Incorrigible Girls

Seventeen-year-old “Sylvia” was arrested in August 1927 and taken to the Women’s Night Court. There she was physically examined in public, only partially hidden from the view of spectators who flocked to Night Court as others might go to a show. The doctor who examined her genitals diagnosed a sexually transmitted infection so she was sentenced to the hospital until cured. She was declared a “wayward minor” and ordered to see a parole officer at the Catholic Charities every month for a year after her release from the hospital.

A major influence on the treatment of girls like “Sylvia” was a group called the Committee of Fourteen. This self-appointed group set itself the task of reducing promiscuity over twenty-seven years from its inception in 1905 until its dissolution in 1932. To this end, the Committee sought to have judges they perceived as too lenient on girls and women in the Night Court to be reassigned and worked to have the short sentences handed down to some girls to be re-adjudicated by different judges who would re-sentence the adolescent girls to longer terms. Frederick Whitin, the Executive Secretary of the Committee, hired investigators to visit nightclubs and speakeasies in apartments to report on dancing, alcohol, and interracial activity. They even collaborated with police in entrapping young women: offering them money for sex, then signaling officers to arrest the women.

The Committee contributed to the creation of the Women’s Court in 1910, the passage of the Wayward Minors Law of 1925 that sentenced delinquent youths to probation, and the formation of the Crime Prevention Bureau of the Police Department in 1929. Even as the Committee condemned immorality, it pandered to prurience, offering “fleshpot tours” to places where participants could witness immorality such as interracial couples dancing, and prostitutes of all genders. The Committee’s actions and influence still resonate, reflected in the ways morality is legislated through the court system today.

Some of the women whose lives were affected by the efforts of the Committee, such as Polly Adler and Billie Holiday, are well-known. Hundreds more remain obscure. “Incorrigible Girls” tells their stories.