October 2, 2017--Hookers

Rona is getting involved with hooking rugs. A great fall and winter pastime  

On the way home from Bangor, Maine where there was a weekend workshop for hooking aficionados, we wondered about the etymological history of hooker as applied to prostitutes.

We thought maybe it was assigned to street walkers who would hook the arms of the men they were seeking to lure. We couldn't come up with anything else that made much sense and so, since we do not have a smart phone, we looked it up when we were back at the house.

It has quite an interesting and unexpected history.

According to the Urban Dictionary it first appeared during the Civil War when General Joseph Hooker of the Union Army tried to protect his men from venerial disease by recruiting uninfected women and pimping then to his corps of 20,000 men. They were thereafter referred to as "Hooker's girls."

Digging deeper, according to other sources this is not necessarily accurate. 

There is evidence that the term "hooker" was used as early as 1845, well before the War Between the States. It is thus more likely that it derives from the concentration of cheap rum and prostitutes around the shipyards and ferry terminal of the Corlear's Hook area of Manhattan's Lower Eastside in the early to mid 19th century.

Sounds right though I continue to prefer the Urban Dictionary's version.

Corlear's Hook