New Orleans has a long reputation for debauchery and a laissez faire attitude about vice. Or maybe a quid pro quo attitude. This is a brief timeline of the real vice districts, laws, and “lewd and abandoned” women of New Orleans.
Note: I am not an expert. This is a supplement that I compiled to create my video The Real Storyville and by no means a complete timeline of anything.
July 1719
Les Deux Frères leaves France for Louisiana with three seditious women and 14 additional women because of “their extraordinary moral depravity”
February 1720
La Mutine arrives in New Orleans from Salpêtriere with women sometimes confused for filles a la cassette
January 5, 1721
Eighty-eight filles a la cassette (casket girls) arrive on La Baleine
August 5, 1727
La Gironde arrives in New Orleans with the Ursuline nuns
1728
Casket girls arrive in New Orleans in the myth
1780
Pere Antoine arrives in New Orleans
1790s-1820s
Young men come to New Orleans to “see the elephant”
1794
Carondolet Canal (Old Basin Canal) built — where Basin St. gets its name and where the Lafitte Greenway is today
1803
Louisiana Purchase
Haitian Revolution
1812
First steamship “The New Orleans” arrived in New Orleans from Pittsburgh
1817
Ordinance that the harlot was only subject to punishment if she “shall occasion scandals or disturb the tranquility of the neighborhood” (Asbury, 353)
1820s-1850s
1831
New Basin Canal built
Ponchartrain Railroad completed
1837
Law empowering the mayor to order the ejection of prostitutes on the complaint of three respectable citizens (Asbury, 354)
1839
Kate Townsend born in England
1840-1890
Gallatin Street
1845
Johanna Hawk born in Ireland
1857
Kate Townsend arrives in New Orleans from Ireland via New York
1865
Daisy Haines born in Alabama or Mississippi
Willie V. Piazza born in Mississippi
1868
Lulu White born in Alabama
1870s
Johanna Hawk arrives in New Orleans
1883
Kate Townsend murdered
1890s
Lulu White arrives in New Orleans from Selma, Alabama
Willie Piazza arrives in New Orleans from Mississippi
1892
New Orleans Union Station built on Rampart Street near the current Union Passenger Terminal (demolished in 1954)
1896
Plessy v. Ferguson case legalizes segregation
1897
Storyville ordinance passed segregating “lewd and abandoned” women to an area just outside the French Quarter
1900
Storyville officially opens
1901
Norma Wallace born in New Orleans
1904
Southern Railway Freight Office built on St. Louis Street (modern day Basin Street Station)
1904-1920
Tom Anderson is a state legislator for Louisiana
1906
Daisy Haines arrives in New Orleans
1908
Southern Railway Terminal (New Orleans Terminal) built on Canal Street (demolished in 1956)
Traveler’s Aid Society formed in New Orleans
