Gallatin Street
Today’s French Market Place is a bustling tourist attraction, with streams of shoppers grabbing Cafe du Mond beignets in an open-air marketplace. But in the mid-1800s, it was known and Gallatin Street, the seedy flip side to genteel French Quarter society. Police refused to patrol Gallatin Street unless they were in groups. The ‘good’ ones, anyway. The underpaid, understaffed police force was rife with bribery and corruption. Police coerced brothel staff to consent to his indelicate propositions or risk being shut down.
Cops covered up murders, killing witnesses when ‘necessary.’ Even with rampant police corruption and crime, there were still some who believed in public safety and law, trying to clear out brothels and decrease Gallatin Street crime. Unfortunately, the bad cops outnumbered the good. Crime and prostitution raged. Gallatin Street was nowhere for the innocent or trusting. And nobody wanted to run into one prostitute in particular, Bricktop Jackson.
