Katie Hemphill

Interests

No activities entered.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Hemphill, K. M. (2020). Bawdy City: Commercial Sex and Regulation in Baltimore, 1790–1915.
• Hemphill, K. (2019). Bawdy city: Commercial sex and regulation in Baltimore, 1790-1915. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108773669
  More info

  A vivid social history of Baltimore's prostitution trade and its evolution throughout the nineteenth century, Bawdy City centers women in a story of the relationship between sexuality, capitalism, and law. Beginning in the colonial period, prostitution was little more than a subsistence trade. However, by the 1840s, urban growth and changing patterns of household labor ushered in a booming brothel industry. The women who oversaw and labored within these brothels were economic agents surviving and thriving in an urban world hostile to their presence. With the rise of urban leisure industries and policing practices that spelled the end of sex establishments, the industry survived for only a few decades. Yet, even within this brief period, brothels and their residents altered the geographies, economy, and policies of Baltimore in profound ways. Hemphill's critical narrative of gender and labor shows how sexual commerce and debates over its regulation shaped an American city.

Chapters

• Hemphill, K. M. (2023). ‘A very friendly feeling which is perfectly natural’. In Policing Women: Histories in the Western World, 1800 to 1950. doi:10.4324/9781003095286-10
• Hemphill, K. M. (2015). Chapter 9. Selling Sex and Intimacy in the City: The Changing Business of Prostitution in Nineteenth- Century Baltimore. In Capitalism by Gaslight: Illuminating the Economy of Nineteenth-Century America. University of Pennsylvania Press. doi:10.9783/9780812291025.168

Journals/Publications

• Hemphill, K. (2024). Naming the Zones of Sexual Commerce The Origins and History of the “Red-Light District”. Radical History Review, 2024(149). doi:10.1215/01636545-11027535
• Hemphill, K. M. (2022). “Pastor was Trapped”: Queer Scandal and Contestations Over Christian Anti-Vice Reform—CORRIGENDUM. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. doi:10.1017/s1537781422000421
  More info

  An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
• Hemphill, K. M. (2017). Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Enduring Anxieties. Journal of Women's History. doi:10.1353/jowh.2017.0062
• Hemphill, K. M. (2012). "Driven to the Commission of This Crime": Women and Infanticide in Baltimore, 1835–1860. Journal of the Early Republic, 32(3), 437-461. doi:10.1353/jer.2012.0049
  More info

  The author uses newspapers and city documents to describe the history of women and infanticide in Baltimore, Maryland during the mid-19th century, with a focus upon the social conditions of women during the period and the social perceptions which surrounded the crime. Attention is particularly given to the role of women's poverty and social marginalization on the rate of infanticide. Subjects addressed include characteristics of infant mortality, its investigation, and the structural economic restraints on women in the era. Conclusions are then offered discussing the ways in which poor women navigated the criminal justice system. Language: en