Mademoiselle Julie Daubié has published a book in three volumes,
entitled _La Femme pauvre au dix-neuvième Siècle_.[1] This work is the
result of many years of careful research, accompanied by self-denying
labours among the poor, and the outcasts of society.
The following pages are a translation of those chapters of her book
which bear upon the state of the most unhappy of her countrywomen. In
granting permission for the publication of these chapters, Mad’lle
Daubié writes as follows:—
“PARIS, January 18th, 1870.
“Our new Parliament has made an emphatic declaration that it has in
view a great moral reform, which fills us with hope. Our eyes are
turned towards your Parliament, the wisdom of which is boasted
everywhere. It is assuredly not the English Parliament which will make
a law to tolerate (that is to say to encourage) prostitution; for such
an infamy as this is not yet inscribed in any Code of any civilised or
Christian nation. Even in France, prostitution is regulated by an
article of the _Penal Code_, which refers this question to the police.
Our Civil Code has not yet had the impudence to proclaim the
immunities of profligate men to be a civil right; and the expenses of
this department are municipal.
“But if it be true that provocations in the public thoroughfares are
so frequent in the towns of England, and that places of ill fame are
not watched, &c., your Parliament has left much undone, and has much
to do for the repression of vice.
“The principal means for this appear to me to be good laws for the
punishment of seduction, measures for making women independent through
a sufficiency of wages, the severest prohibition of all provocations
in the public way, and the right of the police to enter infamous
houses, and to exercise the same powers against the men as against the
women who frequent them; (an impartiality exercised in France in
gambling houses.)
“But we must abhor and reject all those odious measures which treat
woman as an impure being for debauchery to profit by. Scorn all the
advice which may be given you, on this subject, by timid or corrupt
men, who can see nothing beyond that which actually exists! The
progress of prostitution in France is frightful, and the number of
public women is said to be doubled even since the Great Exhibition.
Every day new houses of infamy are opened, authorised by the _Chef_,
who replies to any one who remonstrates, ‘_It is because they are
necessary, &c., &c._’
“We shall do well, I think, in our International League, to give
ourselves especially to questions of justice and of human dignity in
connexion with the relations of the sexes, and to endeavour to bring
all the nations of Europe to the adoption of uniformly just laws on
this subject—a subject on which it is not permitted to cherish with
impunity false sentiments or unjust laws.”
Who shall dare to prophesy for the future of England, if, at such a
crisis as the present, when the eyes of France—of Europe, it may be
said—are upon us, the Parliament whose wisdom is vaunted on the
Continent, should endorse, and not repudiate, the policy of a clique who
have succeeded in gaining a footing in our country for a system which
elsewhere has been tried and condemned?
JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER,
Hon. Secretary to the Ladies’ National Association for the
Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.
FRENCH MORALITY,
UNDER
THE REGULATION SYSTEM.
I.
INFAMY AS KNOWN TO THE LAW AND SECRET INFAMY; PANDERS AND COURTESANS.
“There are so many drawbacks attached to the loss of virtue in women;
this principal point being taken away is the cause of so many others
falling with it, that public unchastity may be looked upon as the
greatest of misfortunes.”—_Montesquieu._
“Woman is the embodiment of evil when evil exists about her: she is
the impersonation of evil when society must be ruined through
evil.”—_Pierre Leroux._
Public immorality has pushed its excesses so far as to cause the poor
woman to become a nuisance which has neither a name nor a right in our
code. I have undertaken the painful duty of considering with attention
the profligate portion of the community, which is controlled by the
police authorities; I shall not flinch from my sorrowful task—one that
will not, in any way, afford the lovers of scandal cause for
laughter....
Is it my fault, indeed, if, after having gone back to Eden itself for
woman as created in God’s image, I must pick the infected vase out of
the gutter and look into it for woman as made in man’s image?
Social injustice causes the greater part of the young women of the lower
orders both to fall into and to remain enslaved in the sink of
prostitution: the writers of their history agree in calling them the
victims of destitution, ignorance and seduction. The insufficiency of
the city-workwoman’s earnings sometimes forces her, even in a season of
industrial prosperity, to supplement her means by the sale of her
person; that is termed the fifth quarter of the working day. When
employment fails, this species of right to labour makes up the entire
day’s earnings. In different towns, according to the evidence of the
inspectors of the department of morals, women who have not totally lost
every sentiment of modesty are driven to ignominy by the want of the
means of support.
In our manufacturing towns, even children serve as food for profligacy.
Generally, the destitution of these women is such, that out of 6000
registered in Paris, only two had any other resource. One woman might be
instanced who struggled for three days with the pangs of hunger before
yielding. Two young girls, through having recoiled from this horrid
expedient, dropped down, in an hospital, half dead from want of
nourishment. Ignorance is another so fruitful cause of ruin for these
women, that, of 4000 natives of Paris, hardly a hundred were able to
sign their name. In other towns facts as sad are borne witness to. The
privileges enjoyed by seducers are often their original cause, for these
privileges are the cause of women without resources being borne down by
the burden of maternity, and of illegitimate daughters being left in
destitution. These, moreover, constitute the fourth part of the total
number of the inmates of the recognised brothels, completed partly by
the victims of seduction.[2] These latter have followed men, who, after
having promised them marriage, have cruelly deserted them in the towns
where they were without the means of support. Others, incurring the
disgrace and curse of a first fall, find no refuge but in profligacy.
Girl-mothers are also to be met with, who are forced to become
prostitutes to bring up their children. Often, says one of their
historians, cases very embarrassing to the Administration are brought
under notice; young girls not wholly corrupted evince penitence, can be
reclaimed, and wish to return to their homes, but their parents disown
them, _and they are obliged to be registered_. Others, forsaken from
their very birth, have been brought up by themselves; they know neither
their father nor mother, their age nor name. What is to be done? They
are forced to be admitted. No path opens before them; the Administration
offers a passport gratuitously, and, _sometimes_, a pair of shoes, to
the young female under age, without profession, shelter, clothes, or
food, and sends her back to her native place. One of our depraved men,
in whom genius kept alive some ray of feeling, sometimes experienced a
profound pity for these victims whom destitution gives over to
debauchery; he confesses that they often conjured him, with tears, not
to withdraw his unhappy protection from them. One of these suppliants
assured him that if he abandoned her he would be the cause of herself
and mother dying of hunger.[3] By the side of the liberty which girls of
15 have to become prostitutes, is placed that of parent-procurers. The
weakening of family ties among us often causes these monstrous
transactions to occur, on account of which women have been known to
commit suicide. The moral sense is, moreover, perverted to such a
degree, in our rural districts, that you there hear of mothers
congratulating themselves on living by the proceeds of their daughters’
dishonour. Apart from the cynicism of the concubine-keepers who sell
their unacknowledged daughters, workmen are met with who marry with the
object of enslaving their wives; one such person assaulted his to make
her go on the streets, saying to her: “Don’t think you deserve to eat,
if you do not perform the only work you can make lucrative for me—I want
money.”[4]
The foregoing facts belong to _legal_ prostitution, which is always
conjoined with that carried on clandestinely; it is certain that the
_toleration-certificate_ of procuresses is nothing but a permit for all
sorts of infamy. Agents for intercourse with certain women of fashion,
they likewise carry on, almost without impediment, negotiations
respecting girls under age.
An author of the 15th century, estimating the number of “girls of the
town” in Paris at 5000, attributes this enormous figure, unknown before,
to the war which had affected the earnings of women, and to the culpable
indifference of the provost, Ambroise de Loré. Statistics do not supply
us, nevertheless, with reliable indications of the progress of the evil
earlier than from the close of the year A.D. 1812. In Paris, less than a
third of the fallen girls belong to prostitution as known to the law;
the rest haunt the permitted houses, drive a profitable trade at the
singing-saloons, public-houses, lodging-houses, and taverns. More than
25,000 of them are supported by a number of immoral men who, in their
turn, are the support of a great many places of public resort, where
both soul and body are lost through drunkenness and profligacy. In our
different towns,[5] secret prostitution works the same kind of ravages.
It is generally noticed that the destitution of women gives a great
increase to it during industrial “crises.” Our soldiers and colonists
have likewise carried into Algeria morals previously unknown to the Arab
polygamy. So great was the horror the Mussulmans had for prostitution,
that at Algiers, as recently as the 17th century, prostitutes were
thrown into the sea. In the present day, women who go to get employment
in our colony ordinarily find their livelihood only in debauchery and
concubinage; “unfortunates” subjected to the brutalities of our
soldiery, are bartered, like beasts of burden, at every change of
garrison, and our army may be followed by the track of the infection it
leaves in even the smallest villages. After the conquest (of Algeria)
the daughters of the original possessors of the soil had not even the
means of living except by shame.[6] This sketch suffices to show how
unfitted we are to colonise a people which, on the evidence of every
high and competent authority, has adopted our vices without acquiring
any of our good qualities.[7] In fact, the Mussulman code, the Jewish
religion and morals, permit, upon the African soil, polygamy, divorce,
and repudiation, with the obligation, on the father’s part, of
supporting all his children, and the prohibition of repudiating a woman
without providing for her; these duties rendered manifold marriages a
privilege of wealth. The “senatus-consultum” which governs, on the model
of our code, the Arabs who are naturalised French, changes nothing of
the influence exerted on them by climate, religion, education, and
manners. Thus, by abjuring every duty to wives with whom, otherwise,
they are free to maintain relations, uncurbed and uncontrolled, under
the title of concubines; by leaving their unacknowledged children to die
of destitution, they obtain the title of French citizen, which should be
to them the reward of virtue and honour.
In that frightful famine when the brutality of the strong to the weak
was so monstrous, in which Religion and Charity had not arms wide enough
to enfold the legions of repudiated women, and of children without
fathers, the conviction might force itself that our code is more deadly
for Algeria than are its noxious animals.[8] Our legislation for morals
is an active cause of our want of success in colonizing; for our moral
responsibility being able to bring nothing but intermixture to the races
in our colonies, degenerated by polygamy or slavery, the young
negresses, seduced and abandoned, knowing none of the duties of the
family and of maternity, are living in the most deplorable degradation.
In France, the police authorities entrust the lucrative estate (_fermé_)
of profligacy (which private persons are not authorised to farm out) to
brothel-keepers who represent a considerable capital. At Paris, where
their business connexion is sometimes transferred at prices as high as
those of solicitors’ and notaries’ practices, the moveable effects of
one of them have been appraised as high as 100,000 francs (£4,000). The
sums invested compel the brothel-proprietresses to hunt up buyers
incessantly, and God knows how they perform their task. It would be
difficult to form an idea of the corruption they sow in our boroughs, in
our villages even, by sending to them detachments of girls whom
authority tolerates as soon as they place themselves under the
government regulations. France is no longer anything but a vast field of
prostitution, since railways have brought this traffic within reach of
our rural districts. The brothel-keeper, whose receipts are enormous,
has agents who accustom the workman and the female domestic servant to
look upon her house as an institution for the deserving.
The procuress, having full authority for mixed education, takes further
upon herself the social education of the young men living away from home
in our towns: she puts herself on the track of students, collects from
the _Botin Almanac_ the address of certain known men, sends them
ambiguous letters by gold-laced lacqueys, whose business it is to
supplement the intimations. For the negotiations about girls under age,
the brothel-keeper goes out herself from apartments fitted up in
princely style, steps into her carriage, has herself announced by her
footman, introduces herself into aristocratic drawing rooms, has a
perfumed note delivered on a silver salver, announcing to such and such
an important personage the purpose which brings her there. It is
asserted that the inefficiency of our laws is so great as not to admit
of the guilty being reached once in a thousand times, and never
effectually represses them, as we shall see from the sequel of this
investigation.[9]
Apart from this traffic, the brothel-keepers are found to be protected
by the police authorities, who leave the registered girl dependent upon
them: they send clothes to the half-naked workwoman and domestic servant
on their leaving the hospital or the prison, to get them into their
power through debt, and trade on the ignorance and poverty of
unfortunate creatures, wretched to the extent of being obliged to hire
from them clothing in which to present themselves for sanitary
inspection. In the event of subterfuge, the brothel-keeper brings a
charge of taking away with intent to defraud, and our law courts place
her victims in her power. If we did not know the debasement of the girls
of the lower orders, we should, perhaps, be astonished that hunger
should give over to these procuresses, women who, getting none of the
money for which they are sold, will finish by rotting in the street into
which they are thrust like refuse, when they can no longer bring profit.
Their destitution and degradation then become extreme. They live in
filthy lodgings, or take shelter under doorways and under carriages.
Those women whom our troops bring in from all parts are crowded in
narrow and dark caverns, take refuge in plaster-kilns, in partially
built houses, in cells as narrow as graves, in which they pass the night
upon horrible truckle-beds full of filth and vermin, receiving as their
only food some ration-bread which the soldiers throw in the mud to them;
they have thus come to look upon prison as a retreat, and often to beg
in vain the favour of admission to institutions for beggars.[10] Does
the brothel-keeper who has worked their youth for her profit at least
share their disgrace? No! from the moment that she makes choice of the
evil—that she makes a gain by it, _she_ is no more dishonoured by it
than the man who pays the price of it. The unjust assumption of the most
respectable titles—the names alone of _lady_, _mistress of the house_,
or of _matron_, attest the progress of this woman in general
consideration. A burgess in the fullest sense of the term, she dowers
and marries her daughters honourably, sometimes to legionaries, and _to
agents of the police for morals_. Then as a woman of independent means,
_retired from business_, she lives in the country, attracts notice there
for her wealth, her devoutness, and her prayer book at the parish mass
every Sunday. I do not know if such an ending would appear moral in
romance, or whether it would not, on the stage, startle, however little,
the indulgent conservators who look upon the tolerated house as a
necessary evil, without reflecting that if men guilty of the trade in
Blacks are punished with death, the trade in Whites ought not to be made
an institution protected by the public power.
By the side of this in importance in society is placed that of the
_avowed kept women_ (_femmes lancées_), who are sought after like a
race-horse or dog of high breed—a numerous family which daily reckons
new varieties. Here still the original cause of the evil lies in the
want of independence for the woman, who, after having been supported by
a father or a brother, is reduced, in the absence of such props, to have
recourse to a lover. When this fragile reed comes to be broken, she
remains at the mercy of the first comer who gives her the means of
livelihood. The impossibility of getting a competence and distinction in
the liberal professions plunges into this gulf even women like the
exhibitioners of St. Denis; in the same way certain young women of the
working classes have connected themselves with manufacturers, famous
bankers, wealthy public officials, who, living on family property or
pension, give up to them the ten, twenty, or thirty thousand francs
lopped from our budget; these goddesses in the hey-day of their
spring-time are floating on the surface of perdition. The short-lived
favours of their prostituters have stifled their natural qualities; they
show themselves very proud of mortgagee lovers, while rejecting
mortgager ones; but all despicable as they seem, they are far from being
so much so as their supporters, who, possessing a competency, wealth,
social appointments, and honours, sacrifice the most sacred duties to
their passion for degrading gratifications. The woman trampled on by
these attachments of a day is often she who knows how to cherish and
preserve constancy in love, she, in short, who might possibly have
become a faithful spouse and tender mother; while the harlot at the
zenith of her avocation is she who can stoop to the degree of the
corruption of her purchasers.
The luxuriousness, the sensation, the independence, the very borrowed
honour which, in the present day, encircles the name of a certain
mistress of an exalted personage, the remembrancers which the public
compete for at the sale of her effects, are the saddest indications of
our decay. Formerly, prostitution, which had no name in respectable
language, was confined to particular streets with a stigma of infamy
which forbade its breathing the common air; in our time it gives the
tinge of hope to its peculiar type admitted into good society; if there
still exist accursed abodes where human beings are shut up like lepers,
they belong to the hives of the working classes which are tasked to the
utmost to create wonders. Who does not recall the economist Blanqui’s
heartrending stories of the streets of Lille, those catacombs of people
having no property? Who does not remember those of the “_Bassesse_” and
of the “_Cloaque_” at Rouen, where families of working-men, deprived of
air and space, seemed buried alive in their underground dwellings?
Everywhere, however, in our most luxurious districts, splendid mansions,
palaces indeed, are built for high-class and fastidious prostitution,
where it is loaded with gems and perfumes, and receives the respectful
attentions of tradespeople, ambitious people and hangers-on. Without
speaking of the monuments erected to it by art; without pointing to the
stairs of marble and porphyry which it walks on in the temples of its
glory, it may be asserted that, in general, our women of doubtful
position are lodged in rooms which the respectable woman could not pay
for with the fruits of her industry nor of her talent, however
exceptional that might be. My personal inquiries have shewn me in Paris
a number of kept women, whose rent rises from 800 to 4,000, 5,000, and
10,000 francs yearly.
The moral reaction which took place in 1848 caused the scale on which
these women’s pay for what they do is based, to be lowered temporarily;
but they very quickly regained their professional connection and their
accustomed following when the pyramid was resettled on its base. There
are houses where the porters even prefer the kept-woman to every other
lodger, for her proverbial donations and prodigality, and whose virtues
they vie in extolling.[11]
The courtesan preserves in society the importance which attaches to her
in her private apartments. Photographs of her decorate our streets; her
memoirs enrich our literature; her showy personality sets off our public
platforms (_trétaux_); she often displays it, moreover, at the theatres
and the public baths; she cuts a figure on the fashionable promenades,
in the most gorgeous equipages of the higher classes. When she finds
herself at her own disposal, instead of beating the air and space, with
the illustrious lover who glories in being as infatuated as herself, on
returning from the races, the concubine remains in her chariot, where a
long row of carriages with their contents are for hire in this novel
market for prostitution. Amateurs of all classes pass in review this
living corruption; they address these women in a loud tone, with their
hats on, their riding whip in hand, and debate the conditions of
purchase and sale which are made for them, as for horses, to the highest
applicant and richest outbidder.
In the presence of this corruption, which has never had a precedent
except on the eve of the downfall of kingdoms and empires, certain
short-sighted moralists are exclaiming: “It is the passions of
concubines that are dragging us into a bottomless abyss.” I could point
out that the passions of rich women have not the social consequences of
the necessities of poor ones, and that there is a deplorable legislative
fault wherever man pays woman to corrupt her, while she must pay the man
for trying to reform him by marriage; but I shall say, “Misfortune, a
thousand times misfortune upon civilizations which fear the passions
because they do not know how to direct them.” Suppress this source of
devotedness and progress, and there will no longer be either vices or
virtues, and the facility, the satiety of profligacy, will hurry society
on to an irremediable fall.