REGULATION AND ORDER—BORDELLS AND SEGREGATION
The bordell defined.—Proprietor and inmate.—Licensing of bordells
increasingly rare.—Subterfuge adopted in Germany.—Rules governing
the conduct of bordells.—Number of bordells in Europe.—Insignificant
as compared with the volume of prostitution.—Europe knows nothing of
“segregation.”—Segregation never successful.—Why the bordell is
dying out.—Houses of prostitution dependent on White Slave
Traffic.—Shameless exploitation of inmates.—Effort in Vienna to
prevent exploitation.—The bordell favorable to abnormality.—The
bordell and crime.—The bordell and street conditions.—Does the
bordell reduce other forms of prostitution?—The prostitute’s
domicile.
Strictly speaking, the bordell is a licensed or recognized house of
prostitution, the proprietor of which is entitled to carry on the
business for which the establishment is set up. At Brussels such houses
are licensed on payment of specific fees;[307] at Paris and Vienna they
are merely authorized—tolerated by the police, nominally as long as they
comply with certain stipulations; actually, as a rule, until the
property is demolished or the business becomes unprofitable.[308] The
inmates of the bordell are employees working on a percentage basis. The
proprietor boards and lodges them and requires of them practically any
service—normal or abnormal—that the whim of a patron may demand; in
return they receive—or are credited with—part of the receipts, usually
fifty per cent. Against this sum, theoretically theirs, are usually
charged clothing, perfumery, medicines, and other extras. Their cash
receipts are therefore a diminishing quantity. Exploitation of this
sort, though nowadays generally forbidden by the police regulations, it
is practically impossible to prevent, as we shall subsequently see; in
most instances, the authorities do not even try to prevent it.
To the licensing or toleration of outright houses of prostitution public
opinion in Europe has become increasingly hostile; at the present time,
it is permitted in France, Belgium, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; it is
forbidden in the German Empire, Holland, Switzerland,[309] Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain. In France and Austria, no further
concessions will under any circumstances be granted; whenever, and for
whatever reason, a bordell closes, the institution is by so much nearer
to extinction. The bordell is therefore not co-extensive with regulation
and the area open to it is constantly shrinking. On the other hand, it
is, as a matter of fact, more widespread than official accounts lead one
to suppose. For in many German cities, through the connivance or
compulsion of the police, establishments are found which are bordells in
everything but name. The statutes, indeed, expressly forbid their
existence in language the purport of which is unmistakable: “Whoever
furnishes an opportunity for immorality shall be punished as a
pander.”[310] This provision makes the outright licensing or recognition
of the bordell impossible, since the keeper would be at once liable to
criminal prosecution. In police jargon,[311] therefore, licensed or
authorized houses conducted by proprietors are non-existent in Germany.
They exist nevertheless. I have pointed out that the police dictate the
dwelling-houses of registered prostitutes; they thereby condone the
technical violation of law by the landlords or mistresses of those
dwellings where registered prostitutes are authorized or ordered by them
to live. If then several women are permitted or ordered to “board” at a
particular house, an establishment is set up that is a bordell in all
but name. Technically, the girls are boarders, going through the form of
paying a certain sum for food and lodging, while conducting their
business affairs as they please; as a matter of fact little effort is
made by the mistress or the inmates to keep up the make-believe. In
reference to this matter the police or other authorities vary in candor
and straightforwardness. “We have in Cologne no bordells and no bordell
streets,”[312] says one; a similar declaration was made in Parliament by
the member for Hamburg. But in their less technical moments the police
admit the practical truth; a high police official in Cologne stated to
me that while some of the houses are really boarding-houses, others are
really bordells; a similar admission was made in Frankfort.[313] The
author quoted above as declaring that there are no bordells in Cologne,
subsequently gives a list of streets in which “bordells are found.”[314]
A questionnaire was addressed by Frau Katharina Scheven to the municipal
authorities of 235 German cities in 1904, fourteen of which frankly
admitted, and about 200 denied, the existence of bordells: but of the
latter, twenty admit that there are so-called “bordell streets,” i. e.,
streets in various parts of the city in which bordells are found,
despite the fact that technically there are claimed to be none at
all.[315] Hamburg and Bremen are the most prominent examples of the
subterfuge practised by the police of certain German cities in this
matter. In different sections of the former there are “boarding-places”
to which the registered prostitute is “referred”; nor will she be
permitted to remain in the city unless she “boards” in one or another of
them, provided the police so require. Her “mistress” charges her for
rent and food. Nominally, the girl’s earnings are her own and the
mistress does not command her services.[316] As a matter of fact, the
visitor is greeted on entering by the madame and her girls,—precisely as
in a bordell; the place is notorious as a bordell; liquor is pressed
upon the guest’s attention and all partake,—just as in a bordell. The
girls exercise no freedom in selecting or submitting to their patrons.
They may be supposed to retain their earnings, paying only for what they
get; but in practice they have to use every possible device to conceal
from the mistress the amount received from their patrons—an unnecessary
precaution if the police theory were correct. Finally, the sums
ostensibly belonging to them are wiped out for the most part by “extras”
which they require or are cajoled into purchasing from or through the
so-called “landlady.” Similar establishments exist in Dresden, Cologne,
and Frankfort.[317]
In Bremen, the mistress on the premises is eliminated and the women
maintain a certain measure of independence. The twenty-five houses of
Helenenstrasse are divided into small flats, each of which is occupied
as a housekeeping apartment by a prostitute and her servant. The places
differ from bordells in the absence of a landlady, and of a general
meeting and drinking-room. But meeting, drinking, and indirect
exploitation take place nevertheless. The Bremen establishments differ
little in operation or, as we shall see, in outcome from the
conventional bordell. Despite this very common violation of the spirit
and intent of the law in Germany, it is interesting to observe that the
courts have by no means always protected the police in their
disingenuous procedure. In Heidelberg in the year 1907 three houses of
prostitution were closed, the court holding that the connivance of the
police did not affect the punishable character of the landlord’s
offence.[318]
Regulation applied to bordells or quasi-bordells aims to govern their
location, the number, age and medical inspection of inmates, the sale of
liquor, the money relations of mistress and girls, the maintenance of
order, and the extent to which inmates are privileged to appear on the
streets. We shall, for the present, omit everything pertaining to the
sanitary side, which will be discussed in the next chapter. On other
points, the stipulations are usually of a quite obvious character. The
maximum number of inmates, an accurate roll of whom must be kept, may
not exceed the police allowance; minors may not be employed as servants;
schoolboys are not to be admitted; police officers are to have entrance
at all times. In Vienna, bordell women are not allowed to seek patrons
on the street; the keepers are forbidden to sell liquor or to provide
music.[319] The proprietress in Paris is specifically warned of the
precarious tenure of her privilege, which will be terminated in case of
abuse, scandal, or infraction of the regulations;[320] she is also
pledged to enforce police regulations respecting the hours during which
inmates, being registered women, may patrol the streets, and to give
prompt information to inspectors regarding unusual occurrences.[321]
Inmates are forbidden to solicit at windows;[322] no attempt is made to
regulate the sale of alcohol or to prevent exploitation; nor can an
inmate decline to put herself at the disposal of any customer who
selects her, whatever his condition.[323] At Hamburg the authorities are
theoretically concerned to prohibit exploitation. On the second page of
the health record book, given to every inmate, the following
announcement is printed: “Should the ‘landlady’[324] endeavor to detain
an inmate on the ground of debts or loans, the girl is to make a
complaint to the physician who conducts the medical examination, in case
she cannot report to headquarters.” It is further provided that women
must promptly notify the police of change of residence or of absence
from town, permanent or transient; that they must not live or spend the
night in any house not approved by the police, consort with minors,
appear at doors or windows, or be found anywhere but in their dwellings
from 11 P. M. to 6 A. M. The Vienna stipulations concern themselves
particularly with the prevention of exploitation. Personal inspection on
the part of the district officer quarterly, on the part of the central
authorities semi-annually, is required. The inspection concerns itself
with the physical condition of the bordell, with its business conduct,
and other possible subjects of complaint.[325] The Budapest regulations
aim mainly to obstruct exploitation and to procure a measure of personal
freedom. It is explicitly stated that not less than one-fourth of the
girl’s earnings must belong to her and that the keeper may under no
circumstances involve her in debt for either necessaries or luxuries;
that she must be allowed to walk abroad “independently and alone” during
at least three hours a day, and an extra half day once a week; finally,
no hindrance must be placed in the way of her going to church.[326] The
Brussels regulation—to take one more example—applicable to tolerated
houses provides that no married woman shall be permitted to open such an
establishment without her husband’s consent;[327] that such houses must
not be located in busy streets or in proximity to schools, public
buildings, or “edifices consecrated to worship”;[328] “that there must
be no common hall or room for the sale of liquor;”[329] that an
inventory of the girl’s possessions be made in duplicate on her
entrance, to the end that she may know what she is entitled to on
leaving.[330]
The following table portrays the present European situation in respect
to the existence of bordells or quasi-bordells,—their number, location,
number of inmates in connection with the number of inscribed
prostitutes, and the estimated number of non-inscribed prostitutes; it
includes only those cities which I myself visited.
City No.
inscribed
prostitutes Estimated
No. houses not living total number
of No. of in houses of of
prostitution How located inmates prostitution prostitutes
Paris 47 Scattered 387 6,000 50,000–60,000
Vienna 6 Scattered 50–60 1,630 30,000
Hamburg On 8
scattered
113 streets 780 155
Budapest 13 Scattered 260–300 2,000
Dresden On 32
different
81 streets 293[331] Few
Frankfort 100
10 Scattered (about) 188
Cologne[332] 98 Scattered 194 500 6,000[333]
Geneva 17 Scattered 86 None
Rome Over 5,000
known to
22 Scattered 125 100 police
Brussels Over 3,000
known to
6 Scattered 37 145 police
Stuttgart 10 Scattered 22 None
Bremen 25 One street 75 None [334]
Stockholm On 6
scattered
30 streets[335] 98 228
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Other towns make the same kind of showing:[336]
City Population No. of Bordells No. of inmates
Augsburg 89,770 3 12
Fürth 54,882 4 16
Reichenbach 28,498 2 7
Worms 28,624 2 14–16
A careful study of the data above given discloses a number of important
points. In the first place, omissions are significant. The bordell is
altogether non-existent in certain countries, and has been suppressed in
many large cities, though other towns in the same countries still permit
its existence. In Germany, for example, Berlin and Munich have no
bordells such as are found elsewhere in Germany. But the most striking
fact is the insignificance of the number of bordell inmates as compared
with the number of professional prostitutes. The number is on its face
too small to play any part in the management of the general problem.
Indeed, it is trifling even as compared with the number of inscribed
prostitutes, except in the few towns that actually or practically limit
inscription to bordell inmates.[337] The vast majority of prostitutes
live untouched by police control; the vast majority of the inscribed
prostitutes in Europe live scattered, not in houses of prostitution.
Some 40,000 prostitutes in Paris are wholly free of police control; of
the 6,000 registered women of the city, 5,575 live with police consent
as individuals here, there, and everywhere; the remaining 387 live in
forty bordells situated in almost as many different streets. Of 1,689
women inscribed in Vienna, 1,630 live where they please, the regulations
expressly stating: “In so far as a prostitute possesses a dwelling-place
not shared by other prostitutes, she is not to be restricted in her
choice of a location any more than is absolutely necessary;”[338] the
remainder, something between 50 and 60, occupy six bordells located in
different sections of the city; less than one-third of Stockholm’s
registered prostitutes are quartered in its scattered bordells, and the
registered prostitutes are as everywhere else but a fraction of the
whole number. The limitation of inscription to bordell inmates at
Stuttgart and Bremen is of course a step on the way to complete
abandonment of regulation. Only rarely do even the police put forward a
more favorable interpretation, as, e. g., in Geneva, where, with 86
women interned in bordells, I was gravely assured that not above forty
non-inscribed women strolled the streets. In company with an English
physician, I counted twenty unmistakable women between the acts at the
Kursaal that evening; at midnight, standing at a corner of the Place des
Alpes, we observed forty more in the course of a few minutes.
The table above given disposes once and for all of “segregation.”
Segregation in the sense of an attempt to confine the prostitutes of a
city or even the majority of them to a single locality or even to a few
definite localities is not undertaken in any European city from Budapest
to Glasgow. Waiving all objections and assuming plenary and summary
police power such as exists, it is obviously easier to inscribe them
than to confine them. If, as is the case, they cannot be caught and
inscribed, how are they to be caught and segregated? European cities,
having universally failed in the attempt to inscribe prostitution,
necessarily refrain from any endeavor to segregate any considerable part
of it. Nay, more, no European city succeeds even so far as to confine to
bordells or bordell quarters even the inscribed part of the prostitute
army which has been expressly ordered to stay there. “They do not
succeed in Hamburg, Nürnberg, Altona, Mainz, and Leipzig, in confining
prostitutes to houses or to a row of streets. Even inscribed
prostitution breaks away from the streets and the houses to which it is
directed by the police,”[339]—a police, be it added, with summary power
to have its way.
Segregation is therefore impracticable; more than this, any attempt to
bring it about is also recognized to be inadvisable. In the first place,
the impossibility of thoroughness creates an obvious opportunity for
police corruption; a woman who objects to being segregated may for an
adequate consideration induce the police to overlook her; and as
hundreds are bound to be overlooked anyway, the chances of detecting
fraud are slender. Again, a segregated quarter would give to vice the
greatest possible prominence. Finally, it would expose to moral
contagion those who are already most imperilled and whom every
consideration of interest and decency should impel society to
protect—the children of the poor. For the segregated quarter will
inevitably be located where rents are low and where the neighbors have
least influence. Objection to bordells on the part of those living in
the vicinity is, moreover, becoming increasingly louder: “Urgent
requests on the part of the public for the closing of the houses are
becoming more frequent,” says the head of the morals police of Budapest
in his last report. A few months ago, the police of Frankfort endeavored
to placate neighborhood sentiment by ordering the transfer of certain
scattered bordells to a single street adjoining the railroad. A storm of
public indignation led to the speedy abandonment of the proposal,
although fifteen houses had already been bought on speculation for the
purpose.[340]
To what is said above as to the non-existence of segregation in Europe,
Hamburg and Bremen are sometimes said to be exceptions; not infrequently
they are described as having segregated prostitution. Such is not the
case. In both these cities inscribed prostitution is—as everywhere
else—limited, and decreasing in relative importance. In Hamburg the
bordells forced into existence by the police are found, not in a
segregated quarter, but in at least eight different streets scattered
through the town; and six of the eight streets contain houses in which
prostitutes do not reside and are not permitted to reside. But the case
is less favorable to segregation than even the foregoing statement
represents; for not even all inscribed prostitutes live on the eight
streets in question; and the non-inscribed do in Hamburg what they do
everywhere else,—quarter themselves wherever they can.
Nor is the example of Bremen any more favorable to the feasibility of
segregation. There the entire registered list is indeed confined to one
street,—Helenenstrasse; but the separation of seventy-five women or less
in a seaport town in which hundreds of prostitutes live scattered
through the city is assuredly not “segregation.” Nor was Helenenstrasse
itself a deliberate move towards segregation. A contractor had built up
the street with twenty-six little apartment houses as a speculation in
1878,—the year of a panic in the building trade. Facing ruin, as the
houses could not be rented, he accepted the chance suggestion of a
police official that the rooms be let to prostitutes. The historian of
the incident writes: “Since that time,—more than thirty
years—notwithstanding many efforts, this step has never been repeated.
As every inhabitant knows, only a fraction of the prostitution of Bremen
utilizes this street,—altogether insufficient for the existing volume of
the traffic.”[341] Helenenstrasse is therefore perhaps the strongest
argument in Europe against the feasibility of the policy in support of
which it is mistakenly cited.
In passing, it is interesting and significant to observe that the
impracticability of effective segregation is not new. Medieval
regulation ordered the prostitute into a bordell or forced her to wear a
costume which proclaimed her occupation. The bordells were preferably
located on the periphery of the town in the vicinity of the city gate,
i. e., in what purported to be a segregated district. Now, medieval
prostitution was indeed characteristically a bordell prostitution: a
hamlet of from two to four hundred inhabitants had its bordell; and the
number of licensed bordells kept pace with the increase of population.
We may be sure that, having undertaken to force prostitution into
bordells, and having undertaken to force bordells into a localized
quarter, medieval authority was none too tenderly or cautiously applied;
fear of error did not paralyze the official arm. Yet the policy failed!
The researches of Bloch leave absolutely no doubt on this point.[342]
“Despite the fact that municipal authorities endeavored to confine
prostitution to municipally controlled and administered bordells and
legislated severely against prostitutes living elsewhere, nevertheless
the number of scattered prostitutes was very large,—perhaps larger than
of those living in houses. In contrast with the bordell women, they were
called clandestine,—but this does not mean that there was the least
doubt as to their trade.”[343] At times the clandestines—in the sense
here indicated—lived on the very streets on which bordells were
situated, yet refused to be coerced into them; again, they
lodged—sometimes several together—with a landlady who operated a brothel
which the authorities were unable to change into a controlled bordell. A
policy that failed in the relatively small medieval town, where it
encountered no hostile sentiment and could ride rough-shod over personal
privilege, can hardly be successfully carried out in a modern
metropolis, in the face of strong ethical objection and exaggerated
sensitiveness at any invasion of individual liberty,—not to mention the
complications created by mere quantitative increase.
If the table—to which we now return—is examined from an historic point
of view, it becomes clear that the bordell is rapidly losing ground. The
bordell is at this date illegal in Great Britain, Switzerland (except
Geneva), Holland, Denmark, Norway, and the German Empire, though in many
German towns, as I have pointed out, a subterfuge exists; in almost all
these countries it was once an acknowledged institution. In towns in
which its existence does not violate law, it is rapidly disappearing,
even though in some places the authorities favor its maintenance and
extension. Neither Paris, Vienna, Stuttgart, nor Frankfort will
authorize the opening of a new bordell; they all look forward to a time
in the near future when those still surviving will succumb to adverse
sentiment and decreasing receipts,—the causes of which I shall shortly
explain. Hamburg, where the police still strongly favor the bordell and
utilize all their tremendous power in its favor, has seen the total
number of inmates decrease from 1,050 in 1876 to 780 in 1910,—despite
the doubling of population in the same period; three houses authorized
to contain 12 girls apiece were found to harbor 2, 3, and 6
respectively. Budapest,[344] like Hamburg, prefers the bordell, and once
maintained from 50 to 60 bordells, with 600 to 700 women; only 13, with
250 inmates, survive, despite the encouraging attitude of the
authorities. The most elaborate establishment in the city, authorized to
receive 21 girls, had at the date of my visit only 7. In Brussels there
were 7 bordells, containing 66 women, in 1890; six houses, with 37
inmates, in 1910.[345] But most striking of all are the Paris records:
with 235 bordells, containing 1,450 women in 1841 (population
1,200,000), as recently as 1888 there were 69 tolerated houses, with 772
inmates; in 1903 there remained 47 houses, with 387 inmates:[346]
population had meanwhile increased to 2,800,000. At the last named date,
6,031 inscribed women were living in scattered lodgings. The following
table exhibits the relation between inscribed prostitutes living in
lodgings and those interned in the bordells of Paris:
Year Enrolled Living in bordells Living scattered
1872 4,242 1,126 3,116
1882 2,839 1,116 1,723
1892 5,004 596 4,408
1903 6,418 387 6,031
The rest of France shows the same development in progress: Amiens had 13
houses of prostitution in 1880, none in 1895; Havre 34 in 1875, 9 in
1895; 75 bordells in Lyons in 1840 shrank to 17 in 1895; 125 in
Marseilles in 1873 were reduced to 12 in 1899; 31 in Nantes (1855) to 12
in 1896; 60 at Bordeaux (1869) to 16 in 1906.[347] At Rome, the 22
authorized houses were said at the time of my visit to contain some 125
inmates; none had its full authorized complement: a huge establishment,
with a capacity of 18, had 5 inmates; another, with capacity of 12, had
7; others, authorized to harbor 10 women, contained 4, 5, and 6
respectively.[348]
The causes responsible for the decay of the bordell will explain why the
bordell cannot be re-introduced, even though it were an efficacious
device for the maintenance of public order and decency and for the
diminution of disease,—points that still remain to be discussed. The
bordell prospered as long as its management was uncontrolled; its decay
set in the moment public sentiment required the slightest deference to
the dictates of humanity. For, in the first place, the bordell can be
tenanted only through the exertions of the trafficker. A few hopeless
wretches, whose independent career is over, may of their own accord seek
its food and shelter; but these are precisely the women whom the
management accepts only under pressure of necessity. Young and
attractive inmates are desired,—innocent, or, at least, beginners. Prior
to their suppression in Zurich, 60% of the inmates of its 18 bordells
had not completed their seventeenth year![349] The fact that there are
more bordells in Hamburg than experience elsewhere would lead us to
expect may be due not only to police preference, but to the fact that
inscribed minors are permitted—perhaps even forced—to enter them. Now
these eagerly desired youthful recruits are procurable as a rule only
through traffickers; the bordell therefore prospers only where
trafficking prospers. In the heyday of this infamous business, victims
were brought into the large European cities by every species of fraud
and imposition, only to find themselves imprisoned in bordells until
thoroughly broken to the trade. Thus the houses of Paris were filled
with girls enticed from their homes in the departments of the Somme and
the Rhône, or Paris itself; the bordells of Vienna and Budapest with
victims from Posen and Galicia. The local traffic in young girls, as I
have already explained, has now been largely broken up; the European
police, responding to the quick and vigorous development of humane
interest characteristic of recent years, have taken steps which
practically deprive the bordell of youth,—its most attractive asset.
Girls under 21 are as a rule no longer permitted to become inmates; at
Budapest even the bordell servant must have reached the age of forty.
The mistress whose memory goes back to a less scrupulous era is in no
doubt as to the main causes of the hard times on which her lot has now
fallen: “Something young and fresh is nowadays no longer to be
had,”[350] remarked the candid madame of a Budapest bordell.
An outside proof that the bordell is necessarily associated with
trafficking in girls may not be amiss in this connection. The
trafficker, avoiding the aroused continental police, seeks a remote and
less perilous market. The great European cities, in which he can no
longer carry on with impunity a trade in young or innocent girls, can at
the most be utilized as way stations on the journey to Rio Janeiro or
Buenos Aires; in the latter city, 192 well-known bordells, with 1,022
inmates of different nationalities, are found; 95 of them Russian
establishments with 532 girls, 17 Italian establishments with 92
inmates, 22 French houses with 136 girls.[351] The victims whose obscure
trail is traceable from Galicia through Vienna and Berlin to Hamburg,
Rotterdam, or London, are nowadays discovered in the brothels of a South
American city, instead of in those of Hamburg, Brussels, or Paris.
Meanwhile, though the European bordell can no longer be recruited with
the young, the trafficker’s business has not been completely stamped
out; nor can it be until the last recognized bordell is exterminated.
The reduced scope within which madame and trafficker operate makes it
all the more important to do the best possible under the
circumstances,—to make as attractive a showing as possible and to keep
the women moving: hence, redoubled efforts to fill orders for women of
the various types required by the different establishments and to
conduct a chain of houses so that a certain amount of novelty can be
introduced into the trade. An inspection of police records discloses the
fact that women remain on the average only a few weeks in a given house.
Through the 13 bordells of Teplitz-Schönau, Bohemia, between January 1,
1909 and July 30, 1910, 550 inmates passed: one of the bordells,
operating with two girls, had 65 different inmates during this period of
18 months.[352] In the Zurich bordells, 85% of the inmates changed
within 5 months, 63% within 2 months.[353] In the white slave bureau of
one large European police establishment, I was shown a huge list of
persons suspected or already convicted of trafficking in girls. The
traffic in youth has been hampered; but a traffic in women still
remains—a traffic which, though it will not restore prosperity to the
bordell, is absolutely dependent for its existence on the prolonged life
of the house of prostitution. I have repeatedly quoted with respect the
words of Dr. Baumgarten of Vienna; on this point, his opinion is
absolutely unmistakable: “The bordell is inseparable from the traffic in
girls,” he declared to me. Bloch’s investigations are tersely
summarized: “Without bordells, no white slave traffic.”[354]
A notorious instance of the manner in which alone a bordell can be
successfully conducted is furnished by the so-called “Riehl case”
uncovered in Vienna in 1906. The woman conducted an establishment
containing 20 girls and paid an annual rental of 10,000 kronen ($2,000).
A large number of persons were employed to procure recruits,—old women
and young boys, offering good places in domestic service to young girls
who, having come to Vienna, found difficulty in securing work.
Employment agencies directed to Madame Riehl young and friendless
applicants. Suspicion was never aroused in the victim’s mind, for the
door bore a plate marked “Riehl’s Dressmaking Salon.” The behavior of
the madame varied: now, she made no concealment of the nature of her
business; again, she hired the newcomer as a servant, certain that
before long she would yield to the demoralization of the place. Minors
were registered at police headquarters as of full age, or forged
documents testified to the consent of the parents or guardians. The
girls lived as prisoners, so cowed by the treatment they received and so
utterly demoralized by their way of life that they made no effort to
recover their freedom even if opportunity offered.[355]
The conscience of those authorities who are still willing to tolerate
bordells, provided girls are not involuntarily forced into them, has
revolted on another point, viz., the exploitation of the women by the
keepers. For the bordell is a business. Though theoretically only a
convenient place for the gratification of uncontrollable desire, it is
practically an establishment so conducted as to fill the pockets of the
owners, the inmates being forced to receive the maximum number of guests
that can be obtained, after which they are victimized out of their
earnings on every conceivable pretext.[356]
Recent alterations in the police regulations seek to protect the bordell
women against exploitation; but no amount of menace or oversight
suffices to procure the enforcement of the simplest precautionary
regulations. One of the most disgusting aspects of bordell life is the
forced consumption of alcohol; the customer on entering is plied with
drink, and of course the inmates share; conviviality is procured by
general and continuous indulgence in beer, wine, and champagne. In order
to prevent complete physical disorganization on the part of the women
and to restrict the commerce in volume, the sale or use of liquor is
forbidden in the bordells of Brussels, Altona, Hamburg, Stuttgart,
Bremen, and other cities. But it goes on openly and flagrantly,
nevertheless. An Altona madame candidly admitted to me the reason: “The
business couldn’t be carried on otherwise.”[357] In the bordells of
Stockholm, champagne costing 2½ crowns a bottle is sold to guests for 15
and the “girls are made to aid in the consumption as much as possible,
so as to increase the profits.”[358]
The fact is that if the police wish or are willing to maintain bordells,
they cannot refuse to tolerate some of the conditions on which alone it
is worth while for the keepers to conduct them. In Vienna, Budapest,
Dresden, and elsewhere, minute specifications attempt to regulate the
charges which may be levied on the girls by the keepers. But the girl is
completely exploited nevertheless: for exorbitant prices are charged for
necessities, and extras—forbidden or not—usually swallow the remainder.
In the most wretched establishments of Altona, the minimum charge for
board and lodging is reckoned at 75 marks a week; at Stockholm, a girl
pays 5 crowns a day for board,—and various sums for “extras,”—an
“unreasonable sum,”[359] in Johansson’s judgment. The Dresden police
name 8 to 15 marks a day—the latter sum itself enough to procure
accommodations at a first-rate hotel; the girl is actually charged 15 to
18, and if anything is left to her credit it is absorbed by way of
paying for cosmetics, clothes, shoes, etc. The kind landlady is the
intermediary between girls and merchants in a series of transactions
which somehow always leave the girls penniless and amply reimburse the
landlady for her intervention. Frau Scheven related to me the story of a
young girl for whom she had procured admission to a hospital, where in
the course of her recovery the girl decided to abandon her licentious
life. When her benefactress applied to the bordell for her clothes, she
was informed that there were none; and only threats of calling the
police extorted a few meager rags—the sole asset after months of
service, despite the minute prescriptions of the authorities, aiming to
check the rapacity of the keepers.
At Vienna a more serious effort in this direction is now made. A
periodical survey by the ranking officials of the morals bureau is
required,—the director himself as a rule being one of the party. I
possess transcripts of two reports made on a Vienna bordell. The
inspecting party included the division chief, the head of the medical
service, and one or two others of lower rank. The roll was called and
every inmate accounted for; thereupon the inmates were separately
interviewed, especially with a view to ascertaining whether their
personal freedom had been interfered with or whether they had complaints
to make in respect to exploitation. On the first inspection, the women
unanimously declared and proved, that despite the prospect of this
official review, they had been swindled out of all their earnings, even
including such incidental gratuities as they had received from visitors;
that their food was inedible, and that bed-linen was changed only once a
month. The authorities thereupon threatened the closing of the
establishment unless conditions were at once improved. Revised
regulations became effective before the next inspection, at which time
it appeared that each inmate paid something over five dollars a day for
board and lodging (26 kronen), beyond which their earnings belonged to
them; the earnings of the preceding night ran from $10 (50 kronen) to
$30 (150 kronen) apiece. The food had improved in quality, but the
condition of the linen and towels still left much to be desired. Three
of the inmates were badly bruised. The keeper was again warned that
sanitary conditions must be improved. To hinder the crassest
exploitation and to secure the most elemental cleanliness, the highest
officials,—physicians and jurists of university training—had to make a
personal inspection; even then, 6 brothels, containing from 50 to 60
women, could not be kept entirely acceptable. Were brothels more
numerous in Vienna, it would be absolutely impossible to utilize
officers of high rank and spotless personal and professional character
for this sordid duty; if delegated to others, a source of corruption and
abuse would be created. Hence, though rules against exploitation and in
favor of decency are promulgated, successful efforts to enforce them are
practically nowhere encountered.
Though its heyday is over, the bordell can, however, still be made to
pay, if the authorities are disposed to condone exploitation. At the
bare suggestion that a new bordell street would be created in Frankfort,
15 houses in the proposed street were promptly bought up at extravagant
prices;[360] the houses in Helenenstrasse, Bremen, valued at 327,000
marks, cost their present owner 585,000 marks;[361] a tumbledown
medieval hovel, long utilized as a bordell in Stuttgart, was recently
sold for 60,000 marks to a “dummy” purchaser. Shortly after the
transaction, the police, heeding neighborhood complaints, decreed the
closing of the establishment; whereupon they were bitterly reproached
for summary violation of an implied contract.[362] Paris transactions
are naturally on a far higher scale: 200,000 and 300,000 francs have
changed hands for a single business.[363] Another establishment earned
70,000 francs for its owners in a single year. Like all profitable
enterprise in this generation, efficiency and economy have been still
more highly developed through organization; of 31 immoral resorts
“situated in the zone of the Champs-Élysées, near the Arc, the majority
belong to the same managers.”[364]
Fortunately other causes conspire with the suppression of the white
slave traffic and increased control over the internal management of the
bordell to bring about its decline. Taste has changed. “The public has
lost its appetite for officially designated resorts, with their large
numbers, closed shutters, colored windows, visited nowadays usually by
strangers, provincials, and soldiers; the trade inclines rather to
houses of rendezvous, where greater discretion is practised and where,
with a little imagination, one is conscious of an air of
adventure.”[365] The women, too, are filled with the desire to enjoy
their own freedom. They prefer the reckless abandon of the streets, the
cafés, and the theaters. Under these circumstances, the girls who are
still found in bordells are as a rule the failures and the wrecks, with
too little spirit or attractiveness to make an independent success.
In accounting for the decline of the bordell, I have inevitably touched
on the objections to be urged against its further tolerance. The
European bordell has in the first place declined because its recruitment
through young victims has been largely broken up, and because the most
flagrant forms of exploitation no longer prevail entirely unhindered.
But other equally good reasons for the suppression of the bordell may be
cited. The bordell is a veritable school of abnormality. The Paris
bordells are elaborately equipped for every conceivable form of perverse
indulgence. The inmates compete with one another in forcing upon the
youthful customer the knowledge of unnatural and artificial forms of
sexual gratification.[366] Similar excesses are practised
elsewhere,—indeed wherever the bordell is found. The Swedish women told
Dr. Lindblad that “the girl-house is the main seat of perversity; soon,”
they added, “Stockholm will be as bad as Paris.”[367] The infamous
implements employed are in full view as one enters the apartments in
Helenenstrasse. The degradation of the bordell inmate is total;[368] her
rehabilitation well-nigh impossible. She fares far worse than the
street-walker, who sometimes returns to an orderly manner of life.
Finally, cautious as the keeper may be not to deserve the suspicion of
the police, the bordells, especially those of lower grade, are
everywhere in close touch with certain classes of criminals. Between the
lowest class of criminals and the corresponding class of prostitutes
intimate relations subsist.[369] To the low class resort the lawbreaker
betakes himself; there the outlaw receives sympathy and shelter. It is
occasionally alleged that the reverse is true: that the bordell-keepers
turn the lawbreaker over to the police, assisting the authorities in
discovering criminals. But the Dutch police, who have tried and
discarded the bordell system and who, like other police with the same
experience, would under no conditions countenance its reintroduction,
are of a different mind. “Did the bordell-keepers assist you in the
detection of criminals?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” was the reply, “after they
realized that we already knew.”
So much for the inner side of the bordell; it remains to inquire into
its influence on external order.
It is claimed that the bordell, by providing an ascertainable, if not
well known, resort for immoral women and their customers removes scandal
and suggestion from the public highways. Let us consider the argument in
the light of the table already given. The bordell can at most interfere
with the promenading and soliciting of the women interned in it; it
cannot reduce the prominence of non-inscribed women, or of inscribed
women living at large and expressly authorized by the police to walk all
but a few streets. The existence of 47 bordells, with 387 inmates, in
Paris does not interfere with the promenading of perhaps 50,000
unregistered prostitutes or of 6,000 registered, but scattered,
prostitutes; the existence at Brussels of six brothels, with 37 inmates,
does not restrain 145 other registered prostitutes, resident elsewhere,
nor the several thousand non-registered women who live where they
please. The facts thus show that the pressure on the streets is nowhere
relieved by the herding of a few women—and the herding of more is
impracticable. Between Paris and Berlin there is no difference
observable: the former has bordells, the latter lacks them. The streets
of Hamburg with bordells are no better than those of Rotterdam without
them, and are distinctly inferior to those of Liverpool and Amsterdam,
both without them. Zurich without bordells is externally much more
orderly than Geneva with them. If the bordell played any part in the
maintenance of decent street conditions, cities like Berlin, Munich, and
Zurich—where there are no bordells—would be worse off than Paris,
Hamburg, or Stuttgart; or the former would require some extraordinary
agency not needed where bordells exist; as a matter of fact, the cities
in question are not worse and they neither require nor possess any
unusual machinery.
What can be more clearly decisive on this point than the fact that just
at the time of my visit to Geneva, the chief of the department of
justice and police, in consequence of “frequent complaints, named a
special committee charged with the duty of devising means to put an
end”[370] to the sort of vagabondage we are considering? As a matter of
fact, coincidentally with the gradual extinction of the bordell, general
street conditions have improved throughout Europe; and the few towns
whose streets are strikingly free from prostitutes are without exception
towns in which neither regulation nor the bordell exists. The bordell is
not the controlling factor; police, courts, public opinion decide; and
police, courts, and public opinion are likely to be most vigorously in
favor of clean streets in communities that do not recognize prostitution
as a legitimate livelihood.
But, more: the bordell does not necessarily or usually remove its own
inmates from the streets! The women cannot be caged; current tendency is
in just the reverse direction. The Budapest authorities, for example,
regard with horror the “inhumanity” of the Bremen restrictions. Bordell
women are becoming more and more free to come and go as they please; on
other terms they are increasingly reluctant to enter the bordell at all.
Moreover, when business lags—as indeed it tends to do—they go forth to
find patrons on the streets,—for grist must be provided for the ever
active mill. At Dresden, the courteous official who escorted me through
the bordells, explained that it would be useless to start on our round
of visits before midnight,—for the women would all be “out.” I walked
through several of the 32 streets on which bordells exist in the earlier
hours of the evening; from some houses the inmates were just emerging in
striking costumes, to others women were already returning, accompanied
by the prey picked up on the streets, in the cafés, and elsewhere. The
bordell does not, therefore, reduce street scandal even to the extent of
the number of its inmates.
Meanwhile, though the bordell does not relieve the general
thoroughfares, it tends strongly to local scandal and disorder in its
own quarter. The eight bordell streets of Hamburg lie for the most part
close to busy streets in the heart of the city. Except in the forenoon,
when the women are sleeping off the dissipation of the previous night,
shocking scenes are observed. The pedestrian who in the afternoon
inadvertently stumbles into the Schwiegergasse is greeted from window,
vestibule, and doorstep by a volley of invitations; scantily clad women
solicit his attention from the street door in broad daylight. The dark
narrow passages in Cologne, notorious for brothels, are filled with a
procession of reckless boys and half-intoxicated men on the verge of
surrender to temptation. A beating rain did not empty the bordell
streets of Altona, or drive indoors the lightly clad women who called
out the superior attractions of their competing establishments; at
Bremen, in the summer evening, the interned women forbidden to solicit
on the street, approached all passers-by and endeavored in every
imaginable way to entice them into their barracks,—“just for a glass of
beer,” if nothing else. A recent writer, describing conditions in
Frankfort, remarks that “the presence of the policeman does not hinder
even unmistakable and utterly shameless prostitution of minors in the
Rosengasse and Metzgergasse,”[371]—two of the streets in which bordells
are found. In a few instances only,—Budapest and Rome, for example, I
encountered no street disorder in the vicinity of recognized houses of
prostitution.
From the preceding account, it is clear that the case for regulation on
the side of public order is not strengthened by the bordell. Not
infrequently, however, it is argued that, whatever be the situation in
inland towns, the seaport has reasons of its own for requiring the
existence of bordells; without it, drunken sailors of many nationalities
will throng the highways, insulting women and imperilling children. This
kind of argument is not new; I was told by a high official in Paris that
no woman was safe from insult in the streets of Zurich, now that the
bordells had been suppressed. Both statements are equally without basis.
Rotterdam is well-nigh as important a seaport as Hamburg; its streets
suffer nothing by comparison; the streets of Liverpool are at the moment
the cleanest of all. Once more, the bordell is, to say the best for it,
immaterial.
Nor can it even be claimed for the bordell that it lessens other forms
of prostitution. Side by side with it flourish the “Animierkneipe,”
advertising “weekly change of service,” the cabaret, dance hall, café,
cheap lodging-house, the concealed bordell, the _rendezvous_, the
_maison de passe_,—all engaged, as the bordell is engaged, not in
satisfying normal desire, but in arousing, inflaming, and perverting
lust, while at the same time thrusting upon the victim’s attention
accessible means for its gratification. Rome possesses besides 20-odd
authorized bordells, 235—perhaps more—unauthorized houses of
prostitution, well known to the police. I was escorted by an officer to
houses of both types and observed no difference beyond a somewhat
greater nervousness on the part of the keepers of the latter; Geneva
abounds in irregular lodging-houses and _maisons de passe_, lists of
which have been even furnished by anti-regulationists to the police,
without result; Amsterdam reports that it had more clandestine brothels
during the time when bordells were licensed than are to be found now
that they have been suppressed. At Paris, with bordells—as in London,
without them—every imaginable subterfuge is employed in the effort to
carry on surreptitious prostitution: chambers are advertised, foreign
language lessons announced, art objects, pearls, dressmaking, massage,
bibelots employed as baits for the curious.[372] The bordell does not
really affect this situation at all.
Discovering, however, that bordell prostitution is disappearing, the
police of Paris and Budapest are endeavoring to maintain their grip by
authorizing or permitting _rendezvous_ establishments. At Paris, these
establishments may be opened without police permit and will not be
disturbed as long as they comply with a few simple police orders, e. g.,
admitting only inscribed women or at least women regularly examined by a
physician agreeable to the police.[373] They have increased in number
from 64, with 235 women regularly in attendance, in 1900, to 243, with
770 women attached, in 1908.[374] A somewhat similar policy is pursued
in Budapest, where the police tolerate without interference the “hotel
garni” with 20 to 50 rooms, which admits only inscribed women on showing
their certificates, sells no alcoholic beverages, provides every room
with water, towels, etc., and allows no guest to remain longer than
twelve hours; these hotels are regularly visited and inspected by the
authorities. Similarly, the _maison de passe_ is recognized,—usually an
apartment of five to eight rooms, where towards six in the evening one
finds 5 to 10 girls seated around the dining-room table, sewing or
rouging while waiting for customers to drop in. But these substitutes
for the bordell are as futile as the bordell itself; police recognition
of authorized places of _rendezvous_ does not diminish in any wise the
number of hotels surreptitiously utilized for the same purpose. In
Budapest, despite the vigorous police policy, there are as many
unauthorized hotels engaged in the business as there have ever been; and
Paris is notorious for the abundance of uncontrolled resorts. The
explanation is easy. Neither the girl nor her customer desires to submit
to the stigma and notoriety involved in resorting to an authorized house
of any kind; the same motive that leads them to avoid the bordell leads
them to evade the authorized _rendezvous_. In any event, only controlled
women can resort to a controlled establishment; uncontrolled
establishments continue to command the trade of non-inscribed women,—who
always and everywhere enormously preponderate.
Could the futility and impossibility of regulation be more clearly
exhibited? The police of Paris, Budapest, and Vienna offer the woman
every facility for the easy and unimpeded prosecution of her trade,
provided only she will submit to inscription: bordells, if she pleases;
a private lodging, if she prefers; or, if neither of these is agreeable,
hotels discreetly conducted in accessible localities, where the police
will never trouble her or her customers. In return, the authorities ask
only that she register her name, nominally submit to a few restrictions,
and undergo medical examination at intervals. Yet not even on these
favorable terms can a considerable body of women be induced to submit.
Meanwhile, whatever may be said for the bordell as a possible way of
removing prostitutes from the street, the _rendezvous_ house, now
cultivated to take its place, operates in the directly contrary fashion;
for the couples resorting to it generally meet and strike their bargains
in the streets.
There is perhaps another point of view from which the bordell must be
considered. Whatever opinion one may form as to the ultimate fate of
prostitution in civilized society, unquestionably it must, like certain
other social evils, be reckoned with as a phenomenon to be dealt with as
part of the day’s work. I have pointed out that European opinion is
moving towards the conclusion that, for the present, third party
exploitation, overt and offensive manifestation, are aspects with which
our social and governmental instrumentalities are most likely to cope
effectively. The pimp, the bordell-keeper, the prostitute herself—when
her conduct scandalizes—with these the ordinary resources of a
well-managed municipality are increasingly competent to deal. Clearly,
however, we are thus left with the prostitute herself on our hands,—with
the prostitute, I mean, who is vicious, not criminal, leading her own
life, reprehensible of course, but without unnecessary offence to
others. In reference to this type of woman—the type, in other words,
that survives even a successful war on third parties—the first question
that arises is this: where shall she live? For even the inconspicuous
and well-behaved prostitute is a peril, inasmuch as she is a constant
and inevitable source of moral contagion,—particularly objectionable, of
course, in close contact with children and working girls. The bordell
represents one effort to solve the domicile problem, by isolation, just
as infectious disease is isolated. The analogy to disease fails,
however, for two reasons: first, because isolation is usually resisted
by the prostitute; second, because the prominence that vice obtains
through bordells—be they many or few—far outweighs any good attainable
through the forced isolation of those who can be interned. Other
positive efforts to regulate the domicile of the prostitute have also
been made,—so far, without success. The German law, as I have already
stated, forbids the professional prostitute any lodging at all; but the
law has broken down, first, because the vagrant prostitute is most
objectionable of all; second, because the statute is enforced only in
flagrant cases of abuse; third, because it is in conflict with the
regulation system in common use.
Budapest approaches the problem differently. There bordells house a fair
number; the rest are free to live where they please, provided they give
no offence. Authorized places of _rendezvous_ are provided as above
stated, in the hope that women will thus be induced to transact business
elsewhere than in their homes. In the event, however, that a woman
persists in bringing customers to her apartment, decent tenants are in
position to protect themselves through the following enactment: “Any
tenant has the right to forbid a prostitute to continue to occupy rooms
in the house where he lives, if, before he himself moved in, he was not
told that prostitutes live in the same house; should prostitutes move in
subsequently, the tenant may dislodge them by complaining to the police.
No tenant need endure the presence of prostitutes in the building where
he resides; no tenant can be obligated to remain in a house where
prostitutes live unless he knew the fact when he made his lease. The
landlord is obligated to tell prospective tenants the truth without
being asked. If the landlord on the tenant’s demand does not evict a
prostitute, the tenant may break the lease and demand damages. These
provisions apply also to apartments used for _rendezvous_.”[375]
How far this excellent law has affected the situation it is difficult to
tell. Its enforcement against non-registered women is difficult, to say
the least. Besides, the poor can easily be quieted by favors or
concessions. I was therefore not surprised to see children playing in
the courtyard and on the steps of houses in Budapest to which
prostitutes could be observed to be returning in the company of men;
prominent _rendezvous_ apartments were visited in large buildings
tenanted mainly by families of the working-class. Neither regulation in
general nor the bordell in particular has thus succeeded in solving the
dwelling problem. This has been frankly recognized in the revised Vienna
regulations which abandon all effort to deal with the question;
paragraph 12, previously quoted, enjoining the least possible
interference with the free choice of a dwelling-place on the part of a
prostitute who lives alone.[376]
I have throughout this chapter considered the bordell mainly as a factor
in the program of regulation. It is from the standpoint of order
evidently futile. But from another standpoint it is worse than futile.
The bordell gives to sexual vice its most prominent advertisement. By
working on the curiosity of the young and of strangers—its main patrons,
by the way—it substantially increases demand; by requiring constant
service of its inmates, it virtually increases supply. It is therefore
absolutely at war with sound public policy which aims to reduce
both—certainly to avoid their gratuitous increase. Finally, the bordell
is the most flagrant instance of exploitation for the benefit of third
parties, which modern feeling and legislation are emphatically
determined to prevent. For the keeper’s profit men waste their substance
and are—to what extent the ensuing chapter will tell—infected with
disease; while women are dragged down to the lowest depths of
degradation and excess. The bordell is therefore something more than
futile, something more than inhuman.[377]