Quartier Pigalle

Quartier Pigalle is one of the 20 Arrondissements (administrative districts) of Paris, France. Since the early 1900’s, it has been known world-wide as a tourist district containing many sex shops, theatres and adult shows throughout the district. During the second World War, it’s infamy spread to the English speaking soldiers, and the Allied soldiers nicknamed the district “Pig Alley.” But before the War, the city itself was already recognized in America as the world’s most raunchy “Sin City,” long before this nickname got reassigned to Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1928, American-born actress Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri) established a nightclub in Pigalle. There, she would become famous for her erotic dancing, almost completely nude.

Early in his ministry when William Branham mentions his time in Paris, he does not specifically mention the sex district. But he is very clear that he is referring to sin of Biblical proportions:

“Then what did they do? What happened? Here is where he started. The Devil set up his headquarters there. There is where he started, right there, to demoralize the world, from Paris, France.”
Branham, 54-0509 - The Invasion of The United States

Branham claims that his reason for visiting the sex capital of France was out of curiosity.  As his party toured Europe for a series of meetings in the healing revival, someone apparently told Branham that women were stripping their clothes off in the street.  He decided to go see these women to determine whether or not the stories were true.  His conclusion?  "It's the truth!"

When they told me that Pigalle, in Paris, was such an ill-famed place, how did I know? I was never there. But I went down there to find out if it was right or not. I took two or three more ministers and went down there to those womens and things that stripped on them streets and things. It’s the truth..
Branham, William. 1958, Sep 28. The Baptism Of The Holy Spirit. 58-0928

When I went to Pigalle, Brother Moore and I, when I was in France, we thought we'd see just those old prostitutes of Pigalle
Branham, 61-0217 - The Mark Of The Beast And The Seal Of God #2

Female prostitution, however, was not the only attraction at the ill-famed district in Paris.  Quartier Pigalle was also the homosexual capital of the world, and the streets were also filled with male prostitutes.  This could explain Branham's statement, "womens and things that stripped" when he described visiting the sex district to see the prostitution for himself.

“The most visible area of homosexual sociability in post-Liberation Paris was the district around St.-Germain-des-Pres, which had become fashionable after 1945 owing its association with the existentialists. Two popular homosexual meeting places were the Café de Flore – whose manager Paul Boubal had no liking for his homosexual clientele – and the Reine Blanche café. Neither was “officially homosexual, unlike the nearby bar Le Fiacre, which opened at the beginning of the 1950s in the Rue Cherche-Midi. For a decade this was THE gay bar of Paris. Its first-floor restaurant was patronized by a fashionable crowd of actors and singers while downstairs there was a miniscule bar where drinkers were so tightly packed that the pressure of bodies was a sexual experience in itself. Christopher Isherwood, visiting in 1956, described being “jammed in a crowd so dense you could only sway with it like seaweed in water.” The existence of these bars also made the St. Germain distict a meeting place for male prostitutes who hung around the café’s or on the pavements. Those who preferred a seedier, less fashionable atmosphere found it in the Pigalle district, which was fanning the dying embers of its homosexual glory days.”
The Shadow of the Occupation, 1942-1955, Page 49