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Footnote 1:
Published by Ernest Thorin, 7, Rue de Médicis, Paris, 1869.
Footnote 2:
One of our salaried seducers learned that destitution was reducing one
of his illegitimate daughters to have herself registered at the office
of the department of morals. A friend of his urged him to claim her,
so as to save her from this disgrace:—“If,” said he, “I were obliged
to help all my daughters, my income would not be sufficient to do it.”
Footnote 3:
Alfred de Musset—“Confessions d’un enfant du siècle.”
Footnote 4:
To turn, for a moment, from these horrors, let us say they horrify the
moral working-men who have undertaken the responsibilities of the
family without selfish ideas conceived previously. These men generally
give proof of a sentiment of honour, too often extinguished in the
upper classes; but what is their state of mind when they are not able
to guard their wives and daughters against a disgrace which is the
daily bread of an insufficient labour-market? Their faces are then
stern, their eyes vindictive; their heads droop, but they cherish in
their hearts, against the peace of society, a profound hatred and
projects of vengeance which are only too inveterate. Ah! let us dread
the storms we are collecting over our heads, in a gloomy future; if we
have not the energy to put down profligacy from a love of virtue, let
us, at least, do it from considerations of its cost.
Footnote 5:
Clandestine prostitution invariably increases wherever the system of
registration and police regulation exist.
Footnote 6:
E. A. Duchesne—“De la prostitution dans la ville d’Alger, depuis la
conquête, 1853.”
Footnote 7:
Letter from the Bishop of Algiers to the Governor-General of Algeria,
May 1868.
Footnote 8:
I shall better still define the respective condition of the Mussulman
and French morals and laws by recalling to recollection that Emir who
went about Paris displaying, in a triumphal manner, two girls under
age purchased under the title of wives. If we take the oneness and the
sacred nature of our indissoluble marriage-institution as the measure
of this outrage on the dignity of humanity, we see in it a defiance to
our civilisation. It is, nevertheless, a fact that Abdel Kader could
have been supplied with human flesh on the Parisian market on much
easier terms; if he repudiates his Circassians, he must provide for
them, while he would have been free, on his departure, to turn
Parisians out into the street. In the investigation of our scandalous
morals, we shall meet, among our officials, with types of degradation
which would make the Grand Chief Mussulman blush. If, therefore, from
our lawful monogamy to the Arab polygamy, the distance from heaven to
earth be measured, there is between our irresponsible profligacy and
that polygamy all the interval from earth to hell. Before our time the
children born in the harem belonged to the father; in our time, those
born out of it belong to the mother. The economical results of this
state of things, in a country where woman has no means of support, can
be calculated.
Footnote 9:
Some years since, a wealthy foreigner offered a brothel-proprietress
10,000 francs (£400) for a young girl. She bought her from a greedy
mother, who was to receive half the price of the sale, but the
procuress disappeared after delivery of the girl, and receiving
payment for her. The mother, disappointed of the part she agreed for,
went to a lawyer with her case, but he declined to have anything to do
with this unsavoury affair.
Footnote 10:
At the July Revolution, the gates of St. Lazare were opened for them,
but they declined to go out from it.
Footnote 11:
A Parisian tenant was complaining that the house which he thought was
well-tenanted should lodge women of doubtful reputation and be the
theatre for riotous and scandalous orgies. The porter replied: “These
women, who pay for their occupancy as you do, are more generous than
yourself; if you are not satisfied with the neighbourhood you can look
for a better—in any event, _their money is worth as much as yours_.”
Footnote 12:
Brière de Boismont has made out a list of seventeen suicides, in ten
years among the girls registered in Paris.
Footnote 13:
Lamartine—History of the Girondins.
Footnote 14:
According to Lairtullier, she stabbed him herself with a dagger.
Footnote 15:
“He who takes a prostitute for his wife,” says Innocent III.,
“performs an act of piety, for he rescues her from the road to ruin,
and obtains forgiveness of his sins.”
Footnote 16:
The livre was worth about 10½d.
Footnote 17:
A basis of comparison may be formed by remembering that Joinville, one
of the richest noblemen of that age, who went to the crusade with
troops equipped at his own charges, had an income of 1,500 livres.
Footnote 18:
Tacitus: Manners of the Germans—XII.
Footnote 19:
A decree of February 13th, 1424, is made the protector of public girls
against the dissolute men who beat them.
Footnote 20:
P. Dufour: History of Prostitution—Vol. IV.
Footnote 21:
Art. 1st—Women and girl prostitutes are forbidden to do fancy work (to
crochet) on the quays, in the squares, public walks, boulevards, &c.
Footnote 22:
One of the noblest and most constant subjects of interest to the
Emperor at St. Helena was the discovery of effectual means for
guarding against profligacy in towns.
Footnote 23:
Law of November 19th, 1866.
Footnote 24:
For the tendency of similar legislation in England, see _Saturday
Review_, January 8th, 1870:—“The law accepts the fact of a contagious
disease which happens to exist in a human subject only as the law
accepts the fact of a bad drain or an unhealthy factory, and deals
with it accordingly. In neither case is either the woman or the
nuisance _treated as a moral agent, but as a physical
fact_.”—[EDITOR.]
Footnote 25:
Correctional Court of Niort, _re_ Plassiart—Sitting of Dec. 7, 1861.
Footnote 26:
No one is permitted to come into court who must avow his own shame.
Footnote 27:
Assize Court of the Seine—Sitting of May 12, 1868.
Footnote 28:
Law of October 25, 1864.
Footnote 29:
The authoress, when she wrote these pages, had not heard the fact that
the _Contagious Diseases Acts_ had become law in England.—[EDITOR.]
Footnote 30:
In the United States the Constitution thus establishes the principle
of responsibility:—“The president, vice-president, and all civil
functionaries, shall be liable to be turned out of their places if,
after being accused, they are convicted of treason, the waste of
public money, or other offences, and _of libertinism_.” In the same
way, every elector, before voting, must give proof of his morality.
The Prussian laws sentence the pander who allures women, even those
above age, by artifice, to ten years’ hard labour, and have him
flogged when he is sent to, and when discharged from, prison. They
deprive fathers, mothers, masters, patrons, tutors, &c., of their
rights, if they abuse, merely by licentious words, those placed in
their care. Russia whips debauchees with the knout. Spain has partly
kept up her old laws, which were severe only on the purveyors of
profligacy and the frequenters of places of infamy, by declaring that
“_The shame proceeds from him who pays for debauchery, and not from
her who sells it and receives its price._” Public prostitutes there,
who engage maid-servants under 40, are sentenced to one year’s
transportation, and a fine of 2000 marvedi, &c.
Footnote 31:
In one of our towns of 100,000 inhabitants, the brothels receive about
1,200,000 francs yearly.
Footnote 32:
Marcus Aurelius, who understood all the importance of moral
perfection, thanks the gods for having had a youth of chastity. How
few sovereigns can say with him: “Men want a head as flocks do a
leader. This head is not above the laws, his life separated from the
body of society would be a factious one.... A sovereign cannot do his
duty if he does not find advisers to point it out to him,” &c.
Footnote 33:
Luxuriousness, more ruthless than war, overmastered us, and avenges
the world (we have) conquered.
Footnote 34:
A young debauchee used to get women into a house for base purposes.
After debauching his victims he deserted them in the darkness of night
in the middle of winter, among the intricacies of a house unknown to
them. When, half dead from cold, they dragged themselves in the
morning to the doorstep to complain of this barbarity, the young man,
questioned by the porter, feigned surprise. At other times, he made
sport, impudently, of recriminations he knew to be unable to reach
him, and commonly boasted of the privileges of irresponsibility which
convert marriage into a profession of trickery. This guardian of our
social morality was decorated, in 1848, for having, in the June days,
fought _in defence of public tranquillity_.
Footnote 35: