Prostitution in Europe
=Publications of the Bureau of Social Hygiene=
Prostitution in Europe
BY
ABRAHAM FLEXNER
INTRODUCTION BY
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR.
Chairman of the Bureau of Social Hygiene
[Illustration: Open book emblem with sunburst rays and floral border]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1914
Copyright, 1914, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, January, 1914_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PROSTITUTION: DEFINITION AND EXTENT 3
II. THE DEMAND 39
III. THE SUPPLY 61
IV. PROSTITUTION AND THE LAW 103
V. REGULATION AND ORDER—THE STREETS 121
VI. REGULATION AND ORDER—SEGREGATION AND BORDELLS 165
VII. REGULATION AND DISEASE 204
VIII. THE REAL INWARDNESS OF REGULATION 265
IX. ABOLITION AND ORDER 286
X. ABOLITION AND DISEASE 343
XI. THE OUTCOME OF EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE 395
APPENDICES 403
Regulations of Paris
Regulations of Berlin
Regulations of Hamburg
Regulations of Vienna
Danish Law
INDEX 453
INTRODUCTION
In presenting to the public the second volume of the series to be issued
by the Bureau of Social Hygiene, it is appropriate to state briefly the
origin and plans of the Bureau and to indicate the place assigned to the
present study in the scheme which the Bureau has undertaken to develop.
The Bureau of Social Hygiene was created as a result of the work of the
Special Grand Jury which investigated the white slave traffic in New
York City in 1910. It was organized only after a thorough inquiry had
been made, involving conferences with over a hundred leading men and
women in the city as to the relative value of a public commission as
compared with a private organization. The opinion prevailed that a
permanent, unofficial organization, whose efforts would be continuous,
would probably be more lasting and effective; the Bureau of Social
Hygiene was therefore established in the winter of 1911. Its present
members are Miss Katharine Bement Davis, Superintendent of the New York
State Reformatory for Women, at Bedford Hills, New York; Paul M.
Warburg, of the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company; Starr J. Murphy, of the
New York Bar; and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
As was stated in the introduction to the previous volume, spasmodic
efforts to deal with the problem of prostitution have been made from
time to time throughout the course of history. They have failed for
several reasons: First, because, as a rule, there has been too little
accurate information as to the facts of the situation to be dealt with;
again, because they have taken too little account of the teachings of
experience elsewhere; finally, because they have been too explosive, too
discontinuous, to be effective, even if soundly conceived.
The first book of the present series, entitled, “Commercialized
Prostitution in New York City,” was written by Mr. George J. Kneeland,
upon the completion of a careful study of conditions of vice in
Manhattan, carried on under his direction by a corps of trained
investigators. Its aim was simply descriptive; it presented a faithful
picture of contemporaneous conditions in New York.
The present book carries the work a step further. Without raising any
question as to how far European experience is significant for America,
the author describes prostitution in Europe and discusses the various
methods of handling it now employed in the large cities of Great Britain
and the Continent. The subject is a highly controversial one. For this
reason, its investigation was assigned to one who had, on the one hand,
previously given it no critical thought or attention, but whose studies
of education in this country and abroad had demonstrated his competency
to deal with a complicated topic of this nature. Mr. Flexner was
absolutely without prejudice or preconception, just as he was absolutely
unfettered by instructions. He had no previous opinion to sustain; he
was given no thesis to prove or disprove. He was asked to make a
thorough and impartial examination of the subject and to report his
observations and conclusions. He enjoyed the fullest possible facilities
for his inquiries and to them and the writing of this book devoted
almost two years.
It is difficult to summarize the contents of the volume. It touches many
different aspects of the problem,—the nature of modern prostitution, the
factors determining demand, the sources of supply, the various methods
used in its regulation or control, their operation and value, the effect
of abolishing regulation, and the general outcome of European
experience. Though Mr. Flexner has in no way taken America into
consideration, without question the facts he has assembled will be
highly pertinent to any discussion in this country as to the merits of
proposed legislation; for his account makes it clear that widespread
misapprehension prevails as to the policies pursued by European cities,
and their results.
Two volumes are still to appear: an account of European police systems,
by Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick, a member of the staff of the Bureau, and
formerly Commissioner of Accounts of New York City; and a final volume
dealing with prostitution in the United States in which it is hoped that
a program soundly based may be suggested.
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR.
New York, Nov. 1, 1913.
PROSTITUTION IN EUROPE
CHAPTER I
PROSTITUTION: DEFINITION AND EXTENT
Scope of investigation.—General uniformity of phenomena.—Prostitution
an urban problem.—Medieval and modern prostitution
differ.—Prostitution defined.—Need of broad conception.—Immorality
distinguished from prostitution.—Prevalence and significance of
immorality.—Prostitution not necessarily a permanent status.—Mortality
of prostitutes.—Number of prostitutes.—Forms taken by
prostitution.—Influence of alcohol.—Homosexuality.—The pimp.—The Paris
prostitute.—The cost of prostitution.
Prostitution will be studied in these pages from the standpoint of the
practical experience of European countries. An effort will be made to
ascertain its forms and extent, the sources from which it is recruited,
the conditions that either cause or conduce to it, the procedure of
different communities in dealing with it and with the conditions
responsible for it, the measures which have been employed by way of
combat or control, and the results which have been thus obtained.
Material will be drawn from extended personal inquiry and observation in
the larger cities of England, Scotland, France, Italy, Belgium,
Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany,
Austria-Hungary,[1]—from the countries, in a word, that may be grouped
as Western Europe, because they are characterized by a considerable
degree of similarity in all that pertains to social life, national
ideals, and political institutions.
In the countries just specified, neither law nor opinion is strictly
homogeneous: in consequence, the phenomena under consideration respond
to differences of viewpoint or pressure by somewhat altering their
external manifestations. The resulting divergencies are at times only
superficial, at times important enough to affect, perhaps, the volume of
vice itself. None the less at bottom the situation is sufficiently
similar to support the generalized method of treatment which has been
adopted in this book. Distinctions will not be ignored; but on the whole
it will appear that they serve rather to emphasize fundamental
agreement. Recent investigation, indeed, tends to show that such
agreement is of far wider scope than is here assumed; for in
prostitution, if nowhere else, the old adage holds—“There is nothing new
under the sun.” The source-books of both ancient and medieval worlds
disclose an amazing identity with modern times in this melancholy
respect.[2]
Such differences as still persist—in regard to viewpoint, form, or
public policy,—are, at least in the area here dealt with, in a fair way
to disappear. The progress of democratic thought and government,
increasingly easy and unobstructed trading, the advance of industrialism
with the revision of the ethical code following in the wake of practical
sex equality, finally, even deliberate imitation are rapidly developing
decided homogeneity of attitude and effort in reference to many
fundamental human concerns. The student of the particular subject with
which we are occupied is, therefore, nowadays, more and more likely to
be struck by the uniformity of phenomena rather than by local or
national peculiarities, in the course of an inquiry that begins in
Glasgow and concludes in Budapest.
At the outset it is important to observe that throughout Western Europe
prostitution has in the last few centuries undergone essentially the
same evolution. Prostitution is an urban problem, its precise character
largely dependent on the size of the town. Now the medieval town in
Western Europe was small. The really great cities of the middle ages
were all Islamic: Constantinople, Bagdad, and Cairo numbered more than a
million souls apiece, Seville and Cordova were each half as large.
Beside these the main cities of Western Europe were in point of size
insignificant: Paris had a dubious 200,000; Vienna, 50,000; London,
35,000; Cologne, 30,000; Hamburg, 18,000; Dresden, 5,000. Towns without
water communication rarely reached 25,000; many important places did not
exceed 5,000.[3] Size largely determined the character of urban life and
therewith the nature of medieval European prostitution. The inhabitants
of these hardly more than villages were well known to one another; the
family was still an intact organization; the floating population—aside
from organized movements like the crusades, pilgrimages, or armies,—was
not voluminous; at any rate the stranger was known as such. Medieval
prostitution was, in the main, of two varieties, resident or itinerant:
the former more or less commonly living in regular houses of
prostitution—the so-called bordells; the latter, either vagrant or
informally attached like the camp-follower to the temporal or spiritual
armies that swept to and fro across the continent, now waging war, now
fulfilling religious vows. But whether resident or itinerant, the
prostitute was a marked woman in the small medieval community. Even if
her vocation was plied secretly, her true character inevitably and
quickly became notorious; still more so, of course, if carried on
professionally, for then she was visibly to be discriminated by garb,
appearance, abode, and outward manner of living. The distinction between
the vicious and the virtuous woman was thus in the middle ages
uncommonly broad and clear.
Modern conditions contrast strongly with those that I have just
sketched. The cities, themselves huge, are for practical purposes still
further enlarged by the subsidiary communities that hang about their
fringes. Berlin, for example, so late as 1816 a town of 197,000
inhabitants, contained in 1910, 2,071,257; Charlottenburg, to mention
only one of the suburbs practically indistinguishable from it, adds
305,978. London numbers 7,252,963; Liverpool, 760,357; Glasgow, 784,496;
Paris, 2,888,110; Lyons, 523,796; Vienna, 2,031,498; Budapest, 881,600;
Munich, 596,467; Hamburg, 931,035; Dresden, 548,308; Amsterdam, 580,960;
Stockholm, 346,599; Copenhagen, 476,806; Brussels itself, strictly
speaking, a town of only 175,000, is increased to 659,000 by nine
contiguous self-governing suburbs which, for all practical purposes,
merge into it. The mere quantitative difference between the medieval
town and the modern city qualitatively transforms the problem of
prostitution. In these latter-day Babylons, the family is frequently
shattered; thousands of detached, more or less friendless, more or less
irresponsible, girls and boys pour into them to earn a livelihood under
conditions that, so far from forming, actually disintegrate character
and ambition. The situation is still further complicated by the
continuous presence of a huge floating population, in Paris, Berlin, and
London reaching into hundreds of thousands, restlessly surging in and
out, in search of trade, excitement, or amusement. Within the more or
less tightly closed circle, characteristic of a simple community, the
members of which are known to one another, mutual demands in the matter
of conduct uphold the accepted ideal and tradition; family and clan
morality thus sustain the weaker members. Moreover, whatever individuals
may be, they are known to one another as such. But in the modern
Babylons of which I am speaking, one no longer knows one’s nearest
neighbors. Temptation and inducement wax strongest, precisely where
protection and restraint have become feeblest; the conditions favor not
only irresponsibility but concealment. The mere numerical increase and
the absolute impossibility of classifying women and men as virtuous or
vicious on account of sheer ignorance of their life and character thus
profoundly differentiate medieval from modern prostitution. The former
was at once limited and definite; the latter is not only huge but vague.
From a practical point of view, these are facts of unmistakable
importance. While thirty lewd women in a town of 3,000 inhabitants and
5,000 in a town of half a million represent precisely the same
proportion—one percent in both cases—nevertheless the quantitative
increase makes an enormous difference in the feasibility of measures
designed to deal with one aspect or another of the situation. A device
that might conceivably be effective on the smaller scale would probably
break down completely if applied on the larger. Economically,
administratively, hygienically, the problem thus changes its character,
the moment the numbers involved pass beyond a certain point.
An additional difficulty is due to mere size; the prostitute can not be
strictly discriminated in the huge modern city. Wherever professional
prostitution has flourished, so-called clandestine prostitution has
existed. But in the middle ages clandestine prostitutes were
individually so notorious that, even when they avoided the bordell, they
frequently lived in the bordell quarter. In any event, there was no
doubt as to their business and character. In precisely the same way,
there exists to-day in Europe the avowed professional prostitute and the
equally notorious and unmistakable so-called clandestine
prostitute,—both perfectly obvious to the police as well as to the
casual observer. But a highly important distinction must be noted: of
modern prostitution this known contingent, partly outright professional,
partly so-called clandestine,[4] is the smaller and, from many points of
view, the less significant fraction. Neither by garb, appearance, abode,
or apparent manner of living are the majority of women subsisting wholly
or partly on the proceeds of sexual irregularity any longer to be
recognized. The frankly avowed prostitute is only one, and perhaps not
the most important, of the types with which this account must deal; and
this complication originates in the size of the modern city and in the
industrial and other conditions to which city growth is due.
In the endeavor to arrive at an accurate definition of prostitution no
little effort has been expended. Different conceptions are possible
from different points of view. The continental police define
prostitution from the standpoint of registration or inscription: as a
rule they register or, where the system has been discontinued, used to
register, only professional prostitutes,—women, that is, who have no
other means of support than prostitution. From the police point of
view the prostitute is therefore an inscribed woman, or a woman who,
somehow eluding inscription, ought to be inscribed, or one who is at
any rate liable to inscription, on the ground that she earns her
livelihood through sexual promiscuity. Vast numbers, however, escape
through the wide meshes of this net. Many prostitutes are actually
engaged in some sort of remunerative work. The barmaids of the German
“Animierkneipe,”[5] the singers and dancers of low grade Varietés are
prostitutes who obtain their customers by means of their occupations;
yet they are usually exempt from inscription as professional
prostitutes because they are gainfully employed, and being exempt from
inscription they fall outside the police definition of professional
prostitution. The mere fact that partial or even pretended employment
is a protection against police interference leads many prostitutes to
keep up a more or less nominal connection with work. Of 1,177
venereally diseased women, undoubtedly prostitutes, treated in the
municipal hospital of Zurich, only 7.9% owned to being prostitutes;
6.7% more confessed to no employment, but all the others—85.4%—claimed
a vocation of some sort.[6] It is therefore obvious that the police
definition fails to square with the facts. Parent-Duchatelet,
following an official declaration, uses the term prostitution, where
“several mercenary acts of immorality have been legally established,
when the woman involved is publicly notorious, when she has been
caught in the act by other witnesses than her accuser or the police
agent.”[7] From this definition, however, all really clandestine
prostitution is quite omitted; it suffices only for the most obvious
and necessary police purposes. By way of contrast with the narrow
conceptions above given, I shall, for reasons that will shortly
appear, consider prostitution to be characterized by three elements
variously combined: barter, promiscuity, emotional indifference. The
barter need not involve the passing of money, though money is its
usual medium; gifts or pleasures may be the equivalent inducement. Nor
need promiscuity be utterly choiceless; a woman is not the less a
prostitute because she is more or less selective in her associations.
Emotional indifference may be fairly inferred from barter and
promiscuity. In this sense, any person is a prostitute who habitually
or intermittently has sexual relations more or less promiscuously for
money or other mercenary consideration. Neither notoriety, arrest, nor
lack of other occupation is an essential criterion. A woman may be a
prostitute, even though not notorious, even though never arrested,
even though simultaneously otherwise employed in a paid occupation.
The scope of the term is thus greatly, and, as I hope to show,
justifiably, nay necessarily, extended. Barter, emotional indifference,
and more or less promiscuity do not in modern cities characterize the
sex relations of the avowed or professional prostitute alone. They are
equally characteristic marks of the clandestine prostitute, using the
term in its literal meaning to designate the numerous class of
professional prostitutes whose real character is known only to their own
clientele and their close female companions; of the occasional
prostitute,—women who alternately emerge from and relapse into an
irregular life; of the incidental prostitute,—those who carry on more or
less prostitution without interrupting some honorable employment; of
women who practise prostitution under cloak of other occupations; of
women, who ceasing to be kept as mistresses practise prostitution as a
stop-gap until a firmer footing is once more found; of women who reserve
themselves by express arrangement for a small group, none of whom can
alone afford their support; of women, who faithful to one individual at
a time are still taken up by a succession of men paying for favors;
finally of married women, by no means always of the lowest classes, who,
perhaps irreproachable in the eyes of the world, are not above earning
through ignominy the price of luxuries.[8] Here are eight different
categories, falling outside the narrow conception of prostitution, but
nevertheless belonging to prostitution, if prostitution is conceived to
be characterized by barter, emotional indifference, and promiscuity.
For this broad construction there exist the most substantial of grounds.
Why do we object to prostitution at all? Obviously, it is repugnant for
one or more of several reasons: in the first place, because of the
personal demoralization it entails; in the second, because of economic
waste; again, because it is by far the main factor in the spread of
venereal disease; finally, because of its intimate association with
disorder or crime. Unquestionably the full-time notorious prostitutes
who are the especial objects of police care exemplify all the counts in
this indictment; they are themselves demoralized and they spread
demoralization; they cause enormous waste; they inevitably and
invariably spread disease; as a rule they have criminal or
quasi-criminal connections. But there could be no greater mistake than
to suppose that the other categories above specified are free from
objection on these scores. Part-time prostitution, occasional
prostitution, pretentious prostitution,—all the various kinds and grades
above enumerated naturally and inevitably conduce to similar results.
They may be less conspicuous or less offensive, but they are equally
dangerous. If then prostitution is objectionable because of
demoralization, waste, disease, or crime, then it is necessary so to
define it as to include all the varieties to which one or more of the
unfortunate results in questions is attributable. The lowest forms are
most closely connected with crime and disorder, and as the police are
mainly concerned with crime and disorder, they content themselves with a
working conception of prostitution that goes no further. But the general
concern of society must regard as hardly less serious menaces to its
highest welfare the personal demoralization, the economic loss, the
spread of disease equally associated with the less gross forms of the
evil. For these are attended by personal degradation, even though some
individuals, on the whole a considerable number, ultimately react
vigorously enough to recover their self-respect; and they involve
enormous economic waste, increasing rather than diminishing with the
degree of dignity with which the business is surrounded, so that what
externally least resembles commercial prostitution is perhaps from the
economic standpoint most severely to be reprobated as such.
It is, however, in respect to disease that the wide definition can be
most readily and fully justified. Venereal disease is the certain
harvest of any degree of promiscuity in the sex relation. The diminution
of venereal disease is one of the most pressing objects of hygienic
effort; it can be accomplished only by some sort of interference with
prostitution. It would therefore be absurd to define prostitution so
narrowly that many of the regular foci of infection remain outside the
definition and hence beyond the reach of any policy contrived for the
purpose of dealing with them. How numerous the foci are which a narrow
conception would thus ignore will be more fully shown in subsequent
chapters;[9] but enough must be said in this connection to warrant the
extension of the definition beyond the usual police lines. A statistical
study of venereal disease at Mannheim covering nine years (1892–1901)
showed that 63% of the infections were traceable to professional
prostitutes in the narrow police sense of the term, no less than 37%,
however, to the occasional, incidental, and other prostitutes here
explicitly included in the term; among whom girls in active service as
waitresses, servants, and shophands are the most important.[10] A
subsequent investigation of 594 cases disclosed 278 professionals and
316—over 50%—girls serving in one capacity or another (waitress,
seamstress, laundress, actress, etc.) as the sources of infection.[11] A
similar statistic from Hanover proves in the same way that it is from
the standpoint of sanitation absurd to limit prostitution to the
absolutely indiscriminate, professional and notorious activity: of 330
women, to whom infections were traced, 42% (139) were outright
professionals, though only partly inscribed, the remaining 58% being
mainly girls who were simultaneously engaged in paid employments in
shops, taverns, domestic service, theaters, etc.[12] Such conditions
prevail generally on the Continent. The Munich police have lately made a
most careful study of the callings in which 2,574 clandestine
prostitutes well known to them are simultaneously engaged: 721 are
servants, 608 are waitresses, 250 factory workers, 246 seamstresses, 60
are connected with the stage, 52 are laundresses, 40 dressmakers, 28
models, etc. Similar results can be cited from other sources. Of 100
venereal patients at Rouen, only 31 of the infections could be traced to
inscribed prostitutes; 69 cases were attributed to clandestines,
partials, etc.[13] Of 297 traceable infections in Stockholm,
146—practically one-half—were attributed to girls also engaged in
work.[14] The police of Hamburg are at any rate logical, for there girls
employed in bars and fish-shops may be registered as prostitutes; in
certain smaller North German cities prostitution is so commonly
associated with employment as barmaid that the latter is practically
merged with the former. Under conditions in which barmaids, shop girls,
servants, chorus-girls, etc.,[15] are either permanently or
intermittently engaged in prostitution, and when so engaged bring about
precisely the same sort of damage that is wrought by prostitutes who are
nothing else, it is manifestly illogical to use the term so as to
designate the latter class only. The fact that complication with
disorder attaches only to the lower types is assuredly no reason for
restricting the designation of prostitution to them, once we realize
that, on the score of personal demoralization, economic waste, and the
danger of disease, the more sophisticated or subtle forms of
commercialized immorality are equally dangerous and destructive.
Prostitution will therefore in these pages be construed to mean more or
less promiscuity—even transient promiscuity,—of sex relationship for
pay, or its equivalent.
The definition just given is intended to exclude both immorality and
unconventionality in the sex relation, though, for reasons that will
appear, they require incidental discussion in an account of
prostitution. Of these unconventional or irregular sex relationships
there are in Western Europe many varieties, more or less widespread.
Most substantial is the informal union which serves as a substitute for
marriage. In these combinations mutual fidelity is expected, as well as
complete responsibility for such children as may be born. A combination
of this sort is occasionally permanent; occasionally it is converted
into marriage; oftener, perhaps, it binds only during mutual
congeniality, being dissolved when congeniality ceases, or more
frequently when one or the other member has already entered on the
stages preliminary to another combination. In the city such informal
mating of industrial workers of opposite sexes is common;[16] the shop
girl contracts an alliance of this kind with a clerk of her own class,
or not infrequently with a student or professional man, more or less
above her in rank. Of the non-legalized cohabitation of the artisans of
London, Booth remarks that at times “they behave best if not married to
the women with whom they live”;[17] occasionally two parties to previous
but unsuccessful matrimony pair off again without the intervention of
the divorce court, and “as a rule, are faithful to each other.”[18]
Somewhat similar is an informal relationship continued as such until a
child is born—or shortly after—whereupon the neglected rites may be duly
performed. The high percentage of illegitimacy is thus partly accounted
for: In Berlin 20% of the births are outside of wedlock; in all Germany,
almost 10%.[19] The incident is so common among the lower classes,
especially in the rural districts, as hardly to carry any stigma at all.
“Frequent illegitimacy,” writes Adele Schreiber, “may be the expression
of wholesome monogamous conditions, as indeed is often the case in
mountainous countries. Premarital relations are there common, are
characterized by mutual fidelity and, with exceptions of course, look
forward to marriage when a child is born and the parents are able to
establish a home.”[20] These relations must be distinguished from the
episodic connection that is a mere incident in the course of casual
companionship. Mainly in this latter sense, “immoral relations before
marriage among the lower classes are not unusual and are indulgently
regarded,”[21] writes Charles Booth of London. Devon, describing Glasgow
conditions, observes to the same effect that “girls do not seem to
suffer in self-respect nor greatly in the esteem of others, if they
yield themselves to the lad who is their sweetheart for the time. If
decency is observed, morals are taken for granted.”[22] On the Continent
these conditions also exist. “Extra-marital, especially premarital
intercourse is everywhere in the country very frequent,”[23] declares
Moll. Of certain communities in Saxony it has been deliberately asserted
that “no girl over sixteen is still a virgin”; the German peasant is
declared to have no conception of the meaning of chastity.[24] Welander
dealing with 452 prostitutes who could give a clear account of their
first lapse, found that 299 had erred while still living at home or
before leaving the country to take a position in Stockholm.[25]
Episodic laxity unquestionably exposes the girl to dangers that readily
result in prostitution, just as it develops in her comrade the appetite
that leads him to consort with prostitutes. But in itself mere laxity is
not to be confused with prostitution. The instances above given show
indeed how widely immorality varies in ethical quality. An irregular sex
relation may indicate only carelessness of the convention that restricts
sexual congress to the married relation; it may, at the other extreme,
indicate total indifference to the ethical standard that forbids sexual
commerce unaccompanied by high emotional sanction, mutual respect,
complete responsibility for the natural result. The former is a marriage
in all but form; the latter is simple depravity; but neither involves
prostitution. A lapse—one or several—does not imply prostitution; nor is
the paid mistress a prostitute so long as her relations, emotionally
indifferent and mercenary though they be, are free from promiscuity. It
must be remembered, therefore, that irregular sex connection may not
only lack barter or promiscuity, but on the woman’s side at least may
possess high emotional coloring, whether she be mistress, unwedded wife,
or compliant sweetheart.
In the designation of prostitute there is nothing final or
irretrievable. It is indeed one of the peculiar earmarks of modern
prostitution that thousands who flounder for a while eventually escape
from the bog. The tendency is undoubtedly towards complete
disintegration; women who drift into it may drift more and more deeply
into the morass. But the numerically more powerful drift is nevertheless
outwards; while some are overwhelmed, thousands emerge. Having
apparently started on the descent, they somehow arrest their downward
progress and clamber out,—sometimes from the very bottom, more
frequently and more hopefully, before the lower depths have been
reached.[26] Modern prostitution is therefore unprecedentedly
fluctuating in character. Johansson’s admirable studies of the data
contained in the Inspection-bureau of Stockholm “show that the same
woman who one month is in domestic service or at other work will the
next month register with the police and thus enter the ranks of
professional prostitution; the third month she will have her position
again and be freed from the requirement to undergo inspection; thus the
thing shifts for years and years.”[27] During the first three years of
registration a considerable number of the women leave Stockholm, give up
prostitution and become domestic servants or factory hands.[28] This has
been the case since modern urban conditions began: “Let us recollect,”
wrote Parent-Duchatelet, “that for the majority of public women
prostitution is a transitory estate; they quit for the most part after a
year; very few indeed remain until death.”[29] The Munich barmaid who is
sexually more or less indiscriminate inflicts upon society for the time
being the same sort of damage as the notorious prostitute; she herself
deteriorates, she exposes herself to disease, in the spread of which she
is subsequently a factor; she is therefore a prostitute. But once she
rehabilitates herself, her status changes. She is barmaid now,
prostitute no longer. The prostitution of European cities to-day is
characterized by the abundance of cases that oscillate in this way to
and fro across the dividing line. Our definition must be capable of
including these at one moment, even if they have to be omitted at
another.
We are thus enabled to understand what has long figured as a mystery.
What becomes of the ordinary prostitute? For the common notion that her
expectation of life is some five or six years, there is no basis in fact
whatsoever.[30] It is demonstrably untrue even of the avowed
professional or registered continental harlot. Though her resistance is
weakened, an early death need not and as a rule does not ensue. Of 3,517
women inscribed at Paris, Parent-Duchatelet[31] notes that 980—close to
28%—have been on the Paris list longer than seven years; and the Paris
list is neither the beginning nor the end of the careers of most of the
women inscribed. This is obvious from the further fact that of the 3,517
women in question, 1,269 admitted the practice of professional
prostitution during more than five years.[32] Again, the average annual
registration of professionals with the Paris police between 1888 and
1903 was 5,549; the average annual death rate among them was 19.[33]
Johansson has made an elaborate comparison between the mortality of
inscribed prostitutes and that of the corresponding age groups of the
female population of Stockholm; the inscribed women show the higher
rate, but by no means so large as is popularly supposed:[34]
1870–4 75–79 1880–4 85–9 90–4 95–99 1900–3
Percentage of
mortality among
inscribed
prostitutes 17.1 13.6 14.7 10.9 8.4 9.0 7.8
Among corresponding
age groups of
Stockholm’s female
population 12.0 9.1 7.6 6.4 5.7 4.8 4.7
The mortality among the registered prostitutes of Vienna in the years
1879–1882, inclusive, averaged less than of ½ of 1%; at Berlin for
approximately the same period 1¼%;[35] for the years 1904–6, it was only
⅘ of 1%.[36] The mortality among the more cautious women, less exposed
to wind and weather and alcohol, is probably lower still. The loss to
the Paris registered list through death is negligible: of 3,582
inscribed women in 1880, 46 died in the course of the year; of 4,770 a
decade later, 5 died; of 6,222 in 1900, 26 died. The total loss by death
in twenty years was 485.[37] English statistics, though bearing less
directly on the point, establish a similar presumption. Through the
London Venereal Hospital[38] for women, some 400 patients annually pass;
the average number of deaths during each of the last twenty years has
been less than three. If there were 10,000 prostitutes in London—a low
estimate,—there would be an annual death rate of 2,000, provided we
assume a five year lease of life: yet out of 790,000 women between 18
and 35 resident in London, only 3,059 died in 1909. Finally, of the
11,823 women committed to Holloway Jail in 1908, many of them
prostitutes of over five years’ standing, only six died in the course of
the year.[39] The explanation is to be sought in the fluctuating
constitution of the prostitute army already pointed out. Prostitutes
disappear rather than die,—a fact of great practical significance as we
shall discover; only a part—it is uncertain of what size—remain
prostitutes: a small fraction marry, a much larger fraction return to
work; those who stick to the business wind up as the servants of younger
prostitutes, occasionally as brothel-keepers; a few of them are found as
aged hags, offering themselves for a copper coin below the bridges of
Berlin or in the dark corners of Whitechapel.
The considerations just dwelt on make anything approaching an accurate
estimate of the number of prostitutes in a given city entirely
impossible. In the first place, because of the general flux above
described; in the second, because particular causes—the conditions of
trade, the season of the year, the presence or absence of local
festivities, such as the Wakes and Bank Holiday in Great Britain, the
October Fest at Munich, the Carnival at Cologne,[40] finally, the
varying pressure of local authorities, all operate to disturb for better
or worse the general movement above indicated. Only the roughest
approximations can therefore be made by way of obtaining an imperfect
picture; and for the most part, the guesses are not to be trusted too
far, even for that purpose. At Paris, Maxime du Camp assessed the number
at 120,000,—an estimate that has by common consent been rejected as
manifestly absurd; M. Lépine, the able and accomplished ex-Prefect of
Police, inclines to a figure varying from one-half to two-thirds as
large, say 60,000 to 80,000—itself generally viewed as much too high,
even on a liberal interpretation of the terms; MM. Yves Guyot and
Augagneur, distinguished publicists, estimate 30,000;[41] Turot, still
more conservatively, 20,000;[42] Carlier, formerly chief of the
municipal police, cuts even this moderate estimate down: he concedes
only from 14,000 to 17,000. His logic is worth noting, for I shall recur
to a similar method of calculation. He assumes that for every
clandestine prostitute actually arrested for solicitation, intoxication,
etc., “there are at least five or six more who ought to be.” Between
1872 and 1888, the non-registered prostitutes arrested averaged 2,797
annually; according as one employs as multiple five or six, the total
would be 13,985 or 16,782. But the method is not reliable: in the first
place, because in any case the multiple is probably too small; in the
second because the fluctuation in arrests shows clearly that arrests do
not increase “pari passu” with the increase in population, while
clandestine prostitutes increase still faster.[43] There were, for
instance, 1,932 arrests in 1888—the last of the years considered by
Carlier—as against 3,769 in 1872, the first. Moreover, from 1888 to
1903, the average annual arrests numbered 2,762, a slightly smaller
figure than in the former period. Were the method sound, one must
conclude that clandestine prostitution had not increased between
1872[44] and 1903, despite the fact that population rose from 1,851,792
to 2,660,559.
An estimate of 80,000 was once current for London,—an unquestionable
exaggeration. The Home Office reported in 1837 that the total number of
prostitutes known to the police as living in houses of ill-fame, walking
the streets and infesting low neighborhoods was 9,409;[45] twenty years
later a similar return made by Sir Richard Mayne, Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police, based on detailed reports from the several
districts yielded a total somewhat smaller, 8,600; a decade later the
number similarly reached had fallen to 6,515.[46] An unofficial count
recently made disclosed 8,000. If the figures for 1837 and 1857 are
fairly representative, the later ones are certainly much too low. The
probabilities are, however, that all these estimates include only
notorious and unmistakable prostitutes, excluding the numerous
clandestines and partials who figure in the continental calculations.
Equally uncertain calculations have from time to time been put forth
respecting other great cities. Dufour estimated the clandestine
prostitutes of Berlin at 50,000 in 1896, at a time when just above four
thousand were enrolled, assuming, that is, 12 clandestine for every
registered woman.[47] In three successive years, 1889, 1890, 1891, the
morals police arrested for solicitation and similar offences 3,220,
3,537, and 4,019 women respectively; of these, 640, 735, and 792
respectively were registered by the police on the ground that they were
incorrigible;[48] the rest were warned and released, despite the fact
that with probably few exceptions they were at the moment practising
professional prostitution.[49] It would appear, therefore, that, as the
police register only 1–5 of those they arrest, clandestine prostitution
is at least five times as extensive as professional; on this basis we
must assume 20,000 clandestine prostitutes for the German
capital—probably an underestimate, since, large numbers of clandestines
never being arrested at all, five is too small a multiple to employ.
It is perhaps needless to quote similar estimates for other places,
except by way of driving home the enormous extent of the evil, even if
it can not be definitely appraised. The prostitutes of Vienna have been
rated at 30,000, of Glasgow at 17,000,[50] of Cologne at 7,000, of
Munich at 8,000. The police records of Rome show 5,000 women who have
been in their hands latterly for some offence connected with
prostitution;[51] a Dutch register in process of compilation at police
headquarters, Amsterdam, already contains upwards of 7,000 names; in
that city the police have the names and addresses of 968 women well
known for this avocation;[52] in Rotterdam 1,206.[53] For the German
Empire as a whole, a not unreasonable calculation of 330,000 has been
ventured, side by side with a serious, though mistaken guess of one and
one-half million.[54] But the only safe data refer to the number of
registered women and the number of arrests; and though the former are
confessedly only a small fraction, their sum total is itself not to be
passed over lightly from whatever standpoint the matter is regarded:
Paris with its 6,418 (1903), Berlin with 3,559, Hamburg with 935, Vienna
with 1,689, Budapest with 2,000. If the evil is, on the average, only
five times as extensive as these figures indicate, there is enough to be
alarmed at, without a panic-stricken incursion into the realms of
baseless fancy.
Left to itself or to unhampered exploitation prostitution seeks
everywhere the same sort of outlets; the free professional, the
clandestine, the occasional, the partial, hunt their prey, openly or
furtively, according to circumstances, in the crowded thoroughfares of
retail trade, or loiter in cafés and theater promenades. Having found
their victim, they repair to their own rooms, to hotels, assignation
houses, etc. A large number avoid publicity and obtain their clientele
in the guise of friends through introduction or recommendation or
through the keepers of _rendezvous_-houses, who arrange appointments by
means of photographs and fill orders for patrons desiring a person of
particular type. A small and steadily decreasing number of prostitutes
suffer themselves to be immured in bordells, i. e., houses of
prostitution licensed or authorized by the police in certain towns, e.
g., in Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and in Geneva, and
conducted by a proprietor or mistress who collects the entire income,
paying the inmates a stipulated percentage. In places where bordells are
forbidden as well as in places where they exist, a non-licensed and more
or less similar establishment has sprung up,—the brothel, which commonly
represents itself as a boarding-place, where a certain number of
prostitutes have their own rooms, pay the keeper a fixed sum for their
keep and retain whatever else they earn. Into such establishments the
police of Hamburg, Bremen, Dresden, Cologne, having the right to
designate the registered prostitute’s dwelling-place, yet being
forbidden to license bordells, force as many of the women as they can
lay hold of,—a violation of the statute in spirit, as we shall shortly
perceive. In London and Berlin, the brothel takes a looser form, and
amounts usually to nothing more than the casual combination of a few
women who utilize their joint premises for carrying on their business.
It is worth noting, as we pass, though we shall return to the point,
that, whether the police favor the licensed bordell or, by stretching
their authority, force women into barracks or brothels, a segregated
district, into which the prostitutes of a city are confined, exists
nowhere in Europe, and is nowhere supposed to be either desirable or
feasible. A few streets—in Hamburg for example, are tenanted either only
or almost entirely by prostitutes under police pressure; but they do not
form a district, for they are widely separated, and they contain in any
event only a fraction of the total number of local prostitutes,—not even
all the registered women of the city. A single street in Bremen is
inhabited altogether by prostitutes; but it is absurd to speak of
segregation in reference to seventy-five women in a town containing
hundreds of others living at large. Elsewhere, at Paris, Rome, Geneva,
Vienna, Budapest, where the bordells are officially recognized and even
favored,—they are scattered throughout the respective cities, no single
street usually containing more than one or two.
Prostitution tends, further, to associate itself with the sale of
alcohol; in consequence of which loose women congregate in low grade
drinking and amusement-places, and are utilized wherever law and custom
do not interfere, to assist in the sale of drink. I have already called
attention to the low morality of the barmaid in certain portions of the
Continent. In the German cities, outright prostitutes are employed to
push the sale of drink, by drinking with and otherwise entertaining
their already more or less intoxicated patrons; screened corners and a
quick succession of new faces characterize the so-called Animierkneipe
and American bars,[55] which are bitterly denounced as perhaps the most
demoralizing form that prostitution has as yet assumed. Hardly more than
a variation of Animierkneipe is the dance hall, varieté, or cabaret,
where the “artiste” is a prostitute mingling freely with the audience at
the conclusion of her turn and relying largely on alcohol to make her
way quickly with her casual acquaintances. Finally, pretended
employments,—cigar shops, massage-establishments, and employment
agencies illustrate in one place or another at once the timidity and the
stubbornness of the phenomenon; for though prostitution easily takes
fright and abandons any one shape under the frown of unfavorable opinion
or the pressure of the law, it tends to reappear in another guise. We
shall subsequently consider these efforts to control or suppress
particular aspects of the evil, and their consequences.[56]
One more word is required here by way of mere description.
Prostitution in Europe as an organized business is by no means limited
to the intercourse of persons of opposite sexes. A homosexual
prostitution,—prostitution, that is, in which the parties belong to
the same sex,—has developed on a considerable scale. Notorious resorts
for those addicted to homosexuality are to be found not only in Paris
but in smaller towns, like Hamburg. Berlin is, however, probably the
main mart. In prominent thoroughfares, bars exist to which only women
resort as well as bars to which no woman gets access; and at
intervals, large homosexual balls are given, attended only by persons
of a single sex. I witnessed one such affair, at which some 150
couples, all men, appeared. It is estimated that between 1,000 and
2,000 male prostitutes live in Berlin; forty homosexual resorts are
tolerated by the Berlin police; and it is reported that some 30,000
persons of marked homosexual inclination reside in the German capital.
The prostitute is everywhere attended by a complementary phenomenon—the
pimp, who lives upon her earnings, in return for which she is as a rule
treated with brutality.[57] The police estimate that something like 50%
to 90% of the prostitutes of the large European cities support men in
this fashion—not only the street-walkers and scattered prostitutes, but,
not infrequently, bordell inmates, as well.[58] The tie is easy to
describe, difficult to understand. No practical advantage accrues to the
woman, for in Europe the pimp affords her absolutely no protection
against the police; indeed, the reverse is apt to be the case, for the
police, tolerant of an inoffensive prostitute though they be, are
unrelenting in their hostility to the pimp whom they rightly regard as a
criminal, either actual or in the making. The woman may be compromised
by the association; she certainly can not be protected. One is thrown
back for an adequate explanation on the fundamental fact of sex
relation. The woman has no attachment whatsoever with her stream of
casual customers; but the pimp belongs to her. A vestige of affection, a
sense of property lies at the bottom of the connection; her blunted
sense does not revolt from the price she pays for it. This view is
strongly favored by the fact that the woman’s loyalty will endure every
strain that her mate may put upon it,—abuse, deprivation, or what
not,—every strain, except competition. The difficulties of obtaining a
conviction are practically insuperable unless jealousy loosens the
woman’s tongue.[59]
Despite the general similarity to which I have repeatedly adverted,
there is a notion current that prostitution in Paris is subtly different
from that in other great cities, that the women are less mercenary, the
practice less odious or repulsive. Parisian prostitution enjoys indeed
the glamour of a Bohemian background and a more picturesque tradition;
but beyond this I saw no reason to think the notion well grounded. In my
observation, prostitution is even more uniform internally than
externally: it is everywhere purely mercenary, everywhere rapacious,
everywhere perverse, diseased, sordid, vulgar, and almost always filthy.
In her bloom, the Parisian cocotte possesses a bit of Gallic grace and
verbal cleverness that is perhaps denied to English, German, or
Scandinavian women of the same class. But it is soon brushed away by
excess, drink and perversion. The refined courtesan of the books is
practically as rare in Paris as in London and Berlin. Pretentious
prostitution is indeed nowadays international; there is no distinction
in type, origin, or bearing between the women of Monte Carlo, Ostende,
the Ambassadeurs, or the Palais de Dance. At different times the same
individuals may be found in all these resorts. At the lower level, all
is equally sordid everywhere. The grisette of the Bal Tabarin is, like
her English or German sister, a pathetic figure, whose livelier speech
and simulated gaiety does not hide poverty, loneliness, vulgarity, or
the ravages of overwork, irregular hours, disease, and absinthe. A day
at St. Lazare or police headquarters—and thither those who remain
prostitutes eventually come—quickly dispels any illusion one may
entertain on this score: Holloway Jail and the Inspection bureaus of
Hamburg, Vienna, and Stockholm have nothing more degraded or repulsive
to show.
The cost of prostitution, near and remote, direct and indirect, outruns
any calculation that one would dare to formulate. Payment for service
varies from a few copper coins to several hundred marks or francs;
incidental expense for accommodations, amusements, liquor, gratuities,
gifts, may double the immediate outlay. The Berlin street girl of fair
grade demands five or ten marks;[60] with her customer she takes a cab
or taxi, for which he pays; they resort to a hotel or room of which she
has the use and for which he pays perhaps six marks more; she demands
pin-money for herself, the maid or concierge. Money is the sole object
of her effort, the whole burden of her talk. “The Berlin street-walker,”
writes Schneider, “immediately asks the stranger whom she accosts: ‘what
will you give me?’ Once at home with her, the bargaining begins anew,
for, now that she has him, she can raise her demands.”[61] Impossible as
it is to be definite, one fact stands out: the prostitute living at
large is swindled by every one who has dealings with her: her landlord,
by way of recompense for the legal risk he may run,[62] the dressmaker,
milliner, grocer, butcher, etc. The London street-walker pays three
guineas in rental where an honest family pays one. Nor is her outlay
limited to her own necessities, for she must earn enough to satisfy the
rapacity of her pimp, besides. Her business interest and bad taste lead
her to indulge in shoddy and relatively expensive luxuries, soon worn
out or discarded. The price of all this, mere livelihood, extravagance,
and rascality, her patrons pay; from them every sou is obtained.
A clearer picture can be obtained in the case of the bordell, where
business methods prevail.[63] The more elaborate of these establishments
represent large investments. The latest bordell of Budapest required an
initial outlay of 500,000 crowns ($100,000), on which a very liberal
return is expected. Fiaux cites a second-class establishment in Paris
that yields an annual profit of 70,000 fr. and notes that the same
proprietors often run a chain of houses.[64] In these places, a minimum
price for service is usually fixed; entrance fee, tips, and alcohol are
of course “extra.” In Paris, the entrance fee at pretentious
establishments is 20 francs; from that it ranges downward as low as
five. The inevitable bottle of wine at the former also costs 20 francs;
at the latter, whatever can be wheedled or coaxed.[65] Rendezvous
establishments, incurring greater risk, charge correspondingly; 40
francs, if modish; five, if utterly wretched. Those with a carefully
guarded clientele sometimes exact as much as 100 francs! At Stockholm,
the charge varies from a few pennies to twenty-five crowns (about
$7.50).
In the long run, whatever the women earn, they rarely have anything to
show for it. The bordell-keeper plies them hard and then manages to keep
them in her debt. Despite the fact that they may entertain anywhere from
five to fifty guests in twenty-four hours, they do not own the clothes
on their back, when they make up their mind to leave! Schneider
calculates the minimum payment of a girl for bare living in the better
bordells of Hamburg, Leipzig, and Vienna at 300 to 600[66] marks a
month—an underestimate, as he himself subsequently avers. Seventy-five
wretched creatures are harbored in the barracks of Helenenstrasse,
Bremen, independently of each other; several of them figured out for me
the amount they must earn merely to live; from which it appeared that
10,000 marks a year each barely sufficed: the first charge for their
support was therefore 750,000 marks! In the Roman brothels, the girls
must average 10 to 12 men a night, in order to earn the high charges
made for their keep; in the lowest resort of Altona, the wretched inmate
pays 75 marks a week for her mere board and lodging; at Dresden, the
bordell women are charged up with 100 marks a week for the same bare
necessaries. Among the common prostitutes of Stockholm are found women
who claim to earn—and to spend—sums ranging from 3,000 to 12,000 crowns
annually. A careful study was made by Dr. Lindblad of 712 cases;[67] the
number of customers ran from less than one on the average daily to as
high as 20 when business was brisk; assuming 225 working days per
year,[68] the women must have averaged incomes of $1,080 each annually.
Of 569 from whom information could be obtained, 513 save absolutely
nothing, and only seven claimed to have saved a tidy sum.[69]
I have spoken thus far only of the money immediately involved,—the sums
paid to the prostitute for her service, the sums paid out by her for her
keep. But the account is not so simple. We may not overlook the loss
involved in the unproductiveness of this army of women; expenditure on
alcohol, gifts and demoralizing amusements; the long score chargeable to
venereal disease, including the loss in earnings, the outlay for
treatment, both of the immediate victims and those still more
unfortunate on whom, though innocent, some part of the curse and its
cost not infrequently devolves. Upwards of 10,000 individuals are now
annually treated for venereal complaints in the public hospitals of
Berlin alone. These are essential items in the cost of prostitution. Of
the total loss only the roughest guesses can be made; but it is worth
noting that any estimate that endeavors to include all the factors,
direct and indirect, soon reaches into the millions. Losch, for example,
has reckoned the annual cost of prostitution to the German Empire at
something between 300 and 500 million marks.[70] This outlay may be
contrasted with that spent by the Prussian Government on its entire
educational system: its universities, secondary schools, elementary
school system, technical and professional institutions of all kinds
involving a budget in 1909 of a little less than 200,000,000 marks.[71]
Assuredly the economic burden imposed on society by prostitution is
comparable with that due to standing armies, war, or pestilence.