Introduction

Introduction

I enter upon this part of my subject with a deep sense of the misery, the vice, the ignorance, and the want that encompass us on every side--I enter upon it after much grave attention to the subject, observing closely, reflecting patiently, and generalizing cautiously upon the phenomena and causes of the vice and crime of this city--I enter upon it after a thoughtful study of the habits and character of the “outcast” class generally--I enter upon it, moreover, not only as forming an integral and most important part of the task I have imposed upon myself, but from a wish to divest the public mind of certain “idols” of the platform and conventicle--“idols” peculiar to our own time, and unknown to the great Father of the inductive philosophy--and “idols,” too, that appear to me greatly to obstruct a proper understanding of the subject. Further, I am led to believe that I can contribute some new facts concerning the physics and economy of vice and crime generally, that will not only make the solution of the social problem more easy to us, but, setting more plainly before us some of its latent causes, make us look with more pity and less anger on those who want the fortitude to resist their influence; and induce us, or at least the more earnest among us, to apply ourselves steadfastly to the removal or alleviation of those social evils that appear to create so large a proportion of the vice and crime that we seek by punishment to prevent.

Such are the ultimate objects of my present labours: the result of them is given to the world with an earnest desire to better the condition of the wretched social outcasts of whom I have now to treat, and to contribute, if possible, my mite of good towards the common weal.

But though such be my ultimate object, let me here confess that my immediate aim is the elimination of the truth; without this, of course, all other principles must be sheer sentimentality--sentiments being, to my mind, opinions engendered by the feelings rather than the judgment. The attainment of the truth, then, will be my primary aim; but by the truth, I wish it to be understood, I mean something more than the bare facts. Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact. A fact, so long as it remains an isolated fact, is a dull, dead, uninformed thing; no object nor event by itself can possibly give us any knowledge, we must compare it with some other, even to distinguish it; and it is the distinctive quality thus developed that constitutes the essence of a thing--that is to say, the point by which we cognize and recognise it when again presented to us. A fact must be assimilated with, or discriminated from, some other fact or facts, in order to be raised to the dignity of a truth, and made to convey the least knowledge to the mind. To say, for instance, that in the year 1850 there were 26,813 criminal offenders in England and Wales, is merely to oppress the brain with the record of a fact that, per se, is so much mental lumber. This is the very mummery of statistics; of what rational good can such information by itself be to any person? who can tell whether the number of offenders in that year be large or small, unless they compare it with the number of some other year, or in some other country? but to do this will require another fact, and even then this second fact can give us but little real knowledge. It may teach us, perhaps, that the past year was more or less criminal than some other year, or that the people of this country, in that year, were more or less disposed to the infraction of the laws than some other people abroad; still, what will all this avail us? If the year which we select to contrast criminally with that of 1850 be not itself compared with other years, how are we to know whether the number of criminals appertaining to it be above or below the average? or, in other words, how can the one be made a measure of the other?

To give the least mental value to facts, therefore, we must generalize them, that is to say, we must contemplate them in connection with other facts, and so discover their agreements and differences, their antecedents, concomitants, and consequences. It is true we may frame erroneous and defective theories in so doing; we may believe things which are similar in appearance to be similar in their powers and properties also; we may distinguish between things having no real difference; we may mistake concomitant events for consequences; we may generalize with too few particulars, and hastily infer that to be common to all which is but the special attribute of a limited number; nevertheless, if theory may occasionally teach us wrongly, facts without theory or generalization cannot possibly teach us at all. What the process of digestion is to food, that of generalizing is to fact; for as it is by the assimilation of the substances we eat with the elements of our bodies that our limbs are enlarged and our whole frames strengthened, so is it by associating perception with perception in our brains that our intellect becomes at once expanded and invigorated. Contrary to the vulgar notion, theory, that is to say, theory in its true Baconian sense, is not opposed to fact, but consists rather of a large collection of facts; it is not true of this or that thing alone, but of all things belonging to the same class--in a word, it consists not of one fact but an infinity. The theory of gravitation, for instance, expresses not only what occurs when a stone falls to the earth, but when every other body does the same thing; it expresses, moreover, what takes place in the revolution of the moon round our planet, and in the revolution of our planet and of all the other planets round our sun, and of all other suns round the centre of the universe; in fine, it is true not of one thing merely, but of every material object in the entire range of creation.

There are, of course, two methods of dealing philosophically with every subject--deductively and inductively. We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles. The one explains, the other investigates; the former applies known general rules to the comprehension of particular phenomena, and the latter classifies the particular phenomena, so that we may ultimately come to comprehend their unknown general rules. The deductive method is the mode of using knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of acquiring it.

In a subject like the crime and vice of the metropolis, and the country in general, of which so little is known--of which there are so many facts, but so little comprehension--it is evident that we must seek by induction, that is to say, by a careful classification of the known phenomena, to render the matter more intelligible; in fine, we must, in order to arrive at a comprehensive knowledge of its antecedents, consequences, and concomitants, contemplate as large a number of facts as possible in as many different relations as the statistical records of the country will admit of our doing.

With this brief preamble I will proceed to treat generally of the class that will not work, and then particularly of that portion of them termed prostitutes. But, first, who are those that will work, and who those that will not work? This is the primary point to be evolved.

OF THE WORKERS AND NON-WORKERS.

The essential quality of an animal is that it seeks its own living, whereas a vegetable has its living brought to it. An animal cannot stick its feet in the ground and suck up the inorganic elements of its body from the soil, nor drink in the organic elements from the atmosphere. The leaves of plants are not only their lungs but their stomachs. As they breathe they acquire food and strength, but as animals breathe they gradually waste away. The carbon which is secreted by the process of respiration in the vegetable is excreted by the very same process in the animal. Hence a fresh supply of carbonaceous matter must be sought after and obtained at frequent intervals, in order to repair the continual waste of animal life.

But in the act of seeking for substances fitted to replace that which is lost in respiration, nerves must be excited and muscles moved; and recent discoveries have shown that such excitation and motion are attended with decomposition of the organs in which they occur. Muscular action gives rise to the destruction of muscular tissue, nervous action to a change in the nervous matter; and this destruction and decomposition necessarily involve a fresh supply of nitrogenous matter, in order that the loss may be repaired.

Now a tree, being inactive, has little or no waste. All the food that it obtains goes to the invigoration of its frame; not one atom is destroyed in seeking more: but the essential condition of animal life is muscular action; the essential condition of muscular action is the destruction of muscular tissue; and the essential condition of the destruction of muscular tissue is a supply of food fitted for the reformation of it, or--death. It is impossible for an animal--like a vegetable--to stand still and not destroy. If the limbs are not moving, the heart is beating, the lungs playing, the bosom heaving. Hence an animal, in order to continue its existence, must obtain its subsistence either by its own exertions or by those of others--in a word, it must be autobious or allobious.

The procuration of sustenance, then, is the necessary condition of animal life, and constitutes the sole apparent reason for the addition of the locomotive apparatus to the vegetative functions of sentient nature; but the faculties of comparison and volition have been further added to the animal nature of Man, in order to enable him, among other things, the better to gratify his wants--to give him such a mastery over the elements of material nature, that he may force the external world the more readily to contribute to his support. Hence the derangement of either one of those functions must degrade the human being--as regards his means of sustenance--to the level of the brute. If his intellect be impaired, and the faculty of perceiving “the fitness of things” be consequently lost to him--or, this being sound, if the power of moving his muscles in compliance with his will be deficient--then the individual becomes no longer capable, like his fellows, of continuing his existence by his own exertions.

Hence, in every state, we have two extensive causes of allobiism, or living by the labour of others; the one intellectual, as in the case of lunatics and idiots, and the other physical, as in the case of the infirm, the crippled, and the maimed--the old and the young.

But a third, and a more extensive class, still remains to be particularized. The members of every community may be divided into the energetic and the an-ergetic; that is to say, into the hardworking and the non-working, the industrious and the indolent classes; the distinguishing characteristic of the anergetic being the extreme irksomeness of all labour to them, and their consequent indisposition to work for their subsistence. Now, in the circumstances above enumerated, we have three capital causes why, in every State, a certain portion of the community must derive their subsistence from the exertions of the rest; the first proceeds from some physical defect, as in the case of the old and the young, the super-annuated and the sub-annuated, the crippled and the maimed; the second from some intellectual defect, as in the case of lunatics and idiots; and the third from some moral defect, as in the case of the indolent, the vagrant, the professional mendicant, and the criminal. In all civilized countries, there will necessarily be a greater or less number of human parasites living on the sustenance of their fellows. The industrious must labour to support the lazy, and the sane to keep the insane, and the able-bodied to maintain the infirm.

Still, to complete the social fabric, another class requires to be specified. As yet, regard has been paid only to those who must needs labour for their living, or who, in default of so doing, must prey on the proceeds of the industry of their more active or more stalwart brethren. There is, however, in all civilized society, a farther portion of the people distinct from either of those above mentioned, who, being already provided--no matter how--with a sufficient stock of sustenance, or what will exchange for such, have no occasion to toil for an additional supply.

Hence all society would appear to arrange itself into four different classes:--

I. THOSE THAT WILL WORK. II. THOSE THAT CANNOT WORK. III. THOSE THAT WILL NOT WORK. IV. THOSE THAT NEED NOT WORK.

Under one or other section of this quadruple division, every member, not only of our community, but of every other civilized State, must necessarily be included; the rich, the poor, the industrious, the idle, the honest, the dishonest, the virtuous, and the vicious--each and all must be comprised therein.

Let me now proceed specially to treat of each of these classes--to distribute under one or other of these four categories the diverse modes of living peculiar to the members of our own community, and so to enunciate, for the first time, the natural history, as it were, of the industry and idleness of Great Britain in the nineteenth century.

It is no easy matter, however, to classify the different kinds of labour scientifically. To arrange the several varieties of work into “orders,” and to group the manifold species of arts under a few comprehensive genera--so that the mind may grasp the whole at one effort--is a task of a most perplexing character. Moreover, the first attempt to bring any number of diverse phenomena within the rules of logical division is not only a matter of considerable difficulty, but one, unfortunately, that is generally unsuccessful. It is impossible, however, to proceed with the present inquiry without making some attempt at systematic arrangement; for of all scientific processes, the classification of the various phenomena, in connection with a given subject, is perhaps the most important; indeed, if we consider that the function of cognition is essentially discriminative, it is evident, that without distinguishing between one object and another, there can be no knowledge, nor, indeed, any perception. Even as the seizing of a particular difference causes the mind to apprehend the special character of an object, so does the discovery of the agreements and differences among the several phenomena of a subject enable the understanding to comprehend it. What the generalization of events is to the ascertainment of natural laws, the generalization of things is to the discovery of natural systems. But classification is no less dangerous than it is important to science; for in precisely the same proportion as a correct grouping of objects into genera and species, orders and varieties, expands and assists our understanding, so does any erroneous arrangement cripple and retard all true knowledge. The reduction of all external substances into four elements by the ancients--earth, air, fire, and water--perhaps did more to obstruct the progress of chemical science than even a prohibition of the study could have effected.

But the branches of industry are so multifarious, the divisions of labour so minute and manifold, that it seems at first almost impossible to reduce them to any system. Moreover, the crude generalizations expressed in the names of the several arts, render the subject still more perplexing.

Some kinds of workmen, for example, are called after the articles they make--as saddlers, hatters, boot-makers, dress-makers, breeches-makers, stay-makers, lace-makers, button-makers, glovers, cabinet-makers, artificial-flower-makers, ship-builders, organ-builders, boat-builders, nailers, pin-makers, basket-makers, pump-makers, clock and watch makers, wheel-wrights, ship-wrights, and so forth.

Some operatives, on the other hand, take their names not from what they make, but from the kind of work they perform. Hence we have carvers, joiners, bricklayers, weavers, knitters, engravers, embroiderers, tanners, curriers, bleachers, thatchers, lime-burners, glass-blowers, seamstresses, assayers, refiners, embossers, chasers, painters, paper-hangers, printers, book-binders, cab-drivers, fishermen, graziers, and so on.

Other artizans, again, are styled after the materials upon which they work, such as tinmen, jewellers, lapidaries, goldsmiths, braziers, plumbers, pewterers, glaziers, &c. &c.

And lastly, a few operatives are named after the tools they use; thus we have ploughmen, sawyers, and needlewomen.

But these divisions, it is evident, are as unscientific as they are arbitrary; nor would it be possible, by adopting such a classification, to arrive at any practical result.

Now, I had hoped to have derived some little assistance in my attempt to reduce the several varieties of work to system from the arrangement of the products of industry and art at “the Great Exhibition.” I knew, however, that the point of classification had proved the great stumbling block to the French Industrial Exhibitions. In the Exposition of the Arts and Manufactures of France in 1806, for instance, M. Costaz adopted a topographical arrangement, according to the departments of the kingdom whence the specimens were sent. In 1819, again, finding the previous arrangement conveyed little or no knowledge, depending, as it did, on the mere local association of the places of manufacture, the same philosopher attempted to classify all arts into a sort of natural system, but the separate divisions amounted to thirty-nine, and were found to be confused and inconvenient. In 1827 M. Payon adopted a classification into five great divisions, arranging the arts according as they are chemical, mechanical, physical, economical, or “miscellaneous” in their nature. It was found, however, in practice, that two, or even three, of these characteristics often belonged to the same manufacture. In 1834 M. Dupin proposed a classification that was found to work better than any which preceded it. He viewed man as a locomotive animal, a clothed animal, a domiciled animal, &c., and thus tracing him through his various daily wants and employments, he arrived at a classification in which all arts are placed under nine headings, according as they contribute to the alimentary, sanitary, vestiary, domiciliary, locomotive, sensitive, intellectual, preparative, or social tendencies of man. In 1844 and 1849 attempts were made towards an eclectic combination of two or three of the above-mentioned systems, but it does not appear that the latter arrangements presented any marked advantages.

Now, with all the experience of the French nation to guide us, I naturally expected that especial attention would be directed towards the point of classification with us, and that a technological system would be propounded, which would be found at least an improvement on the bungling systems of the French. It must be confessed, however, that no nation could possibly have stultified itself so egregiously as we have done in this respect. Never was there anything half so puerile as the classification of the works of industry in our own Exhibition!

But this comes of the patronage of Princes; for we are told that at one of the earliest meetings at Buckingham Palace his Royal Highness propounded the system of classification according to which the works of industry were to be arranged. The published minutes of the meeting on the 30th of June, 1849, inform us--

“His Royal Highness communicated his views regarding the formation of a Great Collection of Works of Industry and Art in London in 1851, for the purposes of exhibition, and of competition and encouragement. His Royal Highness considered that such a collection and exhibition should consist of the following divisions:--

Raw Materials. Machinery and Mechanical Inventions. Manufactures. Sculpture and Plastic Art generally.”

Now, were it possible for monarchs to do with natural laws as with social ones, namely, to blow a trumpet and declaring “le roi le veut,” to have their will pass into one of the statutes of creation, it might be advantageous to science that Princes should seek to lay down orders of arrangement and propound systems of classification. But seeing that Science is as pure a republic as Letters, and that there are no “Highnesses” in philosophy--for if there be any aristocracy at all in such matters, it is at least an aristocracy of intellect--it is rather an injury than a benefit that those who are high in authority should interfere in these affairs at all; since, from the very circumstances of their position it is utterly impossible for them to arrive at anything more than the merest surface knowledge on such subjects. The influence, too, that their mere “authority” has over men’s minds is directly opposed to the perception of truth, preventing that free and independent exercise of the intellect from which alone all discovery and knowledge can proceed.

Judging the quadruple arrangement of the Great Exhibition by the laws of logical division, we find that the three classes--Raw Materials, Machinery, and Manufactures--which refer more particularly to the Works of Industry, are neither distinct nor do they include the whole. What is a raw material, and what a manufacture? It is from the difficulty of distinguishing between these two conditions that leather is placed under Manufactures, and steel under Raw Materials--though surely steel is iron plus carbon, and leather skin plus tannin; so that, technologically considered, there is no difference between them. If by the term raw material is meant some natural product in its crude state, then it is evident that “Geological maps, plans, and sections; prussiate of potash, and other mixed chemical manufactures; sulphuric, muriatic, nitric, and other acids; medicinal tinctures, cod liver oil, dried fruits, fermented liquors and spirits, preserved meats, portable soups, glue, and the alloys” cannot possibly rank as raw materials, though one and all of these articles are to be found so “classified” at the Great Exhibition; but if the meaning of a “raw material” be extended to any product which constitutes the substance to be operated upon in an industrial art, then the answer is that leather, which is the material of shoes and harness, is no more a manufacture than steel, which is placed among the raw materials, because forming the constituent substance of cutlery and tools. So interlinked are the various arts and manufactures, that what is the product of one process of industry is the material of another--thus, yarn is the product of spinning, and the material of weaving, and in the same manner the cloth, which is the product of weaving, becomes the material of tailoring.

But a still greater blunder than the non-distinction between products and materials lies in the confounding of processes with products. In an Industrial Exhibition to reserve no special place for the processes of industry is very much like the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted; and yet it is evident that, in the quadruple arrangement before mentioned, those most important industrial operations which consist merely in arriving at the same result by simpler means--as, for instance, the hot blast in metallurgical operations--can find no distinct expression. The consequence is that methods of work are arranged under the same head as the work itself; and the “Executive” have been obliged to group under the first subdivision of Raw Materials the following inconsistent jumble:--Salt deposits; ventilation; safety lamps and other methods of lighting; methods of lowering and raising miners, and draining; methods of roasting, smelting, or otherwise reducing ores; while under the second subdivision of Raw Materials chemical and pharmaceutical processes and products are indiscriminately confounded.

Another most important defect is the omission of all mention of those industrial processes which have no special or distinct products of their own, but which are rather engaged in adding to the beauty or durability of others; as, for instance, the bleaching of some textile fabrics, the embroidering of others, the dyeing and printing of others; the binding of books; the cutting of glass; the painting of china, &c. From the want of an express division for this large portion of our industrial arts, there is a jumbling and a bungling throughout the whole arrangement. Under the head of manufactures are grouped printing and bookbinding, the “dyeing of woollen, cotton, and linen goods,” “embroidery, fancy, and industrial work,” the cutting and engraving of glass; and, lastly, the art of “decoration generally,” including “ornamental, coloured decoration,” and the “imitations of woods, marbles, &c.,”--though surely these are one and all additions to manufactures rather than manufactures themselves. Indeed, a more extraordinary and unscientific hotch-potch than the entire arrangement has never been submitted to public criticism and public ridicule.

Amid all this confusion and perplexity, then, how are we to proceed? Why, we must direct our attention to some more judicious and more experienced guide. In such matters, at least, as the Exposition of the Science of Labour, it is clear that we must “put not our trust in princes.”

That Prince Albert has conferred a great boon on the country in the establishment of the Great Exhibition (for it is due not only to his patronage but to his own personal exertions), no unprejudiced mind can for a moment doubt; and that he has, ever since his first coming among us, filled a most delicate office in the State in a highly decorous and commendable manner, avoiding all political partizanship, and being ever ready to give the influence of his patronage, and, indeed, co-operation, to anything that appeared to promise an amelioration of the condition of the working classes of this country, I am most glad to have it in my power to bear witness; but that, because of this, we should pin our faith to a “hasty generalization” propounded by him, would be to render ourselves at once silly and servile.

If, with the view of obtaining some more precise information concerning the several branches of industry, we turn our attention to the Government analysis of the different modes of employment among the people, we shall find that for all purposes of a scientific or definite character the Occupation Abstract of the Census of this country is comparatively useless. Previous to 1841, the sole attempt made at generalization was the division of the entire industrial community into three orders, viz.:--

I. Those employed in Agriculture.

1. Agricultural Occupiers.

a. Employing Labourers.

b. Not employing Labourers.

2. Agricultural Labourers.

II. Those employed in Manufactures.

1. Employed in Manufactures.

2. Employed in making Manufacturing Machinery.

III. All other Classes.

1. Employed in Retail Trade or in Handicraft, as Masters or Workmen.

2. Capitalists, Bankers, Professional, and other educated men.

3. Labourers employed in labour not Agricultural--as Miners, Quarriers, Fishermen, Porters, &c.

4. Male Servants.

5. Other Males, 20 years of age.

The defects of this arrangement must be self-evident to all who have paid the least attention to economical science. It offends against both the laws of logical division, the parts being neither distinct nor equal to the whole. In the first place, what is a manufacturer? and how is such an one to be distinguished from one employed in handicraft? How do the workers in metal, as the “tin manufacturers,” “lead manufacturers,” “iron manufacturers,”--who are one and all classed under the head of manufacturers--differ, in an economical point of view, from the workers in wood, as the carpenters and joiners, the cabinet-makers, ship-builders, &c., who are all classed under the head of handicraftsmen? Again, according to the census of 1831, a brewer is placed among those employed in retail trade or in handicrafts, while a vinegar maker is ranked with the manufacturers. According to Mr. Babbage, manufacturing differs from mere making simply in the quantity produced--he being a manufacturer who makes a greater number of the same articles; manufacturing is thus simply production in a large way, in connection with the several handicrafts. Dr. Ure, however, appears to consider such articles manufactures as are produced by means of machinery, citing the word which originally signified production by hand (being the Latin equivalent for the Saxon handicraft) as an instance of those singular verbal corruptions by which terms come to stand for the very opposite to their literal meaning. But with all deference to the Doctor, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, Mr. Babbage’s definition of a manufacturer, viz., as a producer on a large scale, appears to me the more correct; for it is in this sense that we speak of manufacturing chemists, boot and shoe manufacturers, ginger-beer manufacturers, and the like.

The Occupation Abstract of the Census of 1841, though far more comprehensive than the one preceding it, is equally unsatisfactory and unphilosophical. In this document the several members of Society are thus classified:--

I. Persons engaged in Commerce, Trade, and Manufacture.

II. Agriculture.

III. Labour, not Agricultural.

IV. Army and Navy Merchant Seamen, Fishermen, and Watermen.

V. Professions and other pursuits requiring education.

VI. Government, Civil Service, and Municipal and Parochial Officers.

VII. Domestic Servants.

VIII. Persons of Independent Means.

IX. Almspeople, Pensioners, Paupers, Lunatics, and Prisoners.

X. Remainder of Population, including Women and Children.

Here it will be seen that the defects arising from drawing distinctions where no real differences exist, are avoided, those engaged in handicrafts being included under the same head as those engaged in manufacture; but the equally grave error of confounding or grouping together occupations which are essentially diverse, is allowed to continue. Accordingly, the first division is made to include those who are engaged in trade and commerce as well as manufacture, though surely--the one belongs strictly to the distributing, and the other to the producing class--occupations which are not only essentially distinct, but of which it is absolutely necessary for a right understanding of the state of the country that we know the proportion that the one bears to the other. Again, the employers in both cases are confounded with the employed, so that, though the capitalists who supply the materials, and pay the wages for the several kinds of work are a distinct body of people from those who do the work, and a body, moreover, that it is of the highest possible importance, in an economical point of view, that we should be able to estimate numerically,--no attempt is made to discriminate the one from the other. Now these three classes, distributors, employers, and operatives, which in the Government returns of the people are jumbled together in one heterogeneous crowd, as if the distinctions between Capital, Labour, and Distribution had never been propounded, are precisely those concerning which the social inquirer desires the most minute information.

The Irish census is differently arranged from that of Great Britain. There the several classes are grouped under the following heads:--

I. Ministering to Food.

1. As Producers. 2. As Preparers. 3. As Distributors.

II. Ministering to Clothing.

1. As Manufacturers of Materials. 2. As Handicraftsmen and Dealers.

III. Ministering to Lodging, Furniture, Machinery, &c.

IV. Ministering to Health.

V. Ministering to Charity.

VI. Ministering to Justice.

VII. Ministering to Education.

VIII. Ministering to Religion.

IX. Various Arts and Employments, not included in the foregoing.

X. Residue of Population, not having specified occupations, and including unemployed persons and women.

This, however, is no improvement upon the English classification. There is the same want of discrimination, and the same disregard of the great “economical” divisions of society.

Moreover, to show the extreme fallacy of such a classification, it is only necessary to make the following extract from the Report of the Commissioners for Great Britain:--

“We would willingly have given a classification of the occupations of the inhabitants of Great Britain into the various wants to which they respectively minister, but, in attempting this, we were stopped by the various anomalies and uncertainties to which such a classification seemed necessarily to lead, from the fact that many persons supply more than one want, though they can only be classed under one head. Thus to give but a single instance--the farmer and grazier may be deemed to minister quite as much to clothing by the fleece and hides as he does to food by the flesh of his sheep and cattle.”

He, therefore, who would seek to elaborate the natural history of the industry of the people of England, must direct his attention to some social philosopher, who has given the subject more consideration than either princes or Government officials can possibly be expected to devote to it. Among the whole body of economists, Mr. Stuart Mill appears to be the only man who has taken a comprehensive and enlightened view of the several functions of society. Following in the footsteps of M. Say, the French social philosopher, he first points out concerning the products of industry, that labour is not creative of objects but of utilities, and then proceeds to say:--

“Now the utilities produced by labour are of three kinds; they are--

“First, utilities fixed and embodied in outward objects; by labour employed in investing external material things with properties which render them serviceable to human beings. This is the common case, and requires no illustration.

“Secondly, utilities fixed and embodied in human beings; the labour being in this case employed in conferring on human beings qualities which render them serviceable to themselves and others. To this class belongs the labour of all concerned in education; not only schoolmasters, tutors, and professors, but governments, so far as they aim successfully at the improvement of the people; moralists and clergymen, as far as productive of benefit; the labour of physicians, as far as instrumental in preserving life and physical or mental efficiency; of the teachers of bodily exercises, and of the various trades, sciences, and arts, together with the labour of the learners in acquiring them, and all labour bestowed by any persons, throughout life, in improving the knowledge or cultivating the bodily and mental faculties of themselves or others.

“Thirdly, and lastly, utilities not fixed or embodied in any object, but consisting in a mere service rendered, a pleasure given, an inconvenience or pain averted, during a longer or a shorter time, but without leaving a permanent acquisition in the improved qualities of any person or thing; the labour here being employed in producing an utility directly, not (as in the two former cases) in fitting some other thing to afford an utility. Such, for example, is the labour of the musical performer, the actor, the public declaimer or reciter, and the showman.

“Some good may, no doubt, be produced beyond the moment, upon the feeling and disposition, or general state of enjoyment of the spectators; or instead of good there may be harm, but neither the one nor the other is the effect intended, is the result for which the exhibitor works and the spectator pays, but the immediate pleasure. Such, again, is the labour of the army and navy; they, at the best, prevent a country from being conquered, or from being injured or insulted, which is a service, but in all other respects leave the country neither improved nor deteriorated. Such, too, is the labour of the legislator, the judge, the officer of justice, and all other agents of Government, in their ordinary functions, apart from any influence they may exert on the improvement of the national mind. The service which they render is to maintain peace and security; these compose the utility which they produce. It may appear to some that carriers, and merchants or dealers, should be placed in this same class, since their labour does not add any properties to objects, but I reply that it does, it adds the property of being in the place where they are wanted, instead of being in some other place, which is a very useful property, and the utility it confers is embodied in the things themselves, which now actually are in the place where they are required for use, and in consequence of that increased utility could be sold at an increased price proportioned to the labour expended in conferring it. This labour, therefore, does not belong to the third class, but to the first.”

To the latter part of the above classification, I regret to say I cannot assent. Surely the property of being in the place where they are wanted, which carriers and distributors are said to confer on external objects, cannot be said to be fixed--if, indeed, it be strictly embodied in the objects, since the very act of distribution consists in the alteration of this local relation, and transferring such objects to the possession of another. Is not the utility which the weaver fixes and embodies in a yard of cotton, a very different utility from that effected by the linendraper in handing the same yard of cotton over the counter in exchange for so much money? and in this particular act, it would be difficult to perceive what is fixed and embodied, seeing that it consists essentially in an exchange of commodities.

Mr. Mill’s mistake appears to consist in not discerning that there is another class of labour besides that employed in producing utilities directly, and that occupied in fitting other things to afford utilities: viz., that which is engaged in assisting those who are so occupied in fitting things to be useful. This class consists of such as are engaged in aiding the producers of permanent material utilities either before or during production, and such as are engaged in aiding them after production. Under the first division are comprised capitalists, or those who supply the materials and tools for the work, superintendents and managers, or those who direct the work, and labourers, or those who perform some minor office connected with the work, as in turning the large wheel for a turner, in carrying the bricks to a bricklayer, and the like; while in the second division, or those who are engaged in assisting producers after production, are included carriers, or those who remove the produce to the market, and dealers and shopmen, or those who obtain purchasers for it. Now it is evident that the function of all these classes is merely auxiliary to the labour of the producers, consisting principally of so many modes of economizing their time and labour. Whether the gains of some of these auxiliary classes are as disproportionately large, as the others are disproportionately small, this is not the place to inquire. My present duty is merely to record the fact of the existence of such classes, and to assign them their proper place in the social fabric, as at present constituted.

Now, from the above it will appear, that there are four distinct classes of workers:--

I. ENRICHERS, or those who are employed in producing utilities fixed and embodied in material things, that is to say, in producing exchangeable commodities or riches.

II. AUXILIARIES, or those who are employed in aiding the production of exchangeable commodities.

III. BENEFACTORS, or those who are employed in producing utilities fixed and embodied in human beings, that is to say, in conferring upon them some permanent good.

IV. SERVITORS, or those who are employed in rendering some service, that is to say, in conferring some temporary good upon another.

Class 1 is engaged in investing material objects with qualities which render them serviceable to others.

Class 2 is engaged in aiding the operations of Class 1.

Class 3 is engaged in conferring on human beings qualities which render them serviceable to themselves or others.

Class 4 is engaged in giving a pleasure, averting a pain (during a longer or shorter period), or preventing an inconvenience, by performing some office for others that they would find irksome to do for themselves.

Hence it appears that the operations of the first and third of the above classes, or the Enrichers and Benefactors of Society, tend to leave some permanent acquisition in the improved qualities of either persons or things,--whereas the operations of the second and fourth classes, or the Auxiliaries and Servitors, are limited merely to promoting either the labours or the pleasures of the other members of the community.

Such, then, are the several classes of Workers; and here it should be stated that, I apply the title Worker to all those who do anything for their living, who perform any act whatsoever that is considered worthy of being paid for by others, without regard to the question whether such labourers tend to add to or decrease the aggregate wealth of the community. I consider all persons doing or giving something for the comforts they obtain, as self-supporting individuals. Whether that something be really an equivalent for the emoluments they receive, it is not my vocation here to inquire. Suffice it some real or imaginary benefit is conferred upon society, or a particular individual, and what is thought a fair and proper reward is given in return for it. Hence I look upon soldiers, sailors, Government and parochial officers, capitalists, clergymen, lawyers, wives, &c., &c., as self-supporting--a certain amount of labour, or a certain desirable commodity, being given by each and all in exchange for other commodities, which are considered less desirable to the individuals parting with them, and more desirable to those receiving them.

Nevertheless, it must be confessed that, economically speaking, the most important and directly valuable of all classes are those whom I have here denominated Enrichers. These consist not only of Producers, but of the Collectors and Extractors of Wealth, concerning whom a few words are necessary.

There are three modes of obtaining the materials of our wealth--(1) by collecting, (2) by extracting, and (3) by producing them. The industrial processes concerned in the collection of the materials of wealth are of the rudest and most primitive kind--being pursued principally by such tribes as depend for their food, and raiment, and shelter, on the spontaneous productions of nature. The usual modes by which the collection is made is by gathering the vegetable produce (which is the simplest and most direct form of all industry), and when the produce is of an animal nature, by hunting, shooting, or fishing, according as the animal sought after inhabits the land, the air, or the water. In a more advanced state of society, where the erection of places of shelter has come to constitute one of the acts of life, the felling of trees will also form one of the modes by which the materials making up the wealth of the nation are collected. In Great Britain there appears to be fewer people connected with the mere collection of wealth than with any other general industrial process. The fishermen are not above 25,000, and the wood-cutters and woodmen not 5000; so that even with gamekeepers, and others engaged in the taking of game, we may safely say that there are about 30,000 out of 18,000,000, or only one-six hundredth of the entire population, engaged in this mode of industry--a fact which strongly indicates the artificial character of our society.

The production of the materials of wealth, which indicates a far higher state of civilization and which consists in the several agricultural and farming processes for increasing the natural stock of animal and vegetable food, employs upwards of one million; while those who are engaged in the extraction of our treasures from the earth, either by mining or quarrying, both of which processes--depending, as they do, upon a knowledge of some of the subtler natural powers--could only have been brought into operation in a highly advanced stage of the human intellect, number about a quarter of a million. Altogether, there appear to be about one million and a half of individuals engaged in the industrial processes connected with the collection, extraction, and production of the materials of wealth; those who are employed in operating upon these materials, in the fashioning of them into manufactures, making them up into commodities, as well as those engaged in the distribution of them--that is to say, the transport and sale of them when so fashioned or made up--appear to amount to another two millions and a half, so that the industrial classes of Great Britain, taken altogether, may be said to amount to four millions. For the more perfect comprehension, however, of the several classes of society, let me subjoin a table in round numbers, calculated from the census of 1841, and including among the first items both the employers as well as employed:--

Engaged in Trade and Manufacture 3,000,000 „ Agriculture 1,500,000 „ Mining, Quarrying, and Transit 750,000 --------- Total Employers and Employed 5,250,000 Domestic Servants 1,000,000 Independent persons 500,000 Educated pursuits (including Professions and Fine Arts) 200,000 Government Officers (including Army, Navy, Civil Service, and Parish Officers) 200,000 Alms-people (including Paupers, Prisoners, and Lunatics) 200,000 --------- 7,350,000 Residue of Population (including 3,500,000 wives and 7,500,000 children) 11,000,000 ---------- 18,350,000

Now, of the 5,250,000 individuals engaged in Agriculture, Mining, Transit, Manufacture and Trade, it would appear that about one million and a quarter may be considered as employers; and, consequently, that the remaining four millions may be said to represent the numerical strength of the operatives of England and Scotland. Of these about one million, or a quarter of the whole, may be said to be engaged in producing the materials of wealth; and about a quarter of a million, or one-sixteenth of the entire number, in extracting from the soil the substances upon which many of the manufacturers have to operate.

The artizans, or those who are engaged in the several handicrafts or manufactures operating upon the various materials of wealth thus obtained, are distinct from the workmen above-mentioned, belonging to what are called skilled labourers, whereas those who are employed in the collection, extraction, or growing of wealth, belong to the unskilled class.

An artisan is an educated handicraftsman, following a calling that requires an apprenticeship of greater or less duration in order to arrive at perfection in it; whereas a labourer’s occupation needs no education whatever. Many years must be spent in practising before a man can acquire sufficient manual dexterity to make a pair of boots or a coat; dock labour or porter’s work, however, needs neither teaching nor learning, for any man can carry a load or turn a wheel. The artisan, therefore, is literally a handicraftsman--one who by practice has acquired manual dexterity enough to perform a particular class of work, which is consequently called “skilled.” The natural classification of artisans, or skilled labourers, appears to be according to the materials upon which they work, for this circumstance seems to constitute the peculiar quality of the art more than the tool used--indeed, it appears to be the principal cause of the modification of the implements in different handicrafts. The tools used to fashion, as well as the instruments and substances used to join the several materials operated upon in the manufactures and handicrafts, differ according as those materials are of different kinds. We do not, for instance, attempt to saw cloth into shape nor to cut bricks with shears; neither do we solder the soles to the upper leathers of our boots, nor nail together the seams of our shirts. And even in those crafts where the means of uniting the materials are similar, the artisan working upon one kind of substance is generally incapable of operating upon another. The tailor who stitches woollen materials together would make but a poor hand at sewing leather. The two substances are joined by the same means, but in a different manner, and with different instruments. So the turner, who has been accustomed to turn wood, is unable to fashion metals by the same method.

The most natural mode of grouping the artisans into classes would appear to be according as they pursue some mechanical or chemical occupation. The former are literally mechanics or handicraftsmen--the latter chemical manufacturers. The handicraftsmen consist of (1) The workers in silk, wool, cotton, flax, and hemp--as weavers, spinners, knitters, carpet-makers, lace-makers, rope-makers, canvas-weavers, &c. (2) The workers in skin, gut, and feathers--as tanners, curriers, furriers, feather dressers, &c. (3) The makers up of silken, woollen, cotton, linen, hempen, and leathern materials--as tailors, milliners, shirt-makers, sail-makers, hatters, glove-makers, saddlers, and the like. (4) The workers in wood, as the carpenters, the cabinet-makers, &c. (5) The workers in cane, osier, reed, rush, and straw--as basket-makers, straw-plait manufacturers, thatchers, and the like. (6) The workers in brick and stones--as bricklayers, masons, &c. (7) The workers in glass and earthenware--as potters, glass-blowers, glass-cutters, bottle-makers, glaziers, &c. (8) The workers in metals--as braziers, tinmen, plumbers, goldsmiths, pewterers, coppersmiths, iron-founders, blacksmiths, whitesmiths, anchor-smiths, locksmiths, &c. (9) The workers in paper--as the paper-makers, cardboard-makers. (10) The chemical manufacturers--as powder-makers, white-lead-makers, alkali and acid manufacturers, lucifer-match-makers, blacking-makers, ink-makers, soap-boilers, tallow-chandlers, &c. (11) The workers at the superlative or extrinsic arts--that is to say, those which have no manufactures of their own, but which are engaged in adding to the utility or beauty of others--as printing, bookbinding, painting, and decorating, gilding, burnishing, &c.

The circumstances which govern the classification of trades are totally different from those regulating the division of work. In trade the convenience of the purchaser is mainly studied, the sale of such articles being associated as are usually required together. Hence the master coachmaker is frequently a harness manufacturer as well, for the purchaser of the one commodity generally stands in need of the other. The painter and house-decorator not only follows the trade of the glazier, but of the plumber, too; because these arts are one and all connected with the “doing up” of houses. For the same reason the builder combines the business of the plasterer with that of the bricklayer, and not unfrequently that of the carpenter and joiner in addition. In all of these businesses, however, a distinct set of workmen are required, according as the materials operated upon are different.

We are now in a position to proceed with the arrangement of the several members of society into different classes, according to the principles of classification which have been here laid down. The difficulties of the task, however, should be continually borne in mind; for where so many have failed it cannot be expected that perfection can be arrived at by any one individual; and, slight as the labour of such a task may at the first glance appear to some, still the system here propounded has been the work and study of many months.

CLASSIFICATION

OF

THE WORKERS AND NON-WORKERS

OF GREAT BRITAIN.

THOSE WHO WILL WORK.

I. ENRICHERS, as the Collectors, Extractors, or Producers of Exchangeable Commodities.

II. AUXILIARIES, as the Promoters of Production, or the Distributors of the Produce.

III. BENEFACTORS, or those who confer some permanent benefit, as Educators and Curators engaged in promoting the physical, intellectual, or spiritual well-being of the people.

IV. SERVITORS, or those who render some temporary service, or pleasure, as Amusers, Protectors, and Servants.

THOSE WHO CANNOT WORK.

V. THOSE WHO ARE PROVIDED FOR BY SOME PUBLIC INSTITUTION, as the Inmates of workhouses, prisons, hospitals, asylums, almshouses, dormitories, and refuges.

VI. THOSE WHO ARE UNPROVIDED FOR, and incapacitated for labour, either from want of power, from want of means, or from want of employment.

THOSE WHO WILL NOT WORK.

VII. VAGRANTS.

VIII. PROFESSIONAL BEGGARS.

IX. CHEATS.

X. THIEVES.

XI. PROSTITUTES.

THOSE WHO NEED NOT WORK.

XII. THOSE WHO DERIVE THEIR INCOME FROM RENT.

XIII. THOSE WHO DERIVE THEIR INCOME FROM DIVIDENDS.

XIV. THOSE WHO DERIVE THEIR INCOME FROM YEARLY STIPENDS.

XV. THOSE WHO DERIVE THEIR INCOME FROM OBSOLETE OR NOMINAL OFFICES.

XVI. THOSE WHO DERIVE THEIR INCOME FROM TRADES IN WHICH THEY DO NOT APPEAR.

XVII. THOSE WHO DERIVE THEIR INCOME BY FAVOUR FROM OTHERS.

XVIII. THOSE WHO DERIVE THEIR SUPPORT FROM THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY.

THOSE WHO WILL WORK.

I. Enrichers, or those engaged in the collection, extraction, or production of exchangeable commodities.

A. COLLECTORS.

1. Fishermen.

2. Woodmen.

3. Sand and Clay-collectors.

4. Copperas, Cement-stones, and other finders.

B. EXTRACTORS.

1. Miners.

a. Coal.

b. Salt.

c. Iron, Lead, Tin, Copper, Zinc, Manganese.

2. Quarryers.

a. Slate.

b. Stone.

C. GROWERS.

1. Farmers.

a. Capitalist Farmers.

i. Yeomen, or Proprietary Farmers.

ii. Tenant Farmers.

b. Peasant Farmers.

i. Peasant Proprietors; as the Cumberland “Statesmen.”

ii. “Metayers,” or labourers paying the landlord a certain portion of the produce as rent for the use of the land.

iii. “Cottiers,” or labouring Tenant Farmers.

2. Graziers.

3. Gardeners, Nurserymen, Florists.

D. MAKERS OR ARTIFICERS.

1. Mechanics.

a. Workers in Silk, Wool, Worsted, Hair, Cotton, Flax, Hemp, Coir.

b. Workers in Skin, Gut, and Feathers.

c. Workers in Woollen, Silken, Cotton, Linen, and Leathern Materials.

d. Workers in Wood, Ivory, Bone, Horn, and Shell.

e. Workers in Osier, Cane, Reed, Rush, and Straw.

f. Workers in Stone and Brick.

g. Workers in Glass and Earthenware.

h. Workers in Metal.

i. Workers in Paper.

2. Chemical Manufacturers.

a. Acid, Alkali, Alum, Copperas, Prussian-Blue, and other Manufacturers.

b. Gunpowder Manufacturers, Percussion-Cap, Cartridge, and Firework Makers.

c. Brimstone and Lucifer-match Manufacturers.

d. White-lead, Colour, Black-lead, Whiting, and Blue Manufacturers.

e. Oil and Turpentine Distillers, and Varnish Manufacturers.

f. Ink Manufacturers, Sealing-wax and Wafer Makers.

g. Blacking Manufacturers.

h. Soap Boilers and Grease Makers.

i. Starch Manufacturers.

j. Tallow and Wax Chandlers.

k. Artificial Manure Manufacturers.

l. Artificial Stone and Cement Manufacturers.

m. Asphalte and Tar Manufacturers.

n. Glue and Size Makers.

o. Polishing Paste, and Glass and Emery Paper Makers.

p. Lime, Coke, and Charcoal Burners.

q. Manufacturing Chemists and Drug Manufacturers.

r. Workers connected with Provisions, Luxuries, and Medicines.

i. Bakers, and Biscuit Makers.

ii. Brewers.

iii. Soda-water and Ginger-beer Manufacturers.

iv. Distillers and Rectifiers.

v. British Wine Manufacturers.

vi. Vinegar Manufacturers.

vii. Fish and Provision Curers.

viii. Preserved Meats and Preserved Fruit Preparers.

ix. Sauce and Pickle Manufacturers.

x. Mustard Makers.

xi. Isinglass Manufacturers.

xii. Sugar Bakers, Boilers, and Refiners.

xiii. Confectioners and Pastry-cooks.

xiv. Rice and Farinaceous Food Manufacturers.

xv. Chocolate, Cocoa, and other Manufacturers of Substitutes for Tea.

xvi. Cigar, Tobacco, and Snuff Manufacturers.

xvii. Quack, and other Medicine Manufacturers, as Pills, Powders, Syrups, Cordials, Embrocations, Ointments, Plaisters, &c.

3. Workers connected with the Superlative Arts, that is to say, with those arts which have no products of their own, and are engaged either in adding to the beauty or usefulness of the products of other arts, or in inventing or designing the work appertaining to them.

a. Printers.

b. Bookbinders.

c. Painters, Decorators, and Gilders.

d. Writers and Stencillers.

e. Dyers, Bleachers, Scourers, Calenderers, and Fullers.

f. Print Colourers.

g. Designers of Patterns.

h. Embroiderers (of Muslin, Silk, &c.), and Fancy Workers.

i. Desiccators, Anti-dry-rot Preservers, Waterproofers.

j. Burnishers, Polishers, Grinders, Japanners, and French Polishers.

k. Engravers, Chasers, Die-Sinkers, Embossers, Engine-Turners, and Glass-Cutters.

l. Artists, Sculptors, and Carvers of Wood, Coral, Jet, &c.

m. Modellers and Moulders.

n. Architects, Surveyors, and Civil Engineers.

o. Composers.

p. Authors, Editors, and Reporters.

⁂ Operatives are divisible, according to the mode in which they are paid, into--

1. Day-workers.

2. Piece-workers.

3. “Lump” or Contract-workers; as at the docks.

4. Perquisite-workers; as waiters, &c.

5. “Kind” or Truck-workers; as the farm servants in the North of England, Domestic Servants and Milliners, Ballast-heavers, and men paid at “Tommy-shops.”

6. Tenant-workers; or those who lodge with or reside in houses belonging to their employers. The Slop-working Tailors generally lodge with the “Sweaters,” and the “Hinds” of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland have houses found them by their employers. These “Hinds” have to keep a “Bondager,” that is, a female in the house ready to answer the master’s call, and to work at stipulated wages.

7. Improvement-workers; or those who are considered to be remunerated for their work by the instruction they receive in doing it; as “improvers” and apprentices.

8. Tribute-workers, as the Cornish Miners, Whalers, and Weavers in some parts of Ireland, where a certain proportion of the proceeds of the work done belongs to the workmen.

The wages of “society-men” among operatives are settled by custom, the wages of “non-society-men” are settled by competition.

Operatives are also divisible, according to the places at which they work, into--

1. Domestic workers, or those who work at home.

2. Shop or Factory workers, or those who work on the employer’s premises.

3. Out-door workers, or those who work in the open air; as bricklayers, agricultural labourers, &c.

4. Jobbing-workers, or those who go out to work at private houses.

5. Rent-men, or those who pay rent for

a. A “seat” at some domestic worker’s rooms.

b. “Power,” as turners, and others, when requiring the use of a steam-engine. Some operatives have to pay rent for tools or “frames,” as the sawyers and “stockingers,” and some for gas when working on their employer’s premises.

Operatives are further divisible, according to those whom they employ to assist them, into--

1. Family workers, or those who avail themselves of the assistance of their wives and children, as the Spitalfields Weavers.

2. “Sweaters” and Piece-master workers, or those who employ other members of their trade at less wages than they themselves receive.

3. “Garret-master” workers, or those who avail themselves of the labour (chiefly) of apprentices.

Operatives are moreover divisible, according to those by whom they are employed, into--

1. “Flints” and “Dungs;” “Whites” and “Blacks,” according as they work for employers who pay or do not pay “society prices.”

2. Jobbing piece-workers, or those who work single-handed for the public (without the intervention of an “employer”) and are paid by the piece. These mostly do the work at their own homes, as cobblers, repairers, &c.

3. Jobbing day-workers, or those who work single-handed for the public (without the intervention of an “employer”) and are paid by the day. These mostly go out to work at persons’ houses and frequently have their food found them. Among the tailors and carpenters this practice is called “whipping the cat.”

4. “Co-operative men,” or those who work in “association” for their own profit, obtaining their work directly from the public, without the intervention of an “employer.”

Lastly, Operatives admit of being arranged into two distinct classes, viz., the superior, or higher-priced, and the inferior, or lower-priced.

The superior, or higher-priced, operatives consist of--

1. The skilful. 2. The trustworthy. 3. The well-conditioned.

The inferior, or lower-priced operatives, on the other hand, are composed of--

1. The unskilful; as the old or superannuated, the young (including apprentices and “improvers”), the slow, and the awkward.

2. The untrustworthy; as the drunken, the idle, and the dishonest. Some of the cheap workers, whose wages are minimized almost to starvation point, so that honesty becomes morally impossible, have to deposit a certain sum of money, or to procure two householders to act as security for the faithful return of the work given out to them.

3. The inexpensive, consisting of--

a. Those who can live upon less; as single men, foreigners, Irishmen, women, &c.

b. Those who derive their subsistence from other sources; as Wives, Children, Paupers, Prisoners, Inmates of Asylums, Prostitutes, and Amateurs (or those who work at a business merely for pocket-money).

c. Those who are in receipt of some pecuniary or other aid; as Pensioners, Allottees of land, and such as have out-door relief from the workhouse.

II. Auxiliaries, or those engaged in promoting the enrichment and distributing the riches of the community.

A. PROMOTERS OF PRODUCTION.

1. Employers, or those who find the materials, implements, and appurtenances for the work, and pay the wages of the workmen.

a. Administrative Employers, or those who supply wholesale or retail dealers. These are subdivisible into--

i. Standard Employers, or those who work at the regular standard prices of the trade.

ii. “Cutting” Employers, or those who work at less than the regular prices of the trade; as Contractors, &c.

b. Executive Employers, or those who work directly for the public without the intervention of a wholesale or retail dealer; as Builders, &c.

c. Distributive Employers, or those who are both producers and retail traders.

i. Those who retail what they produce; as Tailors, Shoemakers, Bakers, Eating-house Keepers, Street Mechanics, &c.

ii. Those who retail other things (generally provisions), and compel or expect the men in their employ to deal with them for those articles, as the Truck-Masters and others.

iii. Those who retail the appurtenances of the trade to which they belong, and compel or expect the men in their employ to purchase such appurtenances of them; as trimmings in the tailors’ trade, thread among the seamstresses, and the like.

d. Middlemen Employers, or those who act between the employer and the employed, obtaining work from employers, and employing others to do it; as Sub-contractors, Sweaters, &c. These consist of--

i. Trade-working Employers, or those who make up goods for other employers in the trade.

ii. Garret-masters, or those who make up goods for the trade on the smallest amount of capital, and generally on speculation.

iii. Trading Operative Employers, or those who obtain work in considerable quantities, and employ others at reduced wages to assist them in it; as “Sweaters,” “Seconders,” &c. These are either--

α. Piece Masters; as those who take out a certain piece of work and employ others to help them at reduced wages.

β. “Lumper” Employers, or those who contract to do the work by the lump, which is usually paid for by the piece, and employ others at reduced wages in order to complete it.

⁂ Employers are known among operatives as “honourable” or “dishonourable,” according as the wages they pay are those, or less than those, of the Trade Society.

2. Superintendents, or those who look after the workmen on behalf of employers.

a. Managers.

b. Clerks of the Works.

c. Foremen.

d. Overlookers.

e. Tellers and Meters, or those who take note of the number and quantity of the articles delivered.

f. Provers, or those whose duty it is to examine the quality or weight of the articles delivered.

g. Timekeepers, or those who note the time of the operatives coming to and quitting labour.

h. Gatekeepers, or those who see that no goods are taken out.

i. Clerks, or those who keep accounts of all sales and purchases, incomings, and outgoings of the business.

j. Pay Clerks, or those who pay the workmen their wages.

3. Labourers.

a. Acting as motive powers.

i. Turning wheels, working pumps, blowing bellows.

ii. Wheeling, dragging, pulling, or hoisting loads.

iii. Shifting (scenes), or turning (corn).

iv. Carrying (bricks, as hodmen).

v. Driving (piles), ramming down (stones, as paviours).

vi. Pressing (as fruit, for juice; seeds, for oil).

b. Uniting or putting one thing to another.

i. Feeding (furnace), laying-on (as for printing machines).

ii. Filling (as “fillers-in” of sieves at dust-yards).

iii. Oiling (engines), greasing (railway wheels), pitching or tarring (vessels), pasting paper (for bags).

iv. Mixing (mortar), kneading (clay).

v. Tying up (plants and bunches of vegetables).

vi. Folding (printed sheets).

vii. Corking (bottles), or caulking (ships).

c. Separating one thing from another.

i. Sifting (cinders), screening (coals).

ii. Picking (fruit, hops, &c.), shelling (peas), peeling, barking, and threshing.

iii. Winnowing.

iv. Weeding and stoning.

v. Reaping and mowing.

vi. Felling, lopping, hewing, chopping (as fire-wood), cutting (as chaff), shearing (sheep).

vii. Sawing.

viii. Blasting.

ix. Breaking (stones), crushing (bones and ores), pounding (drugs).

x. Scouring (as sand from castings), scraping (ships).

d. Excavating, sinking, and embanking.

i. Tunnelling.

ii. Sinking foundations.

iii. Boring.

iv. Draining, trenching, ditching, and hedging.

v. Embanking.

vi. Road-making, cutting.

B. DISTRIBUTORS OF PRODUCTION.

1. Dealers, or those who are engaged in the buying and selling of commodities on their own account.

a. Merchants or Importers, and Exporters.

b. Wholesale Traders.

c. Retail Traders.

d. Contracting Purveyors, or those who supply goods by agreement.

e. Contractors for work or repairs; as Road Contractors, and others.

f. Contractors for privileges, as the right of Printing the Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, or selling refreshments at Railway Stations, &c.

g. Farmers of revenues from dues, tolls, &c.

h. Itinerants, or those who seek out the Customers, instead of the Customers seeking out them.

i. Hawkers, or those who cry their goods.

ii. Pedlars, or those who carry their goods round.

2. Agents, or those who are engaged in the buying or selling of commodities for others, as Land Agents, House and Estate Agents, Colonial and East India Agents, &c., &c.

a. Supercargoes.

b. Factors, or Consignees.

c. Brokers, Bill, Stock, Share, Ship, Sugar, Cotton, &c.

d. Commission Salesmen, or Unlicensed Brokers.

e. Buyers, or those who purchase materials or goods for Manufacturers, or Dealers.

f. Auctioneers, or those who sell goods on Commission to the highest bidder.

3. Lenders and Lettors-out, or those who receive a certain sum for the loan or use of a thing.

a. Lenders or Lettors-out of commodities, as--

i. Job-horses, carriages, chairs and seats in parks, gardens, &c.

ii. Plate, linen, furniture, piano-fortes, flowers, fancy dresses, Court suits, &c.

iii. Books, newspapers, prints, and music.

b. Lettors-out of tenements and storage room, as--

i. Houses.

ii. Lodgings.

iii. Warehouse-room for imports, &c., as at wharfs.

iv. Warehouse-room for furniture and other goods.

c. Lenders of money, as--

i. Mortgagees.

ii. Bankers.

iii. Bill-discounters.

iv. Loan offices with and without policies of assurance.

v. Building and investment societies.

vi. Pawnbrokers.

vii. Dolly shopmen.

⁂ The several modes of distributing goods or money are--

1. By private contract or agreement.

2. By a fixed or ticketed price.

3. By competition, as at Auctions.

4. By games of chance, as Lotteries (with the “Art Union”), Raffles (at Fancy Fairs), Tossing (with piemen and others), Prizes for skill (with throwing sticks, &c.), Betting, Racing, &c.

The places at which goods are distributed are--

1. Fairs, or annual gatherings of buyers and sellers.

2. Markets, or weekly gatherings of buyers and sellers.

3. Exchanges, or daily gatherings of merchants and agents.

4. Counting-houses, or the places of business of wholesale traders.

5. Shops, or the places of business of retail traders.

6. Bazaars, or congregations of shops.

4. Trade Assistants.

a. Shopmen and Warehousemen.

b. Shopwalkers.

c. Cashiers or Receivers.

d. Clerks.

e. Accountants.

f. Rent-Collectors.

g. Debt-collectors.

h. Travellers, Town as well as Commercial.

i. Touters.

j. Barkers (outside shops).

k. Bill deliverers.

l. Bill-stickers.

m. Boardmen.

n. Advertizing-van Men.

5. Carriers.

a. Those engaged in the external transit of the Kingdom.

i. Mercantile Sailing Vessels.

ii. Mercantile Steam Vessels.

b. Those engaged in the internal Transit of the Kingdom.

i. Those engaged in the coasting trade from port to port.

ii. Those engaged in carrying inland from town to town, as--

α. Those connected with land carriage; as railroad men, stage coachmen, mail coachmen, and mail cartmen, post boys, flymen, waggoners, country carriers, and drovers.

β. Those connected with water carriage; as navigable river and canal men, bargemen, towing men.

iii. Those engaged in carrying to and from different parts of the same town by land and water.

α. Passengers; as Omnibus-men, Cabmen, Glass and Job Coachmen, Fly Men, Excursion-van Men, Donkey-boys, Goat-carriage boys, Sedan and Bath Chair Men, Guides.

β. Goods; as Waggoners, Draymen, Carters, Spring-Van Men, Truckmen, Porters (ticketed and unticketed, and public and private men).

γ. Letters and Messages; as Messengers, Errand Boys, Telegraph Men, and Postmen.

δ. Goods and Passengers by water; as Bargemen, Lightermen, Hoymen, Watermen, River Steamboat Men.

c. Those engaged in the lading and unlading and the fitting of vessels, as well the packing of goods.

i. Dock and wharf labourers.

ii. Coal whippers.

iii. Lumpers, or dischargers of timber ships.

iv. Timber porters and rafters.

v. Corn porters.

vi. Ballast heavers.

vii. Stevedores, or stowers.

viii. Riggers.

ix. Packers and pressers.

III. Benefactors, or those who confer some permanent benefit by promoting the physical, intellectual, or spiritual well-being of others.

A. EDUCATORS.

1. Professors.

2. Tutors.

3. Governesses.

4. Schoolmasters.

5. Ushers.

6. Teachers of Languages.

7. Teachers of Sciences.

8. Lecturers.

9. Teachers of “Accomplishments”; as Music, Singing, Dancing, Drawing, Wax-Flower Modelling, &c.

10. Teachers of Exercises; as Gymnastics.

11. Teachers of Arts of Self-Defence; as Fencing, Boxing, &c.

12. Teachers of Trades and Professions.

B. CURATORS.

1. Corporeal.

a. Physicians.

b. Surgeons.

c. General Practitioners.

d. Homœopathists.

e. Hydropathists.

2. Spiritual.

a. Ministers of the Church of England.

b. Dissenting Ministers.

c. Catholic Ministers.

d. Missionaries.

e. Scripture Readers.

f. Sisters of Charity.

g. Visitants.

IV. Servitors, or those who render some temporary service or pleasure to others.

A. AMUSERS, or those who contribute to our entertainment.

1. Actors.

2. Reciters.

3. Improvisers.

4. Singers.

5. Musicians.

6. Dancers.

7. Riders, or Equestrian Performers.

8. Fencers and Pugilists.

9. Conjurers.

10. Posturers.

11. Equilibrists.

12. Tumblers.

13. Exhibitors or Showmen.

a. Of Curiosities.

b. Of Monstrosities.

B. PROTECTORS, or those who contribute to our security against injury.

1. Legislative.

a. The Sovereign.

b. The Members of the House of Lords.

c. The Members of the House of Commons.

2. Judicial.

a. The Judges in Chancery, Queen’s Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer, Ecclesiastical, Admiralty, and Criminal Courts.

b. Masters in Chancery, Commissioners of the Bankruptcy, Insolvent Debtors, Sheriffs, and County Courts, Magistrates, Justices of the Peace, Recorders, Coroners, Revising Barristers.

c. Barristers, Pleaders, Conveyancers, Attorneys, Proctors.

3. Administrative or Executive.

a. The Lords Commissioners of the Treasury; the Secretaries of State for Home, Foreign, and Colonial Affairs; the Chancellor and Comptroller of the Exchequer; the Privy Council, and the Privy Seal; the Board of Trade, the Board of Control, and the Board of Health; the Board of Inland Revenue, the Poor-Law Board, and the Board of Audit; the Commissioners of Woods and Forests; the Ministers and Officials in connection with the Army and Navy, the Post Office, and the Mint; the Inspectors of Prisons, Factories, Railways, Workhouses, Schools, and Lunatic Asylums; the Officers in connection with the Registration and Statistical Departments; and the other Functionaries appertaining to the Government at home.

b. The Ambassadors, Envoys Extraordinary, Ministers Plenipotentiary, Secretaries of Legation, Chargés d’Affaires, Consuls, and other Ministers and Functionaries appertaining to the Government abroad.

c. The Governors and Commanders of British Colonies and Settlements.

d. The Lord Lieutenants, Custodes Rotulorum, High and Deputy Sheriffs, High Bailiffs, High and Petty Constables, and other Functionaries of the Counties.

e. The Mayors, Aldermen, Common Councilmen, Chamberlains, Common Sergeants, Treasurers, Auditors, Assessors, Inspectors of Weights and Measures, and other Functionaries of the Cities or incorporated Towns.

f. The Churchwardens, the Commissioners of Sewers and Paving, the Select and Special Vestrymen, the Vestry Clerks, the Overseers or Guardians of the Poor, the Relieving Officers, the Masters of the Workhouses, the Beadles, and other Parochial Functionaries.

g. The Masters and Brethren of the Trinity Corporation, the Pier and Harbour Masters, Conservators of Rivers, and other Functionaries connected with Navigation, and the Trustees and Commissioners in connection with the Public Roads.

h. The Naval and Military Powers; as the Army, Navy, Marines, Militia, and Yeomanry.

i. The Civil Forces; as Policemen, Patrole, and Private Watchmen.

j. Sheriffs’ Officers, Bailiffs’ Followers, Sponging-house Keepers.

k. Governors of Prisons, Jailers, Turnkeys, Officers on board the Hulks and Transport Ships, Hangmen.

l. The Fiscal Forces; as the Coast Guard, Custom-house Officers, Excise Officers.

m. Collectors of Imposts; as Tax and Rate Collectors, Turnpike Men, Toll Collectors of Bridges and Markets, Collectors of Pier and Harbour dues, and Light, Buoy, and Beacon dues.

n. Guardians of special localities; as Rangers, and Park-keepers, Arcade-keepers, Street-keepers, Square-keepers, Bazaar-keepers, Gate and Lodge-keepers, Empty-house-keepers.

o. Conservators; as Curators of Museums, Librarians, Storekeepers, and others.

p. Protective Associations; as Insurance Companies against Loss by fire, shipwreck, storms, railway accidents, death of cattle, Life Assurance Societies, Provident or Benefit Clubs, Guarantee Societies, Trade Protection Societies, Fire Brigade and Fire-escape Men, Humane Society Men, and Officers of the Societies for the Suppression of Mendicity, Vice, and cruelty to Animals.

SERVANTS, or those who contribute to our comfort or convenience by the performance of certain offices for us.

1. Private Servants, regularly engaged.

a. Stewards.

b. Farm Bailiffs.

c. Secretaries.

d. Amanuenses.

e. Companions.

f. Butlers.

g. Valets.

h. Footmen, Pages, and Hall Porters.

i. Coachmen, Grooms, “Tigers,” and Helpers at Stables.

j. Huntsmen and Whippers-in.

k. Kennelmen.

l. Gamekeepers.

m. Gardeners.

n. Housekeepers.

o. Ladies’ Maids.

p. Nursery Maids and Wet Nurses.

q. House Maids and Parlour Maids.

r. Cooks and Scullery Maids.

s. Dairy Maids.

t. Maids of all work.

2. Private Servants temporarily engaged.

a. Couriers.

b. Interpreters.

c. Monthly Nurses and Invalid Nurses.

d. Waiters at Parties.

e. Charwomen.

f. Knife, boot, window, and paint Cleaners, Pot scourers, Carpet beaters.

3. Public Servants.

a. Waiters at hotels and public gardens.

b. Masters of the Ceremonies.

c. Chamber-Maids.

d. Boots.

e. Ostlers.

f. Job Coachmen.

g. Post-boys.

h. Washerwomen.

i. Dustmen.

j. Sweeps.

k. Scavengers.

l. Nightmen.

m. Flushermen.

n. Turncocks.

o. Lamplighters.

p. Horse Holders.

q. Crossing Sweepers.

THOSE WHO CANNOT WORK.

V. Those that are provided for by some Public Institution.

A. THE INMATES OF WORKHOUSES.

B. THE INMATES OF PRISONS.

1. Debtors.

2. Criminals (Some of these, however, are made to work by the authorities).

C. THE INMATES OF HOSPITALS.

1. The Sick.

2. The Insane; as Lunatics and Idiots.

3. Veterans; as Greenwich and Chelsea Hospital men.

4. The Deserted Young; as the Foundling Hospital children.

D. THE INMATES OF ASYLUMS AND ALMSHOUSES.

1. The Afflicted; as the Deaf, and Dumb, and Blind.

2. The Destitute Young; as Orphans.

3. The Decayed Members of the several Trades or Sects.

a. Trade and Provident Asylums and Almshouses.

b. Sectarian Asylums and Almshouses--as for aged Jews, Widows of Clergymen, &c.

E. THE INMATES OF THE SEVERAL REFUGES AND DORMITORIES FOR THE HOUSELESS AND DESTITUTE.

VI. Those who are Unprovided for.

A. THOSE WHO ARE INCAPACITATED FROM WANT OF POWER.

1. Owing to their Age.

a. The Old.

b. The Young.

2. Owing to some Bodily Ailment.

a. The Sick.

b. The Crippled.

c. The Maimed.

d. The Paralyzed.

e. The Blind.

3. Owing to some Mental Infirmity.

a. The Insane.

b. The Idiotic.

c. The Untaught, or those who have never been brought up to any industrial occupation; as Widows and those who have “seen better days.”

B. THOSE WHO ARE INCAPACITATED FROM WANT OF MEANS.

1. Having no tools; as is often the case with distressed carpenters.

2. Having no clothes; as servants when long out of a situation.

3. Having no stock-money; as impoverished street-sellers.

4. Having no materials; as the “used-up” garret or chamber masters in the boot and shoe or cabinet-making trade.

5. Having no place wherein to work; as when those who pursue their calling at home are forced to become the inmates of a nightly lodging-house.

C. THOSE WHO ARE INCAPACITATED FROM WANT OF EMPLOYMENT.

1. Owing to a glut or stagnation in business; as among the cotton-spinners, the iron-workers, the railway-navigators, and the like.

2. Owing to a change in fashion; as in the button-making trade.

3. Owing to the introduction of machinery; as among the sawyers, hand-loom weavers, pillow-lace makers, threshers, and others.

4. Owing to the advent of the slack season; as among the tailors and mantua-makers, and drawn-bonnet-makers.

5. Owing to the continuance of unfavourable weather.

a. From the prevalence of rain; as street-sellers, and others.

b. From the prevalence of easterly winds; as dock-labourers.

6. Owing to the approach of winter; as among the builders, brickmakers, market-gardeners, harvest-men.

7. Owing to the loss of character.

a. Culpably; from intemperate habits, or misconduct of some kind.

b. Accidentally; as when a servant’s late master goes abroad, and a written testimonial is objected to.

THOSE WHO WILL NOT WORK.

VII. Vagrants or Tramps.

Under this head is included all that multifarious tribe of “sturdy rogues,” who ramble across the country during the summer, sleeping at the “casual wards” of the workhouses, and who return to London in the winter to avail themselves of the gratuitous lodgings and food attainable at the several metropolitan refuges.

VIII. Professional Beggars and their Dependents.

A. NAVAL AND MILITARY BEGGARS.

1. Turnpike Sailors.

2. Spanish Legion Men, &c.

3. Veterans.

B. “DISTRESSED-OPERATIVE” BEGGARS.

1. Pretended Starved-out Manufacturers, as the Nottingham “Driz” or Lace-Men.

2. Pretended Unemployed Agriculturists.

3. Pretended Frozen-out Gardeners.

4. Pretended Hand-loom Weavers, and others deprived of their living by Machinery.

C. “RESPECTABLE” BEGGARS.

1. Pretended Broken-down Tradesmen, or Decayed Gentlemen.

2. Pretended Distressed Ushers, unable to take situation for want of clothes.

3. “Clean-Family Beggars” with children in very white pinafores, their faces newly washed, and their hair carefully brushed.

4. Ashamed Beggars, or those who “stand pad with a fakement” (remain stationary, holding a written placard), and pretend to hide their faces.

D. “DISASTER” BEGGARS.

1. Shipwrecked Mariners.

2. Blown-up Miners.

3. Burnt-out Tradesmen.

4. Lucifer Droppers.

E. BODILY AFFLICTED BEGGARS.

1. Having real or pretended sores, vulgarly known as the “scaldrum dodge.”

2. Having swollen legs.

3. Being crippled, deformed, maimed, or paralyzed.

4. Being blind.

5. Being subject to fits.

6. Being in a decline, and appearing with bandages round the head.

7. “Shallow coves,” or those who exhibit themselves in the streets half clad, especially in cold weather.

F. FAMISHED BEGGARS.

1. Those who chalk on the pavement, “I am starving.”

2. Those who “stand pad” with a small piece of paper similarly inscribed.

G. FOREIGN BEGGARS.

1. Frenchmen who stop passengers in the street and request to know if they can speak French, previous to presenting a written statement of their distress.

2. Pretended Destitute Poles.

3. Hindoos and Negroes, who stand shivering by the kerb.

H. PETTY TRADING BEGGARS.

1. Tract sellers.

2. Sellers of lucifers, boot-laces, cabbage-nets, tapes, and cottons.

⁂ The several varieties of beggars admit of being sub-divided into--

a. Patterers, or those who beg on the “blob,” that is, by word of mouth.

b. Screevers, or those who beg by screeving, that is, by written documents, setting forth imaginary cases of distress, such documents being either--

i. “Slums” (letters).

ii. “Fakements” (petitions).

I. THE DEPENDENTS OF BEGGARS.

1. Screevers Proper, or the writers of slums and fakements for those who beg by screeving.

2. Referees, or those who give characters to professional beggars when a reference is required.

IX. Cheats and their Dependents.

A. THOSE WHO CHEAT THE GOVERNMENT.

1. Smugglers defrauding the Customs.

2. “Jiggers” defrauding the Excise by working illicit stills, and the like.

B. THOSE WHO CHEAT THE PUBLIC.

1. Swindlers, defrauding those of whom they buy.

2. “Duffers” and “horse-chaunters,” defrauding those to whom they sell.

3. “Charley-pitchers” and other low gamblers, defrauding those with whom they play.

4. “Bouncers and Besters” defrauding, by laying wagers, swaggering, or using threats.

5. “Flatcatchers,” defrauding by pretending to find some valuable article--as Fawney or Ring-Droppers.

6. Bubble-Men, defrauding by instituting pretended companies--as Sham Next-of-Kin-Societies, Assurance and Annuity Offices, Benefit Clubs, and the like.

7. Douceur-Men, defrauding by offering for a certain sum to confer some boon upon a person as--

a. To procure Government Situations for laymen, or benefices for clergymen.

b. To provide Servants with Places.

c. To teach some lucrative occupation.

d. To put persons in possession of some information “to their advantage.”

8. Deposit-Men, defrauding by obtaining a certain sum as security for future work or some promised place of trust.

C. THE DEPENDENTS OF CHEATS ARE--

1. “Jollies,” and “Magsmen,” or accomplices of the “Bouncers and Besters.”

2. “Bonnets,” or accomplices of Gamblers.

3. Referees, or those who give false characters to swindlers and others.

X. Thieves and their Dependents.

A. THOSE WHO PLUNDER WITH VIOLENCE.

1. “Cracksmen”--as Housebreakers and Burglars.

2. “Rampsmen,” or Footpads.

3. “Bludgers,” or Stick-slingers, plundering in company with prostitutes.

B. THOSE WHO “HOCUS,” OR PLUNDER THEIR VICTIMS WHEN STUPIFIED.

1. “Drummers,” or those who render people insensible.

a. By handkerchiefs steeped in chloroform.

b. By drugs poured into liquor.

2. “Bug-hunters,” or those who go round to the public-houses and plunder drunken men.

C. THOSE WHO PLUNDER BY MANUAL DEXTERITY, BY STEALTH, OR BY BREACH OF TRUST.

1. “Mobsmen,” or those who plunder by manual dexterity--as the “light-fingered gentry.”

a. “Buzzers,” or those who abstract handkerchiefs and other articles from gentlemen’s pockets.

i. “Stook-buzzers,” those who steal handkerchiefs.

ii. “Tail-Buzzers,” those who dive into coat-pockets for sneezers (snuff-boxes,) skins and dummies (purses and pocket-books).

b. “Wires,” or those who pick ladies’ pockets.

c. “Prop-nailers,” those who steal pins and brooches.

d. “Thimble-screwers,” those who wrench watches from their guards.

e. “Shop-lifters,” or those who purloin goods from shops while examining articles.

2. “Sneaksmen,” or those who plunder by means of stealth.

a. Those who purloin goods, provisions, money, clothes, old metal, &c.

i. “Drag Sneaks,” or those who steal goods or luggage from carts and coaches.

ii. “Snoozers,” or those who sleep at railway hotels, and decamp with some passenger’s luggage or property in the morning.

iii. “Star-glazers,” or those who cut the panes out of shop-windows.

iv. “Till Friskers,” or those who empty tills of their contents during the absence of the shopmen.

v. “Sawney-Hunters,” or those who go purloining bacon from cheesemongers’ shop-doors.

vi. “Noisy-racket Men,” or those who steal china and glass from outside of china-shops.

vii. “Area Sneaks,” or those who steal from houses by going down the area steps.

viii. “Dead Lurkers,” or those who steal coats and umbrellas from passages at dusk, or on Sunday afternoons.

ix. “Snow Gatherers,” or those who steal clean clothes off the hedges.

x. “Skinners,” or those women who entice children and sailors to go with them and then strip them of their clothes.

xi. “Bluey-Hunters,” or those who purloin lead from the tops of houses.

xii. “Cat and Kitten Hunters,” or those who purloin pewter quart and pint pots from the top of area railings.

xiii. “Toshers,” or those who purloin copper from the ships along shore.

xiv. Mudlarks, or those who steal pieces of rope and lumps of coal from among the vessels at the river-side.

b. Those who steal animals.

i. Horse Stealers.

ii. Sheep, or “Woolly-bird,” Stealers.

iii. Deer Stealers.

iv. Dog Stealers.

v. Poachers, or Game Stealers.

vi. “Lady and Gentlemen Racket Men,” or those who steal cocks and hens.

vii. Cat Stealers, or those who make away with cats for the sake of their skins and bones.

c. Those who steal dead bodies--as the “Resurrectionists.”

3. Those who plunder by breach of trust.

a. Embezzlers, or those who rob their employers.

i. By receiving what is due to them, and never accounting for it.

ii. By obtaining goods in their employer’s name.

iii. By purloining money from the till, or goods from the premises.

b. Illegal Pawners.

i. Those who pledge work given out to them by employers.

ii. Those who pledge blankets, sheets, &c., from lodgings.

c. Dishonest servants, those who make away with the property of their masters.

d. Bill Stealers, or those who purloin bills of exchange entrusted to them, to get discounted.

e. Letter Stealers.

D. “SHOFUL MEN,” OR THOSE WHO PLUNDER BY MEANS OF COUNTERFEITS.

1. Coiners or fabricators of counterfeit money.

2. Forgers of bank notes.

3. Forgers of checks and acceptances.

4. Forgers of wills.

E. DEPENDENTS OF THIEVES.

1. “Fences,” or receivers of stolen goods.

2. “Smashers,” or utterers of base coin or forged notes.

XI. Prostitutes and their Dependents.

A. PROFESSIONAL PROSTITUTES.

1. Seclusives, or those who live in private houses or apartments.

a. Kept Mistresses.

b. “Prima Donnas,” or those who belong to the “first class,” and live in a superior style.

2. Convives, or those who live in the same house with a number of others.

a. Those who are independent of the mistress of the house.

b. Those who are subject to the mistress of a brothel.

i. “Board Lodgers,” or those who give a portion of what they receive to the mistress of the brothel, in return for their board and lodging.

ii. “Dress Lodgers,” or those who give either a portion or the whole of what they get to the mistress of the brothel in return for their board, lodging, and clothes.

3. Those who live in low lodging-houses.

4. Sailors’ and soldiers’ women.

5. Park women, or those who frequent the parks at night, and other retired places.

6. Thieves’ women, or those who entrap men into bye streets for the purpose of robbery.

7. The Dependents of Prostitutes:

a. “Bawds,” or Keepers of Brothels.

b. Followers of Dress Lodgers.

c. Keepers of Accommodation Houses.

d. Procuresses, Pimps, and Panders.

e. Fancy-Men.

f. Magsmen and Bullies.

B. CLANDESTINE PROSTITUTES.

1. Female Operatives.

2. Maid Servants.

3. Ladies of Intrigue.

4. Keepers of Houses of Assignation.

C. COHABITANT PROSTITUTES.

1. Those whose paramours cannot afford to pay the marriage fees.

2. Those whose paramours do not believe in the sanctity of the ceremony.

3. Those who have married a relative forbidden by law.

4. Those whose paramours object to marry them for pecuniary or family reasons.

5. Those who would forfeit their income by marrying, as officers’ widows in receipt of pensions, and those who hold property only while unmarried.

THOSE WHO NEED NOT WORK.

XII. Those who derive their income from rent.

A. LANDLORDS OF ESTATES.

B. LANDLORDS OF HOUSES.

XIII. Those who derive their income from dividends.

A. FUNDHOLDERS.

B. SHAREHOLDERS.

1. In Mines.

2. In Canals.

3. In Railways.

4. In Public Companies.

XIV. Those who derive their income from yearly stipends.

A. ANNUITANTS.

B. PENSIONERS.

XV. Those who hold obsolete or nominal offices.

SINECURISTS.

XVI. Those who derive their incomes from trades in which they never appear.

A. SLEEPING PARTNERS.

B. ROYALTY MEN.

XVII. Those who derive their incomes by favour from some other.

A. PROTEGÉS.

B. DEPENDENTS.

XVIII. Those who derive their support from the head of the family.

A. WIVES.

B. CHILDREN.

OF THE NON-WORKERS.

The exposition of the several members of society being finished, I now come to treat of that inoperative moiety of it, which more especially concerns us here. The non-workers, we have seen, consist of three broadly marked and distinct orders, viz:--

The incapacitated, or compulsory non-workers.

The indisposed, or voluntary non-workers.

The independent, or privileged non-workers.

It would be of the highest possible importance, could we ascertain with any precision the number of people existing in this country, who do no manner of work for their support; and I was anxious to have concluded the preceding account of the several divisions of society, with an estimate of the numbers appertaining to each of the four great classes, as well as the incomes accruing to them. I found, however, on consulting the official documents with this view, that the government returns were in such an economical tangle--distributor being confounded with employer, and employer again jumbled up with the employed--that any attempt to unravel the twisted yarn would have cost an infinity of trouble, and have been almost worthless after all; and it was from a long experience as to the incompetency of the official returns to aid the social inquirer in solving the great economical problems concerning the production and distribution of wealth, that I was induced to suggest to Sir George Grey (to whom I had been indebted for much courtesy and valuable information, and who, from the commencement of my investigations, had shown a readiness to afford me every assistance), that, in the ensuing census, an attempt should be made to obtain some definite account of the numbers of employers and employed, and I am happy to say that, in conformity with my suggestion, the next “Abstract of the Occupations of the People,” will at least teach us the proportion between these two main elements of our social state; so that if the Distributors are but kept distinct from the Promoters and Producers of the wealth of the country, one important step towards a right understanding of the subject will assuredly have been made[10].

It should, however, be borne in mind, that, though the distribution, the promotion, and the production of the riches or exchangeable commodities of a country are usually distinct offices in every civilized nation, they are not invariably separate functions, even in our own. The exceptions to the economical rule with us appear to be as follows:--

1. Sometimes the producers themselves supply the materials, tools, shelter, and subsistence, that they require for their work, though this is usually done by some capitalist; and having finished the work, proceed themselves to find purchasers for it likewise (though this is generally the office of the distributor or dealer). Street artizans, or those who make the goods they sell in the streets, may be cited as instances of a class uniting in itself the three functions of producer, capitalist (supplying the materials, &c.), and distributor.

2. Sometimes the capitalist employer is also the distributor of the commodities, such being the case with bakers, tailors, and the like, who themselves “purvey” what they employ others to produce.

3. Sometimes the craft does not admit of a distributor being attached to it; the employer himself undertaking to supply the wants of the public; this is the case with the building and decoration of houses.

4. Sometimes the work is done directly for the public, without the intervention of either a distributor or trading-employer; such is the case with the jobbing, day, or piece workers--among the seamstresses and journeymen tailors, for instance--who “make up ladies’ and gentlemen’s own materials,” either at home or at the houses of those for whom the work is done.

5. Sometimes the artificers or working men are their own capitalists; providing the materials, tools, shelter, and subsistence requisite for the work, as is the case with the garret and chamber-masters in the slop cabinet and shoe trades, and among the members of co-operative associations.

6. Sometimes the artificers are both employers and employed; being supplied with their materials and subsistence from a capitalist, and supplying them again to other artificers working under them; this is the case with sweaters, piece-working masters, first hands, and the like.

7. Sometimes the capitalist employer, on the other hand, is, or rather assumes to be, the proprietor of both the capital and labour; as is the case with the slave-owners, masters of serfs, bondmen, villeins, and the like; though this state of things, thank God, no longer exists in this country.

8. Sometimes the capitalist supplies all the requisites of production, excepting the subsistence of the artificer, who is remunerated by a certain share of the profits (if any); this is often the case with publishers and authors.

9. Sometimes the capitalist supplies only the materials and subsistence, but not the tools, of the artificers, and sometimes he compels them to pay him a rent for them out of their wages; as is the case with the employers of the sawyers and stockingers.

10. Sometimes the capitalist supplies the materials, tools, and subsistence of the artificers, but not the appliances of their work; and sometimes he compels them to purchase such appliances of him at an exorbitant profit; as the trimmings in the tailors’ trade, thread with the seamstresses, and the like.

11. Sometimes the capitalist supplies the materials, tools, subsistence, and shelter of the artificers, but not their gas-light, and compels them to pay a rent for the same out of their wages.

12. Sometimes the capitalist supplies the materials, tools, appliances, and subsistence, but not the shelter, necessary for the due performance of the work, the artificers, in such cases, doing the work at their own homes.

* * * * *

But all this concerns the workers more directly than the non-workers of society, and it is mentioned here merely with the view of completing the classification before given. Our more immediate business in this place lies with the inoperative, rather than the operative, members of the community. Nor is it with the entire body of these that we have to deal, but rather with that third order of the non-working class who are unwilling, though able, to work, as contradistinguished from those who are willing, but unable, to do so. The non-workers are a peculiar class, including orders diametrically opposed to each other: the very rich and the very poor, in the first place, and the honest and dishonest in the second. The dishonest members of society constitute those who are known more particularly as the criminal class. Hence to inquire into their means of living and mode of life, involves an investigation into the nature and the extent of crime in this country. Crime, sin, and vice are three terms used for the infraction of three different kinds of laws--social, religious, and moral. Crime is the transgression of some social law, even as sin is the transgression of some religious law, and vice the breach of some moral one. These laws, however, often differ only in emanating from different authorities; while infractions of them are merely offences against different powers. To thieve is to offend at once socially, religiously, and morally; for not only does the social, but the religious and moral law, each and all, enjoin that we should respect the property of others.

But there are other crimes or offences against the social powers, besides such as are committed by those who will not work. The crimes perpetrated by those who object to labour for their living, are habitual crimes; whereas those perpetrated by the other classes of society are accidental crimes, arising from the pressure of a variety of circumstances. Here, then, we have a most important fundamental distinction: all crimes, and consequently all criminals, are divisible into two different classes, the professional and the casual; that is to say, there are two distinct orders of people continually offending against the laws of society, viz., those who do so as a regular means of living, and those who do so from some accidental cause. It is impossible to arrive at any accurate knowledge on the subject of crime generally, without making this first analysis of the several species of offences according to their causes; that is to say, arranging them into opposite groups or classes, according as they arise from an habitual indisposition to labour on the part of some of the offenders, or from the temporary pressure of circumstances upon others. The official returns, however, on this subject are as unphilosophic as the generality of such documents, and consist of a crude mass of undigested facts, being a statistical illustration of the “rudis indigestaque moles,” in connection with a criminal chaos.

At present the several crimes of the country are officially divided into four classes:--

I. Offences against persons; including murder, rape, bigamy, assaults, &c.

II. Offences against property.

A. With violence; including burglary, robbery, piracy, &c.

B. Without violence; including embezzlement, cattle-stealing, larceny, and fraud.

C. Malicious offences against property; including arson, incendiarism, maiming cattle, &c.

III. Forgery and offences against the currency; including the forging of wills, bank-notes, and coining, &c.

IV. Other offences; including high-treason, sedition, poaching, smuggling, working illicit stills, perjury, &c.

M. Guerry, the eminent French statist, adopts a far more philosophic arrangement, and divides the several crimes into--

I. Crimes against the State; as high treason, &c.

II. Crimes against personal safety; as murder, assault, &c.

III. Crimes against morals (with and without violence); as rape, bigamy, &c.

IV. Crimes against property (proceeding from cupidity or malice); as larceny, embezzlement, incendiarism, and the like.

The same fundamental error which renders the government classification comparatively worthless, deprives that of the French philosopher of all practical value. It gives us no knowledge of the character of the people committing the crimes; being merely a system of criminal mnemonics, as it were, or easy method of remembering the several varieties of offences. The classes in both systems are but so many mental pigeon-holes for the orderly arrangement and partitioning of the various infractions of the law; further than this they cannot help us.

Whatever other information the inquirer may want, he must obtain for himself; if he wish to learn from the crimes something as to their causes, as well as the nature of the criminals, he must begin de novo, and, using the official facts, but rejecting the official system of classification, proceed to arrange all the several offences into two classes, according as they are of a professional and casual character, committed by habitual or occasional offenders. Adopting this principle, it will be found that the non-professional crimes consist mainly of murder, assaults, incendiarism, ravishment, bigamy, embezzlement, high treason, and the like; for it is evident that none can make a trade or profession of the commission of these crimes, or resort to them as a regular means of living[11].

The professional crimes, on the other hand, will be generally found to include burglary, robbery, poaching, coining, smuggling, working of illicit stills, larceny from the person, simple larceny, &c., because each and every of these are regular crafts, requiring almost the same apprenticeship as any other mode of life. Burglary, coining, working illicit stills, and picking pockets, are all arts to which no man, without some previous training, can take. Hence to know whether the number of these dishonest handicrafts--for such they really are--be annually on the increase or not, is to solve a most important portion of the criminal problem; it is to ascertain whether crime pursued as a profession or business, is being augmented among us--to discover whether the criminal class, as a distinct portion of our people is, or is not, on the advance. The non-professional crimes will furnish us with equally curious results, showing a yearly impress of the character of the times; for being only occasional offences, of course the number of such offenders at different years will give us a knowledge of the intensity of the several occasions inducing the crimes in such years.

The accidental crimes, classified according to their causes, may be said to consist of--

I. Crimes of malice, exercised either against the person or the property of the object.

II. Crimes of lust and perverted appetites; as rape, &c.

III. Crimes of shame; as concealing the births of infants, attempts to procure miscarriage, and the like.

IV. Crimes of temptation, } with, or without

V. Crimes of cupidity, } breach of

VI. Crimes of want, } trust.

VII. Crimes of political prejudices.

With the class of casual or accidental criminals, however, we are not at present concerned. Those who resort to crime as a means of support, when in a state of extreme want, for instance, cannot be said to belong to the voluntary non-workers, for many of these would willingly work to increase their sustenance, if that end were attainable by such means, but the poor shirt-workers, slop-tailors, and the like, have not the power of earning more than the barest subsistence by their labour, so that the pawning of the work entrusted to them by their employers, becomes an act to which they are immediately impelled for “dear life,” on the occurrence of the least illness or mishap among them. Such offenders, therefore, belong more properly to those who cannot work for their living, or rather, who cannot live by their working, and though they offend against the laws in the same manner as those that will not work, they cannot certainly be said to be of the same class.

The voluntary non-workers are a distinct body of people. In the introductory chapter to the first volume of the “Street-folk,” they have been shown to appertain to even the rudest nations, being as it were the human parasites of every civilized and barbarous community. The Hottentots have their “Sonquas,” and the Kafirs their “Fingoes,” as we have our “Prigs” and “Cadgers.” Those who will not work for the food they consume, appear to be part and parcel of a State--an essential element of the social fabric as much as those who cannot, or need not work for their living. Go where you will, to what corner of the earth you please, search out or propound what new-fangled or obsolete form of society you may, there will be some members of it more apathetic than the rest, who object to work--some more infirm than the rest, who are denied the power to work--and some more thrifty than the rest, who from their past savings have no necessity to work for the future. These several forms are but the necessary consequences of specific differences in the constitution of different beings. Circumstances may tend to give an unnatural development to either one or other of the classes; the criminal class, the pauper class, or the wealthy class, may be in excess in one form of society, as compared with another, or they may be repressed by certain social arrangements; nevertheless, to a greater or less degree, there they will and must ever be.

Since, then, there is an essentially distinct class of people who will not work for their living, and since work is a necessary condition of the human organism, the question becomes, How do such people live? There is but one answer:--If they do not labour to procure their own food, of course they must live on the food procured by the labour of others. But how do they obtain possession of the food belonging to others? There are but two means: it must either be given to them by, or be taken from, the industrious portion of the community. Consequently, the next point to be settled is, what are the means by which those who object to work get their food given to them, and what the means by which they are enabled to take it from others. Let us begin with the last mentioned.

The means by which the criminal classes obtain their living constitute the essential points of difference among them, and form indeed the methods of distinction among themselves. The “Rampsmen,” the “Drummers,” the “Mobsmen,” the “Sneaksmen,” and the “Shofulmen,”[12] which are the terms by which they themselves designate the several branches of the “profession,” are but so many expressions indicating the several modes of obtaining the property of which they become possessed.

The “Rampsman” or “Cracksman” plunders by force; as the burglar, footpad, &c.

The “Drummer” plunders by stupefaction; as the “hocusser.”

The “Mobsman” plunders by manual dexterity; as the pickpocket.

The “Sneaksman” plunders by stealth; as the petty-larceny men and boys.

The “Shofulman” plunders by counterfeits; as the coiner.

Now each and all of these are distinct species of the genus, having often little or no connection with the others. The “Cracksman,” or housebreaker, would no more think of associating with the “Sneaksman” than a barrister would dream of sitting down to dinner with an attorney; the perils braved by the housebreaker or the footpad make the cowardice of the sneaksman contemptible to him; and the one is distinguished by a kind of bulldog insensibility to danger, while the other is marked by a low cat-like cunning. The “Mobsman,” on the other hand, is more of a handicraftsman than either, and is comparatively refined by the society he is obliged to keep. He usually dresses in the same elaborate style of fashion as a Jew on a Saturday (in which case he is more particularly described by the prefix “swell”), and “mixes” generally in the “best of company,” frequenting--for the purposes of his business--all the places of public entertainment, and often being a regular attendant at church and the more elegant chapels, especially during charity sermons. The Mobsman takes his name from the gregarious habits of the class to which he belongs, it being necessary, for the successful picking of pockets, that the work be done in small gangs or mobs, so as to “cover” the operator. Among the Sneaksmen, again, the purloiners of animals, such as the horse stealers, the sheep stealers, the deer stealers, and the poachers, all belong to a particular tribe (with the exception of the dog stealers)--they are agricultural thieves; whereas the others are generally of a more civic character. The Shofulmen, or coiners, moreover constitute a distinct species, and upon them, like the others, is impressed the stamp of the peculiar line of roguery they may chance to follow as a means of subsistence.

Such are the more salient features of that portion of the voluntary non-workers who live by taking what they want from others. The other moiety of the same class who live by getting what they want given to them, is equally peculiar. These consist of the “Flatcatchers,” the “Hunter” and “Charley[13] Pitchers,” the “Bouncers” and “Besters,” the “Cadgers,” the Vagrants, and the Prostitutes.

The “Flatcatchers” obtain what they want by false pretences; as swindlers, duffers, ring droppers, and cheats of all kinds.

The “Hunter” and “Charley Pitchers” obtain what they want by gaming; as thimblerig men, &c.

The “Bouncers” and “Besters” obtain what they want by betting, intimidating, or talking people out of their property.

The “Cadgers” obtain what they want by begging, and exciting false sympathy.

The Vagrants obtain what they want by declaring on the casual ward of the parish workhouse.

The Prostitutes obtain what they want by the performance of an immoral act.

Each of these, again, are unmistakeably distinguished from the rest. The “Flatcatchers” are generally remarkable for great shrewdness, especially in the knowledge of human character and ingenuity in designing and carrying out their several schemes. The “Charley Pitchers” appertain more to the conjuring or sleight-of-hand and blackleg class. The “Cadgers,” again, are to the class of cheats what the “Sneaksmen” are to the thieves, the lowest of all, being the least distinguished for those characteristics which mark the other members of the same body. As the “Sneaksmen” are the least daring and expert of all the thieves, so are the “Cadgers” the least intellectual and cunning of all the cheats. A “shallow cove,” that is to say, one who exhibits himself half naked in the streets as a means of obtaining his living, is looked upon as the most despicable of all, since the act requires neither courage, intellect, nor dexterity for the execution of it. The Vagrants, on the other hand, are the wanderers--the English Bedouins--those who, in their own words, “love to shake a free leg”--the thoughtless and the careless vagabonds of our race; while the Prostitutes, as a body, are the shameless among our women.

Such, then, are the characters of the voluntary non-workers, or professionally criminal class, the vagrants, beggars, cheats, thieves, and prostitutes--each order expressing some different mode of existence adopted by those who object to labour for their living. The vagrants, who love a roving life, exist principally by declaring on the parish funds for the time being; the beggars, as deficient in courage and intellect as in pride, prefer to live by soliciting alms of the public; the cheats, possessed of considerable cunning and ingenuity, choose rather to subsist by continual fraud and deception; the thieves, distinguished generally by a hardihood and comparative disregard of danger, find greater delight in risking their liberty by taking what they want, instead of waiting to have it given them; while the prostitutes, as deficient in shame as the beggars are in pride, prefer to live by using their charms for the vilest of purposes.

The exposition of the causes why the several species of voluntary non-workers object to labour for their living, I shall reserve for a future occasion; that they do object to work is patent in the fact that they might sustain themselves by their industry if they chose (for those who are unable to do so, and are consequently driven to dishonesty, have been purposely removed from the class).

The number of individuals belonging to the professional criminal class, we are not yet in a position to ascertain; but few dependable facts have been collected on the subject, and even these have been obtained so many years back that, with the increase of population, they have become almost worthless, except in a historic point of view. Such as they are, however, it will be as well to add them to this introduction to the class of voluntary non-workers, as the best information at present existing upon the subject.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF DEPREDATORS, OFFENDERS, AND SUSPECTED PERSONS WHO HAVE BEEN BROUGHT WITHIN THE COGNIZANCE OF THE POLICE IN THE YEAR 1837, COMPREHENDING:--

1. Persons who have no visible means of subsistence, and who are believed to live wholly by violation of the law, as by habitual depredation, by fraud, by prostitution, &c.

2. Persons following some ostensible and legal occupation, but who are known to have committed an offence, and are believed to augment their gains by habitual or occasional violation of the law.

3. Persons not known to have committed any offences, but known as associates of the above classes, and otherwise deemed to be suspicious characters.

--------------------------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- | Metropolitan Police District. Character and description of Offenders. +--------+--------+-------+------------ | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total | Class. | Class. | Class.|all Classes. --------------------------------------------------------+--------+--------+-------+------------ { Burglars | 77 | 22 | 8 | 107 RAMPSMEN[14] { Housebreakers | 59 | 17 | 34 | 110 { Highway robbers | 19 | 8 | 11 | 38 |---- 155|--- 47|--- 53|---- 255 | | | | MOBSMEN Pickpockets | 544| 75| 154| 773 | | | | SNEAKSMEN Common thieves | 1667| 1338 652| 3657 | | | | { Horse stealers | 7 | 4 | | 11 ANIMAL STEALERS { Cattle stealers | | | | { Dog stealers | 45 | 48 | 48| 141 |---- 52|--- 52| |---- 152 | | | | { [15]Forgers | | 3 | | 3 SHOFULMEN { [15]Coiners | 25 | 1 | 2 | 28 { Utterers of base coin | 202 | 54 | 61 | 317 |---- 227|--- 58|--- 63|---- 348 | | | | { [15]Obtainers of goods by false pretences| 33 |108 | | 141 FLATCATCHERS { [15]Persons committing frauds of any | | | | { other description | 23 |118 | 41| 182 |---- 56|--- 226| |---- 323 | | | | Receivers of stolen goods | 51| 158| 134| 343 | | | | [15]Habitual disturbers of the public | | | | peace | 723| 1866| 179| 2768 | | | | Vagrants | 1089| 186| 20| 1295 | | | | CADGERS { [15]Begging-letter writers | 12 | 17 | 21 | 50 { Bearers of begging-letters | 22 | 40 | 24 | 86 |---- 34|--- 57|--- 45|---- 136 | | | | { [15]Prostitutes, well-dressed, living in | | | | { brothels | 813 | 62 | 20 | 895 PROSTITUTES {[15]Prostitutes, well-dressed, walking the| | | | { streets |1460 | 79 | 73 |1612 { Prostitutes, low, infesting low | | | | neighbourhoods |3533 |147 |184 |3864 |----5806|--- 288|--- 277|---- 6371 | | | | [15]Classes not before enumerated | 40| 2| 438| 470 | | | | Total | 10,444| 4353| 2104| 16,901 --------------------------------------------------------+--------+--------+-------+-----------

The estimate made for five of the principal provincial towns in the same year was as follows:--

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF DEPREDATORS, OFFENDERS, AND SUSPECTED PERSONS BROUGHT WITHIN THE COGNIZANCE OF THE POLICE OF THE UNDERMENTIONED DISTRICTS, IN THE YEAR 1837.

-------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+----------+----------- | | | | Number of Depredators, Offenders, | | Proportion | and Suspected Persons. | Average | of District or Place. | | Length | known bad +--------+--------+--------+--------+ of | Characters | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | | Career. | to the | Class. | Class. | Class. | Total. | |Population. -------------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+----------- Metropolitan Police District | 10,444 | 4353 | 2104 | 16,901 | 4 yrs. | 1 in 89 Borough of Liverpool | 3,580 | 916 | 215 | 4,711 | ...... | 1 in 45 City and County of Bristol | 1,935 | 1190 | 356 | 3,481 | ...... | 1 in 31 City of Bath | 284 | 470 | 847 | 1,601 | ...... | 1 in 37 Town and County of Newcastle-on-Tyne | 1,730 | 222 | 62 | 2,014 |2-1/4 yrs.| 1 in 27 +--------+--------+--------+--------+ | Total | 17,973 | 7151 | 3584 | 28,708 | | -------------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+----------+-----------

By the above table it will be seen that, in 1837, there were 28,708 persons of known bad character, infesting five of the principal towns in England: nearly 18,000 of the entire number had no visible means of subsistence, and were believed to live wholly by depredation; 7000 were believed to augment their gains by habitual or occasional violation of the law; and 3500 were known to be associates of the others, and otherwise deemed suspicious characters. According to the average proportion of these persons to the population, there would have been in the other large towns nearly 32,000 persons of a similar class, and upwards of 69,000 of such persons dispersed throughout the rest of the country. Adding these together, we have as many as 130,000 individuals of known bad character in England and Wales, without the walls of the prisons.

To form an accurate notion of the total number of the criminal population at the above period, we must add to the preceding amount the number of persons resident within the walls of the prisons. These, at the time of taking the last census, amounted to 19,888, which, added to the 130,000 above enumerated, gives within a fraction of 150,000 individuals for the entire criminal population of the country, as known to the police in 1837.

Let us now, for a moment, turn our attention to the number and cost of the honest and dishonest poor throughout England and Wales. Mr. Porter, usually no mean authority upon all matters of a statistical nature, tells us, in his “Progress of the Nation,” p. 530, that “the proportion of persons in the United Kingdom who pass their time without applying to any gainful occupation is quite inconsiderable! Of 5,800,000 males of 20 years and upwards living at the time of the census of 1831, there were said to be engaged in some calling or profession 5,450,000, thus leaving unemployed only 350,000, or rather less than six per cent.” “The number of unemployed adult males in Great Britain in 1841,” he afterwards informs us, “was only 274,000 and odd.”

But this statement gives us no accurate idea of the number of persons subsisting by charity or crime, for the author of the “Progress of the Nation,” strange to say, wholly excludes from his calculation the mass of individuals maintained by the several parishes, as well as the criminals, almspeople, and lunatics throughout the country! Now, according to the Report of the Poor-law Commissioners, the number of paupers receiving in and out-door relief, in 1848, was no less than 1,870,000 and odd. The number of criminals and suspicious characters throughout the country, in 1837, we have seen, was 150,000. In 1844 the number of lunatics in county asylums was 4000 and odd; while, according to the occupation abstract of the population returns there were in 1841 upwards of 5000 almspeople, 1000 beggars, and 21,000 pensioners. These, formed into one sum, give us no less than 2,000,000 of individuals living upon the income of the remainder of the population. By the above computation, therefore, we see that, out of a total of 16,000,000 souls, in England and Wales, one-eighth, or twelve per cent. of the whole, continue their existence either by pauperism, mendicancy, or crime.

Now, the cost of this immense mass of vice and want is even more appalling than the number of individuals subsisting in such utter degradation. The total amount of money levied in 1848 for the relief of the poor throughout England and Wales, was 7,400,000_l._ But, exclusive of this amount, the magnitude of the sum that we give voluntarily towards the support and education of the poorer classes, is unparalleled in the history of any other nation, or of any other time. According to the summary of the returns annexed to the voluminous reports of the Charity Commissioners, the rent of the land and other fixed property, together with the interest of the money left for charitable purposes in England and Wales, amounts to 1,200,000_l._ a year; and it is believed that, by proper management, this return might be increased to an annual income of at least two millions of money. “And yet,” says Mr. MʻCulloch, “there can be no doubt that even this large sum falls far below the amount expended every year in voluntary donations to charitable establishments. Nor can any estimate be formed,” he adds, “of the money given in charity to individuals, but in the aggregate it cannot fail to amount to an immense sum.” All things considered, therefore, we cannot be very far from the truth, if we assume the sums voluntarily subscribed towards the relief of the poor to equal, in the aggregate, the total amount raised by assessment for the same purpose (the income from voluntary subscriptions to the metropolitan charities alone equals 1,000,000_l._ and odd); so that it would appear that the well-to-do amongst us expend the vast sum of 15,000,000_l._ per annum in mitigating the miseries of their less fortunate brethren.

But though it may be said that we give altogether 15,000,000_l._ a year to alleviate the distress of those who want or suffer, we must remember that this vast sum expresses not only the liberal extent of our sympathy, but likewise the fearful amount of want and suffering, on the one hand, and of excess and luxury on the other, that there must be in the land. If the poorer classes require fifteen millions to be added in charity every year to their aggregate income in order to relieve their pains and privations, and the richer can afford to have the same immense sum taken from theirs, and yet scarcely feel the loss, it shows at once how much the one class must have in excess and the other in deficiency. Whether such a state of things is a necessary evil connected with the distribution of wealth, this is not the place for me to argue. All I have to do here is to draw attention to the fact. It is for others to lay bare the cause, and, if possible, discover the remedy.

There still remains, however, to be added to the sum expended in voluntary or compulsory relief of the poor, the cost of our criminal and convict establishments at home and abroad. This, according to the Government estimates, amounts to very nearly 1,000,000_l._; then there is the value of the property appropriated by the 150,000 habitual criminals, and this, at 10_s._ a week per head, amounts to very nearly 4,000,000_l._; so that, adding these items to the sum before-mentioned, we have, in round numbers, the enormous amount of 20,000,000_l._ per annum as the cost of the paupers and criminals of this country; and, reckoning the national income, with Mr. MʻCulloch and others, at 350,000,000_l._, it follows that the country has to give upwards of five per cent. out of its gross earnings every year to support those who are either incapable or unwilling to obtain a living for themselves.

OF THE PROSTITUTE CLASS GENERALLY.

We have now seen that the two modes of obtaining a living other than by working for it are, by forcibly or stealthily appropriating the proceeds of another’s labour, or else by seducing the more industrious or thrifty to part with a portion of their gains. Prostitution, professionally resorted to, belongs to the latter class, and consists, when adopted as a means of subsistence without labour, in inducing others, by the performance of some immoral act, to render up a portion of their possessions. Literally construed, prostitution is the putting of anything to a vile use; in this sense perjury is a species of prostitution, being an unworthy use of the faculty of speech; so, again, bribery is a prostitution of the right of voting; while prostitution, specially so called, is the using of her charms by a woman for immoral purposes. This, of course, may be done either from mercenary or voluptuous motives; be the cause, however, what it may, the act remains the same, and consists in the base perversion of a woman’s charms--the surrendering of her virtue to criminal indulgence. Prostitution has been defined to be the illicit intercourse of the sexes; but illicit is unlicensed, and the mere sanctioning of an immoral act could not dignify it into a moral one. Such a definition would make the criminality of the act to consist solely in the absence of the priest’s licence.

In Persia there are no professional prostitutes permitted; but though the priest’s sanction there precedes the surrendering of the woman’s virtue in every instance, still the same immoral perversion takes place--it being customary for couples to be wedded for a small sum by the priest in the evening, and divorced by him, for an equally small sum, in the morning. Here, then, we find the licensed intercourse assuming the same immoral cast as the unlicensed; for surely none will maintain that these nuptial ephemeræ are sanctified, because accompanied with a priestly licence. Nor can we, on the other hand, assert that the mere fact of continence in the association of the sexes, the persistence of the female to one male, or the continued endurance of an unsanctioned attachment, can ever be raised into anything purer than cohabitation, or the chastity of unchastity.

Prostitution, then, does not consist solely in promiscuous intercourse, for she who confines her favours to one may still be a prostitute; nor does it consist in illicit or unsanctioned intercourse, for, as we have seen, the intercourse may be sanctioned and still be prostitution to all intents and purposes. Nor can it be said to consist solely in the mercenary motives so often prompting to the commission of the act; for fornication is expressly that form of prostitution which is the result of illicit attachment.

In what, then, it may be asked, does prostitution consist? It consists, I answer, in what the word literally expresses--putting a woman’s charms to vile uses. The term whore has, strictly, the same signification as that of prostitute; though usually supposed to be from the Saxon verb hyrian, to hire, and, consequently, to mean a woman whose favours can be procured for a reward. But the Saxon substantive hure, is the same word as the first syllable of hor-cwen, which signifies literally a filthy quean, a har-lot. Now the term hor, in hor-cwen, is but another form of the Saxon adjective horig, filthy, dirty, the Latin equivalent of which is sor-didus; hence the substantive horines means filthiness, and horingas, adulterers (or filthy people), and hornung, adultery, fornication, whoredom (or filthy acts). Prostitution and whoredom, then, have both the same meaning, viz., perversion to vile or filthy uses; and consist in the surrendering of a woman’s virtue in a manner that excites our moral disgust. The offensiveness of the act of unchastity to the moral taste or sense constitutes the very essence of prostitution; and it is this moral offensiveness which often makes the licensed intercourse of the sexes, as in the marriage of a young girl to an old man, for the sake of his money, as much an act of prostitution as even the grossest libertinism.

The next question consequently becomes, what are the invariable antecedents which excite the moral disgust in every act of prostitution? or are there any such invariable antecedents characterizing each offensive perversion of a woman’s charms? Is the offensiveness a mere matter of taste, differing according as the moral palates of the individuals or races may differ one from the other, and ultimately referable to some peculiar form of organization, convention, fashion, or geography? or is it a part of the inherent constitution of things?--in a word, is there an abstract chastity and unchastity; an erotic τὸ καλὸν and τὸ κακὸν; an universal standard of moral beauty and ugliness in woman--that, go where you will, is the same to all natures and in all countries? or is the vice of one set of people the virtue of another, as this race admires white teeth and that black?

This is a matter lying, as it were, across the very threshold of the subject, and which must necessarily, according as one or other view be taken, give a wholly different cast, not only to all our thoughts in connection with the evil, but to all our plans for the remedy of it. If prostitution be loathsome to us, merely because it is the moral fashion of our people that it should be so, then by popularizing new forms of thought and feeling among us may we remove all opprobrium from the act, and so put an end to all the moral evil in connection with it; but if it be naturally and innately offensive to every healthy mind, then can it be remedied solely by improving the tone of the thoughts and feelings of the depraved, and restoring the lost moral sense, as well as directing the perverted taste to more wholesome and beautiful objects.

To solve this part of the problem, then, it will be necessary that we should take as comprehensive a view of the subject as possible, collecting a large and multifarious body of facts, and examining the matter from almost every conceivable point of view. It will be necessary that we should regard it by the light of the early ages of society--that we should contemplate it amid all the primitive rudeness of barbaric life--and ultimately that we should study it under the many varied phases that it assumes in civilized communities.

For the better performance of this task I have availed myself of the services and assistance of my friend, Mr. Horace St. John, whom I shall now leave to lay before the reader the many curious and interesting facts which he has collected at my request in connection with the ancient and foreign part of the subject, after which I shall return to the consideration of that branch of the general inquiry connected more immediately with the prostitution of this country.

OF PROSTITUTION IN ANCIENT STATES: GENERAL VIEW.

In the following inquiry, though the chief object will be to ascertain the extent and character of the prostitute class of women, it will be necessary to indicate generally the condition of the sex in various ages, and among different nations. This will afford a comparative view of the subject. It is impossible to form a judgment on the condition of this class, and its influence on society, without learning in what degree of estimation morality is viewed by a people; what position in the social scale is occupied by their women; at what price chastity is held; and what are the relative stations of the sexes. To afford a correct idea of this, in plain, popular language, is the task to which we now apply ourselves; and we commence with the ancient states whose institutions have, in a greater or less degree, influenced those of all others, in every later age. It is necessary to maintain a distinction between those countries where marriage was an institution, and those--if they are not quite fabulous--at least savage communities where the intercourse of men with women is looser than that of beasts.

Far as we can trace the history of society we discover no state without the blemish of prostitution. In some it was more, in others less prevalent; but in all it existed in one form or another. In examining the manners of the ancient nations, Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Anglo Saxons, we find women who degraded themselves from vanity, lust, or for gain; and, among the old communities of the East, less known to us, public immorality was a characteristic. We shall show this to have been the case, and, basing our statements on the most creditable authority, indicate the principal features of each system. The information, it is true, which has been bequeathed to us, and elucidated by the learning and diligence of numerous scholars, is far from complete; but enough may be collected among the antiquities of Israel, Greece, Rome, and Egypt, to establish a fair opinion. The general design of this inquiry will be to draw a view of the position occupied by the female sex in different ages and countries, to measure the estimation in which it was held, to fix the accepted standard of morality, to ascertain the recognised significance of the marriage contract, the laws relating to polygamy and concubinage, the value at which feminine virtue and modesty were held, and thus to consider the prostitute in relation to the system of which she formed a part. She will be the particular object of investigation; but the others are by no means unimportant. They are, indeed, necessary to a just and comprehensive view of the question before us. In a society where men lived in brutal promiscuousness with the women, prostitution could scarcely exist; where chastity was lightly esteemed, and marriage held to be a loose contract for social purposes, adultery could hardly be very full of shame. In this, therefore, as in all other inquiries, it is necessary to view the actual object in relation to others which are invariably connected with it. There is no universal, unvarying standard, by which even prostitution can be measured. Circumstances, not belonging, yet not entirely foreign to it, are to be considered. Consequently, while we hold that in view as the main ground of research, we shall, where materials allow, draw a sketch of the situation occupied by the female sex, and of the other traits of civilization to which we have referred.

In a general view, Greece and Rome, with the great city of Babylon, stand most prominently forward with their system of prostitution. Closer inquiry, however, induces us to hesitate before assigning them that distinction. Of the two classical states especially, it is because our information is more immediate and complete, that their public immorality is more remarkable. The poets of the earlier, and the historians of the later, period, have transmitted to us numerous accounts of the manners and customs of Greece and Rome; their painters have left us views,--their architects and sculptors, monuments of their civilization. Their moralists and satirists have enlarged on the prevalent vices, and from all these sources we are enabled to derive clearer ideas of their women, and especially their prostitution. Besides, in a polished state, with pure manners the prostitute class will always be more distinct, and therefore more conspicuous.

Babylon, far more than a thousand years ago, was a proverb of immorality. Her name and the name of Whore have been associated ideas, not on account only of the idolatry practised by her people, but on account of their licentious manners. Concerning Egypt, though Diodorus and Herodotus wrote of it, little is known; of the marriage ceremony absolutely nothing. The prostitutes are not described; but, from every trace and record of their civilization which has been preserved, it is evident that a large class addicted itself to this calling. Who were the public musicians, disreputable in the eyes of all other persons?--who were the dancers who performed their wanton feats at the entertainments of the rich, and stripped themselves half, or entirely, naked before their couches?--who were the drunken women, who bared their bodies, and capered in that state on the Nile boats, during the festival of Bubastis?--who were they who assisted at the sacerdotal orgies, which defiled the temples of ancient Egypt?--who could they have been, but women of abandoned character, who prostituted themselves for vile purposes, for gain or pleasure?

Among the Jews, again, the continually reiterated allusions to harlots, in the Scriptures, the abominations perpetually charged to their account, the threats pronounced upon their wickedness, the frequent allusions to their licentious manners, indicate a wide prevalence of this system. Among a people so commonly guilty of nameless crimes, we cannot expect to find chastity a peculiar virtue. Indeed, it is seldom such vices are practised until all the inferior offences against decency have become insipid through satiety. The writers, therefore, who parade before us the civilization of the Jews, as an example of public morality, base their conclusions on a strange interpretation of facts. To contrast them with the manners of Attic Greece, is a pure satire on common sense. Sparta was licentious, but not in the low and gross manner of the Jews. Athens harboured a licentious class; but none like those bestial voluptuaries among the Hebrews, in whom lust became a loathsome passion. Although, therefore, the actual manners of ancient Israel have been less vividly described than those of Greece, it is evident from the tenour of Scripture history, that morality there was less pure than in the Attic state.

Rome, under the republic, was, perhaps, still farther removed from the charge of corruption. Prostitutes it had, and brothels; but its women were generally virtuous. The chastity of the Roman matron has passed into a proverb. It was, however, if we may credit the historian Tacitus, exceeded by the modesty of the women in ancient Germany. Among them morals appear purged of licentiousness. Polygamy was forbidden, and practised only by the petty kings who set themselves above the law. The manners of the people, rather than the enactments of their code, prohibited divorce. Adultery, rare as it was, ranked as an inexpiable crime; while seduction was condemned, and prostitution unknown. It was not, however, the severity of the law which enforced the virtue; it was the virtue that imparted its spirit to the law. From the morals of ancient Germany, the lawgivers of society might learn many useful lessons. Bars and bolts, multiplied walls, troops of eunuchs, jealous lattices, and the dread of punishment, failed to guard the harems of the East; while the hut of the German barbarian, open on all sides, was impregnable against the seducer. The poor toy of the Persian’s seraglio, protected by a hundred devices, often eluded them all; but the German women were the guardians of their own honour. They may be described as possessing all the virtues, without the vices, of the stern Spartan stock; and, living on terms of equality with the men, held their virtue at too dear a price to prostitute it for admiration, or lust, or money. Civilization, in this respect, has done the Germans a very ill office.

Allied to these fierce wanderers in the Hyrcynian wood were the Saxons, from whom our ancestors descended. We shall find among them, on their native soil, similar manners, especially in the circumstance of the adulteress being whipped without mercy through the village. Among them prevailed, however, an enlightened reverence for the female sex, which contrasted strongly with the ideas of many surrounding nations, who looked on a woman as a creature merely dedicated to the service and gratification of man. They brought over to England institutions susceptible of being moulded to a different form. They became more refined and less moral. Whenever, indeed, rude men, who have not given themselves up to the indulgence of their low physical appetites, turn from the chase, from war, and similar rough occupations, to the framing of laws, to the formation of society, to any intellectual exercise, it appears natural that other propensities should be awakened in them, and of these the sensual always form a part. It is, consequently, interesting to study the progress of manners from stage to stage of civilization, from the rudest tribe to the most refined community.

We shall occupy ourselves first with the Hebrew republic, and then with the monarchy which succeeded it. From Israel we proceed to Egypt, related to it in various ways. Thence our attention will be directed to Greece, which offered models to the statesmen and public economists of all time. The contrast between the Ionic and the Doric states will be presented. Then we shall proceed to Rome, which will lead us to the Anglo-Saxons, others being incidentally noticed by the way.

In all, as far as our limits and our materials will allow, a sketch of the condition of women, the national ideas of feminine virtue, the laws of marriage, and the extent of prostitution, will be given; and thus the reader will be prepared to enter on the wider field of modern society abroad. This will be divided into the barbarous and the civilized; and of the barbarous, the hunters, fishers, shepherds, and tillers of the soil, may be separately noticed.

The account of every ancient people will not be equally complete, because the sources of information are not so. Thus of Egypt, its marriage-customs are wholly unknown; of the Anglo-Saxons, although the learning and industry of Sharon Turner have been employed upon them, our knowledge is extremely imperfect. Even Rome and Greece, though they present us with the general features of their social systems, disappoint us when we search into details. Nevertheless, the reader may be enabled, as we have before said, to form a just idea of the condition of women in antiquity; for the researches of modern scholars have succeeded, at least, in laying bare the principal roots of the ancient system, upon which all the institutions of existing society are, in one form or another, established.

OF PROSTITUTION AMONG THE JEWS AND OTHER ANCIENT NATIONS.

A slight and rapid view of the subject in connection with the Jews, and more obscure nations of antiquity, is all that can here be attempted. With reference to the republic of the Hebrew race, though the ingenuity of modern writers has built up very pleasing theories, described as the manners and customs of the Jews, we can look nowhere for information except to the Bible, and, in a later age, to Josephus.

The position of woman among the Jews was by no means exalted. She was seldom consulted by her friends, when an union with her was desired by a wealthy suitor. Indeed, in the patriarchal times she was regarded more as her husband’s property than as his companion. Such must invariably be the case where polygamy and concubinage are institutions of society. At a still earlier period the customs of society were even more at variance with our ideas. Of course the sons of Adam must have married their sisters, and the practice continued after the necessity for it had ceased. Abraham formed such an union without exciting surprise. The patriarchs permitted men to wed two sisters at once, but the law of Moses brought a reform of marriage customs among the Jews[16]. They discontinued the intercourse between blood-relatives long before it was abandoned by the surrounding nations. Marriages with sisters not by the same mother were forbidden in the Mosaic code. Previously, however, none were unlawful except those of a man with his mother, or mother-in-law, or full sister. In the new dispensation the widow of a deceased brother was placed within the prohibited degree of consanguinity.

The laws against adultery were severe; death was ordained for both the guilty persons, and the punishment appears always to have been by stoning. Many victims, doubtless, perished under this cruel code; but the example of Jesus Christ gave a new lesson to mankind. The woman was brought before him, and the Jews claimed her condemnation. They asked him “should she be stoned.” Had he said no, they might have charged him with favouring adultery, and denying the Mosaic law; had he said yes, the Romans might have impeached him, for they had assumed the distribution of justice, and abolished the punishment of death for adultery. But he evaded their malice, and gave the law of mercy. “Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.” They all went out, and when he was alone with her he said, “Hath no man condemned thee?” She answered, “No man, Lord.” And he again said, “Neither do I condemn thee--go, and sin no more.”

That sentence should ever be in remembrance when we frame our moral code.

Adultery, however, was a crime only to be committed with a married woman, or one who was betrothed. The man’s marriage placed him under no obligation to abstain from intercourse with other than his wife. Wives to the number of four were allowed, while concubinage was unlimited. The first wife, however, was superior to the others. Jealousy, therefore, among the Jewish women could not have been a powerful feeling. Indeed we find strong proofs to the contrary. When Sarah found herself barren, she gave Hagar, her Egyptian maid, to Abraham, as a concubine or inferior wife. Other women, frequently, on discovering themselves to be sterile, begged their husbands to procure another companion of the bed, that they might not die childless. Similar instances are common in the social history of the East.

Marriage with an idolater was forbidden; but a man might marry a proselyte captive. When he saw a beautiful woman among his prisoners of war, he was to take her home, shave her head, pare her nails, change her raiment into that of a free person, and as he had humbled her, was forbidden to make merchandise of her again. The possession, nevertheless, of two wives by a private individual was a rare thing. Popular feeling was generally averse to it. The personages who most commonly practised it were the great men and kings, who were most expressly prohibited. In the Book of Deuteronomy, when the degraded Israelites had clamoured for a king, the law was given, “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, so that his heart turn not away.” No command was more frequently broken in the palaces of Israel. David had an immense harem; it seemed to be reckoned among the regalia. Solomon, who married Pharaoh’s daughter, had seven hundred wives--princesses--and three hundred concubines; but we find that he “did evil in the sight of the Lord,” and that “his heart was turned away.”

Respecting the children born to these parents there was a change in the law. In Genesis a man was allowed to transfer the inheritance to a favourite child; but, probably from the many flagitious actions committed, it was in Deuteronomy ordained, that if a man had two wives, of whom he hated one and loved the other--each bearing a child, the first-born, whether of the loved or the hated woman, should enjoy the right of inheritance.

From all the passages in Scripture referring to this subject, it appears that women among the Jews held but an indifferent position, being made the subject of barter, and that marriage was not a sacred but a civil institution,--a legal bond, which might be broken by a legal act. Matches were usually made by the woman’s kindred, she herself being a secondary actor in the transaction.

Throughout the Bible, notwithstanding, we find women held by the inspired writers in great respect, their treatment by the rebellious Jews, as they sank through various degrees of corruption, being continually set forth among the abominations practised by that flagitious people.

In the Scriptures we discover innumerable references to women, and to prostitutes in particular; but, collecting and comparing them all, we find for our present purpose materials by no means abundant: there is no exact information. Prostitutes, we know, existed, and we are told in what estimation they were held; that they stood at the corners of streets, that they practised many seductive arts, and sold themselves at a very cheap rate: but how many they were, how they lived, what was the nature of their places of resort, we are left uninformed, or guided only by obscure allusions. Nevertheless, sufficient is known upon which to base a view of the condition of women, and the extent of morality among the most ancient nation recognised in history.

In the book of Genesis, whence we obtain our first glimpses of the social history of mankind, we find interesting, though imperfect, sketches of a curious state of society. We meet, even so early as this, with a woman wearing a veil, not taking her meals in company with men, living in separate apartments, and presenting a model of the system still prevalent in the East. Simplicity and luxury in strange combination characterized the manners of that remote age. Their morals appear to have been at all times gross; and one of the principal tasks of legislation was to restrain the licentiousness to which the people were so prone to abandon themselves. Many barbarous races present at this day social institutions similar to those of the Jews, whence many writers have traced them to that stock. It is more probable, however, that similar manners grow out of a similar condition.

Several writers, we know, contend for the purity of manners among the Jews, and point to the rigid laws which ruled them. The social history of mankind, however, if it proves anything, proves this, that it is not by any means the nation with the severest code which is the most virtuous. Examples of the contrary might be multiplied. No state, savage or civilized, could ever have more rigorous laws than Achin and Japan, and nowhere have the people been more flagitious. While the Draconic code was in force, morals in Greece went to rot. Consequently, if we are to consider the Jews to have been a moral people, it must certainly not be on the ground of their severe laws. Arguing from that, a contrary inference should be drawn. The direct evidence, however, tends the other way. Chastity appears to have been by no means a favourite virtue. Not to allude to the unnatural abominations mentioned in the Bible, it is certain that there existed a considerable class of public women, who prostituted themselves to any one for a certain reward.

The story of Tamar is a curious illustration of this subject. To impose on Judah, and bear a child by him, and in spite of him, she assumes the habit and appearance of a regular prostitute. She then goes out, and sitting down by the highway covers her face. Judah thought her to be a harlot, “because she covered her face,” which, as the commentators tell us, it was the custom for such women to do, as among the same class of females in Persia, in mimicry of a shame they did not feel. Judah speaks to her, and says, “Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee.” She answers, “What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me!” He promises to give her a kid from his flock, but she demands a pledge; this he gave, and went with her.

The circumstance is related in a manner which seems to show that the practice was common with men, nor does any particular disgrace appear to attach to it. When, however, Judah learns that his daughter-in-law Tamar is “with child by whoredom,” he condemns her to the punishment of death by burning, on the secret being at length revealed to him[17]. We have here a singular illustration of manners among the primitive tribes of that great family of mankind. The corruption of manners reached, it is probable, a high degree before the laws were given.

Where concubinage was practised, feminine virtue could not be held as a precious possession. The intercourse accordingly of a married man with an unmarried woman was esteemed simply as a proof of deficient chastity. At the same time, the encouragement of prostitution, or “the feeding of whores,” is denounced as the conduct of foolish and profligate men, who unwisely waste their substance. The class of prostitutes was held in very low esteem; they were, in general, foreigners and heathens, and are spoken of usually as “strange women.” Delilah, who beguiled Sampson, was probably a Philistine, though it is not certain that she was not an Israelite. At any rate, there appear to have been many Jewish women, of the lowest order, who followed this degrading occupation. To render them as few as possible, a law was passed forbidding men, under severe penalties, from bringing up their daughters to prostitution for gain. Legislation, however, could not entirely restrain the vicious from such a course of life.

Apparently the prostitutes, among the Jews, sometimes obtained husbands. Priests, however, were forbidden on any account to marry a harlot, or indeed any woman with even a breath of imputation on her fame. For the daughter of a priest, who took to the calling of a prostitute, the punishment was death by burning. For any woman it was infamous, but in spite of what was laid down in the law, or by the public opinion of the Jews, cities never wanted prostitutes, and women walked the streets, or stood in groups at the corners, ready to entrap the young men who came forth in quest of pleasure. Among the exhortations of parents to their sons, and of patriarchs to youth, we always find an injunction to beware of strange women, which implies a considerable prevalence of the system. The readers of the Bible will at once remember the many passages of this kind contained in that volume[18].

With respect to prostitution among the Jews, an illustration is afforded by the story of the two mothers who came before Solomon for judgment. They were harlots, though bearing children, and they said they dwelt in one house, and “there was no stranger with us in the house.” Another is afforded by the account of the two men whom Joshua sent out as spies. They came into a harlot’s house at Rabbah--a brothel, in fact, where, as at Rome in the Imperial age, the woman sat impudently, without a veil, at the door, and solicited the passers by. They wore peculiar clothing. In addition to the vile customs of the East, we find, “Thou shalt not bring into the temple the price of a whore.” This was to guard against the introduction of a practice not uncommon among some ancient and modern nations, of the priests enriching themselves and their temple by hiring out prostitutes[19].

Another state, known to us from Scripture, is Babylon, surnamed the Whore, as well from its profligacy as its idolatry. The one, indeed, was accompanied by the other. Luxury and debauch were carried to the highest excess. The Temple of Venus,--a goddess known there as Mylitta,--was sacred to prostitution. The priests had, in immemorial time, invented a law that every woman should once in her life present herself at the temple, and prostitute her body to any stranger who might desire it. Consecrated by religion, this act appeared odious to few of the Babylonian citizens. The woman came, dressed brilliantly, and crowned with a garland of flowers; she sat down with her companions in a place where the strangers who filled the galleries might observe and make choice of their victims. Numbers were found always ready enough to enjoy the privilege procured for them by the priests. When a man had selected one of the women who pleased him most, he came down, and making her a present of money, which she was compelled to take, took her hand and said, “I implore in thy favour the goddess Mylitta!” He then led her to a retired spot and consummated the transaction. Having once entered the temple it was impossible for any ordinary woman to return home without having prostituted herself. Nevertheless, the priests allowed some ladies of rank and wealth to make a bargain for their chastity, which they probably desired to dispose of more agreeably to their own caprice. These few privileged persons went through the ceremonies without performing the usual act of prostitution. At the taking of Babylon by Cyrus, men were found ready to hire out their daughters and prostitute them for profit, while in the Alexandrian age men sent their wives to strangers for a sum of money[20].

Throughout the countries of the East, upon the history of which at that early period any light has been thrown, we discover the prevalence of similar customs. The most celebrated appear the most licentious, but probably only because they have been the most strictly investigated. The wealthy and luxurious capitals, in which the spoils of great conquests were piled up, never failed to supply a sufficient number of abandoned women, supported by the looser sort of men, in various degrees of position, from penury to splendour. Though circumstances of time and place, of religion and civilization, imparted peculiar characteristics to the prostitute class of each age and country, the general features of the system were invariably the same, and the prostitutes of Babylon resembled very much the prostitutes of New Orleans and London. We turn next to ancient Egypt, a country of whose laws and manners we have had interesting, if not complete, accounts bequeathed us.

OF PROSTITUTION IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

Turning to ancient Egypt, we find, in the records of that singular people, little directly bearing on the question before us. Herodotus, and Diodorus the Sicilian, are almost the sole lights which guide us in our researches among them. Recently, the labours of a learned antiquarian have tended to increase our acquaintance with the people of old Egypt, by translating into language the volumes of information engraved or painted on the walls of tombs, temples, palaces, and monuments, so numerous in the cities on the banks of the Nile. We have thus had broad glimpses of the ancient history, the geography, population, government, the arts, the industry, and the manners of that country at that period; but the extent of the prostitute system has not been touched upon. Nevertheless, as one of the most ancient civilizations known to history, Egyptian society deserves some attention, and it is worth while to glance at the general condition of its women, especially as a few facts throw light on the especial point of our inquiry.

The position of a woman in ancient Egypt was in some respects remarkable. Entire mistress of the household, she exercised considerable influence over her husband, and was not subjected to any intolerable tyranny. In all countries, however, where concubinage is allowed, the condition of the sex must be in a degree degraded. Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians married only one wife, Diodorus that they married as many as they pleased, the restriction applying only to the sacerdotal order. The contradiction may be reconciled by supposing that the former writer described the general practice, and the latter the permission granted by the law; or, which is more probable, that he confounded concubinage with polygamy. From frequent allusions to this system we know it was tolerated. Wise laws, however, held a check upon the practice. Every child, the fruit of whatever union, was to be reared by its parents, infanticide being severely punished. Illegitimacy was a term not recognised. The son of the free, and the son of the bondwoman, had an equal right to inheritance, the father alone being referred to, since the mother was viewed as little more than a nurse to her own offspring. Women in Egypt bore numerous children, which rendered many concubines a burden too heavy for any but the wealthy to bear; nevertheless, some did indulge themselves in this manner, procuring young girls from the slave-merchants who came from abroad, or captives taken in the field.

In a country where the marriage of brother and sister was allowed, we might expect to find curious laws relating to the subject before us. But they were not curious, in any particular degree. Adultery was punished in the woman by the amputation of her nose, in the man by a thousand blows with a stick. The wealthier men were extremely jealous, forcing their wives to go barefooted, that they might not wander in the streets. Eunuchs, also, were maintained by some. Among classes of a lower grade, the women enjoyed peculiar freedom, being allowed to take part in certain public festivals, on which occasions they wore a transparent veil. Among all sorts and conditions of the sex, the drinking of wine was permitted, as it was by the Greeks, though not by the Romans; and ladies are occasionally represented on the monuments, exhibiting all the evidences of excess.

These observations apply to the respectable female society of ancient Egypt. There existed, however, another class, nowhere indeed indicated under the term harlot, or prostitute, but evidently such from the accounts we have received. If the descriptions transmitted to us of the ordinary female society be correct, the women to whom we allude could have been no other than public prostitutes. Such were, in all probability, those who enlivened the festival of Bubastis, and danced at the private entertainments. What ideas of decency prevailed among them, may be imagined from the brief though curious account afforded by Herodotus. When the time of the festival arrived, men and women embarked promiscuously, and in great numbers, on board the vessels which conveyed them up or down the river. During the voyage, they played on various instruments, and whenever they arrived at a city moored the boats. Then some of the women, who could have been no other than the Almé of those days[21], played furiously all kinds of music, flung off their garments, challenged the women of the town with gross insulting language, and outraged decency by their gestures and postures. An immense concourse of people assembled on the occasion, and a large proportion of them belonged to the female sex. “Some of them” only, according to our author, took part in the exhibitions of profligacy we have noticed.

The public dancers and musicians of the female sex were also, in all probability, members of the sisterhood we allude to. They were, it is well known, held in extremely low estimation: they were clothed, like the prostitutes of ancient Greece, in a single light garment; indeed, from the monuments, it is questionable whether they did not, like those in the Roman saturnalia of Flora, dance entirely naked at some of the more dissolute private festivals of the wealthy. At any rate, their forms are represented so completely undraped, that any garment they wore must have been a light veil which clung to the skin, and was transparent. But from what we are told of the festival of Bubastis, it is by no means improbable that they were actually nude.

In that remote period, fancifully called the age of Sesostris, chastity does not appear to have been the capital virtue of society among the Egyptians. At least, we must draw this inference if we are to attach any significance to traditions or fables, which generally reflect some phase of truth. Sesostris, it is said, having offended the gods, was struck blind, and ordered to find a woman who had been strictly faithful to her husband. He was very long in performing the task, being furnished with an unerring rule of judgment. Of course the account is an idle fable, yet it is not altogether unworthy of notice, for it indicates an opinion as to the chastity of that period[22].

OF PROSTITUTION IN ANCIENT GREECE.

In the heroic ages of Greece, we find women--on the authority, indeed, of poets, the sole historians of those times--enjoying a considerable share of liberty, held in much respect, accustomed to self-reliance, and allowed freely to mingle with others of their own sex and with men. A modest simplicity of manners is ascribed to them, which is wholly foreign to modern ideas of refinement. What education they received is not well known, though they appear to have been trained to practise many of the useful as well as the elegant arts of life; but with respect to the morality prevalent among them little exact information can be gained. As in the Bible, however, frequent allusion is made to harlots and strange women, waiting at the corners of the streets, so in the poets of antiquity, passages occur which point to the existence of a class, dedicating itself to serve, for gain, the passions of men who could not afford marriage, or would not be bound by its restrictions. The science of statistics, however, does not seem to have been cultivated in those days. We are not told with certainty of the population of cities, or even whole countries, and men were not then found to calculate how many in a hundred were immoral, or to compare the prostitute with the honourable classes of women.

With the commencement of the strictly historical age, though statistics are still wanting, there have been collected materials from which we may gather fair ideas of the status of women, and the position and extent of the prostitute class among them. Beginning with Sparta, a very peculiar system displays itself. Among the citizens of that celebrated Doric state, women were regarded as little more than agencies for the production of other citizens. The handsome bull-stranglers of Lacedæmon held exceedingly lax notions of morality, and would have considered a delicately chaste woman as one characterized by a singular natural weakness. Taught to consider themselves more in their capacity of citizens than of women, their duty to their husbands, or to their own virtue, occupied always the second place. Their education inculcated the practice of immorality. All ideas of modesty were by a deliberate public training obliterated from their minds. Scourged with the whip when young, taught to wrestle, box, and race naked before assemblages of men, their wantonness and licentiousness passed every bound. Marriage, indeed, was an institution of the state; but no man could call his wife his own. On occasions when the male population was away in the field, the women complained that there was no chance of children being born, and young men were sent back from the camp, to become the husbands of the whole female population, married and single.

In times of peace, also, the public laws gave every woman a chance of becoming what we should in these days term a public prostitute. A man without a wife might insist on borrowing for a certain time the wife of another. Should her husband resist, the law was called in to enforce the demand. It is asserted, indeed, by some, that adultery was unknown in Sparta. There was no such offence, in truth, recognised in the code. It was common, legal, and occurred every day. At the same time, however, it is to be remembered, that the severe laws of Sparta, recognising no concessions to the weaker passions of men, allowed these things only for state purposes, that citizens might be brought forth. There appears to have been no class of prostitutes gaining a livelihood by selling their persons to the pleasures of men: the rigorous code of the state forbade such sensual indulgences. Women were not allowed, apparently, to walk the streets. The young were strictly watched by the elders, the elders jealously observed by the young; and any proneness to a practice subversive of that vigorous health in the population, considered essential to preserve the manhood of Sparta, would have been denounced as an attempt to introduce luxury and effeminacy--the vices, in their eyes, of slaves. To assert that in the whole state no virtuous women, and no public prostitutes, in our sense of the word, could be found, would be rash; but it is certain that no authority which has come down to us represents chastity as a Spartan virtue, or prostitution for money, or from predilection, one of their social institutions.

In Athens a wholly different picture is presented. There, and generally among the Ionians, the duty of the wife was to preserve a chastity as delicate and pure as any which is required in our strictest social circle. There, at the same time, the courtezan class existed, and men of all descriptions and all ages encouraged prostitution, to which a considerable class of women devoted themselves. This is a complete contrast with Sparta.

The young girls of Attica were early trained to all the offices of religion; they acquired considerable knowledge; their intellectual qualities were to some degree developed: they were educated to become housekeepers, wives, and mothers, such as we describe under those heads. Exercising considerable influence over their male relatives, they possessed consequently considerable weight in the community, and altogether held a higher position than the women of Sparta. They led secluded lives, yet they enjoyed many opportunities of intercourse with the other sex; and though, in their theatres, and in their temples, indecency of the grossest description was frequently displayed to their sight, they seem otherwise to have been somewhat refined in this respect. In Sparta, the virgins never hesitated to expose themselves naked before any circle of spectators: in Athens they observed at least the public forms of decorum, and, with the exception of the Hetairæ or prostitute class, were sufficiently modest in their conversation and in their behaviour.

Accustomed to be present at public spectacles, to converse with men, to share in the performance of ceremonies at religious or civic festivals, the women of Athens occupied a position somewhat approaching that which we believe is proper to their sex. Marriages, as among us, were contracted, some from sentiment, others from interest. We are led to form a high idea of the general morality prevailing in the Attic states of Greece at an early period, from the exalted view of love, of chastity, of matronly duties, urged in the writers of the time. This seems a fair measure to employ, since, in a later age, when morals were more corrupt, and the regular class of prostitutes might be confounded with the general society, the style and sentiment of poets and others formed an exact reflex of the prevailing state of morality.

Traditions point to a period in the social history of Greece, when men and women dispensed altogether with the ceremony of marriage, living not only out of wedlock, but promiscuously, without an idea of any permanent compact between two individuals of opposite sexes. If such a state of things ever existed, it must have been before any regular society was formed, and it is therefore vain to dwell upon it. Polygamy, we know, long continued in practice among the Greeks, though it was a privilege and a propensity chiefly followed by the powerful and rich. In Athens marriage was held sacred. The character of a bachelor was disreputable. So, indeed, was it in Sparta, where young men remaining single after a certain period might be punished for the neglect of a duty exacted from them by the severe laws of the state. In both states, but in different degrees, the prohibition of marriage within certain limits of consanguinity extended; but when once the union took place, it was, in Athens, a crime of great enormity to defile its sanctity. The influence of the wife was, in the household, powerful; and commanding, as she did, the respect of men, the advantages of her position were so great, that to risk their loss by a transgression of the moral law, was not a common occurrence. We may therefore assign to the women of Athens a high average of morality, and consider them as having been held in remarkable estimation.

An important point in the manners of every people is the institution of marriage. From an inquiry into its estimation, whether it be held a religious rite, or a civil contract, or both, with various other circumstances in connection with these, we are aided in forming a just idea of the prevalent civilization. In the Doric states of Greece, it was esteemed as little more than a prudent ceremony, binding man and woman together for purposes of state. As among the savages of Australasia, it was the custom for a man to bear a woman forcibly from among her companions, when he took her to the bridesmaid’s house, and, her hair being cut short and her clothes changed, she was delivered to him as wife. His intercourse with her however, was, for some time clandestine, and he shunned being seen in her society. This was the case with the wealthier maidens. The portionless girls were, from time to time, shut up in a dark edifice, and the youths, being introduced, accepted each the woman he happened to seize upon. A penalty was imposed on any one refusing to abide by the decision of chance.

Occasionally public ceremonies were enacted at the marriages of the rich; but from all testimony it appears certain that the union of man with woman at Sparta was entirely of a civil, and by no means of a sacred character. Private interest, sentiment, and happiness were indeed, in this, as in all other matters, subordinate to the public exigencies. When a woman had no children by her own husband, she was not only allowed, but required by the law to cohabit with another man. Anaxandrides, to procure an heir, had, contrary to all custom, two wives. The state excused no licentiousness for its own sake, but any amount for a public object[23].

In Attic Greece, the ceremony of marriage was viewed in a more poetical light, and divinity was supposed to preside over it. We have already alluded to the notion of the promiscuous intercourse among them at a remote period; but, passing from this fable, we find traces of polygamy long discernible. Heracles maintained a regular seraglio. Egeus, Pallas, Priam, Agamemnon, and nearly all the chiefs, possessed harems, but these were irregularities, contrary to law and custom, and only in fashion among royal personages. The story of the two wives of Socrates seems a pure invention.

In the Athenian Republic, marriage, being held in reverence, was protected by the law. In the later and better known ages, consanguinity within certain limits was a bar to such union. Men, however, might marry half-sisters by the fathers’ side, though few availed themselves of the permission. Betrothed long before marriage by their parents, the young man and woman were nevertheless allowed on most occasions to consult their own inclinations. Numerous religious rites preceded the actual ceremony, and heavenly favour was invoked upon it. The marriage was performed at the altar in the temple, where sacrifice was made, and a mutual oath of fidelity strengthened by every sacred pledge. Adultery was held a debasing crime, and divorce discreditable to man and wife[24].

In connection with the subject of marriage is that of infanticide. It prevailed among the Greeks, under the sanction of philosophy. Among the Thebans and the Tyrrhenians it was, however, unknown. Why? Because they were more humane, or moral? Not by any means. They were among the most profligate societies of antiquity. It is generally shame which induces to child-murder women bearing offspring from illicit intercourse with men. Where no disgrace attaches to illegitimate offspring, the principal incentive to destroy them is taken away; and in Tyre, where female slaves served naked at the table of the rich, and even ladies joined the orgies in that condition, modesty was by no means a common grace of their sex.

The Thebans, a very gross people, made infanticide a capital crime; but allowed the poor to impose on the state, under certain circumstances, the burden of their children. In Thrace, the infant, placed in an earthen pot, was left to be devoured by wild beasts, or to perish of cold and hunger[25].

In Sparta, clandestine infanticide was a crime; but the state often performed what it declared a duty, by condemning weakly and delicate infants to be flung into a pit. In Athens, on the contrary, it was left for desperate women, and cold-blooded men, privately to accomplish the act, exposing their children in public places to perish, or to claim charity from some wayfarer. Frequently the rich had recourse to this, for concealing an intrigue, and left a costly dowry of gold and jewels in the earthen jar where they deposited the victim. The temple steps sometimes received the foundling; but occasionally they were left to die in desert places.

In the flourishing period of the Republic, however, poverty was so rare, indeed so unknown, that it seldom exacted these sacrifices from the humbler people. Infanticide was then left to the wholly unnatural who refused the burden, or the guilty who dreaded the shame, of a child.

But in the female society of that state, there was, as we have said, a sisterhood which exercised no inconsiderable influence on public manners. These were the Hetairæ, or prostitutes, who occupied much the same position which the same class does in most civilized communities of modern times. The youthful, beautiful, elegant, polished, and graceful, commanded, while their attractions lasted, the favours and the deference of wealthy and profligate young men, and, when their persons had faded, sank by degrees, until they dragged themselves in misery through the streets, glad to procure a meal by indiscriminate prostitution, with all who accepted their company. When children were born to them, infanticide usually--especially in the case of girls--relieved them of the burden.

The position the prostitute class of Athens occupied in relation to the other women in the community was peculiar. They entered the temples during the period of one particular festival--and in modern countries the church is never closed against them; but they were not, as among us, allowed to occupy the same place at the theatre with the Athenian female citizen. Yet this was not altogether to protect the virtue of the woman; it was to satisfy the pride of the citizen, since every stranger suffered an equal exclusion from these “reserved seats.” Notwithstanding this, however, the courtezans occasionally visited the ladies in their own houses, to instruct them in those accomplishments in which, from the peculiar tenor of their lives, they were most practised, while it appears that both classes mingled at the public baths.

The Hetairæ, or prostitute class, exercised undoubtedly an evil influence on the society of Athens. They indulged the sensual tastes and the vanity of the young, encouraged among them a dissolute manner of life, and, while the power of their attractions lasted, led them into expensive luxury, which could not fail of an injurious effect on the community. The career of the prostitute was, as it is in all countries, short, and miserable at its close. While their beauty remained unfaded they were puffed up with vanity, carried along by perpetual excitement, flattered by the compliments of young men, and by the conversation of even the greatest philosophers, and maintained in opulence by the gifts of their admirers. Premature age, however, always, except in a few celebrated cases, assailed them. They became old, ugly, wrinkled, deformed, and full of disease, and might be seen crawling through the market places, haggling for morsels of provision, amid the jeers and insults of the populace.

In some instances, indeed, there occurred in Athens what occasionally happens in all countries. Men took as wives the prostitutes with whom they had associated. Even the wise Plato became enamoured of Archæanassa, an Hetaira of Ctesiphon. For many of these women were no less renowned for the brilliancy of their intellectual qualities than for their personal charms. Of Phryne, whose bosom was bared before the judges by her advocate, and who sat as a model to the greatest of ancient sculptors, all the world has heard. Her statue, of pure gold, was placed on a pillar of white marble at Delphi. Aspasia exercised at Athens influence equal to that of a queen, attracting round her all the characters of the day, as Madame Roland was wont to do in Paris. Socrates confessed to have learned from her much in the art of rhetoric. Yet these women, harsh as the judgment may appear, were common whores, though outwardly refined, and mentally cultivated. Instances, indeed, of high public virtue displayed by members of that sisterhood, distinguished among the Hetairæ of ancient Greece, are on record, and sufficient accounts of them have been transmitted to us to show that they were among the male society a recognised and respected class, while by the women they were neither abhorred nor considered as a pollution to the community. Still, prostitutes they were, to all intents and purposes.

The mean, the poor, and faded, were chiefly despised for their ugliness and indigence, not for their incontinence. It was, in the Homeric ages, as we learn from the Odyssey, held disgraceful for “a noble maiden” to lose her chastity. But in Athens, at a later time, chastity in an unmarried woman was not held a virtue, the loss of which degraded her utterly below the consideration of all other classes, or debarred her for ever from any intercourse with the honourable of her own sex. The Hetaira was not, it is true, admitted to mingle freely in the society of young women; but she was not shut out from all communication with them; while among men, if her natural attractions or accomplishments were great, she exercised peculiar influence. Consequently, it appears that in Athens the superior public prostitute had a status higher than that of any woman of similar character in our own day. If we look for a comparison to illustrate our meaning, we may find it in many of the ladies who at various periods have frequented our court--known but not acknowledged prostitutes[26].

In the public judgments of Athens we find, it is true, a penalty or fine imposed on “whoredom,”[27] from which, however, the people escaped by a variation of terms, calling a whore a mistress, as Plutarch tells us. Solon, however, recognised prostitution as a necessary, or at least an inevitable evil, for he first built a temple to Aphrodite Pandemos, which, truly rendered, means Venus the Prostitute; and his view was justified by the declaration that the existence of a prostitute class was necessary, in order, as Cato also thought, that the wives and daughters of citizens might be safe from the passion which young men would, in one way or the other, satiate upon the other sex. Though procurers, therefore, were punishable by law, and the Hetairæ were obliged to wear coloured or flowered garments, it was enacted in the civil code of Athens, that “persons keeping company with common strumpets shall not be deemed adulterers, for such shall be common for the satiating of lust.”

Brothels, consequently, existed in moderate numbers at Athens, and the young men were not discouraged from attending them occasionally. There were also particular places in the city where the prostitutes congregated, and a Temple of Venus, which was their peculiar resort. We find in the poets passages, indeed, advocating the support of whores[28].

Still, respected and beloved as the Hetairæ were among their friends and lovers, recognised by the law, and protected by it, general public respect was denied them, for the Athenians estimated above their brilliant charms the modest virtues of inferior women[29].

One of the most remarkable features in the public economy of Athens was the tax upon prostitutes, introduced also in Rome by Caligula. It was annually farmed out by the Senate to individuals who knew accurately the names of all who followed this calling. It is to be regretted that their statistics have not been furnished to us. Every woman, it appears, had a fixed price, which she might charge to the men to whom she prostituted her person, and the amount of the tax varied according to their profits. Apparently, they were principally “strangers” who filled the ranks of the Hetairæ, for we find that if persons enjoying the rank and privilege of citizens took to the occupation, a tax was imposed on them as on the ordinary prostitutes, and they were punished by exclusion from the public sacrifices, and from the honourable offices of state. The same writer informs us, on the authority of Demosthenes, that a citizen who cohabited with an alien paid a penalty, in case he was convicted, of a thousand drachmas, but the penalty could not often have been enforced, as the laws of Solon recognised prostitution; it was a feature in the manners of the city, and brothels were fearlessly kept, and entered without shame. Numerous evidences of this have been supplied us[30]. To preserve a respect for chastity, however, and to inculcate a horror for the prostitute’s occupation, the same code allowed men to sell their sisters or daughters when convicted of an act of fornication, which, in Athens, as elsewhere, frequently was the first step in the regular career of these women[31].

The dishonour thus accruing to the general body of prostitutes, though a small class of them enjoyed many superior advantages from their wealth, and the polish of their manners, served at Athens, in some degree, to preserve public morality. The system never seems to have reached the height which it has gained in many of our modern cities, where married women often follow the occupation, and live upon its gains[32].

In Corinth, however, prostitutes abounded, and the Temple of Venus in that city was sometimes thronged by a thousand of them. They were usually the most beautiful women of the state, presented or sold to the temple, who prostituted themselves for hire. They were of a superior kind, admitting to their embraces none but men who would pay munificently, and in this manner many of them are said to have accumulated large fortunes[33].

Tabular statements, and numerical estimates, have been wanting to complete this glance at the system in ancient Greece; but it may, nevertheless, afford a just idea of the extent and character of the prostitute class there.

OF PROSTITUTION IN ANCIENT ROME.

If our knowledge of ancient Greece, with reference to its moral economy, is slight, ancient Rome is still less understood. Nothing, indeed, like a detailed account of its social institutions has been preserved; its scheme of manners is incompletely comprehended; and only an outline picture of its private life can be formed from passages supplied by hundreds of authors, from allusions in the poets and in the satirical writers. German scholars have laboured industriously in the field of classical politics; but the social economy of Rome has been neglected, or, which is worse, obscured by them. We are, therefore, enabled only to afford a general sketch of the subject in connection with the great Republic, and the imperial system which grew out of its decay.

Examining the condition of the female sex, especially with reference to prostitutes, we must in Rome, as in all other states, distribute our observations over several distinct periods--for such there were in the social history of the nation.

In the more honourable days of the Republic, women occupied a high status. While the state was extremely young we find them, indeed, in perpetual tutelage; but gradually, as institutions were improved and manners refined, they rose to independence, and formed an influential element in society. The matron, in particular, stood in her due position. Respected, accomplished, allowed to converse with men, she was, in the most flourishing era of Roman history, a model for her sex. She presided over the whole household, superintended the education of the children, while they remained in tender years, and shared the honours of her husband. Instead of confined apartments being allotted to her as a domestic prison, the best chambers in the house were assigned, while the whole of it was free to her. Other circumstances in her condition combined to invest her with dignity; and the consequence was, that the Roman matron seldom or never transgressed against the moral or social law. No divorce is recorded before the year 234 B.C.; and that instance was on account of the woman’s barrenness--a plea allowed by the law, but universally reprobated by the people. Yet the obstacles to this dissolution of the marriage compact were by no means formidable. Under the imperial régime, when there was less facility, divorces were more frequent.

The Roman law of marriage was strict. Degrees of consanguinity were marked, though within narrower limits than among us, within which marriage was not only illegal, but wholly void, and any intercourse, by virtue of it, denounced as incest by the law. Public infamy attached to it--not only the odium of opinion, but a formal decree by the prætor. Adultery was held as a base, inexpiable crime. It was interdicted under every penalty short of death, and even this was allowed under certain circumstances to be inflicted by the husband. Wedded life, indeed, was held sacred by every class from the knights to the slaves, though among these social aliens actual marriage could not take place. Celibacy was not only disreputable, but, in a particular degree, criminal; while barrenness brought shame upon the woman who was cursed with it. In an equal, or a greater ratio, was parentage honourable. Polygamy was illegal; but the social code allowed one wife and several concubines, occupying a medium position, finely described by Gibbon, as below the honours of a wife, and above the infamy of a prostitute. Such institutions were licensed that common whoredom might be checked; though the children born of such intercourse were refused the rank of citizens. Often, indeed, they were a burden to the guilty as well as to the poor; and infanticide, which was declared in 374 B.C. a capital crime, was resorted to as a means of relief.

If we examine our question in connection with marriage among the ancient Romans we find a curious system. First, there were certain conditions to constitute connubium, without which no legal union could be formed. There was only connubium between Roman citizens[34]; there was none where either of the parties possessed it already with another; none between parent and child, natural or by adoption; none between grandparents and grandchildren; none between brothers and sisters, of whole or half blood; none between uncle and niece, or aunt and nephew: though Claudius legalized it by his marriage with Agrippina, the practice never went beyond the example. Unions of this kind taking place were void, and the father could claim no authority over his children. Mutual consent was essential--of the persons themselves, and of their friends. One wife only was allowed, though marriage after full divorce was permitted.

There were two kinds of marriage,--that cum, and that sine conventione. In the former the wife passed into her husband’s family, and became subject to him; in the latter she abdicated none of her old relations, and was equal to her husband. There was no ceremony absolutely essential to constitute a marriage. Cohabitation during a whole year made a legal and lasting union; but the woman’s absence during three nights annually released her from the submission entailed by the marriage cum conventione. Certain words, also, with religious rites, performed in presence of ten witnesses, completed a marriage; but certain priestly offices, such as those of the flamen dialis, could only be performed for those whose parents had been wedded in a similar way[35]. The sponsalia, or contracts between the man and his wife’s friends, were usual, but not essential, and could be dissolved by mutual consent. The Roman idea of marriage was, in a word, the union of male and female for life, bringing a community of fortune, by a civil, not a sacred contract. Yet from the ceremonies generally observed, it is evident that an idea, though unrecognised, of a religious union, existed among the Romans in their more pious age.

With respect to property, its arrangement depended on settlements made before hand. Divorce was at one time procured by mutual consent, though afterwards it became more difficult, but never impossible.

There was in Rome a legal concubinage between unmarried persons, resembling the morganatic or “left-handed” marriage, giving neither the woman nor her children any rights acquired from the husband. Widowers often took a concubine, without infamy[36].

The law of Romulus, enacting that no male child should be exposed, and that the first daughter should always be preserved, while every other should be brought up, or live on trial, as it were, for three years, has misled some writers into giving the Romans credit for a loftier humanity. No parent, it is argued, would destroy a three years’ old child. Nevertheless, it is certain that, in the imperial age, at least, infanticide and child-dropping were frequent occurrences. Deformed or mutilated infants, having been shown to five witnesses, might be destroyed at once. The Milky Column, in the Herb-market, was a place where public nurses sat to suckle or otherwise tend the foundlings picked up in various parts of the city. In the early Christian age it was a reproach to the Romans that they cast forth their sons, as Tertullian expresses it, to be picked up and nourished by the fisherwomen who passed. Mothers would deny their children when brought home to their houses. Some strangled them at once. Various devices were adopted among them, as among other nations of antiquity, to check the overflow of population, as well as to hide the crimes of the guilty. Thus the Phœnicians passed children through fire, as a sacrifice; the Carthaginians offered them up at the altar; the Syrians flung them from the lofty propylæa of a temple[37]. One observation, however, applies to the Romans, and, we believe, to every other nation, savage or civilized, in every age of the world--exceptions being invariably allowed. Cruel as may have been the laws sanctioning infanticide, when once the child was received into the bosom of the family it was cared for with tenderness, and, generally, with discretion. It is not sentiment, but justice, which induces us to say that the mother, having once accepted her charge, has seldom been guilty of wilful neglect. The abandoned and dissolute, especially in those societies where fashion has made the performance of maternal duty ridiculous, if not disreputable, have consigned their offspring to others; but women in their natural state usually fulfil this obligation.

In Rome, from various causes, public decency was, at least during the republican period, more rigidly observed, and licentiousness less common and less tolerated than in Sparta or even the later age of Athens. None of its institutions rivalled the dissolute manners of Crete or Corinth. One cause of prostitution being less common was the licence of concubinage, which was to the rich a preferable and a safer plan of self-indulgence. It existed, however, in the State, and employed a considerable class of women, though we are told the accomplished prostitute was known as a Grecian import. Nevertheless, the frequent allusions of the laws to these women prove that they formed no insignificant element in the society of the capital.

Lenocinium, or the keeping of female slaves to hire them out as prostitutes for profit, was an offence rather against the moral than the written law of Rome. The lenones, in many instances, kept brothels or houses open for the trade of prostitution. They purchased in the market handsome girls, for each of whom a sum equal to about 250_l._ of English currency was given--from which we infer that the rates charged in the superior establishments of this kind were somewhat high. Free women were also kept for the same purpose, upon a mutual agreement. The practice was not actually interdicted, but branded as infamous by the prætor’s declaration. No woman, however, whose father, grandfather, or husband had been a Roman knight was allowed to prostitute herself for gain. The independent prostitutes, or those who occupied houses of their own, were compelled to affix on the door a notice of their calling, and the price they demanded. They were also required, when they signified to the prætor, as they were bound to do, their intention of following this disgraceful occupation, to drop their real names, which they resumed whenever they abandoned that mode of life. Cato, the censor, recognised prostitution as Solon did, and Cicero declared no State ever existed without it. Notwithstanding this, the occupation of the prostitute was, in the republican age, so infamous that a comparatively small class practised it; but under the emperors it grew so prevalent, that during the reign of the few of them who even pretended to morality, the severest edicts appeared called for against it. Caligula, however, made a profit from the system. The lenones were subject to a tax, which fell, of course, as in Athens, upon the prostitutes themselves. No check, therefore, was offered by him to prostitution. But Theodosius and Valentinian sought, by formidable penalties, to prevent parents from prostituting their children, and masters their slaves, for gain. Lenocinium was interdicted under pain of the scourge, banishment, and other punishments. In one age public opinion, in the other the whip, held guardianship over the morals of the State.

The owners of houses who allowed lenocinium to be carried on on their premises were liable to forfeit the property, besides paying a price of ten pounds weight of gold. Such edicts, however, only drove immorality into the dark. When the prostitutes could not find enough brothels to harbour them--and, indeed, at all times the poorer sort were excluded from these large establishments--places of refuge were still open. The fornices of Rome were long galleries, divided into a double row of cells--some broad and airy, others only small dark arches, situated on a level with the street, and forming the substructure of the houses above. Some of them, as those of the Formian villa of Cicero, were tastefully stuccoed, and painted in streaks of pink, yellow, and blue. In these long lines of cells the prostitutes of the poorer class were accustomed to assemble, and thence was derived the ecclesiastical term fornication, with its ordinary English meaning. Allusions to this practice occur in the works of Horace and Juvenal, as well as other writers. Some of the arches appear to have been below the surface of the ground, as we find a decree of Theodosius against the subterranean brothels of Rome.

The great satirist who has left us his vivid, though exaggerated picture of manners in the imperial age, supplies some allusions in elucidation of our subject. He speaks of the “transparent garments” worn by prostitutes, as by the dancers of ancient Egypt; of the “foreign women” who swarmed in its “foul brothels;” of the “gay harlots’ chariots” dashing through the streets; and of the porticos and covered walks forming for these women places of promenade. We learn that some of them were forced, as a punishment for disorderly behaviour, to wear the male toga, while most were distinguished by a yellow headdress. The fornices were publicly opened and closed at certain hours. The women stood at the doors of their cells, in loose, light attire, their bosoms exposed, and the nipples gilt. Thus Messelana stood at the door of the lupanaria, with her breast adorned with this singular ornament[38].

At various periods efforts were made to suppress the prostitutes’ calling, but never with success. The lawmakers of the imperial age gave no example of the morality which their edicts pretended to uphold. Thus, the bawds who inveigled or ravished girls from their homes, to obtain a livelihood by their prostitution, became liable to “extreme penalties,” though what these were we know not. The law of lenocinium was more widely interpreted, as manners became more corrupt. If a husband permitted his wife to prostitute herself that he might share the gains, it was lenocinium. Justinian allowed a woman the privilege of divorce, if her husband endeavoured to tempt her into such adultery: he was forced also to restore her dowry. On the other hand, if a woman committed the crime, it was lenocinium for the husband to receive her again, to spare the adulterer if caught in the act, or to refrain from prosecuting him if otherwise detected. If a man married a woman convicted of adultery, discovered a crime of this kind and was bribed to hold his peace, commenced a prosecution for adultery and withdrew it, or lent his house for rape or prostitution, the Julian law made him guilty of lenocinium, and penalties of various kinds were attached to the offence in its different modifications.

Lupanaria, or common brothels, were at all times considered infamous. Young men seem to have been more careful to visit them in secret than at Athens, where they visited and left them in the light of open day, and were encouraged to do so by the poets. There was, however, another class of disreputable places of assembly, to which a similar exists in most modern cities. These were the lower order of popinæ, or houses of entertainment, not absolutely recognised as “stews,” but generally known to be the resorts of prostitutes and their companions. In Pompeii there appears to have existed a class of the same description, for in one of the wine-houses discovered there, an inner room is situated behind the shop, the walls of which are covered with lewd and filthy pictures. Pornography, or obscene painting, was much practised at Rome, and doubtless afforded much pleasure to the company who nightly assembled in the Ganeæ, or regular brothels.

As among the Greeks, instances of men willing to marry prostitutes occurred among the Romans. It was found necessary to check the practice by rendering it disreputable. The penalty of public infamy was denounced against all freemen contracting such an union; while a senator, and the son of a senator, were especially forbidden.

The prostitutes of Rome, like those of many other countries, varied their principal calling by others which rendered them more attractive to the dissolute youth of the city. They cultivated the arts of dancing, singing, and playing on musical instruments. They performed lascivious dances at their places of assembly, playing on the flute, and practising all those tricks of seduction employed so successfully by the Almé of Egypt.

Difficulties have arisen before many inquirers into the social condition of the ancient Romans, as to whence the prostitutes came, seeing that they were chiefly strangers. Some light, we think, is thrown on the subject by the fact that the Ambubaiæ were Syrian musicians, who performed dances in Rome, and, like the Bayaderes of India, the Almé of Egypt, and the dancers of Java, led a life of prostitution. They continued long to be imported; for, in the History of Gibbon, we find particular notice of the lascivious dances performed by the Syrian damsels round the altars on the Palatine Hill, to please the bestial senses of Elagabalus. During the public pantomimes, the prostitutes danced naked before the people; and, at the Floralian festival, the actresses at the theatre, who are known to have been common prostitutes, were compelled to strip, and perform indecent evolutions for the delight of the audience. This refers, however, to the imperial age. It was at no time a task of much inconvenience to divest themselves of clothing, for the harlots never encumbered themselves with much. In this they resembled the Hetairæ of Greece, whose thin slight garment was so insufficient for the purposes of decency, that it was designated as “naked.” This was not, however, from hardiness or simplicity, but merely to promote the profit of their calling. In other respects the luxury of the wealthy prostitutes was boundless, and they were borne through the streets on the rich and elegant lactræ or portable couches, softly pillowed on which they reposed their limbs in voluptuous indolence. In the reign of Domitian a decree was passed that no whore should in future make use of these couches, which were reserved as an especial luxury to the privileged classes of Rome.

The edicts against prostitution increased in severity under various emperors. The severity of Constantine enacted that a man guilty of rape should die, whether he accomplished his purpose by violence, or by gentle and gradual seduction. The virgin who confessed her consent, instead of procuring a mitigation of this sentence, exposed herself to share the penalty. Slaves who were accomplices in the crime of procuring young women for prostitution, were punished by being burnt, or having boiling metal poured down their throats. The consequence of such a savage law was, that it could not be generally applied; nor was it enforced by the example of the emperor, who, once rigidly strict, turned dissolute and luxurious towards the close of his reign.

It will be seen, from the information here collected, that no actual knowledge exists of the precise extent of the prostitute system in Rome. Facts, and some of these extremely curious, have been preserved in connection with it; but the statistics of the question are wholly lost, if, indeed, they ever existed. On this account, it appeared possible to do no more than bring those facts together, and, throwing them into a general sketch of the morality prevailing at different periods in the social history of that state, to draw thence an idea of the truth. Under the comparatively virtuous Republic, a line could certainly be drawn between the profligate and the moral classes of the community. Under some of the emperors such a distinction was wholly impossible. The vulgar prostitute was commonly met at the tables of the rich, and the palace itself was no more than an imperial brothel. A few notes on the history of the empire will justify these remarks.

In the early period of the decline, the licentious amours of Faustina were excused, even encouraged, by her husband, and the nobles paid homage in the temples before the image of an adultress. In the eyes of Commodus virtue was criminal, since it implied a reflection upon his profligacy. Dissolving his frame in lust amid 300 concubines and boys, he violated by force the few modest women remaining near his court. Julia, the wife of Severus, though flattered in life and death by public writers, was no better than a harlot. We have already noticed the pleasures of Elagabalus, who committed rape upon a vestal virgin, and condescended to the most bestial vice. The nobles readily followed his example, and the people were easily led into the fashion. Maximin drowned every coy maiden who refused his embraces. In process of time, the most degrading features of Asiatic profligacy were introduced into Rome, and eunuchs crowded the palaces of the emperor and his nobles. History alludes to no more vulgar prostitute than the Empress Theodora, who played comedies before the people of Constantinople, and prostituted her person--of unparalleled beauty as it was--night after night to a promiscuous crowd of citizens and strangers, of every rank and description. She exhibited herself naked in the theatre. Her sympathy for the prostitute class may be indicated by almost the only virtuous action recorded of her;--inducing her husband Justinian to found a monastery on the shores of the Bosphorus, where 500 miserable women, collected from the streets and brothels, were offered a refuge. When we remember the usual relative proportion of objects relieved by charity, to the numbers from which they are selected, this indicates a considerable trade in prostitution then carried on in Constantinople. When, however, such a social system prevailed, no inquiry could fix the professional class of harlots, since moral women, if any existed, were certainly exceptions.

It is always necessary, while inquiring into the morality of any people, to inquire into the extent to which the practice of procuring abortion was carried, and how it was viewed. Montesquieu justly observes, that it is by no means unnatural, though it may be criminal, for a prostitute, should she by chance conceive a child, to seek to be relieved from the burden. She has no means of support except one which she cannot possibly follow and at the same time fulfil the duties of a mother. These considerations, perhaps, had some weight with the legislators of Rome, as well as those reasons of political prudence which in various ancient states recognised infanticide. That it was practised to some extent there, is shown by frequent allusions in various works. It has been asserted, indeed, that the custom of procuring abortion prevailed to such an extent, that, combined with celibacy, it materially affected the population of the state, but this appears a false view. There are no accounts to support such an idea. It is not known at what particular time a law was introduced against it. Certainly it was held in a different light than it is by our religion, and our civilization. Plato’s republic permits it. Aristotle also allows it to be practised under certain circumstances, but only before the child is quick in the womb. So, also, among the Romans, it seems long to have been unrestrained by law, though it is impossible to believe that the natural instincts of women would not deter them, except in desperate situations, from such unnatural offences.

Such is the view of the prostitute system, with a sketch of general morality, which the facts preserved by history enable us to offer. It appears from these facts, that, during the more flourishing period of the Roman state, the prostitutes formed a class, to which the principal immorality of the female society was confined, while in the later or imperial age profligacy ran loose among the people, so that the distinction between the regular harlot and the unrecognised prostitute was all but lost. Chastity, under the Republic, was a peculiar Roman virtue, and the prostitutes were usually foreigners, while we do not find that they ever mixed with reputable women who had characters to lose[39].

OF PROSTITUTION AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

We leave the countries of classical antiquity and arrive at the Anglo-Saxons of our own history, in whom the reader will feel a peculiar interest. Unfortunately, our usual observations with reference to ancient times, apply to them also. Extremely imperfect records exist of their manners, laws, and institutions. The learned and industrious Sharon Turner has collected most of the facts known, yet neither the word prostitution, nor any term analogous to it, is to be found in his work. In the Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ, we find laws and regulations in reference to the chastity of the women, but nothing which indicates the existence of a class professionally addicted to prostitution. Nevertheless, it is improbable that such a class was utterly unknown, for the modern historians, as well as the old chroniclers, who have described the era, allude repeatedly to the licentious manners of the period. Gluttoning and deep drinking may, however, have excused the epithet, without supposing any prevalence of immorality.

Sharon Turner refers us to the Maories of New Zealand, for a parallel to the manners and condition of Great Britain, when first invaded by the Romans. As far as profligacy goes, the comparison appears correct.

Among the Britons, however, prevailed the extraordinary and pernicious institution of small societies of ten or twelve men, with a community of women among them. Ceremonies of marriage, indeed, took place, but for no other purpose than to provide that each woman’s husband should maintain all her children, whoever their fathers might be. In some of their religious ceremonies women officiated naked, and in all their modes of life a coarse licentiousness obtained.

The Romans introduced a more refined luxury, and manners became less coarse, though no less profligate. The Saxons, however, then transported themselves to these islands from the Cymbric Peninsula, and the civilization of the country passed through a complete revolution. In their original country they had displayed a system of manners peculiar to themselves, and the other wild races inhabiting the mighty woods of Germany. Their laws against adultery were of the most savage character. When a woman was guilty of it, she was compelled to hang herself, her body was burned, and the execution of the adulterer took place over the pile of her ashes. Among some communities the punishment was still more severe, and infinitely more barbarous. The guilty creature was whipped from village to village by a number of women, who tore off her garments to the waist, and pierced her with their knives. Company after company of them pursued her until she sank under the shame, torture, and loss of blood. Chastity, indeed, was very generally regarded among these rude people, but their ideas were very foreign from ours. The degrees of consanguinity within which marriage was prohibited were extremely narrow, a son being permitted to marry his father’s widow, provided she was not his own mother.

In their marriage customs the Anglo-Saxons displayed considerable regard for the female sex, although the wife was taken rather as the property than as the companion of the husband. The original laws of Ethelbert, indeed, as we have said, made the transaction wholly one of purchase; but in the reign of Edmund a more refined code was established. The betrothal usually took place some time before the actual ceremony. This was held as a sacred tie, the high-priest being at the marriage to consecrate it, and pray for a blessing on the wedded pair[40].

The manners of the Anglo-Saxons, after their settlement in England, underwent considerable improvement. They became, indeed, to a degree civilized. Their women were no longer the savages of Germany. They occupied a position wholly different from that of their sex among the more polished and luxurious nations of the East. It was, we may say, similar to that which they at present fill among us. They were recognised as members of the body politic, could bequeath and inherit property, could appeal to the law against any man; they possessed, in a word, the rights, the duties, and the public relations of citizens. Of course, in all these particulars, their position was modified by the natural restraints imposed on their sex. This refers to the more improved period of their civilization. In the laws of Ethelbert a man was permitted to buy a wife, provided he did it openly. By Edmund’s time, however, the practice was changed, and the woman’s consent, as well as that of her friends, was necessary. The man was also pledged before the law to support and respect her. She carried public protection into her new home. Considerable honour, consequence, and independence were there pre-enjoyed by the female sex. Nevertheless there continued long to be in the transaction much of a business character, and the consent of the woman was frequently no more than submission to the terms of a bargain struck between her lover and her parents. By some husbands, indeed, a wife seems to have been considered as little more than a property. We find adultery, for instance, allowed to be compounded. “If a freeman cohabit with the wife of a freeman he must pay the fine, and obtain another woman with his own money, and lead her to the other.” In other words, when he has destroyed the value of one wife, he must buy a fresh one for the injured husband.

This would seem to indicate that women were to be had for money. Adultery, indeed, was at all times an affair of payments. It was punished only by various fines, varying according to the rank of the woman. The chastity of the high noble’s wife was valued at six pounds, that of a churl’s attendant at six shillings.

In the Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ we find many regulations laid down respecting rape and fornication, which imply the occasional practice of those crimes. From the tone of the enactments on the subject, it seems impossible reasonably to doubt that a class of women existed who prostituted themselves for gain or pleasure to the other sex. None such, it is true, is directly indicated. We find, however, a rule of the venerable Bede, that any “slave woman” or “servile” turning her eyes immodestly on men, is to be severely chided. Blount also, quoted in Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” with the historian Henry, describes the punishment of the cucking stool, as inflicted by the Anglo-Saxons, both in Germany and in England, upon scolds, disorderly women, and strumpets, who in the more barbarous society on the Continent were suffocated in marshes. In Cornwall harlots were long punished in the ludicrous and degrading manner described by Brand.

In the absence of any ground upon which to stand, we cannot describe a particular class among the Anglo-Saxons as addicted to prostitution, but from the whole colour of their civilization, from the rudest to the most refined period, it is evident the practice was followed, in a greater or less degree[41].

OF PROSTITUTION AMONG THE BARBAROUS NATIONS.

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