REGULATION AND ORDER—THE STREETS
Regulation defined.—General description of the system.—Regulation in
Berlin.—Compulsory and voluntary inscription.—The Sittenpolizei
(Morals Police).—Variations from the Berlin system.—The Paris
system.—Additional variations.—Lack of legal sanction.—Administrative
punishment.—Liberality of regulation in Vienna.—Varying size of the
morals police division.—No approved system of regulation.—All alike
arbitrary in character.—Inscription lists relatively small.—General
tendency downwards.—Objections to regulation from standpoint of
rescue and preventive effort.—Objections to summary police
process.—The inscription of minors.—So-called clandestine
prostitution.—Omissions.—Disappearances.—External order in regulated
cities.—Failure of regulation to affect conditions.—Regulation
inconsistent with strict order on streets.—Arrests for infraction of
rules.
I have thus far endeavored to convey some notion of the complexity and
extent of modern prostitution and to point out the peculiar difficulties
that attend an effort to deal with it on simple lines. I have described
the measures now beginning to be taken to diminish demand, to abridge
supply, and to interfere with efforts to exploit the existing supply.
Endeavor in these various directions looks to gradual amelioration of
the situation now generally existing in large cities. Meanwhile,
prostitution is a phenomenon that must be dealt with by every municipal
government. What are the methods employed in Europe and with what
results?
Generally speaking, two opposite policies are employed: regulation and
abolition. The former endeavors to handle prostitution by inducing it to
submit to certain rules; it urges that as a matter of fact prostitution
exists, is a social pest, and cannot be summarily wiped out; something
will, however, be gained for decency, health, and order, if the
phenomenon can be forced to conform to conditions laid down by the
police authorities. These conditions form the regulations from which the
policy in question derives its name.
The opposing party—the abolitionists—agree as to the mischief due to
prostitution, as to the impossibility of extirpating it, as to the
difficulty of repressing it, as to the unwisdom of allowing it to
flourish rampant. They insist, however, that regulation fails to achieve
its purpose; worse still, as they argue, the moment prostitution is
accepted provided it submits to certain rules, the state is placed in
the position of authorizing, legalizing, or privileging the practice of
vice. While the regulationists claim that the privileges conferred do
not embody the license to do an immoral and illegal thing, but merely
involve common sense acceptance of the inevitable, the abolitionists
retort that, verbal quibbles to the contrary notwithstanding, regulation
is a compact with vice. In the present and succeeding chapters these two
opposing policies will be described and the effort will be made to
decide the issues raised by them.
To describe regulation is by no means an easy or simple task; for the
systems in vogue in different places vary fundamentally and essentially.
They agree in stipulating that prostitutes registered with the police
must heed certain restrictions placed upon their conduct in the interest
of public order and decency, and that they must present themselves at
regular intervals for medical examination in the interest of public
health. They agree, that is, in their avowed objects. There is, however,
no general agreement whatsoever as to what is feasible or necessary in
order to attain the objects in question. The more thoroughly one
examines European practice and theory in the matter, the more one is
perplexed as to precisely what that practice and theory essentially are.
The general term “Regulation” covers up difficulties and inconsistencies
respecting which even the partisans of control are still widely at
variance. This will become clear, if, after describing the rules in
force at one place, I point out the divergencies from these that obtain
elsewhere.
For the sake of simplicity, I shall divide the discussion into two
parts: the first dealing with registration and with regulation in so far
only as they touch the preservation of order and decency; the second,
dealing with regulation in so far as it touches the question of venereal
disease. Berlin shall furnish the basis of our discussion.[232]
The Berlin prostitute almost invariably first comes into contact with
the police in consequence of street soliciting.[233] The plain-clothes
morals police, shortly to be described, are charged with the duty of
watching not only registered women—to see that they respect the
regulations—but also unregistered women whose actions arouse the
suspicion that they are seeking to practise prostitution for money,—the
offence which is alone obnoxious to German law.[234] We are concerned to
trace the course of the latter.
A woman whose behavior is suspicious is, in the first instance, warned
by the officer—not arrested; if warning is unavailing, arrest follows.
Should she prove to the examining officer before whom she is taken that
she has a proper dwelling-place, she is released on undertaking to
appear next day before the morals police; if she is without dwelling or
resources, she is taken there at once. In any case, she has at police
headquarters no contact whatsoever with inscribed women, who may happen
to be under arrest at the same time. Whatever may happen elsewhere,
contamination does not occur there. Henceforth the procedure varies,
according as the girl is under 18 years of age, between 18 and 21, or
over 21. If under 18, she can nowadays in no event be inscribed; she
must be turned over to her natural or legal guardian or to the juvenile
court in order to bring her under proper conditions either in her own
home or in an institution of the required type. If the girl is between
18 and 21, the same preliminary steps are taken; the morals police
communicate with parent or guardian, as previously mentioned; and an
endeavor is made to secure wholesome conditions for her at home, in some
other family or in an institution.[235] If these efforts are
unsuccessful,—and the facilities are so far in arrears of the
requirements that successful placing is possible for only a small
fraction of the cases,—the girl, despite the fact that she is a minor,
may be inscribed, should she be re-arrested for the same offence and
adjudged guilty in court.[236] Women over 21 are at once turned over to
the courts upon arrest and after conviction may be summarily enrolled.
In addition to such enrolment by compulsion, women over 21 are also
enrolled upon their own application.
Up to the moment of inscription, prostitution for money or its
equivalent is an offence punishable by imprisonment and hard labor;
after inscription, the state withdraws its objection. The woman is
permitted or authorized to earn her living by prostitution, provided she
obey the following directions.[237]
She must not loiter offensively in streets and public places, nor
solicit, nor be found in the company of prostitutes or pimps;[238]
except in case of urgent need, she must not walk in the following
streets and places, viz., The Zoological Garden, Unter den Linden,
Friedrichstrasse, Potsdamer Platz, etc.;[239] she is forbidden to linger
in the vicinity of schools, churches or royal buildings, or to attend
the theater, circus, expositions, museums, or concert gardens attached
thereto;[240] she is to have no intercourse of any kind with
minors;[241] she must admit police officers at any time into her
dwelling, day or night, and give information about any person discovered
with her;[242] she must keep police headquarters constantly informed of
her address;[243] she may not reside in the vicinity of schools,
churches, or public buildings and must change her dwelling on peremptory
notice from the police.[244] Any infraction of these regulations is
punishable by imprisonment for not longer than six weeks; but the
condemned woman may also be remanded to the police, on expiration of
this sentence, for a workhouse term imposed by the police of not
exceeding two years, in their discretion.
I have said that inscription at Berlin may be either compulsory or
voluntary; that is, an unregistered woman arrested for practising
prostitution without authorization in the shape of police registration
and thereafter either warned in vain or punished, may be inscribed by
the police, even though she protest against it; thenceforth she is
compelled to comply with the regulations above named as well as those to
be hereafter described in dealing with the sanitary aspect of police
control. This is compulsory inscription. Or, without waiting to be
forcibly inscribed, she may appear and herself request to be inscribed,
whereby she voluntarily undertakes to respect the obligations that
inscription imposes upon her. It is apparently easy to understand why a
police force, believing in the necessity of regulation as a means of
preserving decorum, and in its efficacy as a means of promoting
sanitation, should favor compulsory inscription; but why should a
prostitute herself, without pressure from the police, ever ask to be
subjected to its régime? A complete explanation will gradually emerge as
we proceed with the description and discussion of regulation; but a
partial account must be given at once. I remarked in the foregoing
chapter that prostitution for gain is in itself a crime according to the
letter of the German law; the prostitute is liable to arrest,
punishment, eviction, whenever it can be proved that she earns money
through immorality, whether she have other occupation or not.[245]
Voluntary inscription is an open confession of irregular life as a
business. Instead, however, of leading to her immediate punishment for
admitted violation of the law, confession and inscription operate in
precisely the contrary way; they relieve the woman of molestation
provided she agrees to carry on her illegal business in compliance with
police formulæ. Once inscribed, she is free to seek and to entertain
patrons as long as she does so without scandal. Inscription—voluntary or
compulsory—thus involves her submission to certain conditions, more or
less restrictive and capable of somewhat disturbing her business
operations; but it has the great advantage of relieving the prostitute
of vague dread of police interference in general. How far the conditions
to which she subscribes when registered are enforced we shall learn
later.
The characteristic features of the Berlin regulations are then as
follows: either voluntary or compulsory inscription; arbitrary and
additional police sentence following judicial sentence, in case the
court so orders; interdiction to prostitutes of prominent thoroughfares,
amusement, and other resorts; non-inscription of minors under 18;
possible inscription of minors between 18 and 21; and complete control
of dwelling-places. As the local police are opposed to bordells and
brothels, it follows that the legalized prostitution of Berlin is
scattered through the city.
For the enforcement of the Berlin regulations a specialized police
division, known as the Sittenpolizei or morals police, exists. Its head
is an Inspector; he is assisted by five assistants, called
Commissioners; and he commands a force of 200 patrolmen, who, in plain
clothes, walk the streets in pairs. These men have sole and complete
charge of the vice problem; the uniformed police have no duty or
responsibility in connection with prostitutes or prostitution,
intervening only in case of an emergency—a street brawl, for example,
when there are no morals police in sight. The duty of the morals force
is twofold. First, they observe the inscribed women, in order to prevent
infractions of the regulations. If a medical visit—to be described in a
subsequent chapter[246]—is missed, a morals patrolman searches for and
produces the offender; if a registered woman otherwise notoriously
transgresses her bargain, it is left to the morals policeman to take her
in hand. Secondly, the morals force is charged with the duty of watching
the uninscribed—usually called clandestine—prostitutes. I have already
told how these women are observed, warned, and if they continue to be
objectionable, arrested;—in all these steps, the morals patrolman is the
agent who deals with the prostitute. His judgment and discretion
determine who shall be warned, who shall be arrested, and thus, in the
long run, who shall be forcibly inscribed. I shall shortly explain more
fully the working of the system, but it is important at the outset to
show the reader the nature and extent of the responsibility laid on the
morals police.
Regardless, for the moment, of the manner in which the above mentioned
regulations are executed, or the results thereby attained, it is
interesting to note that in no two German cities is the same system in
vogue. Nor do the differences touch mere matters of detail; they go to
the very root of the whole matter. Berlin has, as we have seen, in
addition to voluntary, also compulsory inscription, with scattered
prostitution; that is to say, a prostitute detected in the practice of
her vocation may be inscribed against her will; thereafter she is forced
to reside in a place approved by the police,—which place will in no
event be a brothel or a bordell. Bremen, proceeding on the basis of the
same statute, has only voluntary inscription, and women who thus offer
themselves for inscription are compelled to occupy quarters in a single
street in houses which, whatever the theory, are practically
bordells;[247] that is, no woman is inscribed except on her own
application and a woman so inscribed may remove her name from the list
at her pleasure; the sole condition being that she live in
Helenenstrasse during inscription, and remove from it to some other part
of the city whenever she cancels her enrolment; of course, cancellation
of her inscription and removal to another part of town do not
necessarily involve any change in her occupation. Therefore a small
number of Bremen prostitutes are inscribed and corralled; the rest—all
non-registered—live as and where they will. Bremen and Berlin are
therefore decidedly dissimilar. Other cities differ from them both and
from each other. Munich, for example, has, like Bremen, only voluntary
inscription, but, unlike Bremen and like Berlin, only scattered
prostitution. Stuttgart adds another variation: for, unlike Bremen,
Munich, and Berlin, the inscribed women live in scattered bordells, and
in them only. Hamburg is again different: for, like Berlin, it has both
compulsory and voluntary inscription, while, contrary to all the above
examples, the inscribed women live partly in bordells on a number of
different streets and partly in approved but scattered lodgings on the
Berlin plan. Nor are the possible combinations even yet exhausted: for
Dresden, Cologne, Frankfort, and other cities have each its own
idiosyncrasies.
Substantially the same variations are found in the other countries and
cities that I visited. For example, in Paris, inscription is, as in
Berlin, both voluntary and compulsory; the inscribed prostitute dwells
in a bordell or not, as she pleases; she may, however, instead of living
in a bordell, leave her name and address with the keeper of an
authorized _rendezvous_ house, to which she regularly repairs or may be
summoned between certain hours; these houses, like the bordells, are
found in many sections of the city; meanwhile no part of the town is
exempt from prostitutes occupying scattered lodgings. Though they are
thickest in certain well-known sections of Montmartre and the left bank
of the Seine, they are also found in the Avenue Victor Hugo and the
fashionable streets radiating from the Arc de Triomphe. In Vienna, once
more, only voluntary inscription prevails: no woman is enrolled against
her will. But if a woman carries on professional prostitution, the
regulations make it her duty to enroll herself voluntarily; if she fails
in this duty, she may suffer seriously! The rules expressly provide that
the police shall handle the non-registered women more severely than the
registered.[248] The woman’s freedom to enroll or not as she pleases is
thus ostensible rather than actual. It is assuredly a bit casuistical to
maintain that the prostitute may inscribe herself or not—only she will
be relentlessly pursued if she fails to exercise her option in the
desired direction. Once registered, however, she may live in a bordell,
or, as all but a mere handful do, privately. At Budapest, the girl is
first turned over to a social worker who pleads with her to desist from
her evil ways. If her efforts prove unavailing, registration follows.
Meanwhile, unregistered prostitution is harried with great severity. The
Stockholm regulations also make it the woman’s duty to register;[249]
but, as the chief of the division is authorized to observe
non-registered women “suspected of immorality,”[250] it is clear that
compulsory enrolment is not impossible.
Divergencies touch other points also: as for example, the circumstances
that lead to arrest; the registration of minors; of married women; of
women with other means of livelihood; the employment of non-judicial
administrative punishment; the cancellation of inscription; etc. Married
women can be forcibly enrolled in Paris and Berlin and, with the
husband’s consent, in Budapest. They are not even at their own request
permitted to enroll in Munich or Vienna. In one place it is argued that
marriage is often a mere form, for the husband is only the woman’s pimp;
if regulation is efficacious, or meant to be efficacious, it cannot
allow itself to be defeated by such a technicality. Elsewhere it is
argued that the institution of marriage is degraded, if a married woman
is expressly authorized by the law to practise prostitution for her
livelihood, and by inscription allowed to gain immunity for an otherwise
intolerable and illegal line of behavior. Again, in the matter of other
employment: the Berlin and Paris rules proceed on the assumption that
many occupations are either cloaks for the practice of professional
prostitution, or do not affect the character of the woman concerned. The
whole intent of inscription can therefore be defeated if the mere fact
that a woman follows some sort of occupation necessarily exempts her
from inscription. Hence women so engaged may be enrolled if they are
professional prostitutes. Indeed, the rules of some cities give these
women a certain leeway in the matter of reporting to the police so that
their other occupation may not be interfered with. The point is that
Paris, Berlin, and other North German towns see no inconsistency between
registration as a professional prostitute and simultaneous employment as
barmaid or otherwise. Bremen, Stuttgart, Munich, and Budapest take a
very different view. They regard any kind of employment as the beginning
or possibility of salvation; as soon as a girl begins to earn something
honestly, there is hope that she may clamber out of the mire; to enroll
her would be to brand her and thus to bar the road to betterment.
Finally, as to punishment: at Paris administrative punishment is
regarded as the very core of regulation. A registered woman has no legal
rights. She is absolutely in the hands of the police inspector, who, on
hearing the morals patrolman’s complaint against her, pronounces
sentence upon her. She may, of course, protest her innocence, but she is
allowed neither attorney to represent nor witnesses to support her. Nor
can the action of the police be reviewed by any regularly constituted
court of justice. The Paris police regard regulation as unworkable
without this summary administrative power. The Prussian police partly
disagree. They prefer that the courts should act in the first instance.
Only after the courts declare the woman guilty of professional
prostitution does she fall to the jurisdiction of the police. Once
there, however, she is absolutely without legal rights. At Hamburg and
Dresden it is likewise argued that prompt action, unhampered by
technicalities, is the only way to deal with such culprits, and
administrative punishment is accordingly still in vogue. The women may
without judicial trial be sent to jail on sentences running from 7 to 14
days, with 6 months more in the workhouse if without home or occupation.
Finally, in the matter of withdrawal from the police lists: Bremen,
Stuttgart, Vienna, and Budapest cancel inscription on request; they
regard every request as the possibility of a return to decency, and
fearful of ever interfering with such a desire, however faint, never
interpose an objection. Hamburg and Berlin, on the contrary, cancel no
inscription until the police are satisfied that the woman is in earnest;
an applicant is therefore secretly watched and on the report of an
ordinary patrolman embodying his interpretation of her comings and
goings, the ability of a prostitute to get a fresh start wholly depends.
Stockholm removes a woman from the list “until further notice” in case
she announces her decision to return to a decent life, proves to the
inspector that she has an honorable occupation or other means of
support, and after three months’ surveillance, is favorably regarded.
In one respect, Vienna differs at least in the letter of the regulations
from all other cities. The reader will have remarked the effort of the
Berlin stipulations to remove the prostitute from human associations.
She is barred from certain streets; she is forbidden certain places of
amusement. These restrictions are not conditioned upon her conduct, but
upon the fact that she is a prostitute, and they form an important part
of the regulations not only of Berlin, but of Paris, Munich, Brussels,
and other cities. We shall have something to say later of the
enforcement of these, as well as other, rules. But, as showing once more
the total failure of any agreement as to the details, the new Vienna
regulation entirely abandons even the attempt to make the prostitute an
outcast in this sense; she is only forbidden to appear in a group of
immoral women or with a pimp. As to the rest, it is expressly declared:
“In respect to her behavior she is liable only to the same rules as to
order and decency that apply to all other persons.”[251]
Divergencies might be still further multiplied. I might point out that
there is no agreement as to what constitutes the sort of prostitution
which must be amenable to regulation, if regulation is successfully to
achieve its purpose in preserving order and health. Germany holds that
regulation need apply to prostitution only in so far as money passes;
and the actual passing of a material consideration must be either
admitted or proved. Austria urges that no headway can be made against
such a technicality; the Vienna police, therefore, after watching and
vainly warning, arrest on suspicion. Berlin acts most rigorously when
the girl is without a definite home;[252] Stuttgart and Bremen enroll
only when the girl has a definite home, and in a bordell[253] at that.
It is clear that the variations mentioned seriously involve the nature,
scope, and applicability of the system. I shall, as I proceed, discuss
them on their merits. But I want for the present simply to call
attention to the fact that, what at long range is called a system, or
the system, of regulation, proves on fuller knowledge to be a very large
number of systems,—a confusion of systems, inconsistent with one another
in viewpoint and diverse in organization, range, operation, and even
purpose. Confusion in structure may be taken to indicate that a
satisfactory technique of regulation remains to be worked out. It
becomes, therefore, important to accompany any discussion of the merits
or demerits of regulation with a bill of particulars specifying the
precise form of regulation in question; for the variations above noted
are not immaterial or accidental. Their number and importance at once
introduce grave suspicion into the mind of the disinterested observer.
Though systems of regulation differ thus in practically every respect,
they are singularly alike in one highly important regard: they have been
generally developed by more or less arbitrary action on the part of the
police and without the deliberate and express sanction of a competent
legislative authority. From this statement, the British Contagious
Disease Act—long since repealed—must be excepted; to the extent that
that legislation introduced regulation into Great Britain, adequate
legislative authority could not be said to be lacking in any respect;
the Belgian system, too, reposing on communal law,[254] is apparently
well authorized; such is also the case in Hungary, where two
statutes—one passed in 1876, the other in 1899,—authorize the police
regulation of prostitution. Elsewhere this is not, and never has been,
the case. But continental tradition accords to the police an extensive
jurisdiction and initiative in regard to matters more or less loosely
left within their province. In dealing with certain matters, the police
are therefore in the habit of taking summary and arbitrary action on the
basis of custom or on the warrant of ancient degrees of dubious
validity. The courts usually decline to interfere, even though, as I
shall show, they do not hesitate to impugn the adequacy of the legal
basis. The police have everywhere become acutely uncomfortable on the
subject. They cling to the powers; but they crave explicit legislative
warrant such as will place their authority beyond suspicion. This
legislative reassurance they have nowhere obtained; neither in France,
nor Germany, nor Austria has the national legislature deliberately and
unambiguously created or even sustained by statutory enactment the
police regulation of prostitution, as now carried on in those three
countries: nay, more, in certain important respects, regulation has been
practised by the police only by subterfuge in more or less plain
disregard of the letter of the statutes.
The questions here involved are obviously of highly technical character.
The statement above made would not be greatly strengthened by the
citation of even weighty authorities, who are opposed to regulation on
principle; it would be easy to point out that their interpretation of
the law may unconsciously and even unintentionally have been influenced
by their position in reference to the policy itself. I propose therefore
to quote only jurists who are favorable to regulation, men whose
interest lies in making out the strongest possible case for its legal
warrant. As to Paris, I shall follow M. Lépine, to whom I have
previously referred as an extraordinarily able official.[255] The powers
there exercised by the police in respect to prostitution are derived
from a royal ordinance of 1684 appointing the Salpétrière for the
reception of prostitutes and vaguely prescribing that final sentences in
respect to them may be imposed by the police; by two subsequent
ordinances of 1778 and 1780 forbidding the renting of rooms to
prostitutes; and by a law of the year VIII (1799) authorizing the police
to watch prostitution, to provide for the security of the streets and to
check epidemics and infectious disease. From these general directions to
the minute specifications and exemptions of the Paris regulatory system
is indeed a far call. It is impossible seriously to maintain that they
warrant or were ever intended to warrant the procedure ostensibly
derived from them. The police themselves are so conscious of the
uncertain footing on which their system rests, that they have again and
again sought its validation through express legislation. In the year IV
(1795) of the Republic, the directory vainly asked that the legislative
body define prostitution and “give judicial proceedings a special form”;
subsequent failures to obtain explicit legislative sanction are recorded
in 1798 and in 1810,—the latter being the date of the recasting of the
penal code; legislators were at that time not prepared to forbid
regulation, but they refused to write it explicitly on the statute book.
In 1811, 1816, 1822, 1848, 1877, and 1895 similar efforts met with the
same failure. Reviewing these unavailing endeavors to establish
regulation on a secure legal basis, M. Lépine declared before the
Extra-Parliamentary Commission: “In these conditions the Police Prefect
has had no other resource but to cling to old methods which, even if not
converted into laws, have been tolerated and approved by all
governments.”[256]
The situation is no better in the rest of France. Regulation in the
provincial cities is based on certain paragraphs of a law of April 5,
1884,[257] in reference to which M. Hennequin, of the Ministry of the
Interior, a pronounced regulationist, admits: “Without doubt, the law
does not speak expressly of morals, and prostitution is not referred to
by name in article 97:”[258] that is, the comparatively recent statute,
on which provincial regulation in France rests, does not venture to
mention the policy in defense of which it is now invoked. The Austrian
regulations are likewise a creation of the police, ostensibly pursuant
to a general statutory provision that vaguely leaves the “punishment of
professional prostitutes to the police authority.”[259] But regulation
consists not in _punishing_, but in _condoning_ prostitution, provided
certain police stipulations be complied with. Like its French prototype,
the Austrian system thus lacks statutory basis as well as express
legislative sanction; and precisely as the French defect is admitted by
M. Lépine, regulationist, so the corresponding Austrian flaw is
confessed by Dr. Baumgarten, the capable, humane and cultivated official
who presided over the morals police of Vienna: “The legal basis upon
which the present system of police regulation reposes is throughout
vulnerable.”[260] The law must be so amended, he urges, that the police
are charged, not with _punishing_ prostitution, but with _watching_ and
_controlling_ it, on lines to be devised by themselves. Only if so
amended would the present system rest on an unequivocal legal basis.
Needless to say, no such amendment has yet been carried,[261] and the
regulation system in vogue in Austria stands, because, as in France,
lacking the protection of the _habeas corpus_ writ, the outcast can
obtain no footing in court.
The foundation of regulation in Germany is equally dubious. Paragraph
180 of the Criminal Code makes it a punishable offence to rent a room to
a prostitute. Now the moment the police inscribe a prostitute, they
register her dwelling-place; and they bear with particular severity on
prostitutes who are “without a definite domicile.”[262] Regulation[263]
begins, therefore, by flying in the face of the statute: whether
regulated prostitutes live scattered, as in Berlin, or interned, as the
Hamburg police prefer, regulation in so far as it involves their
inhabiting dwelling-places approved by the police is inconsistent with
the section quoted. Grave doubt exists further as to whether in any
event compulsory inscription is legally defensible. The present Imperial
Chancellor admitted that the law is “illogical and confused;”[264] and
the most recent decision of the Reichsgericht, involving the
interpretation of the statute, concedes that “the competency of the
police in the matter of compulsory inscription is not uncontested.”[265]
A recent ministerial instruction[266] endeavors to break the force of
objection, as far as possible without amendment of the statute, by
insisting that, though the police still retain the power of forcible
registration, it is not to be exercised in Prussia until the woman has
been regularly convicted of professional prostitution. A recent defence
of the adequacy of the legal basis pursues a line of argument itself
calculated to deepen mistrust: “The police are competent to do
whatsoever follows from the general nature of their business; they are
entitled to take such measures as are naturally dictated by their
objects. They are therefore competent to take such measures in reference
to prostitution as contribute to the achievement of police purposes. Now
the regulations governing prostitution aim to protect order and health.
Regulation is therefore a function that follows from the general
competency of the police. That is true in Prussia as in France. The
stipulations of the police regulations have therefore the force of
law.”[267] It will be observed that this author makes no pretense of
higher warrant than that of necessity as judged by a police authority
making its own rules. But perhaps still stronger evidence of the legal
insecurity of the existing systems is furnished by the radical changes
proposed in the draft of a new criminal code. Conceding that
prostitution as such is not to be punishable as a crime, it takes the
position that “it is necessary to watch prostitution” and empowers the
police to issue the necessary regulations, subject to prior enactments
on the part of the state legislatures; but these regulations may not
distinguish between controlled and non-controlled prostitutes,—they must
be applicable to all alike.[268]
The most striking fact in connection with the operation of all systems
of regulation is the small inscription list. There are, it is true,
variations: but the largest list, that of Paris, probably includes
hardly more than one prostitute in eight, from which maximum the lists
in other cities decline rapidly to utter insignificance. The following
table exhibits the size of the inscription lists, the population of the
towns in question, and the ratio between the two.[269]
The facts that stand out are the fractional nature of enrolment at its
very best, and the enormous variations in ratio. I shall point out the
reasons for this and later inquire for the effects.[270]
RATIO OF INSCRIBED WOMEN TO POPULATION
Number of inscribed Ratio of latter to
Population women former
Paris 2,888,110 6,000 (Approx.) 1 to 481
Marseilles[271] 550,619 639 1 to 861
Bordeaux 261,678 410 1 to 638
Lille 217,807 108 1 to 2,016
Nantes 170,535 125 1 to 1,364
Le Havre 136,159 136 1 to 1,001
Toulon 104,582 325 1 to 322
Berlin 2,071,257 3,559 1 to 582
Hamburg 931,035 935 1 to 995
Munich 596,467 173 1 to 3,441
Dresden 548,308 293 1 to 1,871
Cologne[272] 516,527 600 1 to 828
Frankfort 414,576 300 1 to 1,382
Stuttgart 286,218 22 1 to 13,010
Bremen 247,437 75 1 to 3,299
Mannheim 193,902 14 1 to 13,850
Augsburg 102,487 6 1 to 17,081
Munster 90,254 1 1 to 90,254
Vienna 2,031,498 1,689 1 to 1,203
Budapest 880,371 2,000 (Approx.) 1 to 440
Rome 542,123 225 1 to 2,409
Stockholm[273] 346,599 554 1 to 625
Brussels 659,000 182 1 to 3,621
Geneva 154,159 86 1 to 1,793
Different years show a considerable fluctuation in the above totals, but
the general tendency is markedly downward. Paris, for instance,
inscribed 4,519 in the year 1830, when its population was 800,000;[274]
in 1873, the registration was practically the same, 4,603; thenceforth
it declined steadily to 2,816 a decade later; since that time a
progressive rise brings it in 1903 to 6,418;[275] a decline is again in
progress, for 1910 does not exceed 6,000. At Berlin there was a steady
rise from 1886 to 1896: the list stood at 3,006 in the former year,
5,098 in the latter; since which time, despite increased population, the
enrolment declined to 3,115 in 1905;[276] i. e., almost 40%. The last
figures obtainable show a registration of 3,559. In Vienna, 1,780 stood
on the books in 1900, decreasing year by year until only 1,441 remained
in 1910; since the revision of the rules in that year, increased vigor
has brought about an increase to 1,689.[277] Hamburg has receded from
1,266 in 1903 to 935 in 1910.[278] Breslau dropped from 1,856 in 1889 to
1,045 just five years later;[279] Mannheim from 60 in 1890 to 13 in
1902.[280] Stockholm reached practically the same high water mark at
different intervals, showing the inevitable fluctuations with which,
there as everywhere else, inscription has been pursued. In 1903 the
number stood at 936,—the figure which it had also reached over a quarter
of a century before. Thereupon there came a decided drop: 119 women had
been newly enrolled in 1903; 67 were enrolled in 1904. By the year 1912,
the total enrolment—itself considerably larger than the effective
enrolment—had sunk to 554.[281]
In most cities—as the figures above given show—regulation is moribund,
and in many quite dead. As compared with the total volume of
prostitution, the enrolment is at the best unimportant, and at the
worst, altogether negligible. Paris, as I have said, registers perhaps
one in eight. If, as is estimated, there are 30,000 prostitutes in
Vienna,[282] the maximum inscription is barely 5%. As opposed to a
registration of 225 in Rome, the police records show 5,000 women under
observation at one time or another.[283] In the year 1909, 140 women
were inscribed at Munich; during the same year, the police were keeping
track of 2,076 clandestine prostitutes: the enrolment was thus less than
7% of those actually known,—and they were only part of the whole;[284]
in 1911, with 173 women inscribed, 2,574 clandestines were under police
observation, the former about 7% of the latter.[285]
The inexperienced outsider may jump to the conclusion that an active and
efficient police administration could easily enough gather into its net
most—or at least many—of those who now slip through. As a matter of
fact, there has been in some towns no lack of endeavor to accomplish
this very thing; but it does not, and cannot, succeed for reasons that
will be explained. And this quite regardless of the existence of any
strong sentiment adverse to regulation as such.
Nowhere, of course, is forcible inscription possible, unless a clear
case can be made out. The police agents are therefore bound to proceed
with great circumspection. They are indeed instructed that a hundred
omissions are preferable to a single error, or apparent error. The agent
may lay hands on the poor and friendless street-walker without danger of
exciting hostile criticism; but for several reasons the more
sophisticated forms of prostitution he dare not touch. Proof is harder;
the woman has friends; the public resents interference with personal
liberty. Forcible enrolment, therefore, very quickly encounters limits
beyond which it cannot be pushed. The mere size of the force at the
disposal of the police inspectors makes little difference; Berlin has a
relatively large body of agents, Vienna a very small one. Yet the latter
achieves almost as much as the former, because neither can forcibly
detain any but the most obvious and flagrant offenders.
But there is another difficulty, connected with the size of the morals
division. Berlin sets aside 200 men for the service; Paris 240; Vienna
6; Brussels 6; Dresden 18; Frankfort 14; Hamburg 24; Budapest 32; Bremen
3. It is complained at Berlin that 200 are inadequate; clearly then six
cannot suffice for Vienna. Yet to any proposition to increase the force
materially the objection is made that only a small body of men can be
protected against corruption or defilement. The morals police are thus
on the horns of a dilemma; if numerous enough to be aggressive they are
exposed to corruption; if few, they are inadequate. For, be it
remembered, wherever enforced inscription is in vogue, the morals police
have enormous power. It practically lies with them to say whether the
clandestine prostitute walking the streets is to be cited before the
division head for punishment and enrolment; whether the registered woman
is to be permitted with impunity to violate the stipulations above
given, or to be punished for infraction thereof. In general, the perils
to which a large force is exposed have decided the authorities in favor
of a small one; with the result that thorough and consistent action is
impossible.
A somewhat apologetic attitude has resulted from the general failure of
even forcible inscription to make a better showing: one is told that the
police do not desire a large list; that registration is purposely
limited, etc. The concrete evidence in favor of this purpose is the
presence at the larger police establishments of a social worker who
endeavors to dissuade women from the pursuit of a vicious life; but this
explanation is not convincing. Of course, regulation has no interest in
keeping in prostitution women who can be induced to leave it; but in the
case of women who are prostitutes and who cannot be dissuaded to desist,
regulation, if effective, must certainly enroll them. Regulation has no
desire to swell the ranks; but it cannot succeed unless it has a
complete list of those really in the ranks. The police apology is an
indirect admission that under modern conditions prostitution by reason
of its protean nature cannot be catalogued.
From the impossibility of cataloguing prostitution, other disastrous
consequences to which I have already adverted, inevitably flow. Wherever
a certain number of individuals are guilty of an offence, and but an
inconsiderable proportion of the guilty are punished, the favoritism of
the law leads inevitably into blackmail and corruption, by which it is
still further defeated. I shall discuss this aspect of the problem
somewhat more fully later on;[286] but at this point it is important to
note that, despite the unimpeachable character of the police heads, and
the splendid quality of the general force, wherever forcible inscription
is practised, that portion of the police force which comes into contact
with prostitution, viz., the morals police, is widely believed to be
contaminated. Whether with money or favors, the women buy immunity from
inscription; the patrolman, warned by his superiors that it is better to
let a hundred guilty women escape than to make one mistake, easily
conceals corruption beneath the pretense of caution.
Forcible inscription is therefore predestined to failure. But there are
weighty objections to it even in the limited form in which it is still
employed in a few places. For it traverses at right angles the modern
spirit. Our discussion of the nature of prostitution indicated that it
is frequently only a phase through which thousands of women pass; their
individual interest and the interest of society require that every
facility for exit and oblivion should be furnished. Regulation does
precisely the reverse: it brands the scarlet letter upon the woman’s
forehead. The heedless victim of an escapade may be thus converted into
a life-long outcast; society may be saddled with her and the harm she
spreads as a permanent burden, hardly to be got rid of, so long as she
lives. And this power, which once for all deprives her of the aspiration
to improve, is ultimately lodged in the hands of an ordinary patrolman:
_his_ observation, _his_ judgment, _his_ interpretation, _his_ assertion
determine whether or not she is to be pushed across the dividing line
into the abyss: his word against the girl’s. Bad though she may be, her
reluctance to request inscription is the faint voice of her better self,
not yet completely silenced; assuredly it is the function of a society,
whose arrangements are by no means guiltless of her fate, not to
extinguish, but to foster the feeble flicker of endangered personality.
It must not be forgotten that in every city there are at this moment
thousands of women technically liable to inscription who will in their
middle twenties and later emerge from immorality and prostitution;[287]
they can for the most part emerge, precisely because they are not
inscribed; successful inscription would in most cases finally rupture
the tie that will ultimately rescue them. It may be questioned whether a
mature woman ought to be permitted by society even voluntarily to brand
herself a professional prostitute: there is no shadow of doubt that no
modern society can afford to compel her to do so.[288]
The essentially medieval character of forcible inscription, by which
alone, I repeat, any showing at all can be made, is most clearly
illustrated by its connection with summary police power. No system of
inscription can achieve even the fractional success of the Paris and
Berlin systems if it allows the accused girl counsel and witnesses. For
the lists are kept at their present minimal size only because the police
can by summary action build them up as fast as they melt away.[289]
Frightful miscarriages of justice are bound to occur in consequence of
arbitrary action: for example, a woman leaving her wretched home in the
Rue des Cordiers is arrested by a morals policeman, in spite of her
protestations that she is on her way to procure medicine for a sick
child; while she is detained in prison, the child dies in the course of
the night.[290] Following her arbitrary detention, the Paris suspect is
brought before a police bureaucrat, who hears the accusing patrolman,
asks the girl or woman, perhaps terrified and certainly undefended, a
few questions and summarily orders her enrolment, if he so please:
thenceforth she is not only a social, but a legal outcast. She can by no
legal ingenuity be brought before a regularly constituted court; she is
amenable to police authority alone. Should she break, or be accused of
breaking, the stipulations to which she is now compulsorily
subordinated, she must accept the penalties imposed by the bureau chief,
without protest. Utter helplessness is her lot; and that too amid
conditions that conspire to bring about not improvement but further
degradation. For the accessories to Paris regulation, the depot at
police headquarters, the hospital and prison at St. Lazare are sheer
survivals into our day of the barbarous dungeons of the middle ages.
Whoso enters them may be said with truth to leave all hope behind. The
present presiding officer endeavors to impart a more or less humane
spirit to his decisions; but the conditions under which his power is
exercised would overtax the wisdom of Solomon. The task is itself wholly
out of keeping with the modern spirit.
Essentially, the objections to summary police action are equally strong
in Germany. Dr. Lindenau argues that the woman is technically somewhat
protected against police tyranny; but, he adds: “One must none the less
grant that the procedure in question is not well known to them.
Moreover, at best it procures only a police decision reached on the
basis of the police officer’s personal impressions.”
Insuperable difficulties thus confront a vigorous regulatory policy. If
regulation is needed to protect order and health and to prevent scandal,
then it is obviously impossible to leave it optional with the prostitute
whether she will be inscribed or not; force is absolutely necessary to
success. But to force there is at once the objection that it can be
applied to but relatively few cases at all; that it cannot be applied to
these without suspending all legal guarantees, and that, once these are
suspended, the way is open to corruption and oppression that are to a
modern community utterly intolerable.
But we have not yet recounted all the difficulties that beset
regulation. Not even forcible enrolment can greatly swell the lists
unless the inscription of minors is allowed. That the duty of the state
towards defenceless or erring children is custodial would appear to be a
principle on which modern society had already agreed; for a minor, at
any rate, there is always at least a ray of hope. Experience already
touched on shows, further, that though prostitution is commonest in the
teens and early twenties, large numbers of those who give way in these
years recover their self-possession afterwards. Hence, forcible or even
permissible inscription of girls under twenty-one is the very acme of
unwisdom and inhumanity. Yet, without it, a substantial inscription list
is impossible. Had the Paris police refused to enroll minors their list,
already relatively small, would have almost collapsed: between 1888 and
1903, 12,471 women were inscribed at Paris, 38% of whom were minors at
the time.[291] In the year 1901, 635 women over 21 years old and 660
minors were forcibly enrolled,—more minors than adults![292] The same
monstrous practice prevails elsewhere. The Stockholm regulations state
that as a rule girls under 17 are not to be inscribed; yet of 4,651 new
registrations between 1859 and 1904, 1,353 were under twenty years of
age;[293] of 338 women enrolled in 1905, 196 (i. e., 58%) had been
registered during their minority.[294] In Germany minors are inscribed
in Bonn, Danzig, Dessau (“but not under sixteen years of age!”),
Frankfort, where 43 were between sixteen and nineteen years of age,
Mannheim, Rostock, Wiesbaden, etc. In the small Munich enrolment—143 in
1909—there were six minors,—Munich-born.[295] Dufour’s tables show the
age of the youngest inscribed prostitute in the various German cities,
up to 1885: in East Prussia, she was fourteen years old; in the Rhine
province, Schlesien, Posen, West Prussia, Bavaria, fifteen; in eight
others over fifteen and under sixteen.[296] Berlin now refuses
inscription below eighteen and acts cautiously in case of girls between
eighteen and twenty-one; but in 1898—before the adoption of the present
policy—out of 846 newly inscribed women, 229 were minors of whom seven
were fifteen years old, twenty-one sixteen years old. But the evidence
afforded by Vienna is even more telling. The inscribed list there is on
the most favorable interpretation absurdly small: even so, 16% of those
inscribed are minors; meanwhile of non-registered prostitutes arrested
on the streets—prostitutes who, be it noted, must be enrolled if the
system is to be even fairly adequate to its intention—over 57% are
minors.[297] It is thus evident that in this essential matter, the
system is also on the horns of a dilemma: if minors are not enrolled,
the system collapses; if minors are enrolled, society perpetrates an
infamy.
A further weakness inherent in forced inscription has already been
alluded to: it is like pouring water into a sieve. When once the obvious
cases have been gathered, the total can hardly be increased, no matter
how great the pressure. Women disappear on the one hand as fast as they
are registered on the other. In a single month in Berlin sixty dropped
out; at Cologne, though 1,200 are registered in the course of the year,
the active list is hardly half that number. So at Vienna, while 2,600
stand on the books at the close of the year, 1,000 have vanished in the
same period, so that the effective inscription is about 1,600.
Johansson’s careful studies of the 2,442 women enrolled in Stockholm
between 1859 and 1884 show that 23% leave in the first year after
inscription.[298] With a total enrolment of 3,582 at Paris in 1880,
1,757 women disappeared,—46 by death, one by marriage, six to return to
a decent life, the rest simply dropped out, eluding police control in
one way or another. The following table exhibits the status there in
other years selected at random:[299]
Disappeared in
Total Number of the course of the Returned to
Year Inscribed Women Year Died Married Decent Life
1881 3,160 1,524 34 2 27
1884 2,917 985 39 13 6
1887 4,681 2,503 18 8 22
1893 4,793 1,121 9 8 17
1897 5,233 1,599 14 27 43
1900 6,222 823 26 39 57
Finally during the year 1901, 1,574 women were newly enrolled, while
1,880 dropped out; of the latter, 52 died, 34 married, 77 found other
means of subsistence, and 1,717 “disappeared.”[300] A certain point once
reached, the structure topples as fast as it is built up. At Dresden I
was frankly told: “Compulsion is useless; it only increases hiding and
disappearing.” Forcible inscription therefore cannot be operated.
On the other hand, as I have said, if inscription is voluntary, the
whole thing goes to pieces. The size of the enrolment at Bremen,
Stuttgart and Munich, where the girl decides for herself, is absurdly
small. The inducements offered are very substantial, for if a woman
complies with the regulations the police guarantee her the unhampered
prosecution of her business. Yet even so, a vestige of surviving decency
intervenes to keep far the greater number from voluntarily branding
themselves. In Paris, out of 1,574 enrolments in 1901, only 52 were
voluntary; out of 737 in 1908, only 36 were voluntary.[301]
Meanwhile, neither forced inscription, inscription of minors nor
inscription of working girls can build up a list that is at all
commensurate with the magnitude of the evil. The showy women of the
cafés, the boulevards, the variety theaters are absolutely free from
molestation. The Paris police “do not arrest, do not disturb, do not
even watch the well-to-do courtesans who frequent the Bois de Boulogne,
driving a fast pair of horses; who live luxuriously near the Parc
Monceau; who frequent theaters, concerts and balls,—in a word the
aristocracy of the underworld. Nor do they concern themselves with the
elegant women who in the afternoon or evening promenade on the main
thoroughfares. These have friends among the journalists,—so it is said;
they go scot-free, for fear of scandal. A third class is also immune:
the grisettes of the Latin Quarter. The demoiselles of the Boulevard St.
Michel are the faithful friends of the students: they are respected by
the police!”[302] These women are all technically called
“clandestine,”—an absurd misnomer, for their way of living is as
notorious as that of any registered prostitute in the city. A little
shrewdness enables them readily to avoid giving offence. The brunt of
the system falls upon the friendless and the stupid. The truth is that
no effort is made to secure thorough inscription,—partly because it is
foredoomed to failure, partly because it could be too easily balked by
corruption and intrigue, and partly for another reason that will appear
in due course. And this is just as true in other cities as in Paris.
Everywhere the police get hold of the dull and abandoned only. I recall
the indignant rejoinder of a Berlin street-walker, on my asking whether
she was inscribed: “No, indeed, only the stupid are inscribed.”[303]
Let us now address ourselves to ascertaining the results of regulation.
I have stated that in favor of the system two reasons are urged,—first,
that it is necessary to the preservation of order; second, that it
promotes the public health. The two must be separately investigated.
In respect to order on the streets, European cities of approximately the
same size are, with few exceptions, practically alike. I have pointed
out that the street-walker seeks by preference the main channels of
retail trade; there she is found in the late afternoon and evening
hours, noticeable by reason of slow gait, furtive expression, and more
or less striking garb. Her demeanor is usually restrained. If no
response is made to the invitation conveyed in a glance, she passes on;
doubtful or encouraged, she stops at a show-window or turns off into a
café or a side street. Only in the late hours of night, does she become
more aggressively provocative. This description applies to all the great
capitals—London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna; some fluctuation may be
noticed from time to time, according as police pressure relaxes or
increases; but this is also equally true of all alike. In general, it
may be said that external appearances in no one of them differ so
markedly from external appearances in the others as to imply a different
policy in reference to the phenomenon. Public opinion objects to scandal
without requiring complete suppression; to this attitude prostitution
has everywhere accommodated itself. The streets of London, in which, as
we shall see, no particular action is taken in reference to the
prostitute, are not to be distinguished essentially from those of Paris
and Berlin, in both of which minute specifications aim to exclude the
evil from prominent thoroughfares; nor are Paris and Berlin
distinguishable from Vienna, in which no such stipulations are made.
External conditions have everywhere ameliorated; the general police
attitude is everywhere understood and is everywhere much the same: hence
London without regulation, Paris with a fairly large inscription, Berlin
with a moderate one, and Vienna with a small one reach substantially the
same result.
The same general description holds of smaller cities. To this group
belong Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfort, Munich, Rome, Budapest, Copenhagen,
Stockholm, Lyons, Glasgow, Manchester, and Rotterdam. Roughly speaking
these cities vary in population from one-half to three-quarters of a
million inhabitants. On the main thoroughfares of their retail trade, a
certain number of prostitutes stroll during the accustomed hours; in the
intervals of patrolling the streets, the women are to be found in cafés,
coffee-houses, variety theaters, in which they are for the most part as
little aggressive as when on the streets. A glance, a half whispered
invitation and a smile form the usual preliminaries, rarely carried
further, unless an encouraging response is returned. From time to time,
increased pressure on the part of the police results in perceptible
improvement of street conditions; and this happens equally in Liverpool,
without regulation, and in Cologne, with it. I visited the latter city
at a time of distinct police activity. At eleven o’clock at night the
streets on which women used to loiter were practically clear; a solitary
street-walker, very suspicious of strangers, explained that conditions
had become intolerable and “for her part, she was going back to
Frankfort.” In general, however, the stranger walking the streets of
Hamburg, Rotterdam, or Munich would be entirely unable to conclude from
their condition whether regulation was in vogue or not; or, if so,
whether it is thoroughly or perfunctorily carried out, and to which type
the system belongs. Surely, a factor that does not modify the result
cannot be important in bringing it about.
From the preceding it may, I think, be fairly concluded that regulation
as it now exists in European cities has failed to improve order on the
streets. For, though there has been improvement, it has taken place
generally,—in cities that have regulation, in cities without it; in
cities where there is a tolerable inscription list, and in cities where
the inscription list is merely nominal.
On the other hand particular attention must be called to the fact that
regulation itself is an obstacle to thorough cleaning of a city’s
streets; it prevents the authorities from taking vigorous measures in
this direction. The law concedes to the inscribed prostitute the
privilege of living by immorality. In so far as the women live
scattered, they must be permitted to find customers, once the right to
earn a livelihood in this way has been granted; for that purpose they
must be permitted to show themselves in the streets, in cafés and
elsewhere. Street-walking as such is not forbidden and cannot be
forbidden in a regulated city unless the same authority that authorizes
a woman to practise prostitution sets out to starve her. Hence inscribed
prostitutes have the use of the streets excepting only certain
thoroughfares and places that are mentioned in the regulations.
But as a matter of fact not even these excepted places are—or can
be—protected from the inscribed women. Common sense refuses to consider
it a crime to walk on Friedrichstrasse, while patrolling one block below
on Charlottenstrasse is harmless; or that a woman, who is free to
promenade on Dorotheenstrasse must be fined and imprisoned for
promenading on the Linden running parallel thereto. The inscribed woman
who conducts herself without scandal on streets in which she is
tolerated, soon begins unobtrusively to invade those which are
forbidden: and so long as her demeanor is circumspect, no notice is
taken. Indeed the streets from which the licensed prostitute has agreed
to withdraw are not infrequently those where she is most at home; and a
large loophole for police favor and corruption is thus created by the
existence of rules only occasionally and capriciously enforced. But
other consequences follow. What is allowed to the inscribed woman cannot
be forbidden to the uninscribed: it is not in human nature to forbid to
the one what is so freely allowed to the other. The very fact that 6,000
inscribed women are legally entitled to patrol most streets in Paris and
are suffered to patrol the others, makes it impossible for the police to
act vigorously and continuously against six or eight times as many
clandestines who avail themselves of the same privilege. “What effect do
the street restrictions have?” I inquired of a Paris police functionary.
“None,” he replied, “they are a dead letter.” It practically results
that the police do not systematically interfere unless scandal arises;
in which event they would interfere anyhow, whether regulation existed
or not.
In respect to street order, regulation is, therefore, in my judgment, a
hindrance, not a help, for it is at war with its own avowed object.
Regulation is asked for that the women may be kept under control,—else,
it is argued, they will overrun the streets. Once under control, they
must be permitted to walk the streets; and if they, responsible to the
police, are permitted, how can others, not so obligated, be prevented?
Hence a measure designed to clean the streets ends by tying the hands of
the police, so that the streets cannot be vigorously cleaned.
Consequently no regulated city possesses streets as free from scandal as
the streets of Amsterdam, Zurich, and Liverpool,—all non-regulated
cities, in which a consistent and thoroughgoing course of action bearing
on all women alike is feasible.
That regulation, so far from cleaning the streets, is inconsistent with
that effort is not only evidenced by one’s senses; it is further proved
by police reports. If regulation succeeded, the inscribed women would
give the police the least trouble: as a matter of experience, they give
them the most. Paris affords the best proof of this statement. In the
year 1903, 55,641 arrests were made among inscribed women for street
offences. Meanwhile, among the far more numerous non-inscribed only
2,821 arrests were made. In Stockholm, against 413 enrolled women in
1903, 9,908 complaints were noted and 1,273 arrests made; three years
later against 241 women, 7,515 complaints are recorded, 1,246 arrests
made. In the years 1900–1904, 34.7% of the enrolled women received hard
labor sentences.[304] So, also, in Germany: the enrolled prostitutes of
Breslau and the number of them arrested in the course of the same year
were as follows.[305]
1890 1891 1892 1893 1894
Enrolled 1,630 1,209 1,162 1,064 1,045
Arrested 1,336 1,570 1,707 1,768 1,995
I shall recur to these figures for the purpose of showing later the true
inwardness of regulation. Meanwhile it is obvious that it does not
effectually prevent trouble.
Attention should also be called to the ineffectiveness of regulation in
dealing with offences. The women are arrested,—sentenced now to prison
for a few days, now for longer periods or set free at once,—only to
resume the way of life that led to their apprehension. Of the 55,641
arrests made in Paris, above mentioned, 41,719 resulted in immediate
dismissal. I watched the “trial” of a group of them,—several of whom had
been released from prison but a few hours before they were re-arrested;
one of them had spent 28 days out of the last month in St. Lazare;
others had been “sent-up” more times than they could recall. The less
hardened are so leniently dealt with that the restrictions are ignored
on the chance that nothing will come of an offence against them.
The offence on account of which arrests are made is usually disorder in
consequence of drink; occasionally, some more serious breach has been
committed. But with these problems ordinary police and judicial methods
are surely quite competent to deal. As much has been admitted to me by
high officials in both Paris and Berlin. One of the latter indeed has
publicly proposed to drop the order function from the duties of the
morals police and to secure the health function by attaching the work to
the health department; and the new regulations of Vienna to some extent
reflect this attitude.
Indeed, it seems somewhat absurd to hold that the regular police is
competent to cope with thieves, murderers, counterfeiters, and all other
irregular characters, crude and subtle, that are attracted like moths to
the great cities, while they lack the wit or courage to deal with the
crime and disorder in which prostitution is implicated; or that the
ordinary process of law and rules of evidence suffice for the former,
but must be waived in case of the latter! The fact is that the state of
the streets depends on the vigor of the police, the sensitiveness of the
public, the management of the drink and amusement traffic and the
attitude of the courts. An unfavorable judicial decision as to what
constitutes a nuisance may change the entire aspect of things, with or
without regulation. In Copenhagen, for example, after the abolition of
regulation, the courts held that standing about the streets was not
illegal: since which event, the main thoroughfares abound with women.
The Acting Recorder of Liverpool held in 1908 that solicitation to be
punishable under the Vagrant Act of 1854 must include actual indecency;
whereupon the Chief Constable reports that “we are going back somewhat
in keeping the streets clear of this nuisance.”[306]
If the inscription of several thousand women in large capitals is
practically without effect in controlling the streets, it is needless to
discuss the effect of the smaller or only nominal inscription lists of
other cities. The registration of a few hundred women in Frankfort, and
of still more insignificant numbers in Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart,
Brussels, Geneva, Lille can cut absolutely no figure at all; its sole
outcome is to tie the hands of the authorities.
So much for the streets; and in cities where prostitution is scattered,
as in Munich and Berlin, the value of regulation in respect to order
depends altogether on what it achieves in keeping the streets free from
scandal. There are those who say, however, that it is not fair to arrive
at an unfavorable verdict on this basis alone; they urge that the
regulation of scattered prostitution may fail, while the regulation of
interned prostitution may succeed. That opens up the question of
bordells to which the next chapter will be devoted.