Published

About the Episode

Barbara Foreman worked as a tobacco wrapper in the city in the early 1900s. She was part of a growing number of wage-earning women who traveled the streets downtown, where theaters, cafes and dance halls offered enticing respite from the drudgery of work. What do the secret Vice Files tell us about this young working woman?

Writer and Producer: M. Alison Kibler
Narrator: Rachel Rubins
Research Team: Jayden LaCoe, Kylie Loughney, Rachel Rubins, Dylan Sykes
Genealogical research by Hope Glidden
Financial Support from the Center for Sustained Engagement with Lancaster at Franklin & Marshall College
Additional Support from LancasterHistory

Resource List

Fronc, Jennifer. New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Odem, Mary. Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Peiss, Kathy. “Charity Girls and CIty Pleasures.” OAH Magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, 2004, pp. 14-16.

Barbara Foreman, Charity Girl