Grayson County TXGenWeb

Denison Herald
July 25, 1972

EARLY ORDINANCE EARNED "X" RATING
One of the first ordinances passed as a matter of course and necessity in Denison in the summer of 1873 would literally curl the hair of today's council members.
December 20, 1873, less than a year after formal incorporation, ordained "that the city marshal is hereby requested to make a full and complete record of all bawdy houses, houses of ill fame and of assignation, and of all bawds, courtesans, and prostitutes within the City of Denison as possible and furnish it to the City Council.
The ordinance called for regular supplements to the list which was to carry name, locality, aliases, age, and former occupations.
Further the Marshal was given the right to suppress activities of any bawd or house with a $3 to $90 fine set for violation.
Businesslike, the ordinance defined: "Any bawd, courtesan, or lewd woman occupying a private room or rooms will be regarded as a brothel keeper in this ordinance."
It further decreed that bawds "not ply their vocation in the streets or public place or doors or open windows of houses, setting a $5 to $50 fine for this.
Written permission to operate had to be secured each month from the city Marshal with a $5 to $50 fine for failure to do so.
"The medical examiner shall visit once a week all houses and give such physical examinations as he deems necessary, the ordinance continues, adding that certificates would be issued by the examiner.
If the examiner detected venereal disease he was to report immediately to t he Marshal "whose duty it is to have her suppressed and removed from the city limits."
Climaxing the ordinance was a paragraph on which much of the city's financial structure was based, especially payment of law enforcement officers. It provided that brothel keepers must pay a $5 fee and all house inmates a $1 fee each week.