Mary Hall
Mary Ann Hall (died January 29,
1886) ran a successful brothel from the 1840s until about 1878 at 349 Maryland
Avenue SW, Washington, D.C., about four blocks west of the U.S. Capitol. Before
the National Museum of the American Indian was built on the site in 1999, the
Smithsonian Institution conducted an archeological excavation of the
foundations and garbage dump of the house.
The expensive tableware in the
garbage dump was made of ironstone and porcelain. Food remnants include meat,
fowl, fish, and exotic fruits like coconuts and berries. French champagne corks
were especially numerous. She built a three-story house on the site which rose
greatly in value. Her business was apparently very successful and she died with
a net worth of $87,000 - worth over $2,000,000 in 2005 dollars.
In 1864 the Union Army's Provost
Marshal published a list of brothels in Washington and Mary Ann Hall's had 18
"inmates," making it the largest in the city.
She was buried with her sister
and other family members under "large and dignified" memorials at the
Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
The story goes that there were so
many prostitutes working around the city during the civil war, that Union
General Joseph Hooker’s army that they became known as “Hooker’s Division” or
“Hooker’s Brigade” or simply “hookers” because they were charged with rounding
up the prostitutes and running them out of the city. But that isn’t where the
term came from.
The word “hooker” had been around
its origins as early as 1567 when it meant petty thief or pickpocket.