A suspect text from “The University of Chicago Sociological Series,” Harvey W. Zorbaugh’s “The Gold Coast and the Slum” is filled with suspect yet engrossing, lurid purported testimonies, such as the fever a man who left his wife discovered once removing to a North Side rooming house. “I found myself totally alone. There were evenings when I went out of my way to buy a paper, or an article at a drug store—just for the sake of talking a few minutes with someone,” Zorbaugh reports the man confessing. “Worse, if possible, than the loneliness was the sex hunger. I had had a regular and satisfying sex experience with my wife. I began to grow restless without it… The constant stimulation of the city began to tell, adding tremendously to this sexual restlessness, lights, well-dressed women, billboards advertising shows. It got so posters showing women in negligee or women’s silk-clad legs excited me unbearably. Many times I followed an attractive woman for blocks, with no thought of accosting her, but to watch the movements off her body… A girl in the next house used to undress without pulling down her shade, and I literally spent hours watching her. I had fantasies of sexual intercourse with every attractive woman I saw on the street.” What Zorbaugh saw as “the emotional tensions of thwarted wishes” often led to suicide, he claimed, finding the state of confusion out of the ordinary. (Ray Pride)
