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Despite Emma’s insistence that Sarah had decamped for “a house of ill fame,” a search of St. Louis bawdy houses turned up no sign of her.

“Well, you’ll have to learn these things. I made very discreet inquiries and you would never guess. She is the—well—the owner of a house of ill fame.”

Only a person who was already of ill fame, for example, could be subjected to torture in order to force a confession.

There is, of course, a good reason for am-dram's ill fame.

The consignment of Christian virgins to houses of ill fame was one of the most common incidents in the later acts of martyrs which were invented in the middle ages.