Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 13

The wholesale regularization of prost.i.tution 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 circ.u.mstances.[161] Even those who would still be glad to see prost.i.tution thoroughly in the control of the police now recognize that experience shows this to be impossible. As many girls begin their career as prost.i.tutes at a very early age, a sound system of regulation should be prepared to enroll as permanent prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tute. Every rigid attempt to keep prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tutes and have become immune to disease.[163] These facts are now becoming fairly obvious and well recognized. The state regulation of prost.i.tution is undesirable, on moral grounds for the oft-emphasized reason that it is only applied to one s.e.x, and on practical grounds because it is ineffective. Society allows the police to hara.s.s the prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tution, and to attain a reasonable att.i.tude 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 coordinated activity of both is involved in the progressive refinement and purification of civilized s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps.

III. The Causes of Prost.i.tution.

The history of the rise and development of prost.i.tution enables us to see that prost.i.tution is not an accident of our marriage system, but an essential const.i.tuent which appears concurrently with its other essential const.i.tuents. 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution shows us how indestructible and essential an element prost.i.tution 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 att.i.tude towards prost.i.tution to-day. In order to understand the place of prost.i.tution in our existing system, it is necessary that we should a.n.a.lyze the chief factors of prost.i.tution. We may most conveniently learn to understand these if we consider prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution. Prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution.

The ways in which various factors of environment and suggestion unite to lead a girl into the paths of prost.i.tution 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 p.u.b.erty a familiarity with things s.e.xual takes place. As soon as they are old enough these girls are seduced by their sweethearts; the familiarity with which they regard s.e.xual 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 coa.r.s.er 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 prost.i.tutes. Barmaids supply a considerable number to the ranks of prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tutes 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 a.s.set the s.e.xual organs are, and soon another one is added to the ranks."

There is some interest in considering the reasons a.s.signed for prost.i.tutes entering their career. In some countries this has been estimated by those who come closely into official or other contact with prost.i.tutes. In other countries, it is the rule for girls, before they are registered as prost.i.tutes, to state the reasons for which they desire to enter the career.

Parent-Duchatelet, whose work on prost.i.tutes in Paris is still an authority, presented the first estimate of this kind. He found that of over five thousand prost.i.tutes, 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-Duchatelet, De la Prost.i.tution, 1857, vol. i, p. 107).

In Brussels during a period of twenty years (1865-1884) 3505 women were inscribed as prost.i.tutes. The causes they a.s.signed for desiring to take to this career present a different picture from that shown by Parent-Duchatelet, 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 s.e.xual pa.s.sions 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 prost.i.tute themselves by their husbands, and 1 by her parents (Lancet, June 28, 1890, p. 1442).

In London, Merrick found that of 16,022 prost.i.tutes who pa.s.sed through his hands during the years he was chaplain at Millbank prison, 5061 voluntarily left home or situation for "a life of pleasure;" 3363 a.s.signed 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tutes by dest.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tutes as to the causes which induced them to take up their avocation:

Dest.i.tution 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 prost.i.tutes 71 Too idle to work 29 Violated 27 Seduced on emigrant s.h.i.+p 16 Seduced in emigrant boarding homes 8 ----- 2,000 (Sanger, History of Prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tution:

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 s.e.xual appet.i.te 5.6 (Woods Hutchinson, "The Economics of Prost.i.tution," American Gynaecologic and Obstetric Journal, September, 1895; Id., The Gospel According to Darwin, p. 194.)

In Italy, in 1881, among 10,422 inscribed prost.i.tutes from the age of seventeen upwards, the causes of prost.i.tution were cla.s.sified 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 a.s.signed by Russian prost.i.tutes for taking up their career are (according to Federow) as follows:

38.5 per cent. insufficient wages.

21. per cent. desire for amus.e.m.e.nt.

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 Prost.i.tution.-Writers on prost.i.tution frequently a.s.sert that economic conditions lie at the root of prost.i.tution and that its chief cause is poverty, while prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution," Parent-Duchatelet 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 prost.i.tutes increases during bad years.[165] It is so also in America. It is the same in j.a.pan; "the cause of causes is poverty."[166]

Thus the broad and general statement that prost.i.tution 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 Strohmberg, who minutely investigated 462 prost.i.tutes, found that only one a.s.signed dest.i.tution 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 prost.i.tutes 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 prost.i.tutes. 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 Quiros and Llanas Aguilaniedo, that the prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution 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 a.s.sumption appeals to those whose weakness it is to explain all social phenomena by economic causes, and in part to its obvious plausibility.[169]

Prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes when business is slack, and return to business when the season begins. Sometimes the regular work of the day is supplemented concurrently by prost.i.tution in the street in the evening. It is said, possibly with some truth, that amateur prost.i.tution of this kind is extremely prevalent in England, as it is not checked by the precautions which, in countries where prost.i.tution is regulated, the clandestine prost.i.tute 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.s 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution, written in the middle of the last century, said that prost.i.tution is "a transitory stage, through which an untold number of British women are ever on their pa.s.sage."[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-Duchatelet, the greatest authority on French prost.i.tution, stated that "prost.i.tution is for the majority only a transitory stage; it is quitted usually during the first year; very few prost.i.tutes 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 cla.s.s, among the lower ranks of prost.i.tution, in which the economic factor counts for much, but in which we ought not too hastily to a.s.sume 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 s.h.i.+llings 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; "circ.u.mstances 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 prost.i.tution, in that it increases the ranks of the women who thereby seek a livelihood and may thus be properly regarded as a factor of prost.i.tution, no practicable raising of the rate of women's wages could possibly serve, directly and alone, to abolish prost.i.tution. De Molinari, an economist, after remarking that "prost.i.tution is an industry" and that if other competing industries can offer women sufficiently high pecuniary inducements they will not be so frequently attracted to prost.i.tution, proceeds to point out that that by no means settles the question. "Like every other industry prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tution,[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 prost.i.tution, and an increase in the number of prost.i.tutes. So that if good wages is to be regarded as the antagonist of prost.i.tution, 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 Despres in a detailed moral and demographic study of the distribution of prost.i.tution in France comes to the conclusion that we must reverse the ancient doctrine that "poverty engenders prost.i.tution" since prost.i.tution regularly increases with wealth,[175] and as a departement rises in wealth and prosperity, so the number both of its inscribed and its free prost.i.tutes rises also. There is indeed a fallacy here, for while it is true, as Despres argues, that wealth demands prost.i.tution, 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 prost.i.tution chiefly finds its recruits. The ancient dictum that "poverty engenders prost.i.tution" 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution can by no means bring us to the root of the matter.

One circ.u.mstance 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 prost.i.tution: a large proportion of prost.i.tutes 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 const.i.tute, it is true, a very large body which could not fail to supply a certain contingent of recruits to prost.i.tution. But when we see that domestic service is the chief reservoir from which prost.i.tutes are drawn, it should be clear that the craving for food and shelter is by no means the chief cause of prost.i.tution.

It may be added that, although the significance of this predominance of servants among prost.i.tutes is seldom realized by those who fancy that to remove poverty is to abolish prost.i.tution, 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, "Prost.i.tution").

It is at the same time worthy of note that by the conditions of their lives servants, more than any other cla.s.s, resemble prost.i.tutes (Bernaldo de Quiros and Llanas Aguilaniedo have pointed this out in La Mala Vida en Madrid, p. 240). Like prost.i.tutes, they are a cla.s.s of women apart; they are not ent.i.tled to the considerations and the little courtesies usually paid to other women; in some countries they are even registered, like prost.i.tutes; it is scarcely surprising that when they suffer from so many of the disadvantages of the prost.i.tute, 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 prost.i.tutes. R. de Ryckere, in his important work, La Servante Criminelle (1907, pp. 460 et seq.; cf., the same author's article, "La Criminalite 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 prost.i.tute. De Ryckere estimates the proportion of former servants among prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tute is, on the whole, not so much immoral as non-moral.

In Paris Parent-Duchatelet found that, in proportion to their number, servants furnished the largest contingent to prost.i.tution, and his editors also found that they head the list (Parent-Duchatelet, edition 1857, vol. i, p. 83). Among clandestine prost.i.tutes at Paris, Commenge has more recently found that former servants const.i.tute forty per cent. In Bordeaux Jeannel (De le Prost.i.tution Publique, p. 102) also found that in 1860 forty per cent, of prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution. 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes, 5823, or about forty per cent., had previously been servants, laundresses coming next, and then dressmakers; cla.s.sifying his data somewhat more summarily and roughly, Merrick found that the proportion of servants was fifty-three per cent.

In America, among two thousand prost.i.tutes, 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 Prost.i.tution, p. 524). Among Philadelphia prost.i.tutes, 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 Prost.i.tuzione, p. 100), servants come first among prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 Quiros and Llanas Aguilaniedo (La Mala Vida, en Madrid, p. 239)), servants come at the head of registered prost.i.tutes with twenty-seven per cent.-almost the same proportion as in Italy-and are followed by dressmakers. In Sweden, according to Welander (Monatshefte fur Praktische Dermatologie, 1899, p. 477) among 2541 inscribed prost.i.tutes, 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 Prost.i.tution.-Economic considerations, as we see, have a highly important modificatory influence on prost.i.tution, although it is by no means correct to a.s.sert that they form its main cause. There is another question which has exercised many investigators: To what extent are prost.i.tutes predestined to this career by organic const.i.tution? It is generally admitted that economic and other conditions are an exciting cause of prost.i.tution; in how far are those who succ.u.mb predisposed by the possession of abnormal personal characteristics? Some inquirers have argued that this predisposition is so marked that prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution. Others have as strenuously denied this conclusion.

Lombroso has more especially advocated the doctrine that prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution;" 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 ident.i.ty of the criminal and the born prost.i.tute," 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. Prost.i.tution is only the feminine side of criminality. And so true is it that prost.i.tution and criminality are two a.n.a.logous, or, so to say, parallel, phenomena, that at their extremes they meet. The prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tution represents the specific form of feminine criminality." The authors add that "prost.i.tution is, in a certain sense, socially useful as an outlet for masculine s.e.xuality 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 Prost.i.tution) vigorously argues that prost.i.tution is not an inoffensive equivalent of criminality, but a factor of criminality. Fere, again (in Degenerescence et Criminalite), a.s.serts that criminality and prost.i.tution are not equivalent, but identical. "Prost.i.tutes and criminals," he holds, "have as a common character their unproductiveness, and consequently they are both anti-social. Prost.i.tution thus const.i.tutes 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 cla.s.ses; it must be added, also, that the prost.i.tute, 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 prost.i.tute 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 Fere, that prost.i.tution is not indeed, as Fere said, a form of criminality, but that it is too frequently united with criminality to be regarded as an equivalent. Monkemoller has more recently supported the same view. Here, however, as usual, there is a wide difference of opinion as to the proportion of prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes, only found a minute proportion who were criminals, Strohmberg found that among 462 prost.i.tutes there were as many as 175 thieves. From another side, Mora.s.so (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 prost.i.tutes which would in any way a.s.similate them with criminals.

The question of the s.e.xuality of prost.i.tutes, 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 Mora.s.so, a.s.sert that s.e.xual impulse is a main cause inducing women to adopt a prost.i.tute's career, others a.s.sert that prost.i.tutes are usually almost devoid of s.e.xual impulse. Lombroso refers to the prevalence of s.e.xual frigidity among prost.i.tutes.[177] In London, Merrick, speaking from a knowledge of over 16,000 prost.i.tutes, states that he has met with "only a very few cases" in which gross s.e.xual desire has been the motive to adopt a life of prost.i.tution. In Paris, Raciborski had stated at a much earlier period that "among prost.i.tutes one finds very few who are prompted to libertinage by s.e.xual ardor."[178] Commenge, again, a careful student of the Parisian prost.i.tute, cannot admit that s.e.xual desire is to be cla.s.sed among the serious causes of prost.i.tution. "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 prost.i.tution for the satisfaction of s.e.xual needs. Although girls who give themselves to prost.i.tution are often lacking in frankness, on this point, I believe, they have no wish to deceive. When they have s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual frigidity of prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes whose habitual familiarity with normal s.e.xual 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 pa.s.sions the ephemeral and superficial relations.h.i.+ps of prost.i.tution can offer no temptation. And it may be added that the majority of prost.i.tutes begin their career at a very early age, long before the somewhat late period at which in women the tendency for pa.s.sion to become strong, has yet arrived.[180] It may also be said that an indifference to s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps, a tendency to attach no personal value to them, is often a predisposing cause in the adoption of a prost.i.tute's career; the general mental shallowness of prost.i.tutes may well be accompanied by shallowness of physical emotion. On the other hand, many prost.i.tutes, at all events early in their careers, appear to show a marked degree of sensuality, and to women of coa.r.s.e s.e.xual fibre the career of prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tutes 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 s.e.xual feeling can scarcely fail to become modified or perverted in course of time, that is no proof of the original absence of s.e.xual sensibility. It is not even a proof of its loss, for the real s.e.xual nature of the normal prost.i.tute, and her possibilities of s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tutes 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 s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tute; "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 prost.i.tutes, not only in Britain, but also in Germany, France, Belgium and Holland, has found that the normal manifestations of s.e.xual feeling are much more common in British than in continental prost.i.tutes. "I should say," he writes, "that in normal coitus foreign women are generally unconscious of s.e.xual excitement. I don't think I have ever known a foreign woman who had any semblance of o.r.g.a.s.m. 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 s.e.xual excitement. Of course in this life, as in others, there is keen compet.i.tion, and a woman, to vie with her compet.i.tors, must please her gentlemen friends; but a man of the world can always distinguish between real and simulated pa.s.sion." (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 s.e.xual gratification for her consort." For their own pleasure also foreign prost.i.tutes frequently ask for cunnilinctus, in preference to normal coitus, while a.n.a.l 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 cla.s.s of British prost.i.tutes which this correspondent finds to be an exception to the general rule: the cla.s.s 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 s.e.xualism-than girls who come from shops or bars; they show a knowledge of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o, and even a.n.a.l coitus, and during menstruation frequently suggest inter-mammary coitus."

On the whole it would appear that prost.i.tutes, 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual impulse of prost.i.tutes by the amount of pleasure they take in the professional performance of s.e.xual intercourse. It is necessary to ascertain whether they possess s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tutes everywhere; however prevalent it may be among women who have no other means of obtaining s.e.xual gratification it is admitted by all to be still more prevalent among prost.i.tutes, indeed almost universal.[185]

h.o.m.os.e.xuality, though not so common as masturbation, is very frequently found among prost.i.tutes-in France, it would seem, more frequently than in England-and it may indeed be said that it occurs more often among prost.i.tutes than among any other cla.s.s of women. It is favored by the acquired distaste for normal coitus due to professional intercourse with men, which leads h.o.m.os.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps to be regarded as pure and ideal by comparison. It would appear also that in a considerable proportion of cases prost.i.tutes present a congenital condition of s.e.xual inversion, such a condition, with an accompanying indifference to intercourse with men, being a predisposing cause of the adoption of a prost.i.tute's career. Kurella even regards prost.i.tutes as const.i.tuting a sub-variety of congenital inverts. Anna Ruling in Germany states that about twenty per cent. prost.i.tutes are h.o.m.os.e.xual; when asked what induced them to become prost.i.tutes, more than one inverted woman of the street has replied to her that it was purely a matter of business, s.e.xual feeling not coming into the question except with a friend of the same s.e.x.[186]

The occurrence of congenital inversion among prost.i.tutes-although we need not regard prost.i.tutes as necessarily degenerate as a cla.s.s-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 prost.i.tutes are merely normal ordinary women of low social rank, if indeed their instincts are not even a little superior to those of the cla.s.s 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 prost.i.tutes generally among one or other of the abnormal cla.s.ses.[187]

Baumgarten, in Vienna, from a knowledge of over 8000 prost.i.tutes, concluded that only a very minute proportion are either criminal or psychopathic in temperament or organization (Archiv fur 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tute is in general the female a.n.a.logue" (Ethnological Journal, April, 1905, p. 41). This estimate is doubtless correct as regards a considerable proportion of the women, often enfeebled by drink, who pa.s.s through the police courts, but it could scarcely be applied without qualification to prost.i.tutes generally.