community, the men banded together to keep their true
sexualities a secret.
In
conclusion, Irving K. Schloss was arrested in Portland, Oregon for
prostitution. By technicality, he was arrested for a legitimate reason but at
the same time he wasn’t necessarily guilty of anything. Irving prostituted
women out to gay men so the other people around the community would think they
were all straight and they wouldn’t be treated poorly. Irving was just
protecting the true identities of men around the community, so they could all
be treated equally. He was arrested for what he believes was doing the right
thing.
