Corlear’s Hook, Lower East Side of Manhattan, 1876
15 January 2021
Hooker is a slang term for a prostitute. We don’t know its origin with certainty, but there are two leading contenders, and the actual origin may very well be a combination of the two. Hooker is also a word with one of the more famous false etymologies.
The earliest known appearance of hooker in the sense of a prostitute is in the New York Transcript of 25 September 1835, which records a courtroom conversation:
Prisoner: [...] he called me a hooker.
Magistrate: What did you call her a hooker for?
Witness: ’Cause she allers hangs around the hook, your honner.
The hook here is a reference to Corlear’s Hook, a neighborhood on the lower east side of Manhattan, near what is now the Williamsburg Bridge. At the time, Corlear’s Hook was a well-known red-light district, as shown an 1839 pamphlet titled, Prostitution Exposed; or a Moral Reform Directory. Despite its title, the pamphlet is a guide for finding prostitutes, rather than an advocate for ending the practice. The author goes by the nom de plume of Butt Ender, and the publisher is For Public Convenience. Presumably, no one put their names on it for fear of being arrested for solicitation. It doesn’t use the word hooker, but it does describe Corlear’s Hook:
The Hook.—There are 32 houses of assignation in Walnut street and its vicinity, and 87 houses of prostitution of the most wretched description; frequented by sailors, &c.
Hooker appears again in another “sporting” New York newspaper, the Weekly Rake of 20 August 1842:
The rake wants to know. When are we to have a fresh importation of “hookers.” The stock is [...] pretty well used up. We want fresh hands at the bellow but don’t want fire.
The word appears in North Carolina in the papers of a Bryan Grimes of Chowan County, North Carolina on 18 November 1845. The book, Tarheel Talk, in which the use is recorded is not clear about the context, but it’s probably a letter by a T. Houghton to Grimes or a member of his family:
If he comes by way of Norfolk he will find any number of pretty Hookers in the Brick row not far from French's hotel.
It’s possible that hooker started as a label for ladies doing business in Corlear’s Hook and given New York City’s position as a travel destination and waypoint, the term spread outward from there.
The second likely origin is in an older slang word for a type of thief. The term dates to the sixteenth century as described by Thomas Harmon:
These hokers or Anglers be perillous and most wicked knaues, and be deriued or procede forth from the vpright men, they commonly goe in fréese yerkynes and gally sloppes, pointeth beneth the knée: these when they practise their pilfryng, it is al by night, for as they walk a day times from house to house to demaund charitie, thei vigilantly mark where, or in what place they may attayne to there pray, casting their eyes vp to euery window, wel noting what they sée ther, whether apparell or linnen, hanging neere vnto the sayde wyndows, and that wil they be sure to haue yt next night folowing, for they customably cary with them a staffe of v. or vi. foote long, in which, within one inch of yt top therof is a little hole bored through: in which hole they putte an yron hoke, and with the same they will pluck vnto them quikly any thing yt thei may reach therwith, which hoke in the day time they couertly cary about the[m], and is neuer sene or taken out till they come to the place where they worke their feat.
The 1725 New Canting Dictionary also records this sense, but adds that hooker is also used by grifters as the name of the person who lures a mark into the con:
ANGLERS, alias HOOKERS; the Third Order of Villains: Petty Thieves, who have a Stick with a Hook at the End, wherewith they pluck Things out of Windows, Grates, &c. Also those that draw People in to be cheated.
It’s very possible that this “luring” sense was extended to include prostitutes, who might very well be alluring. And it may be that oral use of hooker to mean a prostitute predates the red-light district of Corlear’s Hook by quite some time. If so, it’s also possible that the existing slang term became a play on words when the houses of Corlear’s Hook opened their doors for business. In that case, the Corlear’s Hook connection would be one of amplification and spread, rather than origin.
I can’t leave hooker without mention of General Joseph Hooker. The licentious behavior of this U.S. Civil War general is often given as the origin of the term. During his brief tenure as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, the army’s camp followers were known as Hooker’s Division, and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., grandson and great-grandson of the presidents, describes Hooker’s headquarters thusly:
During the winter (1862-63), when Hooker was in command, I can say from personal knowledge and experience, that the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac was a place where no self-respecting man liked to go, and no decent woman could go. It was a combination of barroom and brothel.
As we have seen, the slang use of hooker long predates the Civil War, so the general cannot be the term’s origin. But, as perhaps is the case with Corlear’s Hook, the general and his reputation no doubt amplified the term, bringing it to the vocabularies of thousands of soldiers.
Sources:
Adams, Charles Francis. Charles Francis Adams, 1835-1915: An Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916, 161.
Butt Ender. Prostitution Exposed; or a Moral Reform Directory. New York: Published for Public Convenience, 1839, 29. Gale Primary Sources.
Eliason, Norman Ellsworth. Tarheel Talk: an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1956, 277. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. hooker, n.3, hooker, n.1.
Harmon, Thomas. A Caveat for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Vagabones. London: Henry Middleton, 1573, sig. B4r–v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
A New Canting Dictionary. London: Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1725, B2. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hooker, n.1.
Quinion Michael. Port Out, Starboard Home: and Other Language Myths. London, Penguin, 2004, 152–53. HathTrust Digital Archive.
Photo Credit: Unknown photographer, 1876, New York Public Library.