The History of Prostitution Part 15

Under this system the gravest inconveniences occurred, and became so troublesome that in November, 1835, the governor promulgated a decree remodeling the regulations in force on the subject. It appears the farm system was then abandoned, and the government agents who were intrusted with the collection of the tax robbed both the prost.i.tutes and the state shamefully.

Hence, in December, 1837, a new decree was issued by the governor, repealing all former laws and regulations, and placing the whole subject under the control of the Commissary of Police. The leading provisions of that decree were as follows:

"Every public woman who desires to prost.i.tute herself must declare her intention beforehand to the Comptroller of Public Women, who shall enter her name in his register, and present her with a pa.s.s-book which he shall sign."

"Every girl inscribed on the register shall place in the hands of the treasurer of the Dispensary, monthly, a sum of twenty francs if she be a kept woman, and ten francs if she be not kept. The treasurer shall give her a receipt for the same, and record it in his account-book."

"The mayor shall be authorized to remit this monthly due, as well as any fines that may have been incurred, when the girl owing the same can prove by a certificate from the comptroller, the treasurer, and the physician that she is indigent."

"Every girl who shall not have paid her monthly due, as well as her fines, within ten days after the visit to the Dispensary, shall undergo an imprisonment of not less than five days and not more than three months, unless she establish her indigence as aforesaid."

"Girls detained in prison shall, on the first symptoms of syphilis, be transferred to the Dispensary for treatment, after which they shall be remanded to prison to serve the remainder of the time."

"The physician of the Dispensary shall not only treat patients in that establishment, but shall pay _periodical, accidental, and all necessary visits_ to the prost.i.tutes, who are hereby subjected to such visits. He shall visit the Dispensary twice a day, from 7 to 9 A.M.

and from 3 to 4 P.M. He shall enter upon his memorandum-book, and upon the pa.s.s-book of the girl, the result of all accidental or necessary visits. He shall receive a salary of two thousand francs."[250]

This law is in force at the present time, and is said to have led to great inconvenience. Police agents are accused of levying black mail on the prost.i.tutes to an enormous extent, in the shape of fines, dues for going to b.a.l.l.s, hush-money for escaping the visit to the Dispensary, presents to the policeman on the birth of his children, etc. The product of the tax is inordinately large, amounting, independently of fines, to one hundred and twenty francs, or twenty-four dollars per annum for each girl. Several administrators have recommended its diminution or total suppression, but it is still retained.[251]

In the year 1838, when the present law was pa.s.sed, the number of women inscribed on the police register was 320, the total population of Algiers being 34,882, of whom two thirds were Africans and one third Europeans; but the mayor of the city gave it as his opinion that this figure (320) was in reality far below the truth. In 1846 measures were taken for enforcing the police regulations more strictly than before, and some care was used to procure correct statistics of population and prost.i.tution.[252] We compile the following table from several given by Dr. d.u.c.h.esne:

+-------------------------------------------------+ Registered POPULATION. Year. Prost.i.tutes ------------------------------- (average). African European. Total. (estimated). ----- ----------- ------------ --------- -------- 1847 442 25,000 42,113 67,113 1848 387 25,000 37,572 62,572 1849 395 25,000 37,572 63,072 1850 479 26,000 29,392 55,392 1851 342 .... .... 55,392 +-------------------------------------------------+

To these figures, some of which are only approximative, must be added the number of French soldiers in the garrison at Algiers. At times the effective force has been as large as twelve or fifteen thousand men.

Another point of interest is the nationality of the prost.i.tutes of Algiers. It is known that the native women are loose in their morals. In many parts of the interior it is common for fathers or brothers to let out their daughters or sisters by the night or the week to strangers, and the young women themselves are only too willing to ratify a bargain which promises to gratify their unbounded sensuality. The following table gives the nationality of the registered prost.i.tutes during the period 1846-1851.[253]

+--------------------------------------------------------------- EUROPEANS. ------------------------------------------------------- Years. France. Mahon. Italy. Germany. Great Spain. Holland. Britain. ------ ------- ------ ------ -------- -------- ------ -------- 1847 107 14 6 11 4 58 2 1848 78 10 5 10 3 49 ... 1849 82 8 2 17 3 60 ... 1850 113 8 2 20 2 57 ... 1851 81 4 5 9 2 37 ... +---------------------------------------------------------------

+--------------------------------------------------------+ AFRICANS. ------------------------------------------------- Years. Arabs Jewesses. Mulattoes. Negresses. Total. and Moors. ------ ---------- --------- ---------- ---------- ------ 1847 203 26 6 16 451 1848 181 28 7 16 387 1849 183 22 7 17 401 1850 248 19 7 17 493 1851 170 12 3 13 336 ---------------------------------------------------------+

On inquiring for the causes of prost.i.tution at Algiers, Dr. d.u.c.h.esne found that they might be summed up under three heads: 1st. Poverty, mainly due to the French conquest and the wars which followed. To the present day it appears that it is not unusual for an Arab chief to relieve his wants by sending his prettiest daughter to Algiers to perform a campaign as a prost.i.tute. 2d. The idleness in which all Arab and Moorish women are trained. It was proved that, while all the European women were capable of working at some calling or other, and did work during their stay in the hospital, not one of the native women had any idea of manual employment. A few could sing, and had at one time gained a livelihood as street-singers, but the immense majority were absolutely incapable of doing any thing for a livelihood. 3d. The Oriental idea that the woman is a chattel, to be sold or hired out by her legitimate owner, father, brother, or husband.

This idea, which prevails in many savage nations, among others, many of our own Indian tribes, is, of course, the best of all entering wedges for prost.i.tution.[254]

There are fourteen houses of prost.i.tution at Algiers, all kept, it seems, by Europeans, and the greater part by retired prost.i.tutes. The natives object to living under the control of a brothel-keeper. They live alone in their own rooms. Sometimes three or four of them club together and form a partners.h.i.+p. Their rooms are generally shabby and ill furnished.[255]

Arab prost.i.tutes seldom appear in the streets, and when they do, they are veiled and dressed like modest women. They may be seen at their windows of an evening, peeping through small holes contrived for the purpose, and smoking cigarettes. Their customers are procured by means of runners, who are mostly small boys.

As may be inferred from the amount of the tax on prost.i.tutes, clandestine prost.i.tution is very extensively practiced at Algiers. We have no details or even approximate estimates of the number of clandestine prost.i.tutes, but it doubtless exceeds that of the registered women. Many of them are attached to the garrison, and are handed from regiment to regiment, s.h.i.+elded from the police by being claimed as wives by some of the soldiers. Others in like manner prevail upon some colonist to afford them a temporary home, and so elude the visit of the physician. Dr. d.u.c.h.esne had reason to believe that syphilis prevailed to an alarming extent among the secret prost.i.tutes, and that, until the tax was removed, and they were encouraged to register themselves on the police roll, it would continue to be general and virulent.[256]

Formerly the baths were the great haunts of clandestine prost.i.tutes. It is known that in most eastern countries the bath is not only a sanitary necessity, but a common ally of sensuality. At Algiers, before the conquest, men and women are said to have bathed promiscuously, and frightful scenes of debauchery occurred daily. Under French rule this has been reformed. Men may not bathe from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.; but Dr. d.u.c.h.esne was led to believe that it was quite common for men to introduce women into the baths at night, with the connivance of the bath officials.

Indeed, some of the latter appear to fill the same office to the Algerine bathers as the Roman bath servants did to the dissolute men of that day.[257]

It now remains to speak of the Dispensary at Algiers. It was established, as has been stated, within a few days after the capture of the place. For nearly ten years it was a scandal to the faculty and the authorities. The wards were too small; there were not beds enough for the women; every thing was either deficient in quant.i.ty or objectionable in quality. In 1839, orders were given for the establishment of a proper and commodious Dispensary. Three old Moorish houses were hired and divided into wards.

They contain at present thirteen wards, with beds for seventy-seven patients; a bath-room, containing six baths; a hall for the visits of prost.i.tutes; and the necessary offices, etc. The staff of the Dispensary consists of a director, treasurer (_econome_), physician, apothecary, clerk, cook, a.s.sistant apothecary, porter, five laborers, and four police agents. All the was.h.i.+ng is done in the establishment. The commissariat is on the amplest scale; meat, soup, vegetables of all kinds, rice, eggs, fruit, etc., being supplied in abundance to the patients.[258]

Every morning at seven o'clock the women are visited by the physician, a.s.sisted by the apothecary. Those who are able to walk are examined in the _salle de visite_, the others in their beds. The average number of patients during the year appears to be from five hundred and fifty to six hundred. The average duration of the treatment is from twenty-four to thirty-four days. The cost to the Dispensary averages from one and a half to one and three quarters franc per day for each girl (about thirty or thirty-five cents).[259]

The Dispensary physician reported to Dr. d.u.c.h.esne that, so far as his observation went, syphilis was more severe on the sea-coast than in the interior; and in the months of September, October, November, and December, than at any other period of the year.[260]

Prost.i.tutes are punished for being more than twenty-four hours behind time in visiting the Dispensary; for leaving it during treatment; for insulting the physician or other authorities; for continuing to exercise their calling after being attacked by disease. The penalty is imprisonment, either in the ordinary prison or in the solitary cell. Formerly, the tread-mill was used, and in bad cases a girl's hair was cut off, and her nose slit; but these savage relics of Moorish legislation were long since abandoned. Solitary confinement is found to answer every useful purpose.[261]

CHAPTER XV.

BELGIUM.

Hospitals and Charitable Inst.i.tutions.--Foundlings.--Estimate of the Marriage Ceremony.--Regulations as to Prost.i.tution.--Brothels.-- Sanitary Ordinances.

Belgium takes a more prominent position in Europe than its mere extent would warrant. This influence is derived from the vigorous and effective stand made in behalf of rational freedom, and from the manner in which free inst.i.tutions have been originated and maintained.

The hospitals and other eleemosynary inst.i.tutions of Belgium are of a magnificent character, supported at an annual expenditure of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. Almost every town, and many of the larger villages, have hospitals for the sick, sometimes maintained at corporation expense, sometimes by private endowments. In 318 hospitals, during the four years from 1831 to 1834 (inclusive), no less than 22,180 persons were treated.[262]

Foundling hospitals are a marked feature of these charitable establishments. The turning table, which was formerly in use in all such inst.i.tutions, has lately been abandoned in most of them, but still remains in use at those of Brussels and Antwerp. The total number of children annually abandoned in Belgium is estimated to exceed eight thousand out of one hundred and forty-four thousand births, a ratio of about one in eighteen. The average expense attendant upon the maintenance of each infant is about seventy-two francs.

Marriage in Belgium is, by law, simply a civil contract, requiring fifteen days' notice posted in front of the Hotel de Ville. Notwithstanding the simplicity of this ceremonial, it is affirmed that an enormous extent of immorality and illegitimacy is to be met with, and that a virtuous servant-girl is altogether exceptional, there being scarcely one of them who has not an illegitimate child, while they maintain with the most unyielding confidence that, so long as the father is a _bon ami_ (sweetheart), there is no moral turpitude in the case.

Belgium is remarkable for its regulations with respect to prost.i.tution and the spread of venereal disease. The perfections of the latter arrangements are shown in the fact that, out of an army of thirty thousand men, there were less than two hundred cases of syphilis in the year 1855.

The brothels of Brussels are of two kinds: _les maisons de debauche_ and _les maisons de pa.s.se_; these are visited by _les filles epa.r.s.es_, who keep their appointments there. The two cla.s.ses of houses are distinguished by different-colored lanterns hung over the doors.

All cla.s.ses of prost.i.tutes are required to be examined twice a week; those who live in brothels of the first and second cla.s.s are visited by the physicians, while the very poor women of the third cla.s.s, and all those who do not reside in brothels, are obliged to attend at the Dispensary. If they are punctual in their visits for four weeks in succession they are exempt from all tax; but if, on the contrary, their attendance is irregular, they can be imprisoned from one to five days. Any woman who does not live in a brothel can be examined at her own residence, provided that she pays at the Dispensary a sum amounting to about eighty-five cents. For this she receives four visits, and the physicians will continue to call upon her as long as the payments are made in advance. Thus the denizens of the aristocratic brothels are saved the inconvenience of attending at the Dispensary, as also that portion living in private lodgings who can afford to pay the fee to release themselves from going to the office as common prost.i.tutes, while the half-starved, ill-dressed pauper of the third cla.s.s must wait at the Dispensary until examined, and then return to her squalid home, where none but her companions and the police-officers are ever seen.

The medical staff of the Dispensary is composed of a superintending inspector, whose duty is to be present in the Dispensary when examinations are being made, and to visit the houses once a fortnight at least; of two medical inspectors, who, during alternate months, examine, one the women in the brothels, the other those who attend at the Dispensary. The date and result of every examination are marked on a card belonging to each woman, in the registers kept at the brothels, and in the records of the Dispensary. If a woman be found affected with syphilis or any other infectious disease, the owner of the brothel must send her immediately, in a car, to the hospital, and as soon as her cure is complete her card is handed to her, and she is at liberty to resume her calling.

CHAPTER XVI.

HAMBURG.

Ancient Legislation.--Ulm.--Legislation from 1483 to 1764.--French Revolution, and its effects on Morals.--Abendroth's Ordinance in 1807.--Police Ordinance in 1811.--Additional Powers in 1820.-- Hudtwalcker.--Present Police Regulations.--Number of Registered Women.--Tolerated Houses.--Illegitimacy.--Age and Nativity of Prost.i.tutes.--The Hamburger Berg and its Women.--Physique, Peculiarities, and Diseases of Prost.i.tutes.--Dress.--Food.-- Intellectual Capacity.--Religion.--Offenses.--Procuresses.-- Inscription.--Locality of Brothels.--Brothel-keepers.-- Dance-houses.--Sunday Evening Scene.--Private Prost.i.tutes.-- Street-walkers.--Domestic Prost.i.tution.--Unregistered Prost.i.tution.-- Houses of Accommodation.--Common Sleeping Apartments.--Beer and Wine Houses.--Effect of Prost.i.tution on Generative Organs.--General Maladies.--Forms of Syphilis.--Syphilis in Sea-ports.--Severity of Syphilis among unregistered Women.--The "Kurhaus" and general Infirmary.--Male Venereal Patients.--Sickness in the Garrison.-- Treatment.--Mortal Diseases of Hamburg Prost.i.tutes.--Hamburg Magdalen Hospital.

The ancient legislative enactments respecting prost.i.tution in Hamburg seem to have been of the same character, and based upon the same principles, as in other Continental cities, namely, a partial toleration of a necessary evil for the sake of preventing injurious excesses. This may be traced in the oldest extant law on the subject, dated in 1292. In the public account-books for 1350 are entries of charges which imply that public brothels were built by the corporation, though we find no satisfactory information as to whether they were managed by an appointed official as in Cologne, Strasbourg, or Avignon, or were leased by the city to an individual as in Ulm. It will be interesting to give a sketch of the regulations of prost.i.tution in the latter city before proceeding with the investigation concerning Hamburg.

The laws of the city of Ulm in 1430, or at least that portion of them called "woman house" laws, provided that the houses should be leased, and the lessee, on becoming tenant, swore to serve the city faithfully; to prevent all foul play or concealment of suspicious goods in his house; to provide clean, healthy women, and never to keep less than fourteen. He was bound to observe a fixed dietary scale; the daily meals were to be "of the value of sixpence;" on meat days every woman was to have two dishes, soup with meat and vegetables, and a roast or boiled joint, as most convenient. On fast-days and in Lent they were to have the same number of dishes, which (out of Lent) might consist of eggs and baked meat. As a change to this, they might have herrings and eggs; or fishes (probably fresh-water fish), which they could cook for themselves, and to which the keeper must add white bread. If a woman refused the food provided, he was bound to give her something of the value of sixpence; he was also to sell them wine "when they required it." If a woman was pregnant, he was to put her out of the house. In the "woman's house" there was a chest for general purposes, and a money-box for the accounts between the host and the women.

Every woman who kept company with a man at night must pay the keeper a kreutzer, the remainder of the fee being her own property. All money the women obtained in the day was to be put into the general chest; the third of this belonged to the host; the balance was paid to the women at the end of the week, less any debts they had contracted in the mean time. A woman resided in every house who made financial arrangements between inmates and visitors. If a woman received a present in addition to the stipulated fee, she was at liberty to spend it on clothes, shoes, or personal matters to which n.o.body could lay claim. The keeper could not supply the women with clothes, etc., without the knowledge and consent of the Master of the Beggars (a local functionary who seems to have combined the supervision of brothels, and of known vagrants and beggars). The host was required to provide, at his own cost, a cook and a cook's maid. Girls or women could, with their own consent, be apprenticed to the "women keeper" by their parents or husbands; but if one was apprenticed against her will, and she, or her friends, wished to cancel the agreement, the keeper was bound to release her without requiring the repayment of any money he might have disbursed for her. If a woman who had acc.u.mulated a guilder of her own wished to quit her sinful life, she was allowed to tender it to the keeper in discharge of all her liabilities, and must then be permitted to leave the house, wearing the clothes she wore when she entered it, or, if they were worn out, in her common "Monday clothes." A woman who desired might leave without this payment if she had nothing to give, but if subsequently detected in any other house the keeper could enforce his demands against her, the discharge not affecting his claim under such circ.u.mstances. Every Monday each woman had to contribute one penny, and the host twopence, to the money-box to purchase tapers for the Virgin and the saints, to be offered in the Cathedral on Sunday nights. If any of the women were sick or could not support themselves, they were to be provided with necessaries from the money-box, to which (for greater security) there were two keys, one kept by the host and the other by the Master of the Beggars. Each woman had to spin daily for the keeper two hanks of yarn, or, in default, to pay three h.e.l.lers for each hank. On Sunday, Lady-day, and Twelfth-day, after vespers, and in Pa.s.sion Week, the house was not to be opened. If the keeper broke any of these regulations the council could dismiss him. The oath taken by the Master of the Beggars required him to visit the women-houses every quarter day; to read the laws to the women; and to report to the council any offenses he found existing.[263]

In Hamburg, in 1483, the calling of brothel-keeper was limited to certain streets, apart from the ordinarily frequented thoroughfares--a rule which would imply that the authorities had discontinued building public brothels, and relinquished the business to individuals.

In the seventeenth century a different course of action was adopted, and, in place of toleration and limitation of brothels, strict laws were made in reference to visiting suspected places, and the custody of persons of bad character. The women-houses were pulled down and the women expelled; the criminal records contain frequent instances where the pillory or exile was inflicted for the crime of prost.i.tution.

In 1764, and again in 1767, the Hamburgers enacted very severe laws against offenders, under the t.i.tle of "_delicta carnis_," by which both s.e.xes were subject to pains and penalties, but men seem to have been allowed to clear themselves on oath. The officers of justice were directed to make domiciliary visits in search of offenders, and the pillory, bread and water, the House of Correction, or banishment, are the penalties threatened on habitual evil-doers.