Prostitution, considered in its moral, social, & sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities : with proposals for the mitigation and prevention of its attendant evils

Front matter

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Preface

downwards. I became daily more convinced that far from perishing in hospitals, workhouses, or obscure degradation, she generally, in course of time, amalgamates with the population ; and I argued to myself, that society could not be uninterested in her during her state of transition.

After privately maintaining this doctrine for some years, I ventured at length upon submitting to certain local and public authorities the moral, social, and sanitary considerations which seem to demand the public treatment of Venereal diseases. How I fared will appear in the following pages. It may suffice here to say, that little came of my suit. Still, cherishing the idea of State intervention, I continued to accumulate material here made use of, and more, that might have wearied the professional reader, to whom the deeper shadows of the great world offer no novelty, without profiting the few serious laymen whom it is my collateral hope to interest. At length, when the tone of public feeling seemed to indicate an appropriate time for calling the attention of society to its most deep-seated ailment, and inviting its consideration of remedies, I thought it due to my convictions that I should submit them, and the reasoning whereon they are based, to the ordeal of publication.

The reader who is a conscientious parent must perforce support me ; for, were the educational and sanitary measures I advocate once in operation, with what diminished anxiety would he not contemplate the progress of his boys from infancy to manhood ? The politician and the political economist are mine already, for are not armies and navies invalidated — is not labour enfeebled — is not even population checked by the evils against which I propose we should contend? The sympathies of all who can look kindly upon the sick, the sorry, and the fallen, must gain new impulse from the study of the facts, figures, and deductions, possibly new to them, which I have here marshalled for their use.

There are persons who, alas, will hear neither of reformatories nor of hospitals, but demand severity and suppression. To such as these I have attempted, in my brief notices of foreign police arrangements, to give some notion of the limited extent of vice over which

PKEFACE.

Yll the continental authorities can, with all their machinery, maintain control; and of the spur given to immorality in private by its suppression in public. I have also sketched for them, I hope intelligibly, the boundaries which English common sense will rigorously prescribe to the prostitute-regulations they sigh for ; and on the other hand, the sanction that same common sense would, in my opinion, extend to a broader application of the existing law.

For those who profess a real or fictitious ignorance of prostitution, its miseries, and its ill effects — and those again who plead conscience as an excuse for inaction, I have this one reply. Pointing to the outward signs of prostitution in our streets and hospitals, I inquire whether we can flatter ourselves that the subject has drifted into a satisfactory state on the “ know-nothing'" and “ do-nothing" principles. I hint at the perilous self-sufficiency of the Pharisee, and the wilful blindness of the Levite, who “ passed by on the other side;" and I press upon them, that after reading this work, and testing its author's veracity, they should either refute its arguments or be themselves converted.

The Sanitary Association I have sketched may at first sight appear to some of my readers Quixotic, if not immoral. But I have so often found, on submitting it to thinking men, that derision and censure gave place to approval and encouragement, that as an alternative only I have resolved to propound it. Let those to whom it may appear ridiculous, either amend it (which I grant is possible), or unite with me in agitating for more acceptable means of furthering its object; and if it find opponents on the score of religion, let these mark that I advance it not to supplant the Church and State — the proper parents, guardians, and teacners of the wicked as of the virtuous — but to fill the void created by their laches. I am ready, and I should rejoice to give them their due precedence; but even without them something should be done. It is by no means certain, moreover, that exhortations to prudence and self-respect may not better prepare the heart of a vicious woman to receive the foundation of morality than the burnt tracts of the missionary or the hated staff of the policeman .

The apprehension sometimes suggested to me, that a work like

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PBEFAOE, this might have a prejudicial action upon the innocence of youth has, I confess, in no way fettered my pen. Regret it as we may, this is an age of male and female pre-maturity; but hence, to my thinking, it is more fit and reasonable that true light should be made manifest than that it should be veiled. But, in any case, these pages will not be vended or purchased at street corners. Their price, especially, and the channels through which alone they are likely to be attainable, preclude the idea of their becoming an investment for the pocket-money of school-children or the savings of nursery-maids. Nothing favours the probability that they will find their way to youth and innocence, unless with the privity of age and experience. I have only, therefore, to remind alarmists, that not on the author, but on the purchaser, must rest the responsibility of their falling into young hands without proper interpretation and commentary.

I have little to say in the way of apology, for my plain speaking. The nature of the subject has forced this upon me. To have called things here treated of by other than their right names would have been in any writer an absurdity — in me a gross one. My style is, I regret, somewhat rugged. The experiences I have ccVecicd may to optimists or recluses appear exaggerated. The visions I have indulged in may be hard to grasp. But this most complicated knot demands a swordsman, not an infant. The inhabitants of a provincial city demanded of Lord Palmerston that the angel of pestilence should be stayed by a day of national prayer and fasting. I will fast with you, and pray with you, was the statesman's answer, but let us also drain, scrub, wash, and be clean. Let us exorcise the demon, but let us also try to leave no foothold for him. Thus is it with Prostitution and its resultant evils. Prayer and lamentation will not cure them — sackcloth and ashes will not arrest the deterioration of our national fibre. The schemes of Reformatories, Maids’ Protection Societies, Vice and Obscene Book Suppression Societies, all amiable though they be in the abstract, are quoad the great enterprise but paltry, peddling scratches on the surface of evil. They will ever be miserably partial in their effects, if not utterly abortive. A grave internal malady lurks deep within the body social,

PREFACE.

IX and if society will not hear these words of mine, or words like them from others, the patient will be extinct before the disease is eradicated.

I shall have occasion, in the body of the text, to express my thanks to several gentlemen whose communications I have turned to good account. I may here acknowledge my obligations to the surgeons of the various hospitals, who have kindly placed at my disposal the best statistical information within their reach ; to friends who have lent me countenance in a task not always congenial either to themselves or me ; to others who have given good counsel ; to Messrs. Trebuchet and Poirat-Duval, joint editors of the third edition of Parent-Duchatelet ; and lastly, to my valued friend and collaborates, Mr. Horace Green, whose energy and perfect appreciation of the objects I have in view have been, I may truly say, invaluable to me.

46, Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square ,

October 1st, 1857.

Introduction

“It is time to burst through the veil of that artificial bashfulness which has injured the growth, while it has affected the features, of genuine purity. Society has suffered enough from that spurious modesty which lets fearful forms of vice swell to a rank luxuriance rather than point at their existence, — which coyly turns away its head from the ‘ wounds and putrifying sores’ that are eating into our system, because it would have to blush at the exposure.”*

“Had I not,” says Parent-Duchatelet, “a deep conviction that my researches on prostitution would tend to the advantage of the public health and morals, I would not have published their results. I have laid bare one of the great miseries of humanity. Serious men, for whom I have written, will appreciate my motives. Those who love their fellows will neither fear to follow me in the study, nor avert their eyes from the picture I have presented to their view. In order to know how much good is yet -undone, and to enter with any prospect of success upon the path of amelioration, it is necessary to be acquainted with things as they exist — it is necessary to know the truth. ”f

“ There are some questions so painful and perplexing, that statesmen, moralists, and philanthropists shrink from them by common consent. The subject to which the following pages are devoted is one of these. Of all the social problems which philosophy has to deal with, this is, we believe, the darkest, the knottiest, and the saddest. From whatever point of view it is regarded, it presents considerations so difficult and so grievous, that in this country no ruler or writer has yet been found with nerve to face the sadness, or resolution to encounter the difficulties. Statesmen see the mighty evil lying on the main pathway of the world, and, with a groan of pity and despair, ‘ pass by on the other side.’ They act like the timid patient, who, fearing and feeling the existence of a terrible disease, dares not examine its symptoms or probe its depth, lest he should realize it too clearly, and possibly aggravate its intensity by the mere investigation. Or, like a more foolish animal still, they hide their head at the mention of the danger, as if they hoped, by ignoring, to annihilate it.

“ It is from a strong conviction that this is not worthy behaviour on the part of those who aspire to guide either the actions or the opinions

* Quarterly Review, p. 359, Sept. 1848. Article on Prostitution, f Prostitution dans la Yille de Paris, third edition, vol. ii. p. 391.

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INTRODUCTION.

of others, that, after much hesitations and many misgivings, we have undertaken to speak of so dismal and delicate a matter. We are aware that mischief is risked by bringing the subject prominently before the public eye, and that the benefit to be derived from the discussion should be so clear and certain as unquestionably to overbalance this risk. We are aware that it is a matter on which it is not easy to speak openly — ** not always possible to speak with confidence as to facts, causes, or consequences ; we are aware that we shall expose ourselves to much scoffing from the vulgar and light-minded ; much dishonest misrepresentation from those who recklessly echo any popular cry; much unmerited anger from those who deem that refinement forbids them to speak of things which it does not forbid them to do ; much serious blame on the part of those who think that no object can justify us in compelling attention to so revolting a moral sore. We have weighed all these obstacles; and we have concluded that the end we have in view, and the chance of the good we may effect and the suffering we may mitigate, warrant us in disregarding them. We think that such considerations have already too long withheld serious and benevolent men from facing one of the sorest evils that the English sun now shines upon. Our divines, our philanthropists, our missionaries, nay, even our sceurs de la charite , do not shrink from entering, in person, the most loathsome abodes of sin and misery, — or from penetrating into the lowest dens of filth and pollution, where h uman despair and degradation ever dragged itself to die, — when led thither by the impulse of compassion and the hope of good. Why, then, should we allow indolence, disgust, or the fear of misconstruction, to deter us from entering upon an inquiry as to the possibility of mitigating the very worst form which human wretchedness and degradation can assume? The best and purest of our race do not feel themselves repelled from, or tarnished by, the darkest haunts of actual guilt and horror, where pain is to be assuaged, or where souls are to be saved. Let us act by subjects, as they act by scenes.

“ Feeling, then, that it is a false and mischievous delicacy, and a culpable moral cowardice, which shrinks from the consideration of the great social vice of Prostitution, because the subject is a loathsome one; — feeling, also, that no good can be hoped unless we are at liberty to treat the subject, and all its collaterals, with perfect freedom, both of thought and speech ; — convinced that the evil must be probed with a courageous and unshrinking hand before a cure can be suggested, or palliatives can safely be applied ; — we have deliberately resolved to call public attention to it, though we do so with pain, reluctance, and diffidence.”*

In a previous work, of a more strictly professional character than the present, I advocated at some length the consideration of prostitution upon sanitary grounds. I illustrated by the statistics then open to me, and which I have since been enabled to bring down to the present day for use in the following pages, the lamentable ravages of venereal disease. I showed how the out-patients of our metropolitan hospitals suffering

* Westminster Review, July, 1850.

INTRODUCTION.

from the diseases traceable to prostitution far outnumbered those afflicted by any other complaint, forming, in fact, nearly 50 per cent, of the aggregate. I showed to what extent the efficiency of our military and naval services is positively impaired by the same cause ; and I brought forward the experience of continental cities in proof that many of its melancholy results in London might be obviated, or at least palliated, if we only could or would act on the defensive.

At that time, however, I dared do little more than point out these consequences ; and for going even thus far I was subjected, in certain quarters, to the pains and penalties so ably described by the Westminster Ke viewer, although the subject and professional nature of the book removed it, in great measure, from the scope of general criticism.

But the success of my first experiment upon the public pulse has so far emboldened me, that I now not merely return to the charge with my former materiel, but, backed by the endeavours of others, and the opinions of many indulgent judges, I shall argue the propriety of ameliorating the sanitary condition of prostitutes, from later and still more accurate statistics, and attempt — with the greatest respect, be it said, for the scruples of others — to combat arguments, based upon religious grounds, against any movement on the part of English society towards offering a determined resistance to the spread of venereal diseases. At no period has the public mind been so well prepared to listen to suggestions of a practical nature, and to such I shall endeavour to confine myself.

I may as well state, in limine, that I have no intention of advocating the adoption by Great Britain of the system of prostitution-management practised by the police of continental States; but it must not be imagined that there are no suggestions of value derivable from foreign experience, — and I shall point out, therefore, a few features which might be engrafted upon our own no-management system without infringement of liberty.

Although an author may hazard, as I have hinted, the favour of many, by venturing at all upon such delicate ground, I am aware that his views, on the other hand, may fall grievously short in the opinion of some ardent and enthusiastic persons. The schemes I now advocate for the assistance as well as the control of prostitutes would have been far too mild and inefficient for my own young fancy, before deep and careful consideration had matured my views, and the advice and practice of official men had shown me the value of those good old beasts of burden, “ compromise” and “ expediency,” and the difficulties of even slight innovation. I have found it easy to discern diseases, and a task of no great difficulty to point out remedies; but as in medical, so in social therapeutics, the question often arises — Can good be done at the cost of no harm ? May not the removal of one abuse originate another ? In doing justice or charity to one class, may we not hazard an entail of wrong upon another ? Can we take steps to prevent this or that evil without grazing our neighbour’s dearest prejudices, if not opposing a stumbling-block, in some cases, to his religious belief?

I propose, in the following pages, to inquire whether, in the interest of society and civilization, on what are commonly called sanitary and social grounds, some compromise, which I should term “ recognition,” may not be effected between sanction and pretended ignorance of vice, and whether

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INTRODUCTION, some useful mean may not exist between unbridled licence and despotism, wbicb for want of a better name might be called “ regulation.” I intend to advance, that a large class of our women should not be ignored or excommunicated, and to show why they should be as worthy of improvement, regulation, and even special legislation, as murderers, thieves, gamblers, and other male members of the dangerous classes. Let the objectors strike, but hear.

Young persons are, I believe, generally led to believe that the class of unfortunate females are, with few exceptions, Messalinas and Dalilahs, — living in riot for a little season, — dying neglected and miserable — of most dreadful diseases, or by violence or suicide, — upon dunghills or in ditches. It is marvellous, too, how this belief grows with the growth of many who, having been gently trained, have as adults kept themselves unspotted from the world. But as some few are aware, who have soberly used their opportunities of observation, this is as gross a fallacy as that every prostitute is a Dame aux Camelias. The sufferings of the class are great enough, as these pages will show, but their amalgamation with the population, to which I shall presently allude, seems, notwithstanding all our contrary impressions, to be so regular, so extensive, and to all appearances so much upon the increase, not owing to the spread of vicious desires alone, but also to the action of £ society’ itself, that it seems to me we must no longer hold them outlaws during their passage through their furnace of purification. Granted their admission within the pale of the law, their better regulation and the amelioration of their state will, I think, follow as a matter of course.

While I do not propose to aim at high colouring, I hope I shall be able to avoid the imputation of flippancy. The nature of the subject demands a sobriety of tone, and at the same time a degree of freedom from emotion or exaggeration, which few but professional men whose duties throw them among the persons and scenes here treated of can hope to acquire. I wish to plead in cool reason. If I have no desire, nor the requisite flow of words, to dress up vice in those genteel and fascinating habiliments in which it is paraded in some lighter books, I must confess that long familiarity with the subject precludes the possibility of my attaining that rapture of horror with which another class of observers, perhaps involuntarily, clothe their notes upon bad society.

I believe that the celebrated series of pictures entitled “ The Harlot’s Progress,” and the commonplace reflections which usually accompany engravings after them, have done much towards founding the necessity for this work. They have been, I believe, the text for many a sermon, the substratum of a thousand and one religious tracts, and have inspired our people from generation to generation with the notion of a Pariah class existing within the bosom of society, whom the world of sinners might be pardoned for stoning to death. They have unfortunately diffused injurious and abused impressions on the subject they profess to delineate, and have assisted the natural supineness of men to defer a righteous adjustment of the questions it involves. It is no more a necessary consequence that the loss of her honour should divest one woman of the other feminine attributes, than that another who has preserved it should therefore be in all other respects perfect and complete.

INTRODUCTION.

It is monstrous to pretend that every fallen woman must first have had, and then have cast away, the pearl religion, which so many of the pure and chaste have died without a glimpse of. Monstrous, again, to think so ill of her on whom so little but the fatal gift of beauty was bestowed, that in the garden of her soul she has not brought to fruit the healing plant of holiness. The common germ of it, indeed, was there, but fallen in a bye place, a little, solitary, untended seed, where the weeds also were sown broadcast and bounteously nurtured by wicked man. Most hard, again, that sown as it was, grown without the needful light from heaven, and therefore doomed to certain fruitlessness, this weakly plant alone, from out a world of pompous, self-asserting, barren fig-trees (barren in spite of every favouring condition), should be fixed upon for the axe and the outer fire.

Monstrous, un-Christianlike, un-Englishlike are those who would pass upon her, whose calling is an epilepsy of punishment, the sentence of excommunication that is withheld by the hand of unrighteous conventionality from her tempter and accomplice, and empty the vial of social wrath upon her who is vulgar and obtrusive, while mere fairy like chastisement is considered enough for the notorious sinner of good breeding and position. Foolish and shortsighted those who imagine that if they may send forth the scape goat into the wilderness, they can also, under our dispensation, impose the burden of their sins upon her.

I shall endeavour to occupy the reader as little as possible with statistics. As regards prostitution in this country, I could not have entered, had I been so minded, into the elaborate details which continental. police arrangements place in some measure at the disposal of continental authors ; and I have furnished such particulars only of its condition elsewhere, as may help to elucidate the policy we might adopt towards those who follow the calling in England, their ministers^ and their parasites.

Chapter I Prostitution Defined

Etymology would, of course, at once suggest a “ standing forth, or plying for hire in open market,” as a definition of the word prostitution. Charitable and refined persons instinctively recoil from its general use, under the very natural impression that the essence of “ prostitution” is not so much the receipt of consideration as community ; but, on the other hand, many forcible divines and moralists have maintained that all illicit intercourse is prostitution, and that this word is as justly applicable as those of “ fornication” and “whoredom” to the female who, whether for hire or not, voluntarily surrenders her virtue. According to them, her first offence is as much an act of prostitution as its repetition.

For the purpose of the politico-statistical researches which (more to find occupation for its superfluous bureaucracy than, as is sometimes supposed, through mere tyrannical curiosity) the French administrators have, since the time of the first Republic, made into prostitution, as well as everything else, they arrange disorderly women under two heads, femmes debauchees and prostituees. The former, instead of being, as would at first sight appear, a generic term, seems to distinguish the numerous troop known as femmes galantes and files clandestines , and corresponds with the “kept mistresses” and more reserved class of prostitutes in this country. Over it, while a certain degree of self-respect is preserved, the police neither assert nor can maintain control. Its members enjoy to the full extent their civic rights, and a maxim of law is acknowledged in their favour, which their sisters of this country are obliged to maintain for themselves, — often to the disgust, and occasionally to the amusement, of the public. “ Mulieris, quae non palam sed passim et paucis sui copiam facit, actio competit ad versus eum qui earn merit ricem vocavit.”

Into the second class, which answers to our common street-walkers, the French authorities do their best to drive such of the first as they consider to have forfeited their independent position. It is held that the legally established and repeated exercise of fornication as a calling, combined with public notoriety thereof, arrest in flagrante , proved by witnesses other than the informer or the police agent, constitute the “ prostitute.” The prostitute has been more particularly described by a French author as the woman who abjures society, repudiates its laws, and forfeits all claims upon it, by adopting those “ habitudes scandaleuses hardiment et constamment publiques,” through which she passes into

PROSTITUTION DEFINED.

According to the Board of Public Morals at Berlin, all voluntary sexual abandonment for a consideration is held to be prostitution. The distinctions, however, between the several shades of female frailty are so faint, and it seems so immaterial whether we apply to all erring women indiscriminately the term “ prostitute,” or another, perhaps coarser one, about which no etymological cavil could arise, that I confess I think any further disquisition upon this head quite uncalled-for and uninteresting. I shall therefore assume, with the divines and moralists, for the purpose of my present inquiry, that the fact of “ hiring,” whether openly or secretly, whether by an individual or a plurality in succession, constitutes prostitution.

Parent-Ducliatelet, troisieme edition, tom. i. p. 25.

Chapter II. Religious Objections To The Recognition Of Prostitution

CONSIDERED.

The difficulties the philanthropist and surgeon have to meet in dealing with this subject are raised mainly on its moral and religious side. Those who would ameliorate the physical condition of prostitutes on behalf of society are at once met by the objection — “Disease is a punishment for sin;” “syphilis the penalty paid by society for indulgence in fornication and many worthy persons are so deeply impressed with these convictions, as to say, “We will have none of your sanitary or preventive measures, in this respect at least.” And again, “ The present chances of contracting disease is the strongest means of deterring men from being unchaste. This risk is the most potent barrier against vice. Remove it, and you put a premium on fornication, discourage matrimony, and upset society.”

It must be my endeavour to show the worth of this kind of objection, and further, to advance views which I trust may not be deemed incompatible with Christianity and good morals. I admit, without hesitation, that contagious diseases operate with many a gentleman of education and refinement as deterrents from fornication, and that, involving, as they in general do, both bodily suffering and financial loss, they exert a major force upon the unlimited recurrence to debauchery of the poor, coarse, incontinent rake ; I allow that, without this pressure, men’s sex passion is so strong, and the training to continence has been so neglected, that a life of sensual indulgence would, in the present state of society, be more a rule than an exception ; and I know that it exercises some little influence when religion is unheeded, especially among the bulk of the better educated youth, whose minds are so little made up upon the sinfulness of fornication, that I believe the fear of suffering on earth operates more as a curb upon its licentious practice than the more remote contingency of punishment hereafter.

But, conceding this certain amount of deterrent power to the liability to disease, we shall look in vain for proof that it has had any effect towards extirpating the calling of the harlot, or the traffic in female virtue, which has of late years forced itself upon the attention of our legislature. For every thousand upon whom it does operate, there are ten thousand thoughtless, passionate, habitually licentious men, on whom all lessons are thrown away, and as many defiant scoffers at religion and morality, who will point out some grey-haired offender, permitted by Providence to “ go on still in the way of his wickedness,” for every “ frightful example” that can be adduced on the other side*

RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE

This may probably be considered a low estimate of public morality, but it seems to be that which an important fraction of the religious world incline to adopt and act upon. Man has taken upon himself to say, that the purpose of the Almighty is answered when the infraction of His law is suppressed by terror, — that it is the duty of the Christian to watch with calm serenity the growing crop that waits the scythe of the destroying angel, so long as he can take precautions to secure his own exemption from the fatal harvest.

With regard to ordinary crimes and offences, we are gradually repealing this Draconian code, and coming round to the more Christian belief that preventive dispositions may more than compensate for relaxation of severity. In the case of juvenile vagrancy, we no l onger confine ourselves to the flogging or incarceration of the primary offender, but we combine his milder punishment with some pressure upon the parent — his indirect accomplice — whom we mulct towards the maintenance of the young prisoner, considering him responsible for the child’s appearance in the dock and the jail. Society tried severity, but having found it no deterrent, now racks its ingenuity, not so much for penal devices as for schemes to check the supply of crime by appealing to both parents and children by means of education, reformatories, and liberal relief, that they should the more honourably perform their duties to each other and to the community.