It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this theory

represents the central and primitive idea which led to the

development of sacred prostitution. It seems equally clear,

however, that as time went on, and especially as temple cults

developed and priestly influence increased, this fundamental and

primitive idea tended to become modified, and even transformed.

The primitive conception became specialized in the belief that

religious benefits, and especially the gift of fruitfulness, were

gained _by the worshipper_, who thus sought the goddess's favor

by an act of unchastity which might be presumed to be agreeable

to an unchaste deity. The rite of Mylitta, as described by

Herodotus, was a late development of this kind in an ancient

civilization, and the benefit sought was evidently for the

worshipper herself. This has been pointed out by Dr. Westermarck,

who remarks that the words spoken to the woman by her partner as

he gives her the coin--"May the goddess be auspicious to

thee!"--themselves indicate that the object of the act was to

insure her fertility, and he refers also to the fact that

strangers frequently had a semi-supernatural character, and their

benefits a specially efficacious character (Westermarck, _Origin

and Development of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii, p. 446). It may be

added that the rite of Mylitta thus became analogous with another

Mediterranean rite, in which the act of simulating intercourse

with the representative of a god, or his image, ensured a woman's

fertility. This is the rite practiced by the Egyptians of Mendes,

in which a woman went through the ceremony of simulated

intercourse with the sacred goat, regarded as the representative

of a deity of Pan-like character (Herodotus, Bk. ii, Ch. XLVI;

and see Dulaure, _Des Divinités Génératrices_, Ch. II; cf. vol. v

of these _Studies_, "Erotic Symbolism," Sect. IV). This rite was

maintained by Roman women, in connection with the statues of

Priapus, to a very much later date, and St. Augustine mentions

how Roman matrons placed the young bride on the erect member of

Priapus (_De Civitate Dei_, Bk. iii, Ch. IX). The idea evidently

running through this whole group of phenomena is that the deity,

or the representative or even mere image of the deity, is able,

through a real or simulated act of intercourse, to confer on the

worshipper a portion of its own exalted generative activity.

At a later period, in Corinth, prostitutes were still the priestesses of

Venus, more or less loosely attached to her temples, and so long as that

was the case they enjoyed a considerable degree of esteem. At this stage,

however, we realize that religious prostitution was developing a

utilitarian side. These temples flourished chiefly in sea-coast towns, in

islands, in large cities to which many strangers and sailors came. The

priestesses of Cyprus burnt incense on her altars and invoked her sacred

aid, but at the same time Pindar addresses them as "young girls who

welcome all strangers and give them hospitality." Side by side with the

religious significance of the act of generation the needs of men far from

home were already beginning to be definitely recognized. The Babylonian

woman had gone to the temple of Mylitta to fulfil a personal religious

duty; the Corinthian priestess had begun to act as an avowed minister to

the sexual needs of men in strange cities.

The custom which Herodotus noted in Lydia of young girls prostituting

themselves in order to acquire a marriage portion which they may dispose

of as they think fit (Bk. I, Ch. 93) may very well have developed (as

Frazer also believes) out of religious prostitution; we can indeed trace

its evolution in Cyprus where eventually, at the period when Justinian

visited the island, the money given by strangers to the women was no

longer placed on the altar but put into a chest to form marriage-portions

for them. It is a custom to be found in Japan and various other parts of

the world, notably among the Ouled-Nail of Algeria,[138] and is not

necessarily always based on religious prostitution; but it obviously

cannot exist except among peoples who see nothing very derogatory in free

sexual intercourse for the purpose of obtaining money, so that the custom

of Mylitta furnished a natural basis for it.[139]

As a more spiritual conception of religion developed, and as the growth of

civilization tended to deprive sexual intercourse of its sacred halo,

religious prostitution in Greece was slowly abolished, though on the

coasts of Asia Minor both religious prostitution and prostitution for the

purpose of obtaining a marriage portion persisted to the time of

Constantine, who put an end to these ancient customs.[140] Superstition

was on the side of the old religious prostitution; it was believed that

women who had never sacrificed to Aphrodite became consumed by lust, and

according to the legend recorded by Ovid--a legend which seems to point to

a certain antagonism between sacred and secular prostitution--this was the

case with the women who first became public prostitutes. The decay of

religious prostitution, doubtless combined with the cravings always born

of the growth of civilization, led up to the first establishment,

attributed by legend to Solon, of a public brothel, a purely secular

establishment for a purely secular end: the safeguarding of the virtue of

the general population and the increase of the public revenue. With that

institution the evolution of prostitution, and of the modern marriage

system of which it forms part, was completed. The Athenian _dikterion_ is

the modern brothel; the _dikteriade_ is the modern state-regulated

prostitute. The free _hetairæ_, indeed, subsequently arose, educated women

having no taint of the _dikterion_, but they likewise had no official part

in public worship.[141] The primitive conception of the sanctity of sexual

intercourse in the divine service had been utterly lost.

A fairly typical example of the conditions existing among savages

is to be found in the South Sea Island of Rotuma, where

"prostitution for money or gifts was quite unknown." Adultery

after marriage was also unknown. But there was great freedom in

the formation of sexual relationships before marriage (J. Stanley

Gardiner, _Journal Anthropological Institute_, February, 1898, p.

409). Much the same is said of the Bantu Ba mbola of Africa (_op.

cit._, July-December, 1905, p. 410).

Among the early Cymri of Wales, representing a more advanced

social stage, prostitution appears to have been not absolutely

unknown, but public prostitution was punished by loss of valuable

privileges (R.B. Holt, "Marriage Laws and Customs of the Cymri,"

_Journal Anthropological Institute_, August-November, 1898, pp.

161-163).

Prostitution was practically unknown in Burmah, and regarded as

shameful before the coming of the English and the example of the

modern Hindus. The missionaries have unintentionally, but

inevitably, favored the growth of prostitution by condemning free

unions (_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, November, 1903, p.

720). The English brought prostitution to India. "That was not

specially the fault of the English," said a Brahmin to Jules

Bois, "it is the crime of your civilization. We have never had

prostitutes. I mean by that horrible word the brutalized servants

of the gross desire of the passerby. We had, and we have, castes

of singers and dancers who are married to trees--yes, to

trees--by touching ceremonies which date from Vedic times; our

priests bless them and receive much money from them. They do not

refuse themselves to those who love them and please them. Kings

have made them rich. They represent all the arts; they are the

visible beauty of the universe" (Jules Bois, _Visions de l'Inde_,

p. 55).

Religious prostitutes, it may be added, "the servants of the

god," are connected with temples in Southern India and the

Deccan. They are devoted to their sacred calling from their

earliest years, and it is their chief business to dance before

the image of the god, to whom they are married (though in Upper

India professional dancing girls are married to inanimate

objects), but they are also trained in arousing and assuaging the

desires of devotees who come on pilgrimage to the shrine. For the

betrothal rites by which, in India, sacred prostitutes are

consecrated, see, e.g., A. Van Gennep, _Rites de Passage_, p.

142.

In many parts of Western Asia, where barbarism had reached a high

stage of development, prostitution was not unknown, though

usually disapproved. The Hebrews knew it, and the historical

Biblical references to prostitutes imply little reprobation.

Jephtha was the son of a prostitute, brought up with the

legitimate children, and the story of Tamar is instructive. But

the legal codes were extremely severe on Jewish maidens who

became prostitutes (the offense was quite tolerable in strange

women), while Hebrew moralists exercised their invectives against

prostitution; it is sufficient to refer to a well-known passage

in the Book of Proverbs (see art. "Harlot," by Cheyne, in the

_Encyclopædia Biblica_). Mahomed also severely condemned

prostitution, though somewhat more tolerant to it in slave

women; according to Haleby, however, prostitution was practically

unknown in Islam during the first centuries after the Prophet's

time.

The Persian adherents of the somewhat ascetic _Zendavesta_ also

knew prostitution, and regarded it with repulsion: "It is the

Gahi [the courtesan, as an incarnation of the female demon,

Gahi], O Spitama Zarathustra! who mixes in her the seed of the

faithful and the unfaithful, of the worshipper of Mazda and the

worshipper of the Dævas, of the wicked and the righteous. Her

look dries up one-third of the mighty floods that run from the

mountains, O Zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the

beautiful, golden-hued, growing plants, O Zarathustra; her look

withers one-third of the strength of Spenta Armaiti [the earth];

and her touch withers in the faithful one-third of his good

thoughts, of his good words, of his good deeds, one-third of his

strength, of his victorious power, of his holiness. Verily I say

unto thee, O Spitama Zarathustra! such creatures ought to be

killed even more than gliding snakes, than howling wolves, than

the she-wolf that falls upon the fold, or than the she-frog that

falls upon the waters with her thousandfold brood" (_Zend-Avesta,

the Vendidad_, translated by James Darmesteter, Farfad XVIII).

In practice, however, prostitution is well established in the

modern East. Thus in the Tartar-Turcoman region houses of

prostitution lying outside the paths frequented by Christians

have been described by a writer who appears to be well informed

("Orientalische Prostitution," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_,

1907, Bd. ii, Heft 1). These houses are not regarded as immoral

or forbidden, but as places in which the visitor will find a

woman who gives him for a few hours the illusion of being in his

own home, with the pleasure of enjoying her songs, dances, and

recitations, and finally her body. Payment is made at the door,

and no subsequent question of money arises; the visitor is

henceforth among friends, almost as if in his own family. He

treats the prostitute almost as if she were his wife, and no

indecorum or coarseness of speech occurs. "There is no obscenity

in the Oriental brothel." At the same time there is no artificial

pretence of innocence.

In Eastern Asia, among the peoples of Mongolian stock, especially

in China, we find prostitution firmly established and organized

on a practical business basis. Prostitution is here accepted and

viewed with no serious disfavor, but the prostitute herself is,

nevertheless, treated with contempt. Young children are

frequently sold to be trained to a life of prostitution, educated

accordingly, and kept shut up from the world. Young widows

(remarriage being disapproved) frequently also slide into a life

of prostitution. Chinese prostitutes often end through opium and

the ravages of syphilis (see, e.g., Coltman's _The Chinese_,

1900, Ch. VII). In ancient China, it is said prostitutes were a

superior class and occupied a position somewhat similar to that

of the _hetairæ_ in Greece. Even in modern China, however, where

they are very numerous, and the flower boats, in which in towns

by the sea they usually live, very luxurious, it is chiefly for

entertainment, according to some writers, that they are resorted

to. Tschang Ki Tong, military attaché in Paris (as quoted by

Ploss and Bartels), describes the flower boat as less analogous

to a European brothel than to a _café chantant_; the young

Chinaman comes here for music, for tea, for agreeable

conversation with the flower-maidens, who are by no means

necessarily called upon to minister to the lust of their

visitors.

In Japan, the prostitute's lot is not so degraded as in China.

The greater refinement of Japanese civilization allows the

prostitute to retain a higher degree of self-respect. She is

sometimes regarded with pity, but less often with contempt. She

may associate openly with men, ultimately be married, even to men

of good social class, and rank as a respectable woman. "In riding

from Tokio to Yokohama, the past winter," Coltman observes (_op.

cit._, p. 113), "I saw a party of four young men and three quite

pretty and gaily-painted prostitutes, in the same car, who were

having a glorious time. They had two or three bottles of various

liquors, oranges, and fancy cakes, and they ate, drank and sang,

besides playing jokes on each other and frolicking like so many

kittens. You may travel the whole length of the Chinese Empire

and never witness such a scene." Yet the history of Japanese

prostitutes (which has been written in an interesting and

well-informed book, _The Nightless City_, by an English student

of sociology who remains anonymous) shows that prostitution in

Japan has not only been severely regulated, but very widely

looked down upon, and that Japanese prostitutes have often had to

suffer greatly; they were at one time practically slaves and

often treated with much hardship. They are free now, and any

condition approaching slavery is strictly prohibited and guarded

against. It would seem, however, that the palmiest days of

Japanese prostitution lay some centuries back. Up to the middle

of the eighteenth century Japanese prostitutes were highly

accomplished in singing, dancing, music, etc. Towards this

period, however, they seem to have declined in social

consideration and to have ceased to be well educated. Yet even

to-day, says Matignon ("La Prostitution au Japon," _Archives

d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, October, 1906), less infamy attaches

to prostitution in Japan than in Europe, while at the same time

there is less immorality in Japan than in Europe. Though

prostitution is organized like the postal or telegraph service,

there is also much clandestine prostitution. The prostitution

quarters are clean, beautiful and well-kept, but the Japanese

prostitutes have lost much of their native good taste in costume

by trying to imitate European fashions. It was when prostitution

began to decline two centuries ago, that the geishas first

appeared and were organized in such a way that they should not,

if possible, compete as prostitutes with the recognized and

licensed inhabitants of the Yoshiwara, as the quarter is called

to which prostitutes are confined. The geishas, of course, are

not prostitutes, though their virtue may not always be

impregnable, and in social position they correspond to actresses

in Europe.

In Korea, at all events before Korea fell into the hands of the

Japanese, it would seem that there was no distinction between the

class of dancing girls and prostitutes. "Among the courtesans,"

Angus Hamilton states, "the mental abilities are trained and

developed with a view to making them brilliant and entertaining

companions. These 'leaves of sunlight' are called _gisaing_, and

correspond to the geishas of Japan. Officially, they are attached

to a department of government, and are controlled by a bureau of

their own, in common with the Court musicians. They are supported

from the national treasury, and they are in evidence at official

dinners and all palace entertainments. They read and recite; they

dance and sing; they become accomplished artists and musicians.

They dress with exceptional taste; they move with exceeding

grace; they are delicate in appearance, very frail and very

human, very tender, sympathetic, and imaginative." But though

they are certainly the prettiest women in Korea, move in the

highest society, and might become concubines of the Emperor, they

are not allowed to marry men of good class (Angus Hamilton,

_Korea_, p. 52).

The history of European prostitution, as of so many other modern

institutions, may properly be said to begin in Rome. Here at the outset we

already find that inconsistently mixed attitude towards prostitution which

to-day is still preserved. In Greece it was in many respects different.

Greece was nearer to the days of religious prostitution, and the sincerity

and refinement of Greek civilization made it possible for the better kind

of prostitute to exert, and often be worthy to exert, an influence in all

departments of life which she has never been able to exercise since,

except perhaps occasionally, in a much slighter degree, in France. The

course, vigorous, practical Roman was quite ready to tolerate the

prostitute, but he was not prepared to carry that toleration to its

logical results; he never felt bound to harmonize inconsistent facts of

life. Cicero, a moralist of no mean order, without expressing approval of

prostitution, yet could not understand how anyone should wish to prohibit

youths from commerce with prostitutes, such severity being out of harmony

with all the customs of the past or the present.[142] But the superior

class of Roman prostitutes, the _bonæ mulieres_, had no such dignified

position as the Greek _hetairæ_. Their influence was indeed immense, but

it was confined, as it is in the case of their European successors to-day,

to fashions, customs, and arts. There was always a certain moral rigidity

in the Roman which prevented him from yielding far in this direction. He

encouraged brothels, but he only entered them with covered head and face

concealed in his cloak. In the same way, while he tolerated the

prostitute, beyond a certain point he sharply curtailed her privileges.

Not only was she deprived of all influence in the higher concerns of life,

but she might not even wear the _vitta_ or the _stola_; she could indeed

go almost naked if she pleased, but she must not ape the emblems of the

respectable Roman matron.[143]

The rise of Christianity to political power produced on the whole less

change of policy than might have been anticipated. The Christian rulers

had to deal practically as best they might with a very mixed, turbulent,

and semi-pagan world. The leading fathers of the Church were inclined to

tolerate prostitution for the avoidance of greater evils, and Christian

emperors, like their pagan predecessors, were willing to derive a tax from

prostitution. The right of prostitution to exist was, however, no longer

so unquestionably recognized as in pagan days, and from time to time some

vigorous ruler sought to repress prostitution by severe enactments. The

younger Theodosius and Valentinian definitely ordained that there should

be no more brothels and that anyone giving shelter to a prostitute should

be punished. Justinian confirmed that measure and ordered that all panders

were to be exiled on pain of death. These enactments were quite vain. But

during a thousand years they were repeated again and again in various

parts of Europe, and invariably with the same fruitless or worse than

fruitless results. Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, punished with death

those who promoted prostitution, and Recared, a Catholic king of the same

people in the sixth century, prohibited prostitution altogether and

ordered that a prostitute, when found, should receive three hundred

strokes of the whip and be driven out of the city. Charlemagne, as well as

Genserich in Carthage, and later Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, made

severe laws against prostitution which were all of no effect, for even if

they seemed to be effective for the time the reaction was all the greater

afterwards.[144]

It is in France that the most persistent efforts have been made to combat

prostitution. Most notable of all were the efforts of the King and Saint,

Louis IX. In 1254 St. Louis ordained that prostitutes should be driven out

altogether and deprived of all their money and goods, even to their

mantles and gowns. In 1256 he repeated this ordinance and in 1269, before

setting out for the Crusades, he ordered the destruction of all places of

prostitution. The repetition of those decrees shows how ineffectual they

were. They even made matters worse, for prostitutes were forced to mingle

with the general population and their influence was thus extended. St.

Louis was unable to put down prostitution even in his own camp in the

East, and it existed outside his own tent. His legislation, however, was

frequently imitated by subsequent rulers of France, even to the middle of

the seventeenth century, always with the same ineffectual and worse

results. In 1560 an edict of Charles IX abolished brothels, but the number

of prostitutes was thereby increased rather than diminished, while many

new kinds of brothels appeared in unsuspected shapes and were more

dangerous than the more recognized brothels which had been

suppressed.[145] In spite of all such legislation, or because of it, there

has been no country in which prostitution has played a more conspicuous

part.[146]

At Mantua, so great was the repulsion aroused by prostitutes that they

were compelled to buy in the markets any fruit or bread that had been

soiled by the mere touch of their hands. It was so also in Avignon in

1243. In Catalonia they could not sit at the same table as a lady or a

knight or kiss any honorable person.[147] Even in Venice, the paradise of

prostitution, numerous and severe regulations were passed against it, and

it was long before the Venetian rulers resigned themselves to its

toleration and regulation.[148]

The last vigorous attempt to uproot prostitution in Europe was that of

Maria Theresa at Vienna in the middle of the eighteenth century. Although

of such recent date it may be mentioned here because it was mediæval alike

in its conception and methods. Its object indeed, was to suppress not only

prostitution, but fornication generally, and the means adopted were fines,

imprisonment, whipping and torture. The supposed causes of fornication

were also dealt with severely; short dresses were prohibited; billiard

rooms and cafés were inspected; no waitresses were allowed, and when

discovered, a waitress was liable to be handcuffed and carried off by the

police. The Chastity Commission, under which these measures were

rigorously carried out, was, apparently, established in 1751 and was

quietly abolished by the Emperor Joseph II, in the early years of his

reign. It was the general opinion that this severe legislation was really

ineffective, and that it caused much more serious evils than it

cured.[149] It is certain in any case that, for a long time past,

illegitimacy has been more prevalent in Vienna than in any other great

European capital.

Yet the attitude towards prostitutes was always mixed and inconsistent at

different places or different times, or even at the same time and place.

Dufour has aptly compared their position to that of the mediæval Jews;

they were continually persecuted, ecclesiastically, civilly, and socially,

yet all classes were glad to have recourse to them and it was impossible

to do without them. In some countries, including England in the fourteenth

century, a special costume was imposed on prostitutes as a mark of

infamy.[150] Yet in many respects no infamy whatever attached to

prostitution. High placed officials could claim payment of their expenses

incurred in visiting prostitutes when traveling on public business.

Prostitution sometimes played an official part in festivities and

receptions accorded by great cities to royal guests, and the brothel might

form an important part of the city's hospitality. When the Emperor

Sigismund came to Ulm in 1434 the streets were illuminated at such times

as he or his suite desired to visit the common brothel. Brothels under

municipal protection are found in the thirteenth century in Augsburg, in

Vienna, in Hamburg.[151] In France the best known _abbayes_ of prostitutes

were those of Toulouse and Montpellier.[152] Durkheim is of opinion that

in the early middle ages, before this period, free love and marriage were

less severely differentiated. It was the rise of the middle class, he

considers, anxious to protect their wives and daughters, which led to a

regulated and publicly recognized attempt to direct debauchery into a

separate channel, brought under control.[153] These brothels constituted a

kind of public service, the directors of them being regarded almost as

public officials, bound to keep a certain number of prostitutes, to charge

according to a fixed tariff, and not to receive into their houses girls

belonging to the neighborhood. The institutions of this kind lasted for

three centuries. It was, in part, perhaps, the impetus of the new

Protestant movement, but mainly the terrible devastation produced by the

introduction of syphilis from America at the end of the fifteenth century

which, as Burckhardt and others have pointed out, led to the decline of

the mediæval brothels.[154]

The superior modern prostitute, the "courtesan" who had no connection with

the brothel, seems to have been the outcome of the Renaissance and made

her appearance in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. "Courtesan"

or "cortegiana" meant a lady following the court, and the term began at

this time to be applied to a superior prostitute observing a certain

degree of decorum and restraint.[155] In the papal court of Alexander

Borgia the courtesan flourished even when her conduct was not altogether

dignified. Burchard, the faithful and unimpeachable chronicler of this

court, describes in his diary how, one evening, in October, 1501, the Pope

sent for fifty courtesans to be brought to his chamber; after supper, in

the presence of Cæsar Borgia and his young sister Lucrezia, they danced

with the servitors and others who were present, at first clothed,

afterwards naked. The candlesticks with lighted candles were then placed

upon the floor and chestnuts thrown among them, to be gathered by the

women crawling between the candlesticks on their hands and feet. Finally a

number of prizes were brought forth to be awarded to those men "qui

pluries dictos meretrices carnaliter agnoscerent," the victor in the

contest being decided according to the judgment of the spectators.[156]

This scene, enacted publicly in the Apostolic palace and serenely set

forth by the impartial secretary, is at once a notable episode in the

history of modern prostitution and one of the most illuminating

illustrations we possess of the paganism of the Renaissance.

Before the term "courtesan" came into repute, prostitutes were

even in Italy commonly called "sinners," _peccatrice_. The

change, Graf remarks in a very interesting study of the

Renaissance prostitute ("Una Cortigiana fra Mille," _Attraverso

il Cinquecento_, pp. 217-351), "reveals a profound alteration in

ideas and in life;" a term that suggested infamy gave place to

one that suggested approval, and even honor, for the courts of

the Renaissance period represented the finest culture of the

time. The best of these courtesans seem to have been not

altogether unworthy of the honor they received. We can detect

this in their letters. There is a chapter on the letters of

Renaissance prostitutes, especially those of Camilla de Pisa

which are marked by genuine passion, in Lothar Schmidt's

_Frauenbriefe der Renaissance_. The famous Imperia, called by a

Pope in the early years of the sixteenth century "nobilissimum

Romæ scortum," knew Latin and could write Italian verse. Other

courtesans knew Italian and Latin poetry by heart, while they

were accomplished in music, dancing, and speech. We are reminded

of ancient Greece, and Graf, discussing how far the Renaissance

courtesans resembled the hetairæ, finds a very considerable

likeness, especially in culture and influence, though with some

differences due to the antagonism between religion and

prostitution at the later period.

The most distinguished figure in every respect among the

courtesans of that time was certainly Tullia D'Aragona. She was

probably the daughter of Cardinal D'Aragona (an illegitimate

scion of the Spanish royal family) by a Ferrarese courtesan who

became his mistress. Tullia has gained a high reputation by her

verse. Her best sonnet is addressed to a youth of twenty, whom

she passionately loved, but who did not return her love. Her

_Guerrino Meschino_, a translation from the Spanish, is a very

pure and chaste work. She was a woman of refined instincts and

aspirations, and once at least she abandoned her life of

prostitution. She was held in high esteem and respect. When, in

1546, Cosimo, Duke of Florence, ordered all prostitutes to wear a

yellow veil or handkerchief as a public badge of their

profession, Tullia appealed to the Duchess, a Spanish lady of

high character, and received permission to dispense with this

badge on account of her "rara scienzia di poesia et filosofia."

She dedicated her _Rime_ to the Duchess. Tullia D'Aragona was

very beautiful, with yellow hair, and remarkably large and bright

eyes, which dominated those who came near her. She was of proud

bearing and inspired unusual respect (G. Biagi, "Un' Etera

Romana," _Nuova Antologia_, vol. iv, 1886, pp. 655-711; S.

Bongi, _Rivista critica della Letteratura Italiana_, 1886, IV, p.

186).

Tullia D'Aragona was clearly not a courtesan at heart. Perhaps

the most typical example of the Renaissance courtesan at her best

is furnished by Veronica Franco, born in 1546 at Venice, of

middle class family and in early life married to a doctor. Of her

also it has been said that, while by profession a prostitute, she

was by inclination a poet. But she appears to have been well

content with her profession, and never ashamed of it. Her life

and character have been studied by Arturo Graf, and more slightly

in a little book by Tassini. She was highly cultured, and knew

several languages; she also sang well and played on many

instruments. In one of her letters she advises a youth who was

madly in love with her that if he wishes to obtain her favors he

must leave off importuning her and devote himself tranquilly to

study. "You know well," she adds, "that all those who claim to be

able to gain my love, and who are extremely dear to me, are

strenuous in studious discipline.... If my fortune allowed it I

would spend all my time quietly in the academies of virtuous

men." The Diotimas and Aspasias of antiquity, as Graf comments,

would not have demanded so much of their lovers. In her poems it

is possible to trace some of her love histories, and she often

shows herself torn by jealousy at the thought that perhaps

another woman may approach her beloved. Once she fell in love

with an ecclesiastic, possibly a bishop, with whom she had no

relationships, and after a long absence, which healed her love,

she and he became sincere friends. Once she was visited by Henry

III of France, who took away her portrait, while on her part she

promised to dedicate a book to him; she so far fulfilled this as

to address some sonnets to him and a letter; "neither did the

King feel ashamed of his intimacy with the courtesan," remarks

Graf, "nor did she suspect that he would feel ashamed of it."

When Montaigne passed through Venice she sent him a little book

of hers, as we learn from his _Journal_, though they do not

appear to have met. Tintoret was one of her many distinguished

friends, and she was a strenuous advocate of the high qualities

of modern, as compared with ancient, art. Her friendships were

affectionate, and she even seems to have had various grand ladies

among her friends. She was, however, so far from being ashamed of

her profession of courtesan that in one of her poems she affirms

she has been taught by Apollo other arts besides those he is

usually regarded as teaching:

"Cosi dolce e gustevole divento,

Quando mi trovo con persona in letto

Da cui amata e gradita mi sento."

In a certain _catalogo_ of the prices of Venetian courtesans

Veronica is assigned only 2 scudi for her favors, while the

courtesan to whom the catalogue is dedicated is set down at 25

scudi. Graf thinks there may be some mistake or malice here, and

an Italian gentleman of the time states that she required not

less than 50 scudi from those to whom she was willing to accord

what Montaigne called the "negotiation entière."

In regard to this matter it may be mentioned that, as stated by

Bandello, it was the custom for a Venetian prostitute to have six

or seven gentlemen at a time as her lovers. Each was entitled to

come to sup and sleep with her on one night of the week, leaving

her days free. They paid her so much per month, but she always

definitely reserved the right to receive a stranger passing

through Venice, if she wished, changing the time of her

appointment with her lover for the night. The high and special

prices which we find recorded are, of course, those demanded from

the casual distinguished stranger who came to Venice as, once in

the sixteenth century, Montaigne came.

In 1580 (when not more than thirty-four) Veronica confessed to

the Holy Office that she had had six children. In the same year

she formed the design of founding a home, which should not be a

monastery, where prostitutes who wished to abandon their mode of

life could find a refuge with their children, if they had any.

This seems to have led to the establishment of a Casa del

Soccorso. In 1591 she died of fever, reconciled with God and

blessed by many unfortunates. She had a good heart and a sound

intellect, and was the last of the great Renaissance courtesans

who revived Greek hetairism (Graf, _Attraverso il Cinquecento_,

pp. 217-351). Even in sixteenth century Venice, however, it will

be seen, Veronica Franco seems to have been not altogether at

peace in the career of a courtesan. She was clearly not adapted

for ordinary marriage, yet under the most favorable conditions

that the modern world has ever offered it may still be doubted

whether a prostitute's career can offer complete satisfaction to

a woman of large heart and brain.

Ninon de Lenclos, who is frequently called "the last of the great

courtesans," may seem an exception to the general rule as to the

inability of a woman of good heart, high character, and fine

intelligence to find satisfaction in a prostitute's life. But it

is a total misconception alike of Ninon de Lenclos's temperament

and her career to regard her as in any true sense a prostitute at

all. A knowledge of even the barest outlines of her life ought to

prevent such a mistake. Born early in the seventeenth century,

she was of good family on both sides; her mother was a woman of

severe life, but her father, a gentleman of Touraine, inspired

her with his own Epicurean philosophy as well as his love of

music. She was extremely well educated. At the age of sixteen or

seventeen she had her first lover, the noble and valiant Gaspard

de Coligny; he was followed for half a century by a long

succession of other lovers, sometimes more than one at a time;

three years was the longest period during which she was faithful

to one lover. Her attractions lasted so long that, it is said,

three generations of Sévignés were among her lovers. Tallemant

des Réaux enables us to study in detail her _liaisons_.

It is not, however, the abundance of lovers which makes a woman a

prostitute, but the nature of her relationships with them.

Sainte-Beuve, in an otherwise admirable study of Ninon de Lenclos

(_Causeries du Lundi_, vol. iv), seems to reckon her among the

courtesans. But no woman is a prostitute unless she uses men as a

source of pecuniary gain. Not only is there no evidence that this

was the case with Ninon, but all the evidence excludes such a

relationship. "It required much skill," said Voltaire, "and a

great deal of love on her part, to induce her to accept

presents." Tallemant, indeed, says that she sometimes took money

from her lovers, but this statement probably involves nothing

beyond what is contained in Voltaire's remark, and, in any case,

Tallemant's gossip, though usually well-informed, was not always

reliable. All are agreed as to her extreme disinterestedness.

When we hear precisely of Ninon de Lenclos in connection with

money, it is not as receiving a gift, but only as repaying a debt

to an old lover, or restoring a large sum left with her for safe

keeping when the owner was exiled. Such incidents are far from

suggesting the professional prostitute of any age; they are

rather the relationships which might exist between men friends.

Ninon de Lenclos's character was in many respects far from

perfect, but she combined many masculine virtues, and especially

probity, with a temperament which, on the whole, was certainly

feminine; she hated hypocrisy, and she was never influenced by

pecuniary considerations. She was, moreover, never reckless, but

always retained a certain self-restraint and temperance, even in

eating and drinking, and, we are told, she never drank wine. She

was, as Sainte-Beuve has remarked, the first to realize that

there must be the same virtues for men and for women, and that it

is absurd to reduce all feminine virtues to one. "Our sex has

been burdened with all the frivolities," she wrote, "and men have

reserved to themselves the essential qualities: I have made

myself a man." She sometimes dressed as a man when riding (see,

e.g., _Correspondence Authentique_ of Ninon de Lenclos, with a

good introduction by Emile Colombey). Consciously or not, she

represented a new feminine idea at a period when--as we may see

in many forgotten novels written by the women of that time--ideas

were beginning to emerge in the feminine sphere. She was the

first, and doubtless, from one point of view, the most extreme

representative of a small and distinguished group of French women

among whom Georges Sand is the finest personality.

Thus it is idle to attempt to adorn the history of prostitution

with the name of Ninon de Lenclos. A debauched old prostitute

would never, like Ninon towards the end of her long life, have

been able to retain or to conquer the affection and the esteem

of many of the best men and women of her time; even to the

austere Saint-Simon it seemed that there reigned in her little

court a decorum which the greatest princesses cannot achieve. She

was not a prostitute, but a woman of unique personality with a

little streak of genius in it. That she was inimitable we need

not perhaps greatly regret. In her old age, in 1699, her old

friend and former lover, Saint-Evremond, wrote to her, with only

a little exaggeration, that there were few princesses and few

saints who would not leave their courts and their cloisters to

change places with her. "If I had known beforehand what my life

would be I would have hanged myself," was her oft-quoted answer.

It is, indeed, a solitary phrase that slips in, perhaps as the

expression of a momentary mood; one may make too much of it. More

truly characteristic is the fine saying in which her Epicurean

philosophy seems to stretch out towards Nietzsche: "La joie de

l'esprit en marque la force."

The frank acceptance of prostitution by the spiritual or even the temporal

power has since the Renaissance become more and more exceptional. The

opposite extreme of attempting to uproot prostitution has also in practice

been altogether abandoned. Sporadic attempts have indeed been made, here

and there, to put down prostitution with a strong hand even in quite

modern times. It is now, however, realized that in such a case the remedy

is worse than the disease.

In 1860 a Mayor of Portsmouth felt it his duty to attempt to

suppress prostitution. "In the early part of his mayoralty,"

according to a witness before the Select Committee on the

Contagious Diseases Acts (p. 393), "there was an order passed

that every beerhouse-keeper and licensed victualer in the borough

known to harbor these women would be dealt with, and probably

lose his license. On a given day about three hundred or four

hundred of these forlorn outcasts were bundled wholesale into the

streets, and they formed up in a large body, many of them with

only a shift and a petticoat on, and with a lot of drunken men

and boys with a fife and fiddle they paraded the streets for

several days. They marched in a body to the workhouse, but for

many reasons they were refused admittance.... These women

wandered about for two or three days shelterless, and it was felt

that the remedy was very much worse than the disease, and the

women were allowed to go back to their former places."

Similar experiments have been made even more recently in America.

"In Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1891, the houses of prostitutes

were closed, the inmates turned out upon the streets, and were

refused lodging and even food by the citizens of that place. A

wave of popular remonstrance, all over the country, at the

outrage on humanity, created a reaction which resulted in a last

condition by no means better than the first." In the same year

also a similar incident occurred in New York with the same

unfortunate results (Isidore Dyer, "The Municipal Control of

Prostitution in the United States," report presented to the

Brussels International Conference in 1899).

There grew up instead the tendency to regulate prostitution, to give it a

semi-official toleration which enabled the authorities to exercise a

control over it, and to guard as far as possible against its evil by

medical and police inspection. The new brothel system differed from the

ancient mediæval houses of prostitution in important respects; it involved

a routine of medical inspection and it endeavored to suppress any rivalry

by unlicensed prostitutes outside. Bernard Mandeville, the author of the

_Fable of the Bees_, and an acute thinker, was a pioneer in the advocacy

of this system. In 1724, in his _Modest Defense of Publick Stews_, he

argues that "the encouraging of public whoring will not only prevent most

of the mischievous effects of this vice, but even lessen the quantity of

whoring in general, and reduce it to the narrowest bounds which it can

possibly be contained in." He proposed to discourage private prostitution

by giving special privileges and immunities to brothels by Act of

Parliament. His scheme involved the erection of one hundred brothels in a

special quarter of the city, to contain two thousand prostitutes and one

hundred matrons of ability and experience with physicians and surgeons, as

well as commissioners to oversee the whole. Mandeville was regarded merely

as a cynic or worse, and his scheme was ignored or treated with contempt.

It was left to the genius of Napoleon, eighty years later, to establish

the system of "maisons de tolérance," which had so great an influence over

modern European practice during a large part of the last century and even

still in its numerous survivals forms the subject of widely divergent

opinions.

On the whole, however, it must be said that the system of registering,

examining, and regularizing prostitutes now belongs to the past. Many

great battles have been fought over this question; the most important is

that which raged for many years in England over the Contagious Diseases

Acts, and is embodied in the 600 pages of a Report by a Select Committee

on these Acts issued in 1882. The majority of the members of the Committee

reported favorably to the Acts which were, notwithstanding, repealed in

1886, since which date no serious attempt has been made in England to

establish them again.

At the present time, although the old system still stands in many

countries with the inert stolidity of established institutions, it no

longer commands general approval. As Paul and Victor Margueritte have

truly stated, in the course of an acute examination of the phenomena of

state-regulated prostitution as found in Paris, the system is "barbarous

to start with and almost inefficacious as well." The expert is every day

more clearly demonstrating its inefficacy while the psychologist and the

sociologist are constantly becoming more convinced that it is barbarous.

It can indeed by no means be said that any unanimity has been attained. It

is obviously so urgently necessary to combat the flood of disease and

misery which proceeds directly from the spread of syphilis and gonorrhoea,

and indirectly from the prostitution which is the chief propagator of

these diseases, that we cannot be surprised that many should eagerly catch

at any system which seems to promise a palliation of the evils. At the

present time, however, it is those best acquainted with the operation of

the system of control who have most clearly realized that the supposed

palliation is for the most part illusory,[157] and in any case attained at

the cost of the artificial production of other evils. In France, where the

system of the registration and control of prostitutes has been

established for over a century,[158] and where consequently its

advantages, if such there are, should be clearly realized, it meets with

almost impassioned opposition from able men belonging to every section of

the community. In Germany the opposition to regularized control has long

been led by well-equipped experts, headed by Blaschko of Berlin. Precisely

the same conclusions are being reached in America. Gottheil, of New York,

finds that the municipal control of prostitution is "neither successful

nor desirable." Heidingsfeld concludes that the regulation and control

system in force in Cincinnati has done little good and much harm; under

the system among the private patients in his own clinic the proportion of

cases of both syphilis and gonorrhoea has increased; "suppression of

prostitutes is impossible and control is impracticable."[159]

It is in Germany that the attempt to regulate prostitution still

remains most persistent, with results that in Germany itself are

regarded as unfortunate. Thus the German law inflicts a penalty

on householders who permit illegitimate sexual intercourse in

their houses. This is meant to strike the unlicensed prostitute,

but it really encourages prostitution, for a decent youth and

girl who decide to form a relationship which later may develop

into marriage, and which is not illegal (for extra-marital sexual

intercourse _per se_ is not in Germany, as it is by the

antiquated laws of several American States, a punishable

offense), are subjected to so much trouble and annoyance by the

suspicious police that it is much easier for the girl to become a

prostitute and put herself under the protection of the police.

The law was largely directed against those who live on the

profits of prostitution. But in practice it works out

differently. The prostitute simply has to pay extravagantly high

rents, so that her landlord really lives on the fruits of her

trade, while she has to carry on her business with increased

activity and on a larger scale in order to cover her heavy

expenses (P. Hausmeister, "Zur Analyse der Prostitution,"

_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, vol. ii, 1907, p. 294).

In Italy, opinion on this matter is much divided. The regulation

of prostitution has been successively adopted, abandoned, and

readopted. In Switzerland, the land of governmental experiments,

various plans are tried in different cantons. In some there is

no attempt to interfere with prostitution, except under special

circumstances; in others all prostitution, and even fornication

generally, is punishable; in Geneva only native prostitutes are

permitted to practice; in Zurich, since 1897, prostitution is

prohibited, but care is taken to put no difficulties in the path

of free sexual relationships which are not for gain. With these

different regulations, morals in Switzerland generally are said

to be much on the same level as elsewhere (Moreau-Christophe, _Du

Problème de la Misère_, vol. iii, p. 259). The same conclusion

holds good of London. A disinterested observer, Félix Remo (_La

Vie Galante en Angleterre_, 1888, p. 237), concluded that,

notwithstanding its free trade in prostitution, its alcoholic

excesses, its vices of all kinds, "London is one of the most

moral capitals in Europe." The movement towards freedom in this

matter has been evidenced in recent years by the abandonment of

the system of regulation by Denmark in 1906.

Even the most ardent advocates of the registration of prostitutes

recognize that not only is the tendency of civilization opposed rather

than favorable to the system, but that in the numerous countries where the

system persists registered prostitutes are losing ground in the struggle

against clandestine prostitutes. Even in France, the classic land of

police-controlled prostitutes, the "maisons de tolérance" have long been

steadily decreasing in number, by no means because prostitution is

decreasing but because low-class _brasseries_ and small _cafés-chantants_,

which are really unlicensed brothels, are taking their place.[160]

The wholesale regularization of prostitution in civilized centres is

nowadays, indeed, advocated by few, if any, of the authorities who belong

to the newer school. It is at most claimed as desirable in certain places

under special circumstances.[161] Even those who would still be glad to

see prostitution thoroughly in the control of the police now recognize

that experience shows this to be impossible. As many girls begin their

career as prostitutes at a very early age, a sound system of regulation

should be prepared to enroll as permanent prostitutes even girls who are

little more than children. That, however, is a logical conclusion against

which the moral sense, and even the common sense, of a community

instinctively revolts. In Paris girls may not be inscribed as prostitutes

until they have reached the age of sixteen and some consider even that age

too low.[162] Moreover, whenever she becomes diseased, or grows tired of

her position, the registered woman may always slip out of the hands of the

police and establish herself elsewhere as a clandestine prostitute. Every

rigid attempt to keep prostitution within the police ring leads to

offensive interference with the actions and the freedom of respectable

women which cannot fail to be intolerable in any free community. Even in a

city like London, where prostitution is relatively free, the supervision

of the police has led to scandalous police charges against women who have

done nothing whatever which should legitimately arouse suspicion of their

behavior. The escape of the infected woman from the police cordon has, it

is obvious, an effect in raising the apparent level of health of

registered women, and the police statistics are still further fallaciously

improved by the fact that the inmates of brothels are older on the average

than clandestine prostitutes and have become immune to disease.[163] These

facts are now becoming fairly obvious and well recognized. The state

regulation of prostitution is undesirable, on moral grounds for the

oft-emphasized reason that it is only applied to one sex, and on practical

grounds because it is ineffective. Society allows the police to harass the

prostitute with petty persecutions under the guise of charges of

"solicitation," "disorderly conduct," etc., but it is no longer convinced

that she ought to be under the absolute control of the police.

The problem of prostitution, when we look at it narrowly, seems to be in

the same position to-day as at any time in the course of the past three

thousand years. In order, however, to comprehend the real significance of

prostitution, and to attain a reasonable attitude towards it, we must look

at it from a broader point of view; we must consider not only its

evolution and history, but its causes and its relation to the wider

aspects of modern social life. When we thus view the problem from a

broader standpoint we shall find that there is no conflict between the

claims of ethics and those of social hygiene, and that the coördinated

activity of both is involved in the progressive refinement and

purification of civilized sexual relationships.

_III. The Causes of Prostitution._

The history of the rise and development of prostitution enables us to see

that prostitution is not an accident of our marriage system, but an

essential constituent which appears concurrently with its other essential

constituents. The gradual development of the family on a patriarchal and

largely monogamic basis rendered it more and more difficult for a woman to

dispose of her own person. She belongs in the first place to her father,

whose interest it was to guard her carefully until a husband appeared who

could afford to purchase her. In the enhancement of her value the new idea

of the market value of virginity gradually developed, and where a "virgin"

had previously meant a woman who was free to do as she would with her own

body its meaning was now reversed and it came to mean a woman who was

precluded from having intercourse with men. When she was transferred from

her father to a husband, she was still guarded with the same care;

husband and father alike found their interest in preserving their women

from unmarried men. The situation thus produced resulted in the existence

of a large body of young men who were not yet rich enough to obtain wives,

and a large number of young women, not yet chosen as wives, and many of

whom could never expect to become wives. At such a point in social

evolution prostitution is clearly inevitable; it is not so much the

indispensable concomitant of marriage as an essential part of the whole

system. Some of the superfluous or neglected women, utilizing their money

value and perhaps at the same time reviving traditions of an earlier

freedom, find their social function in selling their favors to gratify the

temporary desires of the men who have not yet been able to acquire wives.

Thus every link in the chain of the marriage system is firmly welded and

the complete circle formed.

But while the history of the rise and development of prostitution shows us

how indestructible and essential an element prostitution is of the

marriage system which has long prevailed in Europe--under very varied

racial, political, social, and religious conditions--it yet fails to

supply us in every respect with the data necessary to reach a definite

attitude towards prostitution to-day. In order to understand the place of

prostitution in our existing system, it is necessary that we should

analyze the chief factors of prostitution. We may most conveniently learn

to understand these if we consider prostitution, in order, under four

aspects. These are: (1) _economic_ necessity; (2) _biological_

predisposition; (3) _moral_ advantages; and (4) what may be called its

_civilizational_ value.

While these four factors of prostitution seem to me those that here

chiefly concern us, it is scarcely necessary to point out that many other

causes contribute to produce and modify prostitution. Prostitutes

themselves often seek to lead other girls to adopt the same paths;

recruits must be found for brothels, whence we have the "white slave

trade," which is now being energetically combated in many parts of the

world; while all the forms of seduction towards this life are favored and

often predisposed to by alcoholism. It will generally be found that

several causes have combined to push a girl into the career of

prostitution.

The ways in which various factors of environment and suggestion

unite to lead a girl into the paths of prostitution are indicated

in the following statement in which a correspondent has set forth

his own conclusions on this matter as a man of the world: "I have

had a somewhat varied experience among loose women, and can say,

without hesitation, that not more than 1 per cent, of the women I

have known could be regarded as educated. This indicates that

almost invariably they are of humble origin, and the terrible

cases of overcrowding that are daily brought to light suggest

that at very early ages the sense of modesty becomes extinct, and

long before puberty a familiarity with things sexual takes place.

As soon as they are old enough these girls are seduced by their

sweethearts; the familiarity with which they regard sexual

matters removes the restraint which surrounds a girl whose early

life has been spent in decent surroundings. Later they go to work

in factories and shops; if pretty and attractive, they consort

with managers and foremen. Then the love of finery, which forms

so large a part of the feminine character, tempts the girl to

become the 'kept' woman of some man of means. A remarkable thing

in this connection is the fact that they rarely enjoy excitement

with their protectors, preferring rather the coarser embraces of

some man nearer their own station in life, very often a soldier.

I have not known many women who were seduced and deserted, though

this is a fiction much affected by prostitutes. Barmaids supply a

considerable number to the ranks of prostitution, largely on

account of their addiction to drink; drunkenness invariably leads

to laxness of moral restraint in women. Another potent factor in

the production of prostitutes lies in the flare of finery

flaunted by some friend who has adopted the life. A girl, working

hard to live, sees some friend, perhaps making a call in the

street where the hard-working girl lives, clothed in finery,

while she herself can hardly get enough to eat. She has a

conversation with her finely-clad friend who tells her how easily

she can earn money, explaining what a vital asset the sexual

organs are, and soon another one is added to the ranks."

There is some interest in considering the reasons assigned for

prostitutes entering their career. In some countries this has

been estimated by those who come closely into official or other

contact with prostitutes. In other countries, it is the rule for

girls, before they are registered as prostitutes, to state the

reasons for which they desire to enter the career.

Parent-Duchâtelet, whose work on prostitutes in Paris is still an

authority, presented the first estimate of this kind. He found

that of over five thousand prostitutes, 1441 were influenced by

poverty, 1425 by seduction of lovers who had abandoned them,

1255 by the loss of parents from death or other cause. By such an

estimate, nearly the whole number are accounted for by

wretchedness, that is by economic causes, alone

(Parent-Duchâtelet, _De la Prostitution_, 1857, vol. i, p. 107).

In Brussels during a period of twenty years (1865-1884) 3505

women were inscribed as prostitutes. The causes they assigned for

desiring to take to this career present a different picture from

that shown by Parent-Duchâtelet, but perhaps a more reliable one,

although there are some marked and curious discrepancies. Out of

the 3505, 1523 explained that extreme poverty was the cause of

their degradation; 1118 frankly confessed that their sexual

passions were the cause; 420 attributed their fall to evil

company; 316 said they were disgusted and weary of their work,

because the toil was so arduous and the pay so small; 101 had

been abandoned by their lovers; 10 had quarrelled with their

parents; 7 were abandoned by their husbands; 4 did not agree with

their guardians; 3 had family quarrels; 2 were compelled to

prostitute themselves by their husbands, and 1 by her parents

(_Lancet_, June 28, 1890, p. 1442).

In London, Merrick found that of 16,022 prostitutes who passed

through his hands during the years he was chaplain at Millbank

prison, 5061 voluntarily left home or situation for "a life of

pleasure;" 3363 assigned poverty as the cause; 3154 were

"seduced" and drifted on to the street; 1636 were betrayed by

promises of marriage and abandoned by lover and relations. On the

whole, Merrick states, 4790, or nearly one-third of the whole

number, may be said to owe the adoption of their career directly

to men, 11,232 to other causes. He adds that of those pleading

poverty a large number were indolent and incapable (G.P. Merrick,

_Work Among the Fallen_, p. 38).

Logan, an English city missionary with an extensive acquaintance

with prostitutes, divided them into the following groups: (1)

One-fourth of the girls are servants, especially in public

houses, beer shops, etc., and thus led into the life; (2)

one-fourth come from factories, etc.; (3) nearly one-fourth are

recruited by procuresses who visit country towns, markets, etc.;

(4) a final group includes, on the one hand, those who are

induced to become prostitutes by destitution, or indolence, or a

bad temper, which unfits them for ordinary avocations, and, on

the other hand, those who have been seduced by a false promise of

marriage (W. Logan, _The Great Social Evil_, 1871, p. 53).

In America Sanger has reported the results of inquiries made of

two thousand New York prostitutes as to the causes which induced

them to take up their avocation:

Destitution 525

Inclination 513

Seduced and abandoned 258

Drink and desire for drink 181

Ill-treatment by parents, relations, or husbands 164

As an easy life 124

Bad company 84

Persuaded by prostitutes 71

Too idle to work 29

Violated 27

Seduced on emigrant ship 16

Seduced in emigrant boarding homes 8

-----

2,000

(Sanger, _History of Prostitution_, p. 488.)

In America, again, more recently, Professor Woods Hutchinson put

himself into communication with some thirty representative men in

various great metropolitan centres, and thus summarizes the

answers as regards the etiology of prostitution:

Per cent.

Love of display, luxury and idleness 42.1

Bad family surroundings 23.8

Seduction in which they were innocent victims 11.3

Lack of employment 9.4

Heredity 7.8

Primary sexual appetite 5.6

(Woods Hutchinson, "The Economics of Prostitution," _American

Gynæcologic and Obstetric Journal_, September, 1895; _Id., The

Gospel According to Darwin_, p. 194.)

In Italy, in 1881, among 10,422 inscribed prostitutes from the

age of seventeen upwards, the causes of prostitution were

classified as follows:

Vice and depravity 2,752

Death of parents, husband, etc. 2,139

Seduction by lover 1,653

Seduction by employer 927

Abandoned by parents, husband, etc. 794

Love of luxury 698

Incitement by lover or other persons outside

family 666

Incitement by parents or husband 400

To support parents or children 393

(Ferriani, _Minorenni Delinquenti_, p. 193.) The reasons

assigned by Russian prostitutes for taking up their career are

(according to Federow) as follows:

38.5 per cent. insufficient wages.

21. per cent. desire for amusement.

14. per cent. loss of place.

9.5 per cent. persuasion by women friends.

6.5 per cent. loss of habit of work.

5.5 per cent. chagrin, and to punish lover.

.5 per cent. drunkenness.

(Summarized in _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Nov. 15,

1901.)

1. _The Economic Causation of Prostitution_.--Writers on prostitution

frequently assert that economic conditions lie at the root of prostitution

and that its chief cause is poverty, while prostitutes themselves often

declare that the difficulty of earning a livelihood in other ways was a

main cause in inducing them to adopt this career. "Of all the causes of

prostitution," Parent-Duchâtelet wrote a century ago, "particularly in

Paris, and probably in all large cities, none is more active than lack of

work and the misery which is the inevitable result of insufficient wages."

In England, also, to a large extent, Sherwell states, "morals fluctuate

with trade."[164] It is equally so in Berlin where the number of

registered prostitutes increases during bad years.[165] It is so also in

America. It is the same in Japan; "the cause of causes is poverty."[166]

Thus the broad and general statement that prostitution is largely or

mainly an economic phenomenon, due to the low wages of women or to sudden

depressions in trade, is everywhere made by investigators. It must,

however, be added that these general statements are considerably qualified

in the light of the detailed investigations made by careful inquirers.

Thus Ströhmberg, who minutely investigated 462 prostitutes, found that

only one assigned destitution as the reason for adopting her career, and

on investigation this was found to be an impudent lie.[167] Hammer found

that of ninety registered German prostitutes not one had entered on the

career out of want or to support a child, while some went on the street

while in the possession of money, or without wishing to be paid.[168]

Pastor Buschmann, of the Teltow Magdalene Home in Berlin, finds that it is

not want but indifference to moral considerations which leads girls to

become prostitutes. In Germany, before a girl is put on the police

register, due care is always taken to give her a chance of entering a Home

and getting work; in Berlin, in the course of ten years, only two

girls--out of thousands--were willing to take advantage of this

opportunity. The difficulty experienced by English Rescue Homes in finding

girls who are willing to be "rescued" is notorious. The same difficulty is

found in other cities, even where entirely different conditions prevail;

thus it is found in Madrid, according to Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas

Aguilaniedo, that the prostitutes who enter the Homes, notwithstanding all

the devotion of the nuns, on leaving at once return to their old life.

While the economic factor in prostitution undoubtedly exists, the undue

frequency and emphasis with which it is put forward and accepted is

clearly due, in part to ignorance of the real facts, in part to the fact

that such an assumption appeals to those whose weakness it is to explain

all social phenomena by economic causes, and in part to its obvious

plausibility.[169]

Prostitutes are mainly recruited from the ranks of factory girls, domestic

servants, shop girls, and waitresses. In some of these occupations it is

difficult to obtain employment all the year round. In this way many

milliners, dressmakers and tailoresses become prostitutes when business is

slack, and return to business when the season begins. Sometimes the

regular work of the day is supplemented concurrently by prostitution in

the street in the evening. It is said, possibly with some truth, that

amateur prostitution of this kind is extremely prevalent in England, as it

is not checked by the precautions which, in countries where prostitution

is regulated, the clandestine prostitute must adopt in order to avoid

registration. Certain public lavatories and dressing-rooms in central

London are said to be used by the girls for putting on, and finally

washing off before going home, the customary paint.[170] It is certain

that in England a large proportion of parents belonging to the working and

even lower middle class ranks are unacquainted with the nature of the

lives led by their own daughters. It must be added, also, that

occasionally this conduct of the daughter is winked at or encouraged by

the parents; thus a correspondent writes that he "knows some towns in

England where prostitution is not regarded as anything disgraceful, and

can remember many cases where the mother's house has been used by the

daughter with the mother's knowledge."

Acton, in a well-informed book on London prostitution, written in the

middle of the last century, said that prostitution is "a transitory stage,

through which an untold number of British women are ever on their

passage."[171] This statement was strenuously denied at the time by many

earnest moralists who refused to admit that it was possible for a woman

who had sunk into so deep a pit of degradation ever to climb out again,

respectably safe and sound. Yet it is certainly true as regards a

considerable proportion of women, not only in England, but in other

countries also. Thus Parent-Duchâtelet, the greatest authority on French

prostitution, stated that "prostitution is for the majority only a

transitory stage; it is quitted usually during the first year; very few

prostitutes continue until extinction." It is difficult, however, to

ascertain precisely of how large a proportion this is true; there are no

data which would serve as a basis for exact estimation,[172] and it is

impossible to expect that respectable married women would admit that they

had ever been "on the streets"; they would not, perhaps, always admit it

even to themselves.

The following case, though noted down over twenty years ago, is

fairly typical of a certain class, among the lower ranks of

prostitution, in which the economic factor counts for much, but

in which we ought not too hastily to assume that it is the sole

factor.

Widow, aged thirty, with two children. Works in an umbrella

manufactory in the East End of London, earning eighteen shillings

a week by hard work, and increasing her income by occasionally

going out on the streets in the evenings. She haunts a quiet side

street which is one of the approaches to a large city railway

terminus. She is a comfortable, almost matronly-looking woman,

quietly dressed in a way that is only noticeable from the skirts

being rather short. If spoken to she may remark that she is

"waiting for a lady friend," talks in an affected way about the

weather, and parenthetically introduces her offers. She will

either lead a man into one of the silent neighboring lanes filled

with warehouses, or will take him home with her. She is willing

to accept any sum the man may be willing or able to give;

occasionally it is a sovereign, sometimes it is only a sixpence;

on an average she earns a few shillings in an evening. She had

only been in London for ten months; before that she lived in

Newcastle. She did not go on the streets there; "circumstances

alter cases," she sagely remarks. Though not speaking well of

the police, she says they do not interfere with her as they do

with some of the girls. She never gives them money, but hints

that it is sometimes necessary to gratify their desires in order

to keep on good terms with them.

It must always be remembered, for it is sometimes forgotten by socialists

and social reformers, that while the pressure of poverty exerts a markedly

modifying influence on prostitution, in that it increases the ranks of the

women who thereby seek a livelihood and may thus be properly regarded as a

factor of prostitution, no practicable raising of the rate of women's

wages could possibly serve, directly and alone, to abolish prostitution.

De Molinari, an economist, after remarking that "prostitution is an

industry" and that if other competing industries can offer women

sufficiently high pecuniary inducements they will not be so frequently

attracted to prostitution, proceeds to point out that that by no means

settles the question. "Like every other industry prostitution is governed

by the demand of the need to which it responds. As long as that need and

that demand persist, they will provoke an offer. It is the need and the

demand that we must act on, and perhaps science will furnish us the means

to do so."[173] In what way Molinari expects science to diminish the

demand for prostitutes, however, is not clearly brought out.

Not only have we to admit that no practicable rise in the rate of wages

paid to women in ordinary industries can possibly compete with the wages

which fairly attractive women of quite ordinary ability can earn by

prostitution,[174] but we have also to realize that a rise in general

prosperity--which alone can render a rise of women's wages healthy and

normal--involves a rise in the wages of prostitution, and an increase in

the number of prostitutes. So that if good wages is to be regarded as the

antagonist of prostitution, we can only say that it more than gives back

with one hand what it takes with the other. To so marked a degree is this

the case that Després in a detailed moral and demographic study of the

distribution of prostitution in France comes to the conclusion that we

must reverse the ancient doctrine that "poverty engenders prostitution"

since prostitution regularly increases with wealth,[175] and as a

département rises in wealth and prosperity, so the number both of its

inscribed and its free prostitutes rises also. There is indeed a fallacy

here, for while it is true, as Després argues, that wealth demands

prostitution, it is also true that a wealthy community involves the

extreme of poverty as well as of riches and that it is among the poorer

elements that prostitution chiefly finds its recruits. The ancient dictum

that "poverty engenders prostitution" still stands, but it is complicated

and qualified by the complex conditions of civilization. Bonger, in his

able discussion of the economic side of the question, has realized the

wide and deep basis of prostitution when he reaches the conclusion that it

is "on the one hand the inevitable complement of the existing legal

monogamy, and on the other hand the result of the bad conditions in which

many young girls grow up, the result of the physical and psychical

wretchedness in which the women of the people live, and the consequence

also of the inferior position of women in our actual society."[176] A

narrowly economic consideration of prostitution can by no means bring us

to the root of the matter.

One circumstance alone should have sufficed to indicate that the

inability of many women to secure "a living wage," is far from

being the most fundamental cause of prostitution: a large

proportion of prostitutes come from the ranks of domestic

service. Of all the great groups of female workers, domestic

servants are the freest from economic anxieties; they do not pay

for food or for lodging; they often live as well as their

mistresses, and in a large proportion of cases they have fewer

money anxieties than their mistresses. Moreover, they supply an

almost universal demand, so that there is never any need for even

very moderately competent servants to be in want of work. They

constitute, it is true, a very large body which could not fail to

supply a certain contingent of recruits to prostitution. But when

we see that domestic service is the chief reservoir from which

prostitutes are drawn, it should be clear that the craving for

food and shelter is by no means the chief cause of prostitution.

It may be added that, although the significance of this

predominance of servants among prostitutes is seldom realized by

those who fancy that to remove poverty is to abolish

prostitution, it has not been ignored by the more thoughtful

students of social questions. Thus Sherwell, while pointing out

truly that, to a large extent, "morals fluctuate with trade,"

adds that, against the importance of the economic factor, it is a

suggestive and in every way impressive fact that the majority of

the girls who frequent the West End of London (88 per cent.,

according to the Salvation Army's Registers) are drawn from

domestic service where the economic struggle is not severely felt

(Arthur Sherwell, _Life in West London_, Ch. V, "Prostitution").

It is at the same time worthy of note that by the conditions of

their lives servants, more than any other class, resemble

prostitutes (Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo have

pointed this out in _La Mala Vida en Madrid_, p. 240). Like

prostitutes, they are a class of women apart; they are not

entitled to the considerations and the little courtesies usually

paid to other women; in some countries they are even registered,

like prostitutes; it is scarcely surprising that when they suffer

from so many of the disadvantages of the prostitute, they should

sometimes desire to possess also some of her advantages. Lily

Braun (_Frauenfrage_, pp. 389 et seq.) has set forth in detail

these unfavorable conditions of domestic labor as they bear on

the tendency of servant-girls to become prostitutes. R. de

Ryckère, in his important work, _La Servante Criminelle_ (1907,

pp. 460 et seq.; cf., the same author's article, "La Criminalité

Ancillaire," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, July and

December, 1906), has studied the psychology of the servant-girl.

He finds that she is specially marked by lack of foresight,

vanity, lack of invention, tendency to imitation, and mobility of

mind. These are characters which ally her to the prostitute. De

Ryckère estimates the proportion of former servants among

prostitutes generally as fifty per cent., and adds that what is

called the "white slavery" here finds its most complacent and

docile victims. He remarks, however, that the servant prostitute

is, on the whole, not so much immoral as non-moral.

In Paris Parent-Duchâtelet found that, in proportion to their

number, servants furnished the largest contingent to

prostitution, and his editors also found that they head the list

(Parent-Duchâtelet, edition 1857, vol. i, p. 83). Among

clandestine prostitutes at Paris, Commenge has more recently

found that former servants constitute forty per cent. In Bordeaux

Jeannel (_De le Prostitution Publique_, p. 102) also found that

in 1860 forty per cent, of prostitutes had been servants,

seamstresses coming next with thirty-seven per cent.

In Germany and Austria it has long been recognized that domestic

service furnishes the chief number of recruits to prostitution.

Lippert, in Germany, and Gross-Hoffinger, in Austria, pointed out

this predominance of maid-servants and its significance before

the middle of the nineteenth century, and more recently Blaschko

has stated ("Hygiene der Syphilis" in Weyl's _Handbuch der

Hygiene_, Bd. ii, p. 40) that among Berlin prostitutes in 1898

maid-servants stand at the head with fifty-one per cent.

Baumgarten has stated that in Vienna the proportion of servants

is fifty-eight per cent.

In England, according to the Report of a Select Committee of the

Lords on the laws for the protection of children, sixty per cent,

of prostitutes have been servants. F. Remo, in his _Vie Galante

en Angleterre_, states the proportion as eighty per cent. It

would appear to be even higher as regards the West End of London.

Taking London as a whole the extensive statistics of Merrick

(_Work Among the Fallen_), chaplain of the Millbank Prison,

showed that out of 14,790 prostitutes, 5823, or about forty per

cent., had previously been servants, laundresses coming next, and

then dressmakers; classifying his data somewhat more summarily

and roughly, Merrick found that the proportion of servants was

fifty-three per cent.

In America, among two thousand prostitutes, Sanger states that

forty-three per cent, had been servants, dressmakers coming next,

but at a long interval, with six per cent. (Sanger, _History of

Prostitution_, p. 524). Among Philadelphia prostitutes, Goodchild

states that "domestics are probably in largest proportion,"

although some recruits may be found from almost any occupation.

It is the same in other countries. In Italy, according to Tammeo

(_La Prostituzione_, p. 100), servants come first among

prostitutes with a proportion of twenty-eight per cent., followed

by the group of dressmakers, tailoresses and milliners, seventeen

per cent. In Sardinia, A Mantegazza states, most prostitutes are

servants from the country. In Russia, according to Fiaux, the

proportion is forty-five per cent. In Madrid, according to Eslava

(as quoted by Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo (_La Mala

Vida, en Madrid_, p. 239)), servants come at the head of

registered prostitutes with twenty-seven per cent.--almost the

same proportion as in Italy--and are followed by dressmakers. In

Sweden, according to Welander (_Monatshefte für Praktische

Dermatologie_, 1899, p. 477) among 2541 inscribed prostitutes,

1586 (or sixty-two per cent.) were domestic servants; at a long

interval followed 210 seamstresses, then 168 factory workers,

etc.

2. _The Biological Factor of Prostitution_.--Economic considerations, as

we see, have a highly important modificatory influence on prostitution,

although it is by no means correct to assert that they form its main

cause. There is another question which has exercised many investigators:

To what extent are prostitutes predestined to this career by organic

constitution? It is generally admitted that economic and other conditions

are an exciting cause of prostitution; in how far are those who succumb

predisposed by the possession of abnormal personal characteristics? Some

inquirers have argued that this predisposition is so marked that

prostitution may fairly be regarded as a feminine equivalent for

criminality, and that in a family in which the men instinctively turn to

crime, the women instinctively turn to prostitution. Others have as

strenuously denied this conclusion.

Lombroso has more especially advocated the doctrine that

prostitution is the vicarious equivalent of criminality. In this

he was developing the results reached, in the important study of

the Jukes family, by Dugdale, who found that "there where the

brothers commit crime, the sisters adopt prostitution;" the fines

and imprisonments of the women of the family were not for

violations of the right of property, but mainly for offences

against public decency. "The psychological as well as anatomical

identity of the criminal and the born prostitute," Lombroso and

Ferrero concluded, "could not be more complete: both are

identical with the moral insane, and therefore, according to the

axiom, equal to each other. There is the same lack of moral

sense, the same hardness of heart, the same precocious taste for

evil, the same indifference to social infamy, the same

volatility, love of idleness, and lack of foresight, the same

taste for facile pleasures, for the orgy and for alcohol, the

same, or almost the same, vanity. Prostitution is only the

feminine side of criminality. And so true is it that prostitution

and criminality are two analogous, or, so to say, parallel,

phenomena, that at their extremes they meet. The prostitute is,

therefore, psychologically a criminal: if she commits no offenses

it is because her physical weakness, her small intelligence, the

facility of acquiring what she wants by more easy methods,

dispenses her from the necessity of crime, and on these very

grounds prostitution represents the specific form of feminine

criminality." The authors add that "prostitution is, in a certain

sense, socially useful as an outlet for masculine sexuality and a

preventive of crime" (Lombroso and Ferrero, _La Donna

Delinquente_, 1893, p. 571).

Those who have opposed this view have taken various grounds, and

by no means always understood the position they are attacking.

Thus W. Fischer (in _Die Prostitution_) vigorously argues that

prostitution is not an inoffensive equivalent of criminality, but

a factor of criminality. Féré, again (in _Dégénérescence et

Criminalité_), asserts that criminality and prostitution are not

equivalent, but identical. "Prostitutes and criminals," he holds,

"have as a common character their unproductiveness, and

consequently they are both anti-social. Prostitution thus

constitutes a form of criminality." The essential character of

criminals is not, however, their unproductiveness, for that they

share with a considerable proportion of the wealthiest of the

upper classes; it must be added, also, that the prostitute,

unlike the criminal, is exercising an activity for which there is

a demand, for which she is willingly paid, and for which she has

to work (it has sometimes been noted that the prostitute looks

down on the thief, who "does not work"); she is carrying on a

profession, and is neither more nor less productive than those

who carry on many more reputable professions. Aschaffenburg, also

believing himself in opposition to Lombroso, argues, somewhat

differently from Féré, that prostitution is not indeed, as Féré

said, a form of criminality, but that it is too frequently united

with criminality to be regarded as an equivalent. Mönkemöller has

more recently supported the same view. Here, however, as usual,

there is a wide difference of opinion as to the proportion of

prostitutes of whom this is true. It is recognized by all

investigators to be true of a certain number, but while

Baumgarten, from an examination of eight thousand prostitutes,

only found a minute proportion who were criminals, Ströhmberg

found that among 462 prostitutes there were as many as 175

thieves. From another side, Morasso (as quoted in _Archivio di

Psichiatria_, 1896, fasc. I), on the strength of his own

investigations, is more clearly in opposition to Lombroso, since

he protests altogether against any purely degenerative view of

prostitutes which would in any way assimilate them with

criminals.

The question of the sexuality of prostitutes, which has a certain bearing

on the question of their tendency to degeneration, has been settled by

different writers in different senses. While some, like Morasso, assert

that sexual impulse is a main cause inducing women to adopt a prostitute's

career, others assert that prostitutes are usually almost devoid of sexual

impulse. Lombroso refers to the prevalence of sexual frigidity among

prostitutes.[177] In London, Merrick, speaking from a knowledge of over

16,000 prostitutes, states that he has met with "only a very few cases"

in which gross sexual desire has been the motive to adopt a life of

prostitution. In Paris, Raciborski had stated at a much earlier period

that "among prostitutes one finds very few who are prompted to libertinage

by sexual ardor."[178] Commenge, again, a careful student of the Parisian

prostitute, cannot admit that sexual desire is to be classed among the

serious causes of prostitution. "I have made inquiries of thousands of

women on this point," he states, "and only a very small number have told

me that they were driven to prostitution for the satisfaction of sexual

needs. Although girls who give themselves to prostitution are often

lacking in frankness, on this point, I believe, they have no wish to

deceive. When they have sexual needs they do not conceal them, but, on the

contrary, show a certain _amour-propre_ in acknowledging them, as a

sufficient sort of justification for their life; so that if only a very

small minority avow this motive the reason is that for the great majority

it has no existence."

There can be no doubt that the statements made regarding the sexual

frigidity of prostitutes are often much too unqualified. This is in part

certainly due to the fact that they are usually made by those who speak

from a knowledge of old prostitutes whose habitual familiarity with normal

sexual intercourse in its least attractive aspects has resulted in

complete indifference to such intercourse, so far as their clients are

concerned.[179] It may be stated with truth that to the woman of deep

passions the ephemeral and superficial relationships of prostitution can

offer no temptation. And it may be added that the majority of prostitutes

begin their career at a very early age, long before the somewhat late

period at which in women the tendency for passion to become strong, has

yet arrived.[180] It may also be said that an indifference to sexual

relationships, a tendency to attach no personal value to them, is often a

predisposing cause in the adoption of a prostitute's career; the general

mental shallowness of prostitutes may well be accompanied by shallowness

of physical emotion. On the other hand, many prostitutes, at all events

early in their careers, appear to show a marked degree of sensuality, and

to women of coarse sexual fibre the career of prostitution has not been

without attractions from this point of view; the gratification of physical

desire is known to act as a motive in some cases and is clearly indicated

in others.[181] This is scarcely surprising when we remember that

prostitutes are in a very large proportion of cases remarkably robust and

healthy persons in general respects.[182] They withstand without

difficulty the risks of their profession, and though under its influence

the manifestations of sexual feeling can scarcely fail to become modified

or perverted in course of time, that is no proof of the original absence

of sexual sensibility. It is not even a proof of its loss, for the real

sexual nature of the normal prostitute, and her possibilities of sexual

ardor, are chiefly manifested, not in her professional relations with her

clients, but in her relations with her "fancy boy" or "bully."[183] It is

quite true that the conditions of her life often make it practically

advantageous to the prostitute to have attached to her a man who is

devoted to her interests and will defend them if necessary, but that is

only a secondary, occasional, and subsidiary advantage of the "fancy boy,"

so far as prostitutes generally are concerned. She is attracted to him

primarily because he appeals to her personally and she wants him for

herself. The motive of her attachment is, above all, erotic, in the full

sense, involving not merely sexual relations but possession and common

interests, a permanent and intimate life led together. "You know that what

one does in the way of business cannot fill one's heart," said a German

prostitute; "Why should we not have a husband like other women? I, too,

need love. If that were not so we should not want a bully." And he, on his

part, reciprocates this feeling and is by no means merely moved by

self-interest.[184]

One of my correspondents, who has had much experience of

prostitutes, not only in Britain, but also in Germany, France,

Belgium and Holland, has found that the normal manifestations of

sexual feeling are much more common in British than in

continental prostitutes. "I should say," he writes, "that in

normal coitus foreign women are generally unconscious of sexual

excitement. I don't think I have ever known a foreign woman who

had any semblance of orgasm. British women, on the other hand, if

a man is moderately kind, and shows that he has some feelings

beyond mere sensual gratification, often abandon themselves to

the wildest delights of sexual excitement. Of course in this

life, as in others, there is keen competition, and a woman, to

vie with her competitors, must please her gentlemen friends; but

a man of the world can always distinguish between real and

simulated passion." (It is possible, however, that he may be most

successful in arousing the feelings of his own fellow-country

women.) On the other hand, this writer finds that the foreign

women are more anxious to provide for the enjoyment of their

temporary consorts and to ascertain what pleases them. "The

foreigner seems to make it the business of her life to discover

some abnormal mode of sexual gratification for her consort." For

their own pleasure also foreign prostitutes frequently ask for

_cunnilinctus_, in preference to normal coitus, while anal coitus

is also common. The difference evidently is that the British

women, when they seek gratification, find it in normal coitus,

while the foreign women prefer more abnormal methods. There is,

however, one class of British prostitutes which this

correspondent finds to be an exception to the general rule: the

class of those who are recruited from the lower walks of the

stage. "Such women are generally more licentious--that is to say,

more acquainted with the bizarre in sexualism--than girls who

come from shops or bars; they show a knowledge of _fellatio_, and

even anal coitus, and during menstruation frequently suggest

inter-mammary coitus."

On the whole it would appear that prostitutes, though not usually impelled

to their life by motives of sensuality, on entering and during the early

part of their career possess a fairly average amount of sexual impulse,

with variations in both directions of excess and deficiency as well as of

perversion. At a somewhat later period it is useless to attempt to measure

the sexual impulse of prostitutes by the amount of pleasure they take in

the professional performance of sexual intercourse. It is necessary to

ascertain whether they possess sexual instincts which are gratified in

other ways. In a large proportion of cases this is found to be so.

Masturbation, especially, is extremely common among prostitutes

everywhere; however prevalent it may be among women who have no other

means of obtaining sexual gratification it is admitted by all to be still

more prevalent among prostitutes, indeed almost universal.[185]

Homosexuality, though not so common as masturbation, is very frequently

found among prostitutes--in France, it would seem, more frequently than in

England--and it may indeed be said that it occurs more often among

prostitutes than among any other class of women. It is favored by the

acquired distaste for normal coitus due to professional intercourse with

men, which leads homosexual relationships to be regarded as pure and ideal

by comparison. It would appear also that in a considerable proportion of

cases prostitutes present a congenital condition of sexual inversion, such

a condition, with an accompanying indifference to intercourse with men,

being a predisposing cause of the adoption of a prostitute's career.

Kurella even regards prostitutes as constituting a sub-variety of

congenital inverts. Anna Rüling in Germany states that about twenty per

cent. prostitutes are homosexual; when asked what induced them to become

prostitutes, more than one inverted woman of the street has replied to her

that it was purely a matter of business, sexual feeling not coming into

the question except with a friend of the same sex.[186]

The occurrence of congenital inversion among prostitutes--although we need

not regard prostitutes as necessarily degenerate as a class--suggests the

question whether we are likely to find an unusually large number of

physical and other anomalies among them. It cannot be said that there is

unanimity of opinion on this point. For some authorities prostitutes are

merely normal ordinary women of low social rank, if indeed their instincts

are not even a little superior to those of the class in which they were

born. Other investigators find among them so large a proportion of

individuals deviating from the normal that they are inclined to place

prostitutes generally among one or other of the abnormal classes.[187]

Baumgarten, in Vienna, from a knowledge of over 8000 prostitutes,

concluded that only a very minute proportion are either criminal

or psychopathic in temperament or organization (_Archiv für

Kriminal-Anthropologie_, vol. xi, 1902). It is not clear,

however, that Baumgarten carried out any detailed and precise

investigations. Mr. Lane, a London police magistrate, has stated

as the result of his own observation, that prostitution is "at

once a symptom and outcome of the same deteriorated physique and

decadent moral fibre which determine the manufacture of male

tramps, petty thieves, and professional beggars, of whom the

prostitute is in general the female analogue" (_Ethnological

Journal_, April, 1905, p. 41). This estimate is doubtless correct

as regards a considerable proportion of the women, often

enfeebled by drink, who pass through the police courts, but it

could scarcely be applied without qualification to prostitutes

generally.

Morasso (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1896, fasc. I) has protested

against a purely degenerative view of prostitutes on the strength

of his own observations. There is, he states, a category of

prostitutes, unknown to scientific inquirers, which he calls that

of the _prostitute di alto bordo_. Among these the signs of

degeneration, physical or moral, are not to be found in greater

number than among women who do not belong to prostitution. They

reveal all sorts of characters, some of them showing great

refinement, and are chiefly marked off by the possession of an

unusual degree of sexual appetite. Even among the more degraded

group of the _bassa prostituzione_, he asserts, we find a

predominance of sexual, as well as professional, characters,

rather than the signs of degeneration. It is sufficient to quote

one more testimony, as set down many years ago by a woman of high

intelligence and character, Mrs. Craik, the novelist: "The women

who fall are by no means the worst of their station," she wrote.

"I have heard it affirmed by more than one lady--by one in

particular whose experience was as large as her benevolence--that

many of them are of the very best, refined, intelligent,

truthful, and affectionate. 'I don't know how it is,' she would

say, 'whether their very superiority makes them dissatisfied with

their own rank--such brutes or clowns as laboring men often

are!--so that they fall easier victims to the rank above them; or

whether, though this theory will shock many people, other virtues

can exist and flourish entirely distinct from, and after the

loss of, that which we are accustomed to believe the

indispensable prime virtue of our sex--chastity. I cannot explain

it; I can only say that it is so, that some of my most promising

village girls have been the first to come to harm; and some of

the best and most faithful servants I ever had, have been girls

who have fallen into shame, and who, had I not gone to the rescue

and put them in the way to do well, would infallibly have become

"lost women"'" (_A Woman's Thoughts About Women_, 1858, p. 291).

Various writers have insisted on the good moral qualities of

prostitutes. Thus in France, Despine first enumerates their vices

as (1) greediness and love of drink, (2) lying, (3) anger, (4)

want of order and untidiness, (5) mobility of character, (6) need

of movement, (7) tendency to homosexuality; and then proceeds to

detail their good qualities: their maternal and filial affection,

their charity to each other; and their refusal to denounce each

other; while they are frequently religious, sometimes modest, and

generally very honest (Despine, _Psychologie Naturelle_, vol.

iii, pp. 207 et seq.; as regards Sicilian prostitutes, cf.

Callari, _Archivio di Psichiatria_, fasc. IV, 1903). The charity

towards each other, often manifested in distress, is largely

neutralized by a tendency to professional suspicion and jealousy

of each other.

Lombroso believes that the basis of prostitution must be found in

moral idiocy. If by moral idiocy we are to understand a condition

at all closely allied with insanity, this assertion is dubious.

There seems no clear relationship between prostitution and

insanity, and Tammeo has shown (_La Prostituzione_, p. 76) that

the frequency of prostitutes in the various Italian provinces is

in inverse ratio to the frequency of insane persons; as insanity

increases, prostitution decreases. But if we mean a minor degree

of moral imbecility--that is to say, a bluntness of perception

for the ordinary moral considerations of civilization which,

while it is largely due to the hardening influence of an

unfavorable early environment, may also rest on a congenital

predisposition--there can be no doubt that moral imbecility of

slight degree is very frequently found among prostitutes. It

would be plausible, doubtless, to say that every woman who gives

her virginity in exchange for an inadequate return is an

imbecile. If she gives herself for love, she has, at the worst,

made a foolish mistake, such as the young and inexperienced may

at any time make. But if she deliberately proposes to sell

herself, and does so for nothing or next to nothing, the case is

altered. The experiences of Commenge in Paris are instructive on

this point. "For many young girls," he writes, "modesty has no

existence, they experience no emotion in showing themselves

completely undressed, they abandon themselves to any chance

individual whom they will never see again. They attach no

importance to their virginity; they are deflowered under the

strangest conditions, without the least thought or care about the

act they are accomplishing. No sentiment, no calculation, pushes

them into a man's arms. They let themselves go without reflexion

and without motive, in an almost animal manner, from indifference

and without pleasure." He was acquainted with forty-five girls

between the ages of twelve and seventeen who were deflowered by

chance strangers whom they never met again; they lost their

virginity, in Dumas's phrase, as they lost their milk-teeth, and

could give no plausible account of the loss. A girl of fifteen,

mentioned by Commenge, living with her parents who supplied all

her wants, lost her virginity by casually meeting a man who

offered her two francs if she would go with him; she did so

without demur and soon begun to accost men on her own account. A

girl of fourteen, also living comfortably with her parents,

sacrificed her virginity at a fair in return for a glass of beer,

and henceforth begun to associate with prostitutes. Another girl

of the same age, at a local fête, wishing to go round on the

hobby horse, spontaneously offered herself to the man directing

the machinery for the pleasure of a ride. Yet another girl, of

fifteen, at another fête, offered her virginity in return for the

same momentary joy (Commenge, _Prostitution Clandestine_, 1897,

pp. 101 et seq.). In the United States, Dr. W. Travis Gibb,

examining physician to the New York Society for the Prevention of

Cruelty to Children, bears similar testimony to the fact that in

a fairly large proportion of "rape" cases the child is the

willing victim. "It is horribly pathetic," he says (_Medical

Record_, April 20, 1907), "to learn how far a nickel or a quarter

will go towards purchasing the virtue of these children."

In estimating the tendency of prostitutes to display congenital

physical anomalies, the crudest and most obvious test, though not

a precise or satisfactory one, is the general impression produced

by the face. In France, when nearly 1000 prostitutes were divided

into five groups from the point of view of their looks, only from

seven to fourteen per cent, were found to belong to the first

group, or that of those who could be said to possess youth and

beauty (Jeannel, _De la Prostitution Publique_, 1860, p. 168).

Woods Hutchinson, again, judging from an extensive acquaintance

with London, Paris, Vienna, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago,

asserts that a handsome or even attractive-looking prostitute, is

rare, and that the general average of beauty is lower than in any

other class of women. "Whatever other evils," he remarks, "the

fatal power of beauty may be responsible for, it has nothing to

do with prostitution" (Woods Hutchinson, "The Economics of

Prostitution," _American Gynæcological and Obstetric Journal_,

September, 1895). It must, of course, be borne in mind that these

estimates are liable to be vitiated through being based chiefly

on the inspection of women who most obviously belong to the class

of prostitutes and have already been coarsened by their

profession.

If we may conclude--and the fact is probably undisputed--that

beautiful, agreeable, and harmoniously formed faces are rare

rather than common among prostitutes, we may certainly say that

minute examination will reveal a large number of physical

abnormalities. One of the earliest important physical

investigations of prostitutes was that of Dr. Pauline Tarnowsky

in Russia (first published in the _Vratch_ in 1887, and

afterwards as _Etudes anthropométriques sur les Prostituées et

les Voleuses_). She examined fifty St. Petersburg prostitutes who

had been inmates of a brothel for not less than two years, and

also fifty peasant women of, so far as possible, the same age and

mental development. She found that (1) the prostitute showed

shorter anterior-posterior and transverse diameters of skull; (2)

a proportion equal to eighty-four per cent. showed various signs

of physical degeneration (irregular skull, asymmetry of face,

anomalies of hard palate, teeth, ears, etc.). This tendency to

anomaly among the prostitutes was to some extent explained when

it was found that about four-fifths of them had parents who were

habitual drunkards, and nearly one-fifth were the last survivors

of large families; such families have been often produced by

degenerate parents.

The frequency of hereditary degeneration has been noted by

Bonhoeffer among German prostitutes. He investigated 190 Breslau

prostitutes in prison, and therefore of a more abnormal class

than ordinary prostitutes, and found that 102 were hereditarily

degenerate, and mostly with one or both parents who were

drunkards; 53 also showed feeble-mindedness (_Zeitschrift für die

Gesamte Strafwissenschaft_, Bd. xxiii, p. 106).

The most detailed examinations of ordinary non-criminal

prostitutes, both anthropometrically and as regards the

prevalence of anomalies, have been made in Italy, though not on a

sufficiently large number of subjects to yield absolutely

decisive results. Thus Fornasari made a detailed examination of

sixty prostitutes belonging chiefly to Emilia and Venice, and

also of twenty-seven others belonging to Bologna, the latter

group being compared with a third group of twenty normal women

belonging to Bologna (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1892, fasc. VI).

The prostitutes were found to be of lower type than the normal

individuals, having smaller heads and larger faces. As the author

himself points out, his subjects were not sufficiently numerous

to justify far-reaching generalizations, but it may be worth

while to summarize some of his results. At equal heights the

prostitutes showed greater weight; at equal ages they were of

shorter stature than other women, not only of well-to-do, but of

the poor class: height of face, bi-zygomatic diameter (though not

the distance between zygomas), the distance from chin to external

auditory meatus, and the size of the jaw were all greater in the

prostitutes; the hands were longer and broader, compared to the

palm, than in ordinary women; the foot also was longer in

prostitutes, and the thigh, as compared to the calf, was larger.

It is noteworthy that in most particulars, and especially in

regard to head measurements, the variations were much greater

among the prostitutes than among the other women examined; this

is to some extent, though not entirely, to be accounted for by

the slightly greater number of the former.

Ardu (in the same number of the _Archivio_) gave the result of

observations (undertaken at Lombroso's suggestion) as to the

frequency of abnormalities among prostitutes. The subjects were

seventy-four in number and belonged to Professor Giovannini's

_Clinica Sifilopatica_ at Turin. The abnormalities investigated

were virile distribution of hair on pubes, chest, and limbs,

hypertrichosis on forehead, left-handedness, atrophy of nipple,

and tattooing (which was only found once). Combining Ardu's

observations with another series of observations on fifty-five

prostitutes examined by Lombroso, it is found that virile

disposition of hair is found in fifteen per cent. as against six

per cent. in normal women; some degree of hypertrichosis in

eighteen per cent.; left-handedness in eleven per cent. (but in

normal women as high as twelve per cent. according to Gallia);

and atrophy of nipple in twelve per cent.

Giuffrida-Ruggeri, again (_Atti della, Società Romana di

Antropologia_, 1897, p. 216), on examining eighty-two prostitutes

found anomalies in the following order of decreasing frequency:

tendency of eyebrows to meet, lack of cranial symmetry,

depression at root of nose, defective development of calves,

hypertrichosis and other anomalies of hair, adherent or absent

lobule, prominent zigoma, prominent forehead or frontal bones,

bad implantation of teeth, Darwinian tubercle of ear, thin

vertical lips. These signs are separately of little or no

importance, though together not without significance as an

indication of general anomaly.

More recently Ascarilla, in an elaborate study (_Archivio di

Psichiatria_, 1906, fasc. VI, p. 812) of the finger prints of

prostitutes, comes to the conclusion that even in this respect

prostitutes tend to form a class showing morphological

inferiority to normal women. The patterns tend to show unusual

simplicity and uniformity, and the significance of this is

indicated by the fact that a similar uniformity is shown by the

finger prints of the insane and deaf-mutes (De Sanctis and

Toscano, _Atti Società Romana Antropologia_, vol. viii, 1901,

fasc. II).

In Chicago Dr. Harriet Alexander, in conjunction with Dr. E.S.

Talbot and Dr. J.G. Kiernan, examined thirty prostitutes in the

Bridewell, or House of Correction; only the "obtuse" class of

professional prostitutes reach this institution, and it is not

therefore surprising that they were found to exhibit very marked

stigmata of degeneracy. In race nearly half of those examined

were Celtic Irish. In sixteen the zygomatic processes were

unequal and very prominent. Other facial asymmetries were common.

In three cases the heads were of Mongoloid type; sixteen were

epignathic, and eleven prognathic; five showed arrest of

development of face. Brachycephaly predominated (seventeen

cases); the rest were mesaticephalic; there were no

dolichocephals. Abnormalities in shape of the skull were

numerous, and twenty-nine had defective ears. Four were

demonstrably insane, and one was an epileptic (H.C.B. Alexander,

"Physical Abnormalities in Prostitutes," Chicago Academy of

Medicine, April, 1893; E.S. Talbot, _Degeneracy_, p. 320; _Id.,

Irregularities of the Teeth_, fourth edition, p. 141).

It would seem, on the whole, so far as the evidence at present goes, that

prostitutes are not quite normal representatives of the ranks into which

they were born. There has been a process of selection of individuals who

slightly deviate congenitally from the normal average and are,

correspondingly, slightly inapt for normal life.[188] The psychic

characteristics which accompany such deviation are not always necessarily

of an obviously unfavorable nature; the slightly neurotic girl of low

class birth--disinclined for hard work, through defective energy, and

perhaps greedy and selfish--may even seem to possess a refinement superior

to her station. While, however, there is a tendency to anomaly among

prostitutes, it must be clearly recognized that that tendency remains

slight so long as we consider impartially the whole class of prostitutes.

Those investigators who have reached the conclusion that prostitutes are a

highly degenerate and abnormal class have only observed special groups of

prostitutes, more especially those who are frequently found in prison. It

is not possible to form a just conception of prostitutes by studying them

only in prison, any more than it would be possible to form a just

conception of clergymen, doctors, or lawyers by studying them exclusively

in prison, and this remains true even although a much larger proportion of

prostitutes than of members of the more reputable professions pass through

prisons; that fact no doubt partly indicates the greater abnormality of

prostitutes.

It has, of course, to be remembered that the special conditions of the

lives of prostitutes tend to cause in them the appearance of certain

professional characteristics which are entirely acquired and not

congenital. In that way we may account for the gradual modification of the

feminine secondary and tertiary sexual characters, and the appearance of

masculine characters, such as the frequent deep voice, etc.[189] But with

all due allowance for these acquired characters, it remains true that such

comparative investigations as have so far been made, although

inconclusive, seem to indicate that, even apart from the prevalence of

acquired anomalies, the professional selection of their avocation tends to

separate out from the general population of the same social class,

individuals who possess anthropometrical characters varying in a definite

direction. The observations thus made seem, in this way, to indicate that

prostitutes tend to be in weight over the average, though not in stature,

that in length of arm they are inferior though the hands are longer (this

has been found alike in Italy and Russia); they have smaller ankles and

larger calves, and still larger thighs in proportion to their large

calves. The estimated skull capacity and the skull circumference and

diameters are somewhat below the normal, not only when compared with

respectable women but also with thieves; there is a tendency to

brachycephaly (both in Italy and Russia); the cheek-bones are usually

prominent and the jaws developed; the hair is darker than in respectable

women though less so than in thieves; it is also unusually abundant, not

only on the head but also on the pudenda and elsewhere; the eyes have been

found to be decidedly darker than those of either respectable women or

criminals.[190]

So far as the evidence goes it serves to indicate that prostitutes tend to

approximate to the type which, as was shown in the previous volume, there

is reason to regard as specially indicative of developed sexuality. It is,

however, unnecessary to discuss this question until our anthropometrical

knowledge of prostitutes is more extended and precise.

3. _The Moral Justification of Prostitution_.--There are and always have

been moralists--many of them people whose opinions are deserving of the

most serious respect--who consider that, allowing for the need of

improved hygienic conditions, the existence of prostitution presents no

serious problem for solution. It is, at most, they say, a necessary evil,

and, at best, a beneficent institution, the bulwark of the home, the

inevitable reverse of which monogamy is the obverse. "The immoral guardian

of public morality," is the definition of prostitutes given by one writer,

who takes the humble view of the matter, and another, taking the loftier

ground, writes: "The prostitute fulfils a social mission. She is the

guardian of virginal modesty, the channel to carry off adulterous desire,

the protector of matrons who fear late maternity; it is her part to act as

the shield of the family." "Female Decii," said Balzac in his _Physiologie

du Mariage_ of prostitutes, "they sacrifice themselves for the republic

and make of their bodies a rampart for the protection of respectable

families." In the same way Schopenhauer called prostitutes "human

sacrifices on the altar of monogamy." Lecky, again, in an oft-quoted

passage of rhetoric,[191] may be said to combine both the higher and the

lower view of the prostitute's mission in human society, to which he even

seeks to give a hieratic character. "The supreme type of vice," he

declared, "she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But

for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be

polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity,

think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of

remorse and of despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are

concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She

remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal

priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."[192]

I am not aware that the Greeks were greatly concerned with the moral

justification of prostitution. They had not allowed it to assume very

offensive forms and for the most part they were content to accept it. The

Romans usually accepted it, too, but, we gather, not quite so easily.

There was an austerely serious, almost Puritanic, spirit in the Romans of

the old stock and they seem sometimes to have felt the need to assure

themselves that prostitution really was morally justifiable. It is

significant to note that they were accustomed to remember that Cato was

said to have expressed satisfaction on seeing a man emerge from a brothel,

for otherwise he might have gone to lie with his neighbor's wife.[193]

The social necessity of prostitution is the most ancient of all the

arguments of moralists in favor of the toleration of prostitutes; and if

we accept the eternal validity of the marriage system with which

prostitution developed, and of the theoretical morality based on that

system, this is an exceedingly forcible, if not an unanswerable, argument.