Feminist analyses have shown how from the mid-nineteenth century women shaped the cities in which they lived. This article argues for the existence of an urban gynocentric zone, the site of a cluster of women-owned businesses charged with handling the unwanted products of women’s bodies. Shaped by shame, it constituted a female space within a larger metropolis, invisible, unacknowledged, yet well enough known to be a place of ready resort for women who needed its services. The article analyses the network of services businesswomen developed to do the dirty work necessary to cleanse the city of moral impurity, and the ways in which they negotiated the taint that such transgressive work necessarily involved. In so doing it promises to inform wider debates about the history of abortion, midwifery, baby farming and adoption.

女权主义分析表明，从 19 世纪中叶开始，女性是如何塑造她们居住的城市的。本文主张存在一个以女性为中心的城市区域，该区域是一群负责处理女性身体不需要的产品的女性拥有的企业的所在地。受耻辱的影响，它在一个更大的大都市中构成了一个女性空间，看不见，不被承认，但众所周知，它是一个为需要它的服务的女性准备的度假胜地。这篇文章分析了女企业家为从事必要的肮脏工作而开发的服务网络，以净化城市的道德不洁，以及她们谈判这种违法工作必然涉及的污点的方式。通过这样做，它有望为关于堕胎、助产、婴儿养殖和收养历史的更广泛辩论提供信息。