Vice Zone Proposed About the Metropole

From The Indianapolis News, Monday, April 22: Federal authorities will join city police and health authorities in suppressing vice in Indianapolis. Charles Tighe, agent-in-charge of the federal intelligence bureau, announced as part of a nation-wide effort by the surgeon-general to rid areas near soldiers’ quarters of vice diseases, a five-mile zone around the Metropole Hotel, Capitol Av and Ohio St, will be established under the conscription law. The Metropole is now the barracks of more than 400 men from Kentucky who are being trained in war industrial work. Federal authorities will work with city officials to enact ordinances to require the examination of immoral women. Together with an anti-vice zone around Ft. Harrison, the zone placed around the hotel will put most of Indianapolis under federal law which will be able to deal more efficiently with disease than local law.

“Vice Zone Proposed About the Metropole,” The Indianapolis News, 22 April 1918, p. 4:3