Thank you, Neil McDonald, for your research. I had tried to reel the
discussion away from what I believed to be "innuendo" from our present-day reading
into "Pleasure House". I knew that the original had been a plantation, long
before it was attacked by the British in 1812. Its history during the 19th century
eludes me here in Georgia, but I was never led to believe that a brothel would
have existed there.

I also attempted to use logic, wondering why any madam would place a brothel
way "out in the country", far from the teeming masses of Navy and other men
available in the Borough and later City of Norfolk. There was no regular
transportation to that area other than what were, by best report, country roads.

When I was a child, in the 50s and 60s, the roads to that area were STILL
only two-lane highways, with Pleasure House Road being a smaller road off into
the wetlands deadending at the beach. We actually used the beach a few miles
further west of that point. Again, when my parents were married, 1950, they drove
out past Pleasure House Road "into the country" to stay with relatives. I
remember visiting that same home in the 60s and thought we had left civilization
far behind.

So... again, why would any enterprising madam have built a "pleasure house"
out in the boonies where only farmers and local constabulary would be regulars?
A larger audience would seem to be required to keep such a place in business.

Rather, as a tavern, inn, and gaming establishment (think coffee house with
liquor, pipes, and poker) would have appealed to the local gentry who needed
the company of their peers and a place to unwind from the hard work of farming.

I think the logic is there. I think that the continous naming of "meeting
rooms" and other things belies the brothel story. We're talking conservative
Virginia here... memorializing the name of a brothel? I think not! Jerry Falwell
and Pat Robertson would have made it a target long ago.

Jon Strickland
Atlanta


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