The History of Prostitution - Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World

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Title: The History of Prostitution - Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World
Author: Sanger, William W.
Language: English
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THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION:

ITS EXTENT, CAUSES, AND EFFECTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

[BEING AN OFFICIAL REPORT TO THE BOARD OF ALMS-HOUSE
GOVERNORS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.]

BY WILLIAM W. SANGER, M.D.,
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND, NEW YORK CITY;
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT
OF SCIENCE; LATE ONE OF THE PHYSICIANS TO THE MARINE
HOSPITAL, QUARANTINE, NEW YORK, ETC., ETC., ETC.

"To such grievances as society can not readily cure, it
usually forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn
being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed
weakness."--CURRER BELL, _Shirley_.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
PEARL STREET, FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1858.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-eight, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of
the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

DEDICATION.

TO THE GOVERNORS OF THE ALMS-HOUSE OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK.

SIRS,--To your honorable Board I dedicate the following pages, the result
of an investigation into the causes and extent of Prostitution.

Yours was the conception, mine has been the execution of the work; to you
am I indebted for many valuable suggestions; to your kindness for much
encouraging approbation; and now to your hands I confide my labors, in the
conviction that they will not be futile; that your patriotism, your
philanthropy, and your humanity will be at once enlisted in the cause.

In so noble an endeavor it will be a source of satisfaction to remember
that I assisted you in those generous exertions which will add fresh
laurels to your names; that I had some share in the effort which will
induce future generations to remember with pride that the first blow
struck in the Western World at the gigantic vice Prostitution was aimed by
the GOVERNORS OF THE ALMS-HOUSE OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK.

I am your obliged fellow-citizen,
WILLIAM W. SANGER, M.D.

Resident Physician's Office, Blackwell's Island,
New York City, August 10th, 1858.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The reader will perceive from the body of this work that the "History of
Prostitution" was commenced in the year 1856. It was completed and ready
for the press at the close of 1857. On the morning of February 13th, 1858,
the Island Hospital on Blackwell's Island was entirely consumed by fire,
which spread so rapidly as to render it impossible to save any thing from
the flames. Among the property destroyed, my library and manuscripts were
included. Fortunately, the first draught of this work had been previously
removed from my office, and was preserved, and from that the present
volume has been prepared.

Advantage has been taken of the opportunity thus afforded carefully to
revise the work and introduce some additional facts, bringing the history,
of New York especially, to the present time.

The chapters describing foreign prostitution are not claimed to be
entirely original. They are compilations and condensations from every
available source. It is believed that the authorities have been named in
most cases where the ideas of others have been used; but, owing to the
loss of all the original works, it is highly probable that in some
instances this has been overlooked. Should the reader discover any
omissions of this nature, he will be kind enough to understand that
accident alone prevents the usual acknowledgements.

W. W. S.

Resident Physician's Office, Blackwell's Island,
New York City, August 10th, 1858.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. THE JEWS.

Prostitution coeval with Society.--Prostitutes in the
Eighteenth Century B.C.--Tamar and Judah.--Legislation of
Moses.--Syrian Women.--Rites of Moloch.--Groves.--Social
Condition of Jewish Harlots.--Description by Solomon.--The
Jews of Babylon. Page 35

CHAPTER II. EGYPT, SYRIA, AND ASIA MINOR.

Egyptian Courtesans.--Festival of Bubastis.--Morals in
Egypt.--Religious Prostitution in Chaldæa.--Babylonian
Banquets.--Compulsory Prostitution in Phoenicia.--Persian
Banquets. 40

CHAPTER III. GREECE.

Mythology.--Solonian Legislation.--Dicteria.--Pisistratidæ.--
Lycurgus and Sparta.--Laws on Prostitution.--Case of
Phryne.--Classes of Prostitutes.--Pornikon Telos.--Dress.--
Hair of Prostitutes.--The Dicteriades of Athens.--Abode and
Manners.--Appearance of Dicteria.--Laws regulating
Dicteria.--Schools of Prostitution.--Loose Prostitutes.--Old
Prostitutes.--Auletrides, or Flute-players.--Origin.--How
hired.--Performances.--Anecdote of Arcadians.--Price of
Flute-players.--Festival of Venus Periboa.--Venus
Callipyge.--Lesbian Love.--Lamia.--Hetairæ.--Social
Standing.--Venus and her Temples.--Charms of Hetairæ.--
Thargelia.--Aspasia.--Hipparchia.--Bacchis.--Guathena and
Guathenion.--Lais.--Phryne.--Pythionice.--Glycera.--
Leontium.--Other Hetairæ.--Biographers of Prostitutes.--
Philtres. 43

CHAPTER IV. ROME.

Laws governing Prostitution.--Floralian Games.--Registration
of Prostitutes.--Purity of Morals.--Julian Law.--Ædiles.--
Classes of Prostitutes.--Loose Prostitutes.--Various Classes
of lewd Women.--Meretrices.--Dancing Girls.--Bawds.--Male
Prostitutes.--Houses of Prostitution.--Lupanaria.--Cells of
Prostitutes.--Houses of Assignation.--Fornices.--Circus.--
Baths.--Taverns.--Bakers' Shops.--Squares and
Thoroughfares.--Habits and Manners of Prostitutes.--Social
standing.--Dress.--Rate of Hire.--Virgins in Roman
Brothels.--Kept Women.--Roman Poets.--Ovid.--Martial.--Roman
Society.--Social Corruption.--Conversation.--Pictures and
Sculptures.--Theatricals.--Baths.--Religious Indecencies.--
Marriage Feasts.--Emperors.--Secret Diseases.--Celsus.--
Roman Faculty.--Archiatii. 64

CHAPTER V. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ERA.

Christian Teachers preach Chastity.--Horrible Punishment of
Christian Virgins.--Persecution of Women.--Conversion of
Prostitutes.--The Gnostics.--The Ascetics.--Conventual
Life.--Opinion of the Fathers on Prostitution.--Tax on
Prostitutes.--Punishment of Prostitutes under the Greek
Emperors. 86

CHAPTER VI. FRANCE.--HISTORY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

Morals in Gaul.--Gynecea.--Capitulary of Charlemagne.--Morals
in the Middle Ages.--Edict of 1254.--Decree of 1358,
re-establishing Prostitution.--Roi des Ribauds.--Ordinance of
Philip abolishing Prostitution.--Sumptuary Laws.--Punishment
of Procuresses.--Templars.--The Provinces.--Prohibition in
the North.--Licensed Brothels at Toulouse, Montpellier, and
Avignon.--Penalties South.--Effect of Chivalry.--
Literature.--Erotic Vocabulary.--Incubes and Succubes.--
Sorcery.--The Sabat.--Flagellants.--Adamites.--Jour des
Innocents.--Wedding Ceremonies.--Preachers of the Day. 93

CHAPTER VII. FRANCE.--HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO LOUIS XIII.

The Court.--Louis IX. to Charles V.--Charles VI.--Agnes
Sorel.--Louis XI.--Charles VIII.--Louis XII.--Francis I.--La
Belle Feronniere.--Henry II.--Diana de Poictiers.--Lewd Books
and Pictures.--Catharine of Medicis.--Margaret.--Henry IV.--
Mademoiselle de Entragues.--Henry III.--Mignons.--Influence
of the Ligue.--Indecency of Dress.--Theatricals.--Ordinance
of 1560.--Police Regulations. 108

CHAPTER VIII. FRANCE.--HISTORY FROM LOUIS XIII. TO THE PRESENT DAY.

Exile of Prostitutes.--Measures of Louis XIV.--Laws of 1684
and 1713.--Police Regulations.--Ordinance of 1778.--
Republican Legislation.--Frightful state of Paris.--Efforts
to pass a general Law.--The Court.--Louis XIII.--The
Medicis.--Louis XIV.--La Vallière.--Montespan.--Maintenon.--
Literature of the Day.--Feudal Rights.--The Regency.--Duchess
of Berri.--Claudine de Tencin.--Louis XV.--Madame de
Pompadour.--Dubarry.--Parc aux Cerfs.--Louis XVI.--Philippe
Egalité.--Subsequent Sovereigns.--Literature.--Lewd Novels
and Pictures.--Tendency of Philosophy.--The Church. 120

CHAPTER IX. FRANCE.--SYPHILIS.

First recorded Appearance in Europe.--Description by
Fracastor.--Conduct of the Faculty.--First Hospitals in
Paris.--Shocking Condition of the Sick.--New Syphilitic
Hospital.--Plan of Treatment.--Establishment of the
Salpétrière.--Bicêtre.--Capuchins.--Hospital du Midi.--
Reforms there.--Visiting Physicians.--Dispensary.--
Statistics of Disease.--Progress and Condition of Disease. 131

CHAPTER X. FRANCE.--PRESENT REGULATIONS.

Number of Prostitutes in Paris.--Their Nativity, Parentage,
Education, Age, etc.--Causes of Prostitution.--Rules
concerning tolerated Houses.--Maisons de Passe.--Windows.--
Keepers.--Formalities upon granting Licenses.--Recruits.--
Pimps.--Profits of Prostitution.--Inscription.--
Interrogatories.--Nativity, how ascertained.--Obstacles.--
Principles of Inscription.--Age at which Inscription is
made.--Radiation.--Provisional Radiation.--Statistics of
Radiation.--Classes of Prostitutes.--Visit to the
Dispensary.--Visiting Physicians.--Punishment.--Offenses.--
Prison Discipline.--Saint Denis.--Tax on Prostitutes.--
Inspectors.--Bon Pasteur Asylum.--(Note: Duchatelet's Bill
for the Repression of Prostitution.) 139

CHAPTER XI. ITALY.

Decline of Public Morals.--Papal Court.--Nepotism.--John
XXII.--Sextus IV.--Alexander VI.--Effect of the Reformation.--
Poem of Fracastoro.--Benvenuto Cellini.--Beatrice Cenci.--Laws
of Naples.--Pragmatic Law of 1470.--Court of Prostitutes.--
Bull of Clement II.--Prostitution in Lombardy and Piedmont.--
Clerical Statute.--Modern Italy.--Laws of Rome.--Public
Hospitals.--Lazaroni of Naples.--Italian Manners as depicted
by Lord Byron.--Foundling Hospitals.--True Character of
Italian People. 154

CHAPTER XII. SPAIN.

Resemblance between Spanish and Roman Laws on Prostitution.--
Code of Alphonse IX.--Result of Draconian Legislation.--
Ruffiani.--Court Morals.--Brothels.--Valencia.--Laws for the
Regulation of Vice.--Concubines legally recognized.--
Syphilis.--Cortejo.--Reformatory Institutions at Barcelona.--
Prostitution in Spain at the Present Day.--Madrid Foundling
Hospital. 168

CHAPTER XIII. PORTUGAL.

Conventual Life in 1780.--Depravity of Women.--Laws against
Adultery and Rape.--Venereal Disease.--Illegitimacy.--
Foundling Hospitals of Lisbon and Oporto.--Singular
Institutions for Wives. 178

CHAPTER XIV. ALGERIA.

Prostitution in Algiers before the Conquest.--Mezonar.--
Unnatural Vices.--Tax on Prostitutes.--Decree of 1837.--
Corruption.--Number of Prostitutes and Population.--
Nationality of Prostitutes.--Causes of Prostitution.--
Brothels.--Clandestine Prostitution.--Baths.--
Dispensary.--Syphilis.--Punishment of Prostitutes. 180

CHAPTER XV. BELGIUM.

Hospitals and Charitable Institutions.--Foundlings.--Estimate
of the Marriage Ceremony.--Regulations as to Prostitution.--
Brothels.--Sanitary Ordinances. 187

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 Prostitutes.--The
Hamburger Berg and its Women.--Physique, Peculiarities, and
Diseases of Prostitutes.--Dress.--Food.--Intellectual
Capacity.--Religion.--Offenses.--Procuresses.--Inscription.--
Locality of Brothels.--Brothel-keepers.--Dance-houses.--
Sunday Evening Scene.--Private Prostitutes.--
Street-walkers.--Domestic Prostitution.--Unregistered
Prostitution.--Houses of Accommodation.--Common Sleeping
Apartments.--Beer and Wine Houses.--Effect of Prostitution 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 Prostitutes.--Hamburg
Magdalen Hospital. 189

CHAPTER XVII. PRUSSIA.

Patriarchal Government.--Ecclesiastical Legislation.--Trade
Guilds.--Enactments in 1700.--Inquiry in 1717.--Enactment in
1792.--Police Order, 1795.--Census.--Increase of illicit
Prostitution.--Syphilis.--Census of 1808.--Ministerial
Rescript and Police Report, 1809.--Tolerated Brothels
closed.--Re-enactment of the Code of 1792.--Ministerial
Rescript of 1839.--Removal of Brothels.--Petitions.--
Ministerial Reply.--Police Report, 1844.--Brothels closed by
royal Command.--Police Embarrassment, and Correspondence with
Halle and Cologne.--Local Opinions.--Public Life in Berlin.--
Dancing Saloons.--Drinking Houses.--Immorality.--Increase of
Syphilis.--Statistics.--Illegitimacy.--Royal Edict of 1851.--
Recent Regulations. 219

CHAPTER XVIII. LEIPZIG.

Population.--Registered and illicit Prostitutes.--Servants.--
Kept-women.--Brothels.--Nationality of Prostitutes.--
Habits.--Fairs.--Visitors.--Earnings of Prostitutes. 252

CHAPTER XIX. DENMARK.

Prostitution in Copenhagen.--Police Regulations.--
Illegitimacy.--Brothels.--Syphilis.--Laws of Marriage and
Divorce.--Infanticide.--Adultery.--New Marriage Ordinances. 256

CHAPTER XX. SWITZERLAND.

Superior Morality of the Swiss.--Customs of Neufchatel.--
"Bundling."--Influence of Climate. 259

CHAPTER XXI. RUSSIA.

Ancient Manners.--Peter the Great.--Eudoxia.--Empress
Catharine, her dissolute Conduct and Death.--Peter's
Libertinism.--Anne.--Elizabeth.--Catharine II., infamous
Career and Death.--Paul.--Alexander I.--Countess Narishkin.--
Nicholas.--Court Morality.--Serfage.--Prostitution in St.
Petersburg.--Excess of Males over Females.--Marriage
Customs.--Brides' Fair.--Conjugal Relations among the Russian
Nobility.--Foundling Hospital of St. Petersburg.--
Illegitimacy. 261

CHAPTER XXII. SWEDEN AND NORWAY.

Comparative Morality.--Illegitimacy.--Profligacy in
Stockholm.--Infanticide.--Foundling Hospitals.--Stora
Barnhordst.--Laws against Prostitution.--Toleration.--
Government Brothels.--Syphilis.--Marriage in Norway. 277

CHAPTER XXIII. GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY TO THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

Aboriginal Morals and Laws.--Anglo-Saxon Legislation.--
Introduction of Christianity.--St. Augustine.--Prostitution
in the Ninth Century.--Court Example.--Norman Epoch.--Feudal
Laws and their Influences.--Civil and Ecclesiastical
Courts.--General Depravity.--Effects of Chivalry.--Fair
Rosamond.--Jane Shore.--Henry VIII.--Elizabeth.--James I. 282

CHAPTER XXIV. GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY FROM THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE
PRESENT DAY.

Puritans.--Results of Asceticism.--Excesses of the
Restoration.--General Licentiousness.--Art.--Literature.--The
Stage.--Nell Gwynne.--Nationality in Vice.--Sabbath at
Court.--James II.--Literature of the seventeenth and
eighteenth Centuries.--Lord Chesterfield.--House of
Hanover.--Royal Princes.--George III.--George IV.--Influence
of French Literature.--Marriage Laws.--Increase of
Population. 298

CHAPTER XXV. GREAT BRITAIN.--PROSTITUTION AT THE PRESENT TIME.

Influence of the Wealthy Classes.--Devices of Procuresses.--
Scene at a Railway Station.--Organization for entrapping
Women.--Seduction of Children.--Continental Traffic.--
Brothel-keepers.--"Fancy Men" and "Spooneys."--Number of
Brothels in London.--Causes of Prostitution.--Sexual
Desire.--Seduction.--Over-crowded Dwellings.--Parental
Example.--Poverty and Destitution.--Public Amusements.--
Ill-assorted Marriages.--Love of Dress.--Juvenile
Prostitution.--Factories.--Obscene Publications.--Census of
1851.--Education and Crime.--Number of Prostitutes.--Female
Population of London.--Working Classes.--Domestic
Servants.--Needlewomen.--Ages of Prostitutes.--Average
Life.--Condition of Women in London.--Charitable
Institutions.--Mrs. Fry's benevolent Labors. 312

CHAPTER XXVI. GREAT BRITAIN.--SYPHILITIC DISEASES.

First Recognition in England.--Regulations of Henry VI.--
Lazar Houses.--John of Gaddesden.--Queen Elizabeth's
Surgeon.--Popular Opinions.--Proclamation of James IV. of
Scotland.--Middlesex and London Hospitals.--Army.--Navy.--
Merchant Service.--St. Bartholomew's Hospital.--Estimated
Extent of Syphilis. 354

CHAPTER XXVII. MEXICO.

Spanish Conquest.--Treatment of Female Prisoners.--Mexican
Manners in 1677.--Priesthood.--Modern Society.--Fashionable
Life.--Indifference of Husbands to their Wives.--General
Immorality.--Offenses.--Charitable Institutions.--The Cuna,
or Foundling Hospital. 359

CHAPTER XXVIII. CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA.

Low moral Condition.--San Salvador.--Guatemala.--Yucatan.--
Costa Rica.--Honduras.--The Caribs.--Depravity in Peru and
Chili.--"Children of the House."--Intrigue in Lima.--
Infanticide.--Laxity of Morals in Brazil and Paraguay.--
Foundling Hospital at Rio Janeiro. 364

CHAPTER XXIX. NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

Decrease of the Indian Race.--Treatment of Females.--
Courtship.--Stealing Wives.--Domestic Life among the Crow
Indians.--"Pine Leaf."--Female Prisoners.--Marriage.--
Conjugal Relations.--Infidelity.--Polygamy.--Divorce.--
Female Morality.--Intrigue and Revenge.--Decency of Outward
Life.--Effects of Contact with White Men.--Traders. 372

CHAPTER XXX. BARBAROUS NATIONS.

Africa.--Australasia.--West Indies.--Java.--Sumatra.--Borneo. 385

CHAPTER XXXI. SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS.

Persia.--Afghanistan.--Kashmir.--India.--Ceylon.--
Ultra-Gangetic Nations.--Celebes.--China.--Japan.--Tartar
Races.--Circassia.--Turkey.--Northern Africa.--Siberia.--
Esquimaux.--Iceland.--Greenland. 415

CHAPTER XXXII. NEW YORK.--STATISTICS.

Schedule of Questions.--Age.--Juvenile Depravity.--Premature
Old Age.--Gradual Descent.--Average Duration of a Prostitute's
Life.--Nativity.--Proportion of Prostitutes from various
States.--New York.--Effects of Immigration.--Foreigners.--
Proportion to Population.--Proportion to Emigration.--Dangers
of Ports of Departure, Emigrant Ships, and Boarding-houses.--
Length of Residence in the United States.--Prostitution a
Burden to Tax-payers.--Length of Residence in New York
State.--Length of Residence in New York City.--Inducements to
emigrate.--Labor and Remuneration in Europe.--Assistance to
emigrate; its Amount, and from whom.--Education.--Neglect of
Facilities in New York.--Social Condition.--Single Women.--
Widows.--Early and Injudicious Marriages.--Husbands.--
Children.--Illegitimate Children.--Mortality of Children.--
Infanticide.--Influences to which Children are exposed. 450

CHAPTER XXXIII. NEW YORK.--STATISTICS.

Continuance of Prostitution.--Average in Paris and New York.--
Dangers of Prostitution.--Disease.--Causes of Prostitution.--
Inclination.--Destitution.--Seduction.--Intemperance.--
Ill-treatment.--Duties of Parents, Husbands, and Relatives.--
Influence of Prostitutes.--Intelligence Offices.--
Boarding-schools.--Obscene Literature. 484

CHAPTER XXXIV. NEW YORK.--STATISTICS.

Means of Support.--Occupation.--Treatment of Domestics.--
Needlewomen.--Weekly Earnings.--Female Labor in France.--
Competition.--Opportunity for Employment in the Country.--
Effects of Female Occupations.--Temptations of Seamstresses.--
Indiscriminate Employment of both Sexes in Shops.--Factory
Life.--Business of the Fathers of Prostitutes.--Mothers'
Business.--Assistance to Parents.--Death of Parents.--
Intoxication.--Drinking Habits of Prostitutes.--Delirium
Tremens.--Liquor Sold in Houses of Prostitution.--Parental
Influences.--Religion of Parents and Prostitutes.--Amiable
Feelings.--Kindness and Fidelity to each other. 523

CHAPTER XXXV. NEW YORK.--PROSTITUTES AND HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION.

First Class, or "Parlor Houses."--Luxury.--Semi-refinement.--
Rate of Board.--Dress.--Money.--Lavish Extravagance.--
Instance of Economy.--Means of Amusement.--House-keepers.--
Rents.--Estimated Receipts.--Management of Houses.--Assumed
Respectability.--Consequences of Exactions from Prostitutes.--
Affection for Lovers.--Second Class Houses.--Street-walkers.--
Drunkenness.--Syphilitic Infection.--Third Class Houses.--
Germans.--Sailors.-Ball-rooms.--Intoxication.--Fourth Class
Houses.--Repulsive Features.--Visitors.--Action of the
Police.--First Class Houses of Assignation.--Secrecy and
Exclusiveness.--Keepers.--Arrangements.--Visitors.--Origin of
some Houses of Assignation.--Prevalence of Intrigue.--Foreign
Manners.--Effects of Travel.--Dress.--Second Class Houses.--
Visitors.--Prostitutes.--Arrangements.--Wine and Liquor.--
Third Class Houses.--Kept Mistresses.--Sewing and Shop
Girls.--Disease.--Fourth Class Houses.--"Panel Houses." 549

CHAPTER XXXVI. NEW YORK.--EXTENT, EFFECTS, AND COST OF PROSTITUTION.

Number of Public Prostitutes.--Opinion of Chief of Police in
1856.--Effects on Prostitution of Commercial Panic of 1857.--
Extravagant Surmises.--Police Investigation of May, 1858.--
Private Prostitutes.--Aggregate Prostitution.--Visitors from
the Suburbs of New York.--Strangers.--Proportion of
Prostitutes to Population.--Syphilis.--Danger of Infection.--
Increase of Venereal Disease.--Statistics of Cases treated in
ISLAND HOSPITAL, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.--Primary Syphilis and
its Indications.--Cases of Venereal Disease in Public
Institutions.--Alms-house.--Work-house.--Penitentiary.--Bellevue
Hospital.--Nursery Hospital, Randall's Island.--Emigrants'
Hospital, Ward's Island.--New York City Hospital.--
Dispensaries.--Medical Colleges.--King's County Hospital.--
Brooklyn City Hospital.--Seamen's Retreat, Staten Island.--
Summary of Cases treated in Public Institutions.--Private
Treatment.--Advertisers.--Patent Medicines.--Drug-stores.--
Aggregate of Venereal Disease.--Probabilities of Infection.--
Cost of Prostitution.--Capital invested in Houses of
Prostitution and Assignation, Dancing-saloons, etc.--Income
of Prostitutes.--Individual Expenses of Visitors.--Medical
Expenses.--Vagrancy and Pauper Expenses.--Police and
Judiciary Expenses.--Correspondence with leading Cities of
the United States.--Estimated Prostitution throughout the
Union.--Remarks on "Tait's _Prostitution in Edinburgh_."--
Unfounded Estimates.--National Statistics of Population,
Births, Education, Occupation, Wages, Pauperism, Crime,
Breweries and Distilleries, and Nativities. 575

CHAPTER XXXVII. NEW YORK.--REMEDIAL MEASURES.

Effects of Prohibition.--Required Change of Policy.--
Governmental Obligations.--Prostitution augmented by
Seclusion.--Impossibility of benevolent Assistance.--
Necessity of sanitary Regulations.--Yellow Fever.--Effect of
remedial Measures in Paris.--Syphilitic Infection not a local
Question.--Present Measures to check Syphilis.--ISLAND
HOSPITAL, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.--Mode of Admission.--Vagrancy
Commitment "on Confession," and its Action on Blackwell's
Island.--Pecuniary Results.--Moral Effects.--Perpetuation of
Disease.--Inadequacy of Present Arrangements.--Discharges.--
Writs of _Habeas Corpus_ and _Certiorari_, how obtained, and
their Effects.--Public Responsibility.--Proposed medical and
police Surveillance.--Requirements.--_Hospital Arrangements
to be entirely separated from punitive Institutions._--
Medical Visitation.--Power to place diseased Women under
Treatment and _detain them till cured_.--Refutation of
Objections.--Quack Advertisers.--Constitution of Medical
Bureau.--Duties of Examiners.--License System.--Probable
Effects of Surveillance.--Expenses of the proposed Plan.--
Agitation in England.--The London _Times_ on Prostitution.--
Objections considered.--Report from MEDICAL BOARD OF BELLEVUE
HOSPITAL on Prostitution and Syphilis.--Report from RESIDENT
PHYSICIAN, RANDALL'S ISLAND, on Constitutional Syphilis.--
Reliability of Statistics.--Resumé of substantiated Facts. 627

THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.

INTRODUCTION.

Arguments are unnecessary to prove the existence of prostitution. The evil
is so notorious that none can possibly gainsay it. But when its extent,
its causes, or its effects are questioned, a remarkable degree of
ignorance or carelessness is manifested. Few care to know the secret
springs from which prostitution emanates; few are anxious to know how wide
the stream extends; few have any desire to know the devastation it causes.
Society has formally laid a prohibition on the subject, and he who
presumes to argue that what affects one may injure all; he who believes
that the malady in his neighbor's family to-day may visit his own
to-morrow; he who dares to intimate that a vice which has blighted the
happiness of one parent, and ruined the character of one daughter, may
produce, must inevitably produce, the same sad results in another circle;
in short, he who dares allude to the subject of prostitution in any other
than a mysterious and whispered manner, must prepare to meet the frowns
and censure of society.

Keen was the knowledge of human nature, acute the perception of worldly
sentiment in the breast of an accomplished woman lately deceased, when she
wrote, "To such grievances as society can not readily cure, it usually
forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn being only a sort of
tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness." How true the idea, many a man
who has attempted to unveil a hidden crime, or probe a secret sorrow, but
too well knows.

Not then to prove that prostitution exists, for that is so glaringly
palpable that all must perforce concede it, but to ascertain its origin,
progress, and end, is the object of these pages. The finger of scorn may
be pointed at the labor; the self-righteous world may wrap itself in a
mantle of prudery, and close its ears against sickening details; the
complacent public may demur at an approach to sin and misery; the
self-satisfied community may object to view wretchedness drawn from the
obscurity of its hiding-place to the full light of investigation:
nevertheless, there is now existing a moral pestilence which creeps
insidiously into the privacy of the domestic circle, and draws thence the
myriads of its victims, and which saps the foundation of that holy
confidence, the first, the most beautiful attraction of home. There is an
ever-present physical danger, so fatally destructive that the world would
recoil, as from the spring of a serpent, could they but appreciate its
malignity; a malignity which is daily and hourly threatening every man,
woman, and child in the community; which for hundreds of years has been
slowly but steadily making its way onward, leaving a track marked with
broken hopes, ruined frames, and sad recollections of stricken friends;
and which now, in the full force of an impetus acquired and aggravated by
concealment, almost defies opposition. There is a social wrong which
forces upon the community vast expenditures for an object of which they
are ignorant; which swells the public taxes and increases individual
outlay for a vice which has hitherto been studiously kept in concealment.
These reasons were sufficiently powerful to induce the necessary
researches for the accomplishment of this work, and they are considered
sufficient to justify its publication.

An unseen evil, of which only the effects are visible, is more frightful
than one whose dimensions are apparent. No statesman would grapple with a
political question until he knew its "form and pressure;" no
philanthropist can satisfactorily encounter an unknown misery. Both may
judge, to some slight extent, of the evil they can not see, but the one
can not venture to remove it, nor the other to modify its woes until its
power is fully known. This has so far been the case with prostitution. The
world has studiously drawn a screen before it, and when the sufferings of
its victims became so apparent that the vice was palpable, an additional
mystery was thrown around it, and the people of the nineteenth century
know it but as a sin with which they can not interfere. It has all the
imagined force of a monster, because of its obscurity; all the virulence
of an avenging fiend, because its true powers are hidden; and even those
who suffered from its poison have been led to believe that its mysteries
were so inscrutable as to defy all approach.

Hitherto reticence has been the policy. This position has been held too
long, for it is false in principle and injurious in tendency. The day has
arrived when the shroud must be removed; when the public safety
imperiously demands an investigation into the matter; when those who
regard it as a small wrong may have their attention directed to its real
proportions; and when those who have viewed it as an unmanageable giant
may be alike undeceived.

A small matter it decidedly is not: the eternal ruin of one misguided
woman would effectually preclude such an opinion; the physical ruin of an
impetuous man would prohibit such an estimate, and both these are among
those daily consequences which call for an investigation. There is
scarcely a person in the community who can not recall some circumstance he
has known to support this assertion; for so wide-spread has been the
baneful influence of prostitution, that there are comparatively few but
have suffered, through friends or relatives, if not in their own persons.

Nor is it unmanageable, except when concealed. Stripped of the veil of
secrecy which has enveloped it, there appears a vice arising from an
inextinguishable natural impulse on the part of one sex, fostered by
confiding weakness in the other; from social disabilities on one side, and
social oppression on the other; from the wiles of the deceiver working
upon unsuspecting credulity; and, finally, _from the stern necessity to
live_.

It is a mere absurdity to assert that prostitution can ever be eradicated.
Strenuous and well-directed efforts for this purpose have been made at
different times. The whole power of the Church, where it possessed not
merely a spiritual, but an actual secular arm, has been in vain directed
against it. Nature defied the mandates of the clergy, and the threatened
punishments of an after-life were futile to deter men from seeking, and
women from granting, sinful pleasures in this world. Monarchs victorious
in the field and unsurpassed in the council-chamber have bent all their
energies of will, and brought all the aids of power to crush it out, but
before these vice has not quailed. The guilty women have been banished,
scourged, branded, executed; their partners have been subjected to the
same punishment; held up to public opinion as immoral; denuded of their
civil rights; have seen their offenses visited upon their families; have
been led to the stake, the gibbet, and the block, and still prostitution
exists. The teachings of morality and virtue have been powerless here. In
some cases they restrain individuals; upon the aggregate they are
inoperative. The researches of science have been unheeded. They have
traced the physical results of vice, and have foreshadowed its course.
They have demonstrated that the suffering parents of this generation will
bequeath to their posterity a heritage of ruined powers; that the malady
which illicit pleasure communicates is destructive to the hopes of man;
that the human frame is perceptibly and regularly depreciating by the
operation of this poison, and have shown that even the desire for health
and long life, one of the most powerful motives that ever influences a
human being, has been of no avail to stem the torrent.

But if history proves that prostitution can not be suppressed, it also
demonstrates that it can be regulated, and directed into channels where
its most injurious results can be encountered, and its dangerous
tendencies either entirely arrested or materially weakened. This is the
policy to which civilized communities are tending, and to aid the movement
it is needful that the subject be examined, even at the risk of the
world's contumely.

In some of the countries of Continental Europe the examination has been
made, and the natural consequences of a searching and philosophical
investigation are there seen in legislation, which aims not to dam a wild
torrent, but to lead it where its rage may be harmlessly spent. When a
mighty river overflows its banks, the uncontrollable flood works
wide-spread ruin and devastation along its course; but the same river,
confined to its natural channel, may be of immense service in carrying off
a vast amount of filth and _debris_ that otherwise would cause pestilence
and death. In this Western hemisphere, and in the mother-country,
Anglo-Saxon prudery has stood aloof from inquiring into a vice which every
one admits to be offensive to the moral sense of the people, and has
submitted to an accumulation of evils rather than seek to abate them,
until the suffering and the wrong have become so boldly defined that they
force themselves upon the public eye.

Assuredly it is high time to inaugurate a new line of action; to cast
aside as unworthy those puerile doubts of propriety and expediency which
have stood in the way of an onward progress. The very meaning of the word
"propriety" supplies an argument in favor of the proposed course.
Conventionally, it has been construed to mean an indefinite something
which every person has moulded to suit his own predilections. Upon the
same principle that a man who makes his living dishonestly would consider
it a glaring impropriety to examine the laws of fraud, has the world
decided it an outrage against propriety to inquire into a vice which many
secretly practice, but all publicly condemn. Reasoning like this has been
too often applied, and with too great an effect. Can there possibly be an
impropriety in investigating a vice which threatens the purity and peace
of the community, because in so doing unpleasant facts will be disclosed?
Is there not a far more striking inconsistency in supinely allowing the
same vice to exist and increase, without hinderance or examination?

Again: it must be conceded that the demands of propriety are universal.
They are not restricted to any person or place, but press with equal force
upon every member of the community in every possible situation. The common
welfare is involved in their general application, and he well merits the
good opinion of his fellow-men who points them to a case where propriety
is outraged, and asks their aid to apply the remedy. In a word,
_propriety_ demands an exposure of all acts of _impropriety_, and the
application of the needful cure.

Then the question arises, In what form shall the exposure be made? Truth
admits of but one reply. It must be so explicit as to leave no doubt of
its meaning; it must be so guarded as not to offend in its application. If
the first of these rules is not observed, any disclosure will be
worthless; if the remarks are vague, indefinite, or generalized, no good
result can accrue. Take a simple illustration. It conveys no determinate
idea to a benevolent man to say, "There is distress in a certain city;"
but point him to the particular locality, and give him the precise
circumstances, and his sympathy is at once aroused and effectively
exerted. The same rule is equally applicable to a monster vice and to an
individual hardship, and upon this principle have the disclosures of the
following pages been based. The idea has been to particularize
sufficiently to draw attention, but not enough to gratify a prurient
inclination; to exhibit the evil in a truthful aspect, but not in a
fascinating form. None can doubt the truth of Pope's well-known lines:

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

The endeavor should be to fulfill the imperative demands of propriety,
without disturbing the conventional prejudices implied by the same word.

Then, as to expediency, or the fitness to effect some good end. It must be
admitted that the mere fact of proving prostitution capable of control is
a good object, and it is apparent that such proof can not be afforded
while the vice remains a myth. Something must be known of its haunts and
its customs ere any one can decide in what shape a supervisory power can
be best applied. This knowledge must be obtained in defiance of
deep-rooted prejudices. Commonplace objections about the danger of
touching impure objects are best met by the remark that to the pure all
things are pure. Though benevolence may at times lead its devotees through
scenes where moral purity is shocked, and to neighborhoods where filth and
obscenity vitiate the very air they breathe, there is no contamination to
those whose motives are good. Inexpediency has been urged as often and as
falsely as impropriety. In their application to this subject, both are
perverted from their legitimate meaning; both are made subservient to a
false taste, or a mawkish sensibility which fears to encounter an
imaginary danger.

The safety of the community, so far as its sanitary condition is
concerned, imperatively demands an inquiry like this. It is no longer
necessary to prove that syphilitic taint is propagated by the direct
agency of prostitution. That fact has been demonstrated years ago, and,
reasoning from it, we rightly infer that the ravages of that poison can be
checked by compelling abandoned women to certain judicious observances.
One thing is absolutely certain, that the public health can not be
endangered by the interference, and there is a moral certainty that it may
be materially benefited. The value of this investigation, so far as
relates to purely physical questions, consists in not merely pointing out
where the evil is, but in showing to what extent it exists, and then
contrasting the state of venereal disease, its rapid increase and
augmenting virulence in this country, with its condition in those nations
where similar investigations have resulted in practical measures.

Public safety imperatively demands this investigation as a means of
tracing the habitual resorts of criminals. It is not necessary to inform
any man conversant with city life that houses of ill fame are the common
resort of the most abandoned of the male part of the community. There the
assassin, against whose hand no life is secure, has a safe retreat. The
burglar, who commits his depredations under cover of the shade of night;
the swindler, who defrauds the honest trader by false representations;
the counterfeiter, who earns a precarious living by his unholy
trade--these hold there high carnival. There they meet to recount their
exploits and divide the spoils; to devise new schemes of wickedness, or
lay plans by which simple youths may be allured to vilest practices.

There is another phase of public safety which demands this investigation,
namely, the preservation of female honor. Those who frequent these haunts
of vice are forever employed in casting about snares to entrap the young,
the unwary, or the friendless woman. They tempt her to minister to their
libidinous desires, and swell the already overcrowded ranks of frailty.
While these resorts are secret, there is every facility for such infamous
conduct, with but slight probability of its detection, and still slighter
opportunities for prevention. Thither, too, young men, and even boys, are
inveigled by those who have grown old in vice, and there are they taught
the horrid mysteries of unhallowed passion. Many a promising youth has
left such haunts as these not only with a ruined constitution, but with
loss of character and honor; many whose names swell the criminal records
of the day date their first step in crime from the hour they entered a
common brothel.

Again: Public safety demands this investigation because of the superior
opportunities it will afford to reformatory measures. Start not at the
supposition of reforming courtesans. There is hope even for them, for they
are human beings, though depraved. Their hearts throb with the same
sympathies that move the more favored of their sex. Their minds are
susceptible to the same emotions as those of other females. Few of them
become vile from natural instincts: poor victims of circumstances, many of
them would gladly amend if the proper means were used at the proper time.

"There is in every human heart
Some not entirely barren part,
Where flowers of richest scent may blow,
And fruit in glorious sunlight grow."

This consummation can be achieved only when the pseudo-virtue of the world
shall yield to true benevolence, and charity be in deed what it professes
in name.

If public safety is thus urgent, private interest also has arguments in
favor of investigating prostitution. No one need be told that public aid
is required to give medical treatment to the unfortunate men and women
tainted by this vice; nor need any one be assured that such aid,
administered with every regard to economy, requires yearly a large portion
of the taxes paid by individuals. It would be sheer folly to assert that
any measures which can follow this inquiry will be efficacious in
eradicating syphilis, but experience proves that an effective supervision
would materially abate its influence, render it curable in a much shorter
space of time, and reduce the expenses for each patient in a corresponding
ratio.

Another large claim upon the public funds arises from the necessity of
employing an extensive judicial and police organization to deal with the
crime and the criminals generated and fostered in houses of ill fame.
Nests of vice as they are now in their darkness and seclusion, it would be
impossible to suppose a more fitting nursery for crime, or one whence more
criminals would emanate. As with disease, so with crime. It can not be
suppressed by placing its retreats under public notice, but it can be
watched, and, once brought to the light of day, half its dangers and
difficulties become surmountable.

Finally, private interest demands this investigation on mere private
grounds--the individual and personal expenses caused by diseases
contracted by debauchery. There is the money a working man must pay for
his cure: this is his share of the loss. There is the unproductive time,
and the loss of profits upon his labor: this is his employer's sacrifice.
There is the deprivation of comforts and necessaries experienced by his
family and dependents: this is their penalty. Society is thus involved in
a general loss on account of an act of folly, or passion, or crime (call
it which you please), committed in a concealed and secret haunt, and such
loss could be saved by the intervention of proper means.

Common sense asks for a full investigation of all the evils attending
prostitution. In the every-day affairs of life, any man who feels the
pressure of a particular evil looks at once for its cause. He may be
neither a philosopher nor a logician, and may never have heard of or read
any of the luminous treatises which professedly simplify science, yet he
knows very well that for every effect there must be some adequate cause,
and for this he generally searches diligently till he can find and remove
it. But here, in the city of New York, is a population who claim to be as
intelligent as any on the Western continent, who have been for years
suffering from the effects of a vice in purse and person; who have paid
and are paying every year large sums of money on account of it; who
witness every day some broken constitution or ruined character resulting
from it, and who yet have never thought of seeking out the cause! Is it
now too late to enlist your sympathies in the undertaking?

Hence we conclude that propriety, expediency, public safety, private
interest, and common sense demand an investigation like this now submitted
to the reader. And what is the argument brought forward to oppose it? The
world's scorn--"this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its
deformed weakness." But is not this scorn powerless against the array of
favoring motives? Will it stand the test of comparison with any one of
them, much less of all? Is not its influence lost when its real character
is known? The reckless carelessness which has suffered a growing vice to
increase and multiply, which has permitted a deadly Upas-tree to take root
and blossom in the community until its poisonous exhalations threaten
universal infection; which has, by its actual indifference, fostered vice,
promoted seduction, perpetuated disease, and entailed death; shall this
deformed weakness now raise its trembling hands, and exhibit its tottering
frame, and lift its puny voice to forbid an examination into the sources
of the danger? Has not the finger of this scorn too long forbid the search
for truth? Has not the hour arrived when truth will speak trumpet-tongued,
and when her voice must be heard?

Now the question will arise, Has the world's indifference produced these
evils? Undoubtedly it has, and in the following manner: Laws have been
placed upon the statute-book declaring prostitutes, and houses of
prostitution, and all who live by such means, illegal and immoral. There
the law yet stands. At uncertain intervals some poor and friendless woman
is arrested as a vagrant, and, to appease the offended majesty of law, she
is sent to prison, a scapegoat for five thousand of her class. It also
sometimes happens that another woman equally guilty, but with money or
influence, is arrested at the same time and for the same offense, and
before she reaches the prison walls a legal quibble has been raised and
she is free. Is there no culpable indifference in this? Houses of
prostitution are proscribed by law. How many of them are ever indicted,
or, if indicted, how many are suppressed? This, too, is owing to criminal
neglect, and it is aggravated by the injurious effects arising from the
mere circumstance of allowing a law to exist, and making no efforts to
enforce it. The character of a people is judged, not by the laws that are
made, but by the strictness with which those that do exist are enforced
and observed. In regard to the first, there may be exhibited an acute
perception of an existing evil, and a desire to reform it by legislation;
but a second glance may reveal no wish to make this legislation effective.
In the special matter of prostitution, the opinion is expressed elsewhere
that prohibitory laws are worse than useless, and in the experience of New
York City there is nothing to shake that opinion, notwithstanding the fact
that the efforts made to enforce them are so "few and far between." Had
existing laws been more vigorously enforced, their inefficiency would long
since have been much better understood than it now is, and people would
not have rested under the delusion that every thing necessary has been
done.

There are yet other cases of culpable indifference. These same proscribed
houses of prostitution are suffered to exist uncontrolled, and to spread
disease and increase crime and vagrancy in all parts of the city. It has
been generally conceded that they can not be suppressed. What effort has
been made to hold in check their baneful influence? None--literally none.
The statesman has looked on appalled at an evil of whose magnitude he
could form no correct idea; the clergyman has hesitated to encounter those
who he judged would not respectfully receive his admonitions; the masses
of society have shrunk from considering a subject which was repugnant and
distasteful. Is there no guilty indifference in this? There can be but one
answer to this query; but one opinion as to the share this general apathy
has had in fostering the evil.

To substitute for this apathy a healthy action is the object of this
investigation. It is but the means to an end. In themselves, as mere
matters of information, the facts and deductions presented in the
following pages can do nothing but demonstrate the necessity of exertion;
but of this necessity they do afford overwhelming demonstration.

Thus much for the general arguments as to the necessity of a work of this
nature. There are other special and local causes which led to its
accomplishment in the present form.

"The Governors of the Alms-House of the City and County of New York," or,
as they are more generally known, "The Ten Governors," is a body called
into existence by an act of the State Legislature passed April 6, 1849,
specially to take charge of the vagrant and pauper institutions of the
city. The present members of the Board are the following well-known
citizens:[1]

C. GODFREY GUNTHER, Esq., _President_.
ISAAC J. OLIVER, Esq., _Secretary_.

Washington Smith, Esq.[2]
Anthony Dugro, Esq.[3]
Cornelius V. Anderson, Esq.
Isaac Townsend, Esq.
Daniel F. Tiemann, Esq.
Joseph S. Taylor, Esq.
P. G. Moloney, Esq.
Benjamin F. Pinckney, Esq.

At the time these investigations commenced two other prominent men were
also members of the organization, Hon. Edward C. West (now Surrogate of
the city) and Simeon Draper, Esq. Both of these gentlemen had served as
President of the Board of Governors with honor to themselves and
satisfaction to their colleagues and the public; both took a lively
interest in the projected inquiry, and to both am I indebted for much
valuable assistance.

The act establishing the Board of Governors assigned to them, with their
other duties, _the medical care of all persons who had contracted
infectious diseases in the practice of debauchery, and who required
charitable aid to restore them to health_. The result was that a very
large number of persons, both male and female, chargeable to the citizens
of New York through the medium of the institutions on Blackwell's Island,
came under their cognizance, and they became convinced that some measures
were necessary in connection therewith.

Individual members had held this opinion for some time before any official
action was taken, and foremost among such was Governor Isaac Townsend.
This gentleman was one of the originally appointed Governors, and has been
connected with the Board by re-election ever since--a circumstance which
made him perfectly acquainted with all the workings of the present system,
and to him the public is indebted for the conception of this undertaking.
For years has he labored to bring about this result, with an indomitable
energy and perseverance equaled only by his known benevolence and honesty
of purpose. He frequently made the practicability of such a measure the
subject of conversation with the gentleman who preceded me as Resident
Physician of Blackwell's Island, and, on my appointment (1853), the
subject was again urged by him; nor could I be unaware of its importance.
No official action was taken until the commencement of the year 1855. At
that time Mr. Townsend was President of the Board, and one of his first
acts in that capacity was to submit a list of interrogatories on the
subject, which were adopted and transmitted to me. I transcribe them from
the Minutes of the Board:

"At a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Alms-House, held
January 23, 1855, the following interrogatories were presented by the
President:

"1. What proportion of the inmates of the institutions on Blackwell's
Island under your medical charge are, in your opinion, directly or
indirectly suffering from syphilis?

"2. Are, or are not, the number of such inmates steadily on the
increase?

"3. Do not patients in the different institutions, particularly in the
Penitentiary Hospital, often leave before the disease is cured, so
that they are liable to infect other persons after their departure?

"4. Are not the offspring of parents affected with constitutional
syphilis subject to many diseases of like character, which cause them
to become a charge upon the city for long periods of time, and often
for life?

"5. What are your views in reference to the best means of checking and
decreasing this disease, and what plan, in your opinion, could be
adopted to relieve New York City of the enormous amount of misery and
expense caused by syphilis?

"6. You will reply in full to the above queries at the earliest
possible date.

"_Resolved_, That a copy of the above be sent to the Resident
Physician, Blackwell's Island."

To reply to these questions, especially to the fifth, I discovered that it
would be requisite to extend my investigations beyond the limits of the
institutions on Blackwell's Island. This idea was communicated to
President Townsend, who joined me in appreciating the necessity of such a
movement. He also was the means of interesting Mayor Wood and other
officers of the city in the investigation as subsequently carried on,
while his continued exertions and earnest support aided me generally in
the prosecution of the labor, and merit my most sincere and grateful
acknowledgments.

The steps thus taken are fully detailed in the following letter to the
Board of Governors, that letter, or preliminary report, having been called
for in connection with the reports from the Medical Board of Bellevue
Hospital, and from the Resident Physician of Randall's Island, which will
be found, _in extenso_, in Chapter XXXVII. of this work:[4]

"ISAAC TOWNSEND, Esq., _President of the Board of Governors_.

"DEAR SIR,--In reply to your letter asking for answers to certain
interrogatories on the subject of prostitution and its diseases, I
have to state that I am not prepared to report, nor can I do so for
some considerable length of time to come.

"Had I confined myself to simply answering the queries propounded as
regards the institutions under my medical charge, simply given you the
gross numbers, with the percentages of those who have suffered or are
now suffering from venereal disease, such reply could have been sent
to you long ago. A report of this kind from this department would have
been looked upon by the public at large as containing the history of
nearly all the prostitution in the city, and particularly would a
majority of the public have believed that nineteen twentieths of the
disease resulting from prostitution found its home here. Such is not
the fact. Great as is the number of prostitutes annually sent here,
and enormous as is the number of cases of venereal disease yearly
treated here, yet these compose but a small fraction of the sum total
actually existing in this city. There are but few more prostitutes on
the island than are to be found on the same number of acres in certain
portions of the city; and as for the venereal disease, why, gentlemen,
the island has the advantage. It is the least dangerous locality.

"Believing these to be facts, I could not bring myself to think that
any practical good would be accomplished by giving you the statistics
of these institutions alone. It would have been merely doing what has
been done before, and would have yielded no additional information for
your guidance. But it appeared to me that the time had come when your
attention might be solicited to the various facts attending the
aggregate prostitution of the city; for, despite all our prohibitory
laws, it is a fact which can not be questioned or denied that this
vice is attaining a position and extent in this community which can
not be viewed without alarm. It has more than kept pace with the
growth of our city. Unlike the vice of a few years since, it no longer
confines itself to secrecy and darkness, but boldly strides through
our most thronged and elegant thoroughfares, and there, in the broad
light of the sun, it jostles the pure, the virtuous, and the good. It
is in your gay streets, and in your quiet, home-like streets; it is
in your squares, and in your suburban retreats and summer resorts; it
is in your theatres, your opera, your hotels; nay, it is even
intruding itself into the private circles, and slowly but steadily
extending its poison, known but to few, and entirely unsuspected by
the majority of our citizens. The whole machinery of the law has been
turned against these females without success; its only result having
been a resolve, on their part, to confront society with the charge of
harsh, cruel, and unjust treatment.

"From these considerations, I felt it my duty to obtain all the facts
which could possibly be collected having any relation to the vice in
question, assured that you were desirous of taking a comprehensive
view of it; and hence the resolve, if possible, to trace to the
fountain-head prostitution and its attendant diseases, so as to be
enabled to bring the subject before you in a form which should exhibit
it in its proper colors and dimensions.

"The first step in this investigation was to obtain ample and reliable
information of the extent of the vice as it exists outside of these
departments--a step which would have been beyond my power alone. From
the bold and reformatory stand which his honor Mayor Wood had taken in
regard to many matters connected with our city government, it was
believed that he would render his assistance if convinced of the
propriety and prospective usefulness of the investigation, and the
result of an application by President Isaac Townsend to his honor
fully justified the correctness of this supposition. He was found not
only willing to aid in this great work, but fully alive to its
necessity and importance. The plan adopted to forward the inquiry was
to take a census of the city, so far as regards prostitution,
including the number of houses of prostitution; the number of
prostitutes; the causes which led them to become such; their ages,
habits, birth-places, early history, education, religious instruction,
occupation, etc., and which census is now being taken by the Chief of
Police, George W. Matsell, Esq., and the Captains of Police.

"Simultaneously with this, inquiries are also being prosecuted
concerning the extent of venereal disease in New York, which will
afford interesting information. This, of course, will be done without
individual exposure, nor will the report, when completed, assume the
form of a guide-book by which persons can find houses of ill fame. I
am desirous of obtaining the aggregate facts of the vice, and shall be
cautious to take no steps toward gratifying a prurient curiosity or
lacerating a rankling wound.

"When these facts are before you, they will be their own argument for
the necessity of action.

"I do not trouble you on this occasion with any remarks upon the
deadly nature of the venereal poison, but when you are informed as to
the facilities for its diffusion will be the proper time to do so.
Neither would it be consistent with this stage of the inquiry to enter
into any discussion as to the plans that could be adopted in
mitigation of the vice; for although prohibitory measures have failed
to suppress, or even check it, yet, until its full extent is known, I
do not imagine that you would deem it prudent to attempt to grapple a
monster whose strength was not fully ascertained.

"You perceive that to obtain all the information necessary on this
matter will be a work requiring both time and labor, and I
respectfully ask your forbearance, with the assurance that I will lay
the result of my inquiries before you at the earliest possible
opportunity, and with the hope that the magnitude and importance of
the subject will be an apology for the time to which it is necessarily
protracted.

"I am, sir, yours, very respectfully,
"WILLIAM W. SANGER, _Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island_."

To aid the police officers in the duty of taking the census alluded to
above, a schedule of questions was prepared.[5] This was submitted to the
Board of Governors by Governor Townsend, and a resolution was adopted at
their meeting of October 23d, 1855, sanctioning the plan adopted, and
authorizing him to have a sufficient number of copies printed. The mayor,
the district attorney, the chief of police, and the captains of the
several districts, willingly and zealously co-operated with Governor
Townsend and myself, and every possible exertion was used to obtain
accurate and extensive information. It became my duty to assist the
officers in the execution of their task, and I am thus enabled to speak
with certainty as to the authenticity of the statistics given, which were
mainly collected _under my own observation_.

I gladly avail myself of the present opportunity to record my obligations
for services rendered by his honor Fernando Wood, Mayor of the city of New
York; George W. Matsell, Esq., Chief of Police; and to the Captains of
Police in the different wards of the city, namely,

Capt. Michael Halpin, 1st ward.
" James Leonard, 2d "
" James A. P. Hopkins, 3d "
" J. Murray Ditchett, 4th "
" Daniel Carpenter, 5th "
" Joseph Dowling, 6th "
" Edward Letts, 7th "
" Charles S. Turnbull, 8th "
" Abraham Ackerman, 9th "
" George W. Norris, 10th "
" Peter Squires, 11th "
" Galen T. Porter, 12th "
" John E. Russel, 13th "
" David Kissner, 14th "
" George W. Dilks, 15th "
" John D. M'Kee, 16th "
" J. W. Hartt, 17th "
" George W. Walling, 18th "
" Francis J. Twomey, 19th "
" Thomas Hannegan, 20th "
" Francis C. Speight, 21st "
" Daniel Witter, 22d "

To Captains Halpin, Hopkins, Ditchett, Carpenter, Dowling, Letts,
Turnbull, Kissner, and Dilks, in whose wards is found the greatest amount
of prostitution, and upon whom fell the largest share of labor, I am more
particularly indebted.

The necessary particulars were finally obtained, and are embodied in
Chapters XXXII. to XXXVII. of this work, but there was still an important
point to determine, namely, what had been done elsewhere, and what was the
result of such action, to check prostitution and diminish the ravages of
venereal disease. The Continent of Europe presented a field for this
inquiry, and to it I turned for the information required, which is given
in the various chapters devoted to the several countries in such a form as
to show the measures which have been taken, the effect, and the causes
which led to legislative interference, contrasted with those other parts
of the world where, as yet, no remedial plans have been tried,
notwithstanding the necessity which calls for them.

The reader is now in possession of the facts which led to this inquiry. Is
it too much to ask his attention to the analysis and exhibition of
prostitution as it is at the present time, he being well assured that no
assertions will be made that are not supported by good authority, nor any
conclusions drawn from doubtful premises?

So far as New York alone is concerned, the evil is known to a large
portion of her citizens, although its ramifications are but very
imperfectly understood; and the endeavor will be to present all possible
information on the matter, and to give a truthful, unexaggerated picture
of the depravity. Disagreeable as this must be from the nature of the
task, it is hopeful from a belief that the result will tend to public
good.

One of the most painfully interesting branches of the inquiry is that
relating to the ages of the unfortunate women. Their number includes many
who are but mere children; who but recently knelt at a mother's side, and
in infantile accents breathed a prayer to the Almighty; who but recently
sprang with eager, joyous bound to the returning footsteps of a father;
who, in a happy and innocent home, have but recently given promise of a
bright and virtuous life. Therein are also included many who were deprived
by death of their natural protectors, and who, thus left unwatched and
uncared for, have fallen before the destroyer ere yet the age of womanhood
was reached.

The places of their birth form an interesting subject for consideration.
In this land the frigid North and sunny South, the busy East and fertile
West have each contributed their quota, while foreign countries have sent
large numbers to swell the mournful aggregate.

The most useful portion of the subject will be found, it is imagined, in
replies to the question, "What was the cause of your becoming a
prostitute?" These tend to expose the concealed vices of mankind, and to
prove that many of the unfortunate victims are "more sinned against than
sinning." Among the reasons assigned for a deviation from the paths of
virtue are some which tell of man's deceit; others, where the machinations
employed to effect the purpose raise a blush for humanity; others, where a
wife was sacrificed by the man who had sworn before God and in the
presence of men to protect her through life; others, where parents have
urged or commanded this course, and are now living on the proceeds of
their children's shame, or where an abuse of parental authority has
produced the same effect; and others still, where women, already depraved,
have been the means of leading their fellow-women to disgrace. A bare
allusion to these wrongs is sickening; but, while the gangrene of
prostitution is rapidly extending through society, it becomes an
imperative duty to examine its causes completely and impartially.

Another prolific source of female depravity will be exhibited by the
several tables showing the description of employment pursued, and the
wages received by women previous to their fall, and it will be a question
for the political economist to decide how far mere business considerations
should be an apology on the part of employers for a reduction in their
rates of remuneration, and whether the saving of a small percentage on
wages is not more than counterbalanced by the enormous amount of taxation
enforced on the public at large to defray the expenses incurred on account
of a system of vice which is the direct result, in many cases, of
insufficient compensation for honest labor.

In conclusion, it must not be assumed that the information collected from
two thousand women in New York City relates to _all_ the prostitutes
therein. The many difficulties surrounding the investigation, and
especially the secrecy to which prohibitory laws have driven this class of
persons, rendered the task impossible; but, from the best information that
could be obtained of those whose knowledge of the vice was derived from
actual experience, it is imagined that the replies represent about two
fifths of the total number.[6] They are presented with full confidence in
their general authenticity, and may be very reasonably concluded to offer
a fair average of the whole. They unquestionably exhibit an appalling
amount of depravity and consequent wretchedness, with but very few
redeeming features, and present mournful subjects for reflection to all
classes, with forcible arguments for remedial measures. Without this end
in prospect it would have been scarcely justifiable, at least in a moral
point of view, to institute this inquiry or make these disclosures; but it
certainly may be reasonably inferred that many will feel sufficient
interest in the advance of virtue to aid in the mitigation of this
enormous vice which threatens all social relations; which has already
introduced physical suffering into so many families; and the influence of
which, increasing in a direct ratio to its existence, will very probably
extend its malignant poison, mental and bodily, into all ranks and classes
of the community. The necessity for action is apparent, but its successful
consummation must rest with the public at large, who have the bane
exhibited before them in its actual power, and the necessity of an
antidote demonstrated from positive facts, and not deduced from a mere
arbitrary theory.

If some antidote be applied, even though a partial one, it will be a
satisfaction to reflect that the investigations have not been profitless,
nor the labor in vain.

HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.

[If the reader has not already perused the Introduction to this
volume, he is advised to do so at once, as therein are stated the
reasons which have called it forth, and extended it to the present
dimensions.]

CHAPTER I.

THE JEWS.

Prostitution coeval with Society.--Prostitutes in the Eighteenth
Century B.C.--Tamar and Judah.--Legislation of Moses.--Syrian
Women.--Rites of Moloch.--Groves.--Social Condition of Jewish
Harlots.--Description by Solomon.--The Jews of Babylon.

Our earliest acquaintance with the human race discloses some sort of
society established. It also reveals the existence of a marriage tie,
varying in stringency and incidental effects according to climate, morals,
religion, or accident, but every where essentially subversive of a system
of promiscuous intercourse. No nation, it is believed, has ever been
reported by a trustworthy traveler, on sufficient evidence, to have held
its women generally in common. Still there appear to have been in every
age men who did not avail themselves of the marriage covenant, or who
could not be bound by its stipulations, and their appetites created a
demand for illegitimate pleasures, which female weakness supplied. This
may be assumed to be the real origin of prostitution throughout the world,
though in particular localities this first cause has been assisted by
female avarice or passion, religious superstition, or a mistaken sense of
hospitality.

Accordingly, prostitution is coeval with society. It stains the earliest
mythological records. It is constantly assumed as an existing fact in
Biblical history. We can trace it from the earliest twilight in which
history dawns to the clear daylight of to-day, without a pause or a moment
of obscurity.

Our most ancient historical record is believed to be the Books of Moses.
According to them, it must be admitted that prostitutes were common among
the Jews in the eighteenth century before Christ. When Tamar, the
daughter-in-law of Judah, desired to defeat the cruel Jewish custom, and
to bear children, notwithstanding her widowhood, she "put her widow's
garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself,
and sat in an open place.... When Judah saw her he thought her a harlot,
for she had covered her face."[7] The Genesiacal account thus shows that
prostitutes, with covered faces, must have been common at the time. It is
the more valuable, as it furnishes the particulars of the transaction. To
keep up her disguise, Tamar demands a kid as her recompense. Judah agrees,
and leaves his "signet, and his bracelets, and his staff" as a pledge for
the kid. It appears to have been regarded as no dishonor to have commerce
with a prostitute, for Judah sends his friend the Adullamite, a man of
standing, to deliver the kid; but to defraud the unfortunate woman of her
ill-gotten gain must have been considered shameful, for, when Judah learns
that she has disappeared, he expresses alarm "lest we be shamed" for not
having paid the stipulated price. It may also be noticed, as an
illustration of the connection between prostitution and pure domestic
morals, that when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he
instantly orders her to be burned for having "played the harlot."

Four centuries afterward it fell to the lot of Moses to legislate on the
Jewish morals, no doubt sadly corrupted by their sojourn in Egypt. His
command is formal and emphatic: "Do not prostitute thy daughter, lest the
land fall to whoredom.... There shall be no whore of the daughters of
Israel."[8] He was equally decided in his condemnation of worse practices,
to which it would appear the Jews were much addicted.[9] He laid penalties
on uncleanness of every kind, and on fornication; but it would appear that
he rather confirmed than abrogated the customary right of a Jewish father
to sell his daughter as a concubine.[10] With the practical view of
improving the physical condition of the race, Moses guarded, by elaborate
laws, against improper and corrupt unions. Adultery and rape he punished
with death. The bride was bound, under pain of death by stoning, to prove
to the satisfaction not only of her husband, but of the tribe, that she
had been chaste to the day of her marriage.[11] A long list of relatives
were specified among whom it was illegal to intermarry. Furthermore, Moses
endeavored, with marked zeal, to check the progress of disease among both
sexes. Whether the maladies mentioned in Leviticus[12] were syphilitic in
their nature, it were difficult to say. Modern medical science admits
that, in hot climates, want of cleanliness and frequent amorous indulgence
will generate phenomena similar to the "issue" so frequently mentioned by
Moses. However this be, it is certain that both Jews and Jewesses were
subject to diseases apparently similar to the common gonorrhoea; that
these diseases were infectious; and that Moses, in reiterated injunctions,
forbade all sexual intercourse, and almost all association, with persons
thus afflicted. So earnest was his desire to eradicate the evil from the
people, that he extended his prohibition to women during the period of
their menstrual visitation.

Having done this much for the Jews, Moses appears to have connived at the
intercourse of their young men with foreign prostitutes. He took an
Ethiopian concubine himself. Syrian women, Moabites, Midianites, and other
neighbors of the Jews--many of them, as it appears, young and lovely, but
with debauched and vicious principles--established themselves as
prostitutes in the land of Israel. For many years, until the time of
Solomon, they were excluded from Jerusalem and the large cities. Driven to
the highways for refuge, they lived in booths and tents, where they
combined the trade of a peddler with the calling of a harlot. Unlike
Tamar, they did not veil the face. Reclining within the tent, with no more
clothing than the heat of the climate suggested, these dissolute girls
invited the complaisance of passengers who stopped to refresh their thirst
or replenish their wardrobe at their booth. So long as their practices
violated no law of nature, the prudent legislator pursued a tolerant
policy. Before long, however, abominable rites in honor of Moloch, Baal,
or Belphegor, were formally established by the "strange women" and their
male accomplices. Moloch, whose disgusting exactions we find in Phoenicia,
and at Carthage also, demanded male worship. The belly of the god's statue
was a furnace, in which a fierce fire was kindled and fed with animal
sacrifice; around it the priests and their proselytes danced to the sound
of music, sang wild songs, and debased themselves by practices of a
disgusting and unnatural character. Nor was the worship of Baal less
revolting. He too had his statues, in forms eminently calculated to excite
the animal passions, and surrounded by cool groves in which the most
shameless prostitution was carried on by all who would deposit an
offering on the altars of the idol. It would even seem, from several
passages in the Bible,[13] that the participators in these infamies were
not invariably human beings. Against such enormities the wrath of Moses
and his successors was aroused, on hygienic as well as moral and religious
grounds. Participation in the rites of Moloch was punished with death.[14]
Aaron's grandson did not hesitate to commit a double homicide to mark the
Divine abhorrence of the daughters of Midian; and Moses himself, warned by
the frightful progress of disease among the male Jews, struck at its roots
by exterminating every female Midianite among his captives, save the
virgins only.

An express command forbade the establishment of groves near the Jewish
temples, evidently on account of the convenience such shady retreats
afforded to prostitutes. Yet on various occasions in the history of Israel
we find accounts of the destruction of such groves, and of the statues of
the gods in whose honor human nature was defiled.[15] Solomon, whose
wisdom was singularly alloyed with sensuality, not only set the example of
inordinate lust, keeping, it is said, seven hundred wives and three
hundred concubines, but repealed the wise restrictions of his predecessors
in regard to prostitutes, allowing them to exercise their calling within
the city of Jerusalem. They multiplied so fast that the prophets speak of
them wandering on all the hills, and prostituting themselves under every
tree, and at a later date they even invaded the Temple, and established
their hideous rites in its courts. That noble edifice had become, in the
time of Maccabees, a mere brothel _plenum scortantium cum
meretricibus_.[16]

It is, however, apparent, notwithstanding the severe ordinances of the
Jewish legislators, that prostitutes were a recognized class, laboring
under no hopeless ban. Jephtha, the son of a prostitute, became none the
less chief of Israel; and some commentators have contended that the
retreat to which he condemned his daughter was simply the calling of her
grandmother. Joshua's spies slept openly in the house of the harlot Rahab,
whose service to Israel was faithfully requited by the amnesty granted to
her family, and the honorable residence allotted to her in Judæa. Samson
chose the house of a harlot to be his residence at Gaza; his fatal
acquaintance with another harlot, Delilah, is the leading trait of his
story. Even Solomon did not disdain to hear the rival wranglings of a
pair of harlots, and to adjudicate between them. Prostitution was in fact
legally domiciled in Judæa at a very early period, and never lost the
foothold it had gained. Of the manner in which it was carried on, an idea
may be formed from the very vivid picture in Proverbs:[17]

"For at the window of my house,
I looked through my casement,
And beheld among the simple ones,
I discerned among the youths,
A young man void of understanding,
Passing through the streets near her (the strange woman's) corner;
And he went the way to her house,
In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night;
And, behold, there met him a woman
With the attire of a harlot, and subtile of heart.
She is loud and stubborn;
Her feet abide not in her house:
Now she is without, now in the streets,
And lieth in wait at every corner.
So she caught him, and kissed him,
And with an impudent face said unto him,
I have peace-offerings with me;
This day have I paid my vows.
Therefore came I forth to meet thee,
Diligently to seek thy face,
And I have found thee.
I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry,
With carved works, with linen of Egypt.
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
Aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning:
Let us solace ourselves with loves. * * *
With her much fair speech she caused him to yield,
With the flattering of her lips she forced him.
He goeth after her straightway,
As an ox goeth to the slaughter,
Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks."

That prostitution continued to be practiced generally and openly until the
destruction of the old Jewish nation, the language of the Biblical
prophets does not permit us to doubt. It may be questioned whether it
ever assumed more revoltingly public forms in any other country. The
Babylonish conquest must have changed the parts, without altering the
performance. At Babylon, the Jewish maidens, whose large, expressive eyes,
voluptuous mouth, slender and graceful figure, with well-developed bust
and limbs, were frequently the theme of ancient poets, peopled the houses
of prostitution, and ministered to the lusts of the nobles. Nor even after
the return to Jerusalem was the evil extirpated. It was to a prostitute
that Christ uttered the memorable sentence, "Her sins are forgiven because
she loved much."

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT, SYRIA, AND ASIA MINOR.

Egyptian Courtesans.--Festival of Bubastis.--Morals in Egypt.--
Religious Prostitution in Chaldæa.--Babylonian Banquets.--
Compulsory Prostitution in Phoenicia.--Persian Banquets.

Before passing to the subject of prostitution in Greece, a glance at
Egypt, and those nations of Asia which seem to have preceded Greece in
civilization, may not be out of place.

Egypt was famous for her courtesans before the time of Herodotus. Egyptian
blood runs warm; girls are nubile at ten. Under the Pharaohs, if ancient
writers are to be believed, there existed a general laxity of moral
principle, especially among young females.[18] Their religion was only too
suggestive. The deities Isis and Osiris were the types of the sexes. A
statue of the latter, a male image, made of gold, was carried by the
maidens at festivals, and worshiped by the whole people. Nor were the
rites of Isis more modest. "At the festival at Bubastis," says Herodotus,
"men and women go thither in boats on the Nile, and when the boats
approach a city they are run close to the shore. A frantic contest then
begins between the women of the city and those in the boats, each abusing
the other in the most opprobrious language, and the women in the boats
conclude the performance by lascivious dances, in the most undisguised
manner, in sight of the people, and to the sound of flutes and other
musical instruments."[19] There is little reason to doubt that the
temples, like those of Baal, were houses of prostitution on an extensive
scale. Herodotus remarks significantly that a law in Egypt forbade sexual
intercourse within the walls of a temple, and exacted of both sexes that
intercourse should be followed by ablution before the temple was
entered.[20]

Where piety required such sacrifices, it is not surprising that public
morals were loose. It was not considered wholly shameful for an Egyptian
to make his living by the hire of his daughter's person, and a king is
mentioned who resorted to this plan in order to discover a thief. Such was
the astonishing appetite of the men, that young and beautiful women were
never delivered to the embalmer until they had been dead some days, a
miserable wretch having been detected in the act of defiling a
recently-deceased virgin![21] Of course, in such a society, there was no
disgrace in being a prostitute. The city of Naucratis owed its wealth and
fame to the beauty of its courtesans, whose reputation spread throughout
Europe, and was much celebrated in Greece. Rhadopis, a Thracian by birth,
led the life of a prostitute in Egypt with such success, that she not only
bought her own freedom from the slave-dealer who had taken her there on
speculation, but, if the Egyptians are to be believed, built a pyramid
with her savings. A large portion of her story is doubtless mythical, but
enough remains to warrant the opinion that she was, though a prostitute, a
wealthy and highly considered person.

In Chaldæa, too, religion at first connived at, and then commanded
prostitution. Every Babylonian female was obliged by law to prostitute
herself once in her life in the temple of the Chaldæan Venus, whose name
was Mylitta.[22] Herodotus appears to have seen the park and grounds in
which this singular sacrifice was made. They were constantly filled with
women with strings bound round their hair. Once inside the place, no woman
could leave it until she had paid her debt, and had deposited on the altar
of the goddess the fee received from her lover. Some, who were plain,
remained there as long as three years; but, as the grounds were always
filled with a troop of voluptuaries in search of pleasure, the young, the
beautiful, the high-born seldom needed to remain over a few minutes. This
strange custom is mentioned by the prophet Baruch, who introduces one of
the women reproaching her neighbor that she had not been deemed worthy of
having her girdle of cord burst asunder by any man.[23] Similar statements
are made by Strabo and other ancient writers. At the time of Alexander
the Great the demoralization had reached a climax. Babylonian banquets
were scenes of unheard-of infamies. When the meal began, the women sat
modestly enough in presence of their fathers and husbands; but, as the
wine went round, they lost all restraint, threw off one garment after
another, and enacted scenes of glaring immodesty. And these were the
ladies of the best families.[24]

The Mylitta of Chaldæa became Astarte in Phoenicia, at Carthage, and in
Syria. Nothing was changed but the name; the voluptuous rites were
identical. In addition to the forced prostitution in the temples, however,
the Phoenicians and most of their colonies maintained for many years the
practice of requiring their maidens to bestow their favors on any
strangers who visited the country. Commercial interest, no doubt, had some
share in promoting so scandalous a custom. On the high shores of
Phoenicia, as at Carthage and in the island of Cyprus, the traveler
sailing past in his boat could see beautiful girls, arrayed in light
garments, stretching inviting arms to him.

Originally the sum paid by the lover was offered to the goddess, but
latterly the girls kept it, and it served to enhance their value in the
matrimonial market. In some places the girl was free if she chose to
abandon her hair to the goddess, but Lucian notes that this was an
uncommonly rare occurrence.

Very similar were the customs of the Lydians and their successors in
empire, the early Persians. Their Venus was named Mithra, in honor of whom
festivals were given at which human nature was horribly outraged. Fathers
and daughters, sons and mothers, husbands and wives sat together at the
table, while voluptuous dances and music inflamed their senses, and when
the wine had done its work, a promiscuous combat of sensuality began which
lasted all night. Details of such scenes must be left to other works, and
veiled in a learned tongue.[25]

CHAPTER III.

GREECE.

Mythology.--Solonian Legislation.--Dicteria.--Pisistratidæ.--Lycurgus
and Sparta.--Laws on Prostitution.--Case of Phryne.--Classes of
Prostitutes.--Pornikon Telos.--Dress.--Hair of Prostitutes.--The
Dicteriades of Athens.--Abode and Manners.--Appearance of Dicteria.--
Laws regulating Dicteria.--Schools of Prostitution.--Loose
Prostitutes.--Old Prostitutes.--Auletrides, or Flute-players.--
Origin.--How hired.--Performances.--Anecdote of Arcadians.--Price of
Flute-players.--Festival of Venus Periboa.--Venus Callipyge.--Lesbian
Love.--Lamia.--Hetairæ.--Social Standing.--Venus and her Temples.--
Charms of Hetairæ.--Thargelia.--Aspasia.--Hipparchia.--Bacchis.--
Guathena and Guathenion.--Lais.--Phryne.--Pythionice.--Glycera.--
Leontium.--Other Hetairæ.--Biographers of Prostitutes.--Philtres.

The Greek mythology supposes obviously a relaxed state of public morals.
What period in the history of the nation it may be assumed to reflect is,
however, by no means certain. It is not reasonable to suppose that the
Homeric poems were composed for immodest audiences, and it would perhaps
be fairer to lay the blame of the mythological indecencies at the door of
the age which polished and improved upon them, rather than of that which
is entitled to the credit of their conception in the rough.

Our first reliable information regarding the morals of the Greek women,
passing over, for the present, the legislation ascribed to Lycurgus, is
found in the ordinances of Solon. Draco is supposed to have affixed the
penalty of death indiscriminately to rape, seduction, and adultery. It has
been conjectured that the safety-valve used at that time, ordinary
prostitution being unknown, was a system of religious prostitution in the
temples, borrowed from and analogous to the plan already described. This,
however, is mere conjecture. Solon, while softening the rigors of the
Draconian code, by law formally established houses of prostitution at
Athens, and filled them with female slaves. They were called _Dicteria_,
and the female tenants _Dicteriades_. Bought with the public money, and
bound by law to satisfy the demands of all who visited them, they were in
fact public servants, and their wretched gains were a legitimate source of
revenue to the state. Prostitution became a state monopoly, and so
profitable that, even in Solon's lifetime, a superb temple, dedicated to
Venus the courtesan, was built out of the fund accruing from this source.
The fee charged, however, appears to have been small.[26] In Solon's time,
the Dicteriades were kept widely apart from the Athenian women of repute.
They were not allowed to mix in religious ceremonies or to enter the
temples. When they appeared in the streets they were obliged to wear a
particular costume as a badge of infamy. They forfeited what rights of
citizenship they may have possessed in virtue of their birth. A procurer
or procuress who had been instrumental in introducing a free-born Athenian
girl to the Dicterion incurred the penalty of death. Nor was the law
content with branding with infamy prostitutes and their accomplices alone.
Their children were bastards; that is to say, they could not inherit
property, they could not associate with other youths, they could not
acquire the right of citizenship without performing some signal act of
bravery, they could not address the people in the public assemblies.
Finally, to complete their ignominy, they were exempt from the sacred duty
of maintaining their parents in old age.[27]

These regulations, for which Solon obtained the praise of Athenian
philosophers,[28] were not long maintained in force. Tradition imputed to
the profligacy of the Pisistratidæ a relaxation of the laws concerning
prostitutes. It was believed that the sons of Pisistratus not only gave to
the Dicteriades the freedom of the city, but allotted to them seats at
banquets beside the most respectable matrons, and, on certain days each
year, turned them into their father's beautiful gardens, and let loose
upon them the whole petulance of the Athenian youth.[29] The law against
procuresses was modified, a fine being substituted for death. "About the
same time," says the scandalous Greek chronicle, "the death-penalty for
adultery was also commuted for scourging."

Still, notwithstanding this falling off, it would appear that Athens was
more moral than her neighbors, Corinth and Sparta. The former, then the
most flourishing sea-port of Greece, was filled with a very low class of
prostitutes. No laws regulated the subject. Any female who chose could
open house for the accommodation of travelers and seamen, and, though
Corinth was yet far from the proverbial celebrity it afterward obtained
for its prostitutes, there is no doubt they bore a fearful proportion to
the aggregate population of the port. At Sparta the case was different. In
the system of legislation which bears the name of Lycurgus, the individual
was sacrificed to the state; the female to the male. Women were educated
for the sole purpose of bearing robust children. Virgins were allowed to
wrestle publicly with men. Girls were habited in a robe open at the
skirts, which only partially concealed the person in walking, whence the
Spartan women acquired an uncomplimentary name.[30] A Spartan husband was
authorized to lend his wife to any handsome man for the purpose of
begetting children. That these laws, the skillfully contrived appeals to
the sensual appetites, and the constant spectacle of nude charms, must
have led to a general profligacy among the female sex, is quite obvious.
Aristotle affirms positively that the Spartan women openly committed the
grossest acts of debauchery.[31] Hence it may be inferred that prostitutes
by profession were unnecessary at Sparta, at all events until a late
period of its history.

After the Persian wars, the subject of Athenian prostitution is revealed
in a clearer light. As a reaction from the looseness of the age of the
Pisistratidæ, the Solonian laws were reaffirmed and their severity
heightened. It has been imagined, from certain obscure passages in Greek
authors, that the courtesans formed several corporations, each of which
was responsible for the acts of all its members. They were liable to
vexatious prosecutions for such acts as inciting men to commit crime,
ruining thoughtless youths, fomenting treason against the state, or
committing impiety. Against such charges it was rarely possible to
establish a sound defense. If the accuser was positive, the Areopagus,
notoriously biased against courtesans, unhesitatingly condemned the
culprit to death, or imposed on her corporation a heavy fine. In this way,
says an old author, the state frequently contrived to get back from these
women the money they obtained from their lovers. Before the famous case of
Phryne, they were wholly at the mercy of their profligate associates. A
man only needed to threaten an accusation of impiety or the like to obtain
a receipt in full. Phryne, so long the favorite of the Athenians, was thus
accused of various vague offenses by a common informer named Euthias. Her
friend Bacchis fortunately persuaded Hyperides, the orator, to undertake
her case, and he softened the judges by exhibiting her marvelous beauty
in a moment of affected passion. "Henceforth," says the hetaira Bacchis to
Myrrhina, "our profits are secured by law."[32]

At this time, that is to say, at the height of Athenian prosperity, there
were four classes of women who led dissolute lives at Athens. The highest
in rank and repute were the _Hetairæ_, or kept women, who lived in the
best part of the city, and exercised no small influence over the manners
and even the politics of the state. Next came the _Auletrides_, or
flute-players, who were dancers as well. They were usually foreigners,
bearing some resemblance to the opera-dancers of the last century, and
they combined the most unblushing debauchery with their special calling.
The lowest class of prostitutes were the _Dicteriades_, already mentioned.
They were originally bound to reside at the Piræus, the sea-port of
Athens, some four miles from the city, and were forbidden to walk out by
day, or to offend the eyes of the public by open indecency. Lastly came
the _Concubines_, who were slaves owned by rich men with the knowledge and
consent of their wives, serving equally the passions of their master and
the caprices of their mistress. These all paid a tax to the state, called
_Pornikon Telos_, which was farmed out to speculators, who levied it with
proverbial harshness upon the unfortunate women. In the time of Pericles
the revenue from this source was large.

All classes, too, wore garments of many colors. The law originally
specified "flowered robes" as the costume of courtesans; but this leading
to difficulties, a farther enactment prohibited prostitutes from wearing
precious stuffs, such as scarlet or purple, or jewels. Thenceforth the
custom, which appears to have been general throughout the Greek cities and
colonies, prescribed cheap robes, with flowers or stripes of many colors
embroidered or painted on them. To this a part of the women added garlands
of roses. It was lawful in some cities for courtesans to wear light,
transparent garments; but at Sparta, as may be imagined, the reverse was
the rule, semi-nudity being the badge of virtuous women.[33]

Perhaps the most singular of the marks by which a Greek courtesan was
known was her hair. It is said that no law prescribed the habit; if so, it
must have been a sort of _esprit de corps_ which led all courtesans to
dye their hair of a flaxen or blonde color. Allusions to this custom
abound in the light literature of Greece. Frequently a flaxen wig was
substituted for the dyed locks. At a very late period in the history of
Greece, modest women followed the fashion of sporting golden hair. This
forms one of the subjects of reprimand addressed to the women of Greece by
the early Christian preachers.[34]

THE DICTERIADES, OR COMMON PROSTITUTES OF ATHENS.

This class approaches more nearly than any other to the prostitutes of our
day, the main difference being that the former were bound by law to
prostitute themselves when required to do so, on the payment of the fixed
sum, and that they were not allowed to leave the state. Their home, as
mentioned already, was properly at the port of Piræus. An open square in
front of the citadel was their usual haunt. It was surrounded with booths,
where petty trade or gambling was carried on by day. At nightfall the
prostitutes swarmed into the square. Some were noisy and obscene; others
quiet, and armed with affected modesty. When a man passed on his way from
the port to the city, the troop assailed him. If he resisted, coarse abuse
was lavished on him. If he yielded, there was the temple of Venus the
Courtesan close by, and there was the wall of Themistocles, under the
friendly shelter of either of which the bargain could be consummated. Were
the customer nice, the great dicterion was not far distant, and a score or
more of smaller rivals were even nearer at hand, as a well-known sign was
there to testify.

The Dicteria were under the control of the municipal police. The door was
open night and day, a bright curtain protecting the inmates from the eye
of the passer-by; and in the better class of establishments, a fierce dog,
chained in the vestibule, served as sentinel. At the curtain sat an old
woman, often a Thessalian and a pretended witch, who received the money
before admitting visitors. Originally the fee was an obolus[35]--about
three cents; but this attempt to regulate the value of a variable
merchandise was soon abandoned. Within, at night, the sounds of music,
revelry, and dancing might be constantly heard. The visitor was not kept
in suspense. The curtain passed, he was in full view of the dicteriades,
standing, sitting, or lying about the room; some engaged in smoothing
their blonde hair, some in conversation, some anointing themselves with
perfumery. The legal principle with regard to the dicteriades appears to
have been that they should conceal nothing; no doubt in contrast to the
irregular prostitutes, of whom something will be said presently. There was
no rule, however, forbidding the wearing of garments in the dicterion, but
the common practice appears to have been to dispense with them, or to wear
a light scarf thrown over the person. This custom was observed by day as
well as by night, and a visitor has described the girls in a large
dicterion as standing in a row, in broad daylight, without any robes or
covering.[36]

It seems that in later times any speculator had a right to set up a
dicterion on paying the tax to the state. An Athenian forfeited his right
of citizenship by so doing; but, as a popular establishment was very
lucrative, avaricious men frequently embarked in the business under an
assumed name. Comic writers have lashed these wretches severely. On paying
the tax to the state regularly, the _pornobosceion_, or master of the
house, acquired certain rights. The dicterion was an inviolable asylum, no
husband being allowed to pursue his wife, or the wife her husband, or the
creditor his debtor, within its walls. Public decency requires, says
Demosthenes, that men shall not be exposed in houses of prostitution.[37]
It was not, however, considered wholly shameful to frequent such places.

There appear to have been attached to these dicteria schools of
prostitution, where young women were initiated into the most disgusting
practices by females who had themselves acquired them in the same manner.
Alexis vigorously describes the frauds taught in these places,[38] while
there is a shocking significance in an expression of Athenæus--"You will
be well satisfied with the performance of the women in the dicteria."[39]

Besides these regular dicteriades, there were at Athens, as there have
been in every large city, a number of women who exercised the calling of
prostitutes, without properly belonging to any of the recognized classes.
They were sometimes called free dicteriades, sometimes she-wolves, and
also cheap hetairæ. Some were native Athenians who had been seduced and
abandoned, and who, led by stings of conscience and idleness to pursue
their career, had still an invincible repugnance to adopt the flowered
robe and yellow hair of the regular courtesan. They roamed the Piræus, and
even the streets of Athens, after dark, eking out a miserable subsistence
by the hardest of trades, and haunting the dark recesses of old houses or
the shade of trees. Others, again, were old hetairæ whose charms had
faded, and who sought a scanty subsistence where they were not known, and
shrank from encountering the eye of a lover where the friendly shade of
night would not hide the ravages of time. Others were the servants of
hotels and taverns, who were always expected to serve the caprices of
visitors.

All of these led a most miserable life. Now and then we hear of one or two
of them meeting a rich and inexperienced traveler, after which the heroine
of the exploit naturally ascended to the rank of hetaira; but, in general,
their customers were the lowest of the port people--sailors, fishermen,
farm-servants. Their price was a meal, a fish, a handful of fruit, or a
bottle of wine. One poor creature, who belonged to no class in particular,
but acquired some celebrity by being kept by the orator Ithatocles, was
named Didrachma because she offered her favors to the public generally for
two drachmas, about thirty-five cents.[40]

Perhaps the most curious fact in reference to these prostitutes is the
singular predominance of old women among them. It appears to have been
adopted as an invariable rule for this sort of courtesans to paint their
faces with a thick ointment, and it is even said that the great painters
of Greece did not disdain to beguile their leisure hours by thus improving
upon nature.[41] Of course, under this disguise, it was impossible to
distinguish a young face from an old one. An aged prostitute thus
bedizened would place herself at an open window with a sprig of myrtle in
her hand, with which she would beckon to people in the street. When a
customer was found, a servant would open the door and conduct him in
silence to the chamber of her mistress. Before entering he paid the sum
demanded, when he found himself in a room lighted only by a feeble glimmer
passing through the curtain, which now hung down over the window. In such
a twilight the most venerable old woman could not be distinguished from a
Venus.[42]

THE AULETRIDES, OR FLUTE-PLAYERS.

Female flute-players were a common accompaniment to an Athenian banquet.
The flute, which in modern times is played by men, was rarely seen in male
hands in Greece. Though the fable ascribed its invention to the god Pan,
and its development to the mythical king Midas, it was monopolized at a
very early period by women, who consoled themselves for the ravages it
wrought in their beauty by the power of fascination it imparted among a
people intensely musical. Flute-playing soon became an essential rite in
the service of certain deities. Ceres was invariably worshiped to the
sound of the flute. And when the Athenians had once tried the experiment
of listening to flute-players after dinner, they never would dine in
company without them.

Thebes appears to have been the native city of the earliest famous
flute-players,[43] but before long the superior beauty of the Asiatic
girls--Ionians and Phrygians--drove their Theban rivals out of the field.
Dancing was combined with flute-playing, and in this art the Asiatics bore
the palm from the world. During the golden days of Greece, numbers of
beautiful girls were every year imported into Athens from Miletus and the
other Ionic ports in Asia Minor, just as in more modern times a similar
trade was carried on between Trebizond and Constantinople.

An Athenian hired his flute-players as a modern European noble hires his
band. They charged so much for their musical performances, reserving the
right of accepting presents in the course of the evening. Some were
singers as well as performers. At each course a new air was played,
increasing in tenderness and expression as the wine circulated. It is
stated that the sounds of a good flute-concert excited people to such a
state of phrensy that they would take off their rings and jeweled
ornaments to throw them to the performers: those who have witnessed a
triumphant operatic soirée can readily believe the statement. But the fair
artists did not wholly rely on their music for their success. The
performer danced while she played, accompanying every note with a
harmonious movement of the body. There is no doubt these dances were in
the highest degree immoral and lascivious. Athenæus tells a story of an
embassy from Arcadia waiting upon King Antigonus, and being invited to
dinner. After the hunger of the venerable guests was appeased, Phrygian
flute-players were introduced. They were draped in semi-transparent veils,
arranged with much coquetry. At the given signal they began to play and
dance, balancing themselves alternately on each foot, and gradually
increasing the rapidity of their movements. As the performance went on,
the dancers uncovered their heads, then their busts; lastly, they threw
the veils aside altogether, and stood before the wondering embassadors
with only a short tunic around the loins. In this state they danced so
indecently that the aged Arcadians, excited beyond control, forgot where
they were, and rushed upon them. The king laughed; the courtiers were
shocked at such ill-breeding, but the dancers discharged the sacred duty
of hospitality.[44]

A flute-player who had achieved a success of this kind was enabled to
conclude a lucrative bargain for other performances. We find allusions to
fees as high as two talents (say $2500) and fifty pieces of gold,[45]
though these were evidently unusual charges. Many of the most fashionable
flute-players were slaves who had been brought to Greece by speculators.
They were commonly sold by auction at the dinner-table, when their owner
judged that the enthusiasm of the guests had attained the highest point.
An anecdote is told of one of the most esteemed names in Greek philosophy
in reference to this strange custom. He was dining with a party of young
men, when a youthful flute-player was introduced. She crept to the
philosopher's feet, and seemed to shelter herself from insult under the
shadow of his venerable beard; but he, a disciple of Zeno, spurned her,
and burst forth into a strain of moralizing. Piqued by the affront, the
girl rose, and played and danced with inimitable grace and pruriency. At
the close of the performance her owner put her up to auction, and one of
the first bidders was the philosopher. She was adjudged to another,
however, and the white-haired sage so far forgot his principles as to
engage in a fierce conflict with the victor for the possession of the
prize.[46] Hand to hand battles on these occasions were common in the best
society at Athens, and a flute-player in fashion made a boast of the riots
she had caused.[47] Of the fortunes realized by successful artists in this
line, an idea may be formed from the gorgeous presents made to the
Delphian oracle by flute-players, and from the fact that the finest houses
at Alexandria were inscribed with the names of famous Greek
auletrides.[48]

As might be inferred from the character of their dances, the auletrides
were capable of every infamy. Constantly breathing an atmosphere of
debauchery, and accustomed to the daily spectacle of nudities, they
naturally attained a pitch of amorous exaltation of which we, at the
present day, can hardly form an idea. They kept a cherished festival in
honor of Venus Peribasia, which was originally established by Cypselus of
Corinth. At that ceremony all the great flute-players of Greece assembled
to celebrate their calling. Men were not usually allowed to be present, a
regulation prompted perhaps by modesty, as the judgment of Paris was
renewed at the festival, and prizes were awarded for every description of
beauty. The ceremony was often mentioned as the Callipygian games; and a
sketch of a scene which took place at one of these reunions, contained in
a letter from a famous flute-player, justifies the appellation. The
banquet lasted from dark till dawn, with wines, perfumes, delicate viands,
songs, and music. An after-scene was a dispute between two of the guests
as to their respective beauty. A trial was demanded by the company, and a
long and graphic account is given of the exhibition, but modern tastes
will not allow us to transcribe the details.[49]

A knowledge of these scandalous scenes, it may be briefly observed, would
be worse than useless, were it not that they illustrate the life of Greek
courtesans; and, being performed under the sanction of religion and the
law, they throw no inconsiderable light on the real character of Greek
society. Their value may be best apprehended by trying to realize what the
effect would be if similar scenes occurred annually in some public edifice
in our large cities, under the auspices of the police, with the approval
of the clergy, and with the full knowledge of the best female society.

It has been suggested that these festivals were originated by, or gave
rise to, those enormous aberrations of the Greek female mind known to the
ancients as Lesbian love. There is, no doubt, grave reason to believe
something of the kind. Indeed, Lucian affirms that, while avarice prompted
common pleasures, taste and feeling inclined the flute-payers toward their
own sex. On so repulsive a theme it is unnecessary to enlarge.

Many flute-players seem to have been susceptible of lasting affections. In
the remains we have of the erotic works of the Greeks, several names are
mentioned as those of successful flute-players whose gains were consumed
by exacting lovers. It does not appear that they often, or ever, married.
The most famous of all the flute-players was Lamia, who, after being the
delight of Alexandria and of King Ptolemy for some fifteen or twenty
years, was taken with the city by Demetrius of Macedon, and raised to the
rank of his mistress. She was forty years of age at this time, yet her
skill was such that she ruled despotically her dissolute lover, and left a
memorable name in Greek history. The ancients asserted that she owed her
name, Lamia, which means a sort of vampire or bloodsucker, to the most
loathsome depravities. Her power was so great that, when Demetrius levied
a tax of some $250,000 on the city of Athens, he gave the whole to her, to
buy her soap, as he said. The Athenians revenged themselves by saying that
Lamia's person must be very dirty, since she needed so much soap to wash
it. But they soon found it to their interest to build a temple in her
honor, and deify her under the name of Venus Lamia.[50]

THE HETAIRÆ, OR KEPT WOMEN.

The Hetairæ were by far the most important class of women in Greece. They
filled so large a place in society that virtuous females were entirely
thrown into the shade, and it must have been quite possible for a chaste
Athenian girl, endowed with ambition, to look up to them, and covet their
splendid infamy. An Athenian matron was expected to live at home. She was
not allowed to be present at the games or the theatres; she was bound,
when she appeared in public, to be veiled, and to hasten whither she was
going without delay; she received no education, and could not share the
elevated thoughts or ideas of her husband; she had no right to claim any
warmth of affection from him, though he possessed entire control over
her.[51]

Now, to judge of the position into which this social system thrust the
female sex, one must glance at the mythology, or, to speak more correctly,
at the religious faith of the Greek people. It has been conjectured that
they derived their idea of Venus from the East. However this be, Venus was
certainly one of the earliest goddesses to whom their homage was paid.
Solon erected opposite his dicterion a temple to Venus Pandemos, or the
public Venus. In that temple were two statues: one of the goddess, the
other of a nymph, Pitho, who presided over persuasion; and the attitudes
and execution of the statues were such that they explained the character
without inscription. At this temple a festival was held on the fourth of
each month, to which all the men of Athens were invited. But Venus
Pandemos soon made way for newer and more barefaced rivals. Twenty temples
were raised in various cities of Greece to Venus the Courtesan. In one
author we find allusion made to Venus Mucheia, or the Venus of houses of
ill-fame. Another celebrates Venus Castnia, or the goddess of indecency.
Others honor Venus Scotia, the patroness of darkness; and Venus Derceto,
the guardian deity of street-walkers. More famous still was Venus
Divaricatrix, whose surname, derived, it is said by a father of the
Church, _a divaricatis cruribus_,[52] must be left in a learned tongue.
And still more renowned was Venus Callipyge, whose statue is at this day
one of the choice ornaments of one of the best European collections of
antiquities. It owed its charm to the marvelous beauty of the limbs, and
was understood to have been designed from two Syracusan sisters, whose
extraordinary symmetry in this particular had been noticed by a countryman
who surprised them while bathing. All these Venuses had temples, and
sacrifices, and priestesses. Their worship was naturally analogous to
their name, and consistent with their history. Their devotees were every
man in Greece. Yet it was in this society, trained to such spectacles, and
nurtured in such a creed, that matrons and maidens were taught to lead a
life of purity, seclusion, and self-sacrifice.

The consequence was obvious. While ignorance and forcible restraint
prevented the women from generally breaking loose, the men grew more and
more addicted to the society of hetairæ, and more liable to regard their
wives as mere articles of furniture. Nor was the anomaly without effect
upon the kept women. They alone of their sex saw the plays of Alexander
and Aristophanes; they alone had the _entrée_ of the studio of Phidias and
Apelles; they alone heard Socrates reason, and discussed politics with
Pericles; they alone shared in the intellectual movement of Greece. No
women but hetairæ drove through the streets with uncovered face and
gorgeous apparel. None but they mingled in the assemblages of great men
at the Pnyx or the Stoa. None but they could gather round them of an
evening the choicest spirits of the day, and elicit, in the freedom of
unrestrained intercourse, wit and wisdom, flashing fancy and burning
eloquence. What wonder that the Hetairæ should have filled so prominent a
part in Greek society! And how small a compensation to virtuous women to
know that their rivals could not stand by the altar when sacrifice was
offered; could not give birth to a citizen!

There are many reasons besides these why the contest was unequal.
Tradition reported several occasions on which hetairæ had rendered signal
service to the state. Leæna, for instance, the mistress of Harmodius, had
bitten off her tongue rather than reveal the names of her
fellow-conspirators. Recollections like these more than nullified the
nominal brand of the law. Again, every wise legislator saw the necessity
of encouraging any form of rational intercourse, in order to arrest the
startling progress which the most degrading of enormities was making in
Greece. When Alcibiades was openly courted by the first philosophers and
statesmen, it was virtue to applaud Aspasia. And besides, it can not be
questioned, in view of the Greek memoirs we possess, that many of the
leading hetairæ were women of remarkable mind, as well as unusual
attractions. Indeed, the leading trait in their history is their
intellectuality, as contrasted with other classes of dissolute women in
antiquity.[53] That trait can be best illustrated by referring to the
lives of a few of the more celebrated hetairæ.

A Milesian prostitute, named Thargelia, accompanied Xerxes on his invasion
of Greece. Some idea may be formed of the position in society occupied by
prostitutes from the fact that Xerxes employed this woman as negotiator
with the court of Thessaly, just as in later times modern ministers have
used duchesses. Thargelia married the King of Thessaly.

Fired by her success, another Milesian girl, named Aspasia, established
herself at Athens. She set up a house of prostitution, and peopled it with
the most lovely girls of the Ionic cities. But wherein she differed from
her rivals and predecessors was the prominence she gave to intellect in
her establishment. She lectured publicly, among her girls and their
visitors, on rhetoric and philosophy, and with such marked ability that
she counted among her patrons and lovers the first men of Greece,
including Socrates, Alcibiades, and Pericles. The last divorced his wife
in order to marry her, and was accused of allowing her to govern Athens,
then at the height of its power and prosperity. She is said to have
incited the war against Samos; and the principal cause of that against
Megara was believed to have been the rape, by citizens of Megara, of two
of Aspasia's girls. What a wonderful light these facts throw on Greek
society!

Enraged beyond control at her success, the virtuous women of Athens rose
against her. She was publicly insulted at the theatre; was attacked in the
street; and, as a last resort, was accused of impiety before the
Areopagus. Pericles, then in the decline of his power, and unable to save
his friends Phidias and Anaxagoras, appeared as her advocate. But on such
an occasion his eloquence failed him. He could only seize his beloved wife
in his arms, press her to his breast, and burst into tears in presence of
the court. The appeal succeeded; possibly the judges made allowance for
popular prejudice; at all events, Aspasia was acquitted and restored to
society. She lived to be the delight of a flour merchant, under whose roof
her lectures on philosophy were continued with undiminished success to the
day of her death.[54]

Her friend, and the inheritor of her mantle, Hipparchia, led an equally
remarkable life. She was an Athenian by birth, and of good family, but,
having heard the Cynic Crates speak, she declared to her parents that
nothing would restrain her from yielding herself to him. She kept her
word, and became the philosopher's mistress, in spite of his dirt, his
poverty, and his grossness. She is reported to have acquired great
reputation as a practical professor of the cynic philosophy. Having
engaged one day in a fierce discussion with a somewhat brutal philosopher
of a rival sect, the latter, by way of answer to a question she put,
violently exposed her person before the whole assembly. "Well," said she,
coolly, "what does that prove?" This woman was one of the most voluminous
and esteemed authors of her day.[55]

Bacchis, the mistress of the orator Hyperides, illustrates the character
of the Athenian kept woman from another point of view. She was extremely
beautiful, and gifted with a sweet disposition. One of her early admirers
had presented her with a necklace of enormous value. The first ladies of
Athens, and even foreign women of rank, coveted the precious trinket in
vain. She was in the height of her fame and charms when she heard the
orator Hyperides plead. Smitten on the spot, she became his mistress, and
observed a fidelity toward him which was neither usual with her class, nor
reciprocated by her lover. On one occasion, a rival announced that the
price of her complaisance would be the possession of the necklace of
Bacchis. The lover had the meanness to ask for it, and Bacchis gave it
without a word. Again: when all Athens knew that she was the mistress of
Hyperides, an officious friend came to tell her that her lover was at that
moment making love to another woman. Bacchis received the announcement
tranquilly. "What do you intend to do?" asked her visitor, with
impetuosity. "To wait for him," was the meek answer. She died very young,
and her lover partially atoned for his ill treatment by pronouncing a
splendid oration over her remains. Very few passages in Greek literature
are marked by such eloquent tenderness and genuine feeling as this
fragment of Hyperides.[56]

Gnathena, and her heir and successor, Gnathenion, were famous in their day
as wits; the biography of the first was written in verse by the poet
Machon.[57] She began life as the mistress of the comic poet Dyphiles, but
soon abandoned him to keep a sort of _table d'hôte_ for the wit and
fashion of Athens. The "best society" gathered around her board, and at
the close of the meal she sold herself by auction. Athenæus has chronicled
a number of her witty and sarcastic sayings, adding that the grace of her
elocution imparted a singular charm to every thing she said. Her protegée,
Gnathenion, grew up in time to receive the mantle which age was wresting
from the shoulders of Gnathena. An anecdote is preserved which throws some
light upon the profits of the calling of hetairæ. At the temple of Venus,
Gnathena and her protegée met an old Persian satrap, richly clothed in
purple, who was struck with the beauty of the latter, and demanded her
price. Gnathena answered, a thousand drachmas (about two hundred dollars).
The satrap exclaimed at such extortion, and offered five hundred,
observing that he would return again. "At your age," maliciously retorted
Gnathena, "once is too much," and turned on her heel. In her old age it
appears that Gnathena was reduced to the disgraceful calling which the
Greeks termed _hippopornos_.[58]

But the fame of these hetairæ is eclipsed by that of the only two kept
women who can rank with Aspasia--Lais and Phryne.

Lais was a Sicilian by birth. Like the Empress Catharine of Russia, she
was taken prisoner when her native city was captured, and sold as a slave.
The painter Apelles saw her carrying water from a well, and, struck with
the beauty of her figure, he bought her, and trained her in his own house.
This, again, is a striking picture. Fancy a leading modern painter
deliberately training a prostitute! It is to be presumed that Apelles
gathered round him the best society in Greece. Lais, when her education
was complete, was as remarkable for wit and information as for her
matchless figure and lovely face. Her master freed her, and established
her at Corinth, then in the height of its prosperity, and the largest
commercial emporium of Greece.

Corinth and the Corinthian prostitutes deserve particular notice. It
appears that almost every house in the place was, in fact, a house of
prostitution. There were regular schools where the art of debauchery was
taught, and frequent importations of young girls from Lesbos, Phoenicia,
and the Ægean Islands supplied them with pupils. Ancient erotic writers
are full of allusions to the danger of visiting Corinth; the proverb, _Non
cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum_, which most moderns have
erroneously conceived to refer to Lais alone, was, in fact, an adage
justified by the experience of merchants and sailors. It would be
incorrect, however, to compare Corinth with modern sea-ports, where the
natural demands of sailors require a cheap supply of women. The
first-class hetairæ of Corinth charged as high as a talent (say $1000) for
a single night's company, and $200 appears to have been no unusual fee.
For the common sailors, the commercial shrewdness of the Corinthians had
established a temple to Venus, containing a thousand young slaves, who
were obliged to prostitute themselves for a single obolus (a cent).[59]

It was in this metropolis of prostitution that Lais commenced business.
She soon rose to the first rank in her trade. Her capriciousness gave
additional value to her charms. Even money could not purchase her when it
was her whim not to yield. She refused $2000 from the orator Demosthenes,
who had actually turned his property into money to lay it at her feet; but
she yielded gratuitously to the muddy, ragged cynic Diogenes, and
graciously shared the patrimony of the philosopher Aristippus. To the
latter, who occupied no mean rank in Greek society, a remark was made to
the effect that he ought to debar his mistress from promiscuous
intercourse for his own sake. He replied phlegmatically, "Would you object
to live in a house or sail in a ship because others had just preceded you
in the one or the other?" Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, resisted Lais
successfully. She had made a wager that she would overcome his stoical
coldness. Rushing into his house one evening in affected terror, she
besought an asylum, as she said thieves had chased her. The philosopher
sternly bade her fear nothing. She sat silent till Xenocrates went to bed;
then, throwing off her dress, and revealing all her wonderful beauty, she
placed herself at his side. He gruffly submitted to this encroachment.
Growing bolder, she threw her arms round him, caressed him, and exhausted
her arts of fascination, but Xenocrates remained unmoved. "I wagered," she
cried, "to rouse a man, not a statue;" and, springing from the couch, she
resumed her dress and disappeared.

The people of Corinth desired to possess her statue, and, having spent her
money in embellishing the city, perhaps she was entitled to this mark of
respect. Myron, the sculptor, was deputed to model her charms. He was old
and gray; but so fascinating was her beauty, that at his second visit he
laid at her feet all the savings of his life. The haughty courtesan
spurned him. He went away, placed himself in the hands of a skillful
perfumer, had his hair and beard dyed, and his appearance rejuvenated.
Then he renewed his suit. "My poor friend," said Lais, with a bitter
smile, "you are asking what I refused yesterday to your father."

In old age Lais had leisure to repent of her caprices. She had spent her
money as fast as she made it, and she retained her calling long after her
charms had vanished. Epicrates has drawn a melancholy picture of a drunken
old woman wandering over the quay at Corinth, and seeking to sell for
three cents what had once been considered cheap at a thousand dollars.
Such was the end of Lais.[60]

Phryne was more fortunate. She husbanded her attractions with judgment,
and to the close of her long life retained her rank and her value. Her
wealth was such that, when Alexander destroyed Thebes, she offered to
rebuild the city at her own expense, provided the Thebans would
commemorate the fact by an inscription. They refused. She had counted
among her lovers the most famous men of the day, among whom were the
orator Hyperides, whose successful defense of his mistress has already
been mentioned; the painter Apelles, and the sculptor Praxiteles. It was
to her that the latter gave his crowning work--his Cupid. He and Apelles
were both privileged to admire and reproduce her nude charms, a privilege
rigorously denied even to the most opulent of her lovers.

Phryne was a prodigious favorite with the Athenian people. She played a
conspicuous part in the festival of Neptune and Venus. At a certain point
in the ceremony she appeared on the steps of the temple at the sea-side in
her usual dress, and slowly disrobed herself in the presence of the crowd.
She next advanced to the water-side, plunged into the waves, and offered
sacrifice to Neptune. Returning like a sea-nymph, drying her hair from
which the water dripped over her exquisite limbs, she paused for a moment
before the crowd, which shouted in a phrensy of enthusiasm as the fair
priestess vanished into a cell in the temple.[61]

Other famous hetairæ achieved political and literary distinction. When
Alexander the Great undertook his Asiatic expedition, his treasurer,
Harpalus, a sort of Croesus in his way, accompanied him, surrounded by the
most lovely women the court of Macedon could afford. Rewarded for his
fidelity by the governorship of Babylon, and still farther enriched by the
spoils of that lucrative office, Harpalus sent to Athens for the most
skillful and lovely hetairæ of the day. Pythionice was sent him. She was
not in the bloom of youth. Some years before she had been the familiar of
young Athenians of fashion; she was now the staid mistress of two
brothers, sons of an opulent corn-merchant. But her talents were
undeniable. She arrived at Babylon, and was installed in the palace; began
to rule over the province, and governed Harpalus, it is said, with
sternness and vigor. In the midst of her glory she suddenly died;
poisoned, no doubt, by some one of the hundred fair ones whom she had
supplanted in the governor's affections. Harpalus, inconsolable for her
loss, expended a large portion of the contents of his treasury in burying
her and commemorating her fame. No queen of Babylon was ever consigned to
the grave with the pomp, or the show, or the ostentatious affliction
which did honor to the memory of the Athenian prostitute. Her tomb cost
$50,000; and historians, admiring, in after ages, its splendor and its
size, inquired, with mock wonder, whether the bones of a Miltiades, or a
Cimon, or a Pericles lay under the pile!

Harpalus found consolation in the arms of a Greek garland-weaver named
Glycera, for aught we know the poisoner of Pythionice. She, too, became
Queen of Babylon, issued her decrees, held her court, submitted to be
worshiped, and saw her statue of bronze, as large as life, erected in the
Babylonian temples. She was a woman of a masculine mind in a feminine
body. When Alexander returned from the East, breathing vengeance against
faithless servants, she compelled her lover to fly with her to Attica,
where she raised, by her eloquence, her money, and her address, an army of
six thousand men to oppose the hero of Macedon. It is said that she
purchased, at what price we know not, the silence of Demosthenes; she
certainly bribed the Athenian people with large donations of corn. But she
could not bribe or persuade her wretched lover to be sensible; his folly
soon roused the Athenians against him, and he was exiled with his
mistress. In this exile, one of his attendants cut the throat of the
venerable lover, and Glycera, left a widow, returned to Athens to pursue
her calling as a hetaira. She was no longer young, and needed the aid of
the dealer in cosmetics; but her prestige as the ex-mistress of Babylon
procured her a certain celebrity, and she soon obtained a position in the
society of Athens. Out of a crowd of admirers who attached themselves to
her court, she chose two to be, as the French would say, her _amants de
coeur_. One was the painter Pausias; the other the comic poet Menander.
The former achieved one of his most brilliant triumphs by painting the
portrait of his mistress. But, whether his temper was not congenial to
hers, or his rival inspired an exclusive affection, Glycera soon discarded
Pausias, and became the mistress of the poet alone. Menander, we are led
to believe, was a man of a harsh, crabbed disposition; the haughty Glycera
was the only one whom his _boutades_ never irritated, who bore with all
his ill temper. When he was successful, she heightened his joy; when his
plays were ill received, and he returned from the theatre in low spirits,
she consoled him, and endured the keenest affronts without murmuring. Her
amiability had its reward. From being one of the most dissolute men of
Athens, Menander became solidly attached and faithful to Glycera, and, so
soon was her Babylonish career forgotten, she descended to posterity in
the Athenian heart inseparably coupled with the dearest of their comic
writers.[62]

Another famous hetaira was Leontium, who succeeded her mistress Philenis
in the affections of the philosopher Epicurus. She is said to have borne
him a daughter, who was born in the shade of a grove in his garden; but,
whether she put her own construction upon the Epicurean philosophy, or did
not really love the gray-headed teacher, she was far from practicing the
fidelity which was due to so distinguished a lover. She figures in the
letters of Alciphron as the tender friend of several younger fashionables;
and she has been accused, with what truth it is hard to say, of attempting
a compromise between the doctrines of Epicurus and those of Diogenes.
However this be, Leontium was undoubtedly a woman of rare ability and
remarkable taste. She composed several works; among others, one against
Theophrastus, which excited the wonder and admiration of so good a judge
as Cicero. She survived her old protector, and died in obscurity.[63]

Something more might be said of Archeanassa, to whose wrinkles Plato did
not disdain to compose an amorous epigram; of Theoris, a beautiful girl,
who preferred the glorious old age of Sophocles to the ardent youth of
Demosthenes, and whom the vindictive orator punished by having her
condemned to death; of Archippa, the last mistress and sole heir of
Sophocles; of Theodote, the disciple of Socrates, under whose counsels she
carried on her business as a courtesan, and whose death may be ascribed,
in some part, to the spite caused by Theodote's rejection of Aristophanes;
and of others who figure largely in every reliable history of intellectual
Greece. But we must stop.

In most of the nations to which reference must be made in the ensuing
pages of this volume, prostitutes have figured as pariahs; in Greece they
were an aristocracy, exercising a palpable influence over the national
policy and social life, and mingling conspicuously in the great march of
the Greek intellect. No less than eleven authors of repute have employed
their talents as historiographers of courtesans at Athens. Their works
have not reached us entire, having fallen victims to the chaste scruples
of the clergy of the Middle Ages; but enough remains in the quotations of
Athenæus, Alciphron's Letters, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Aristophanes,
Aristænetus, and others, to enable us to form a far more accurate idea of
the Athenian hetairæ than we can obtain of the prostitutes of the last
generation.

Into the arts practiced by the graduates of the Corinthian academies it is
hardly possible to enter, at least in a modern tongue. Even the Greeks
were obliged to invent verbs to designate the monstrosities practiced by
the Lesbian and Phoenician women. Demosthenes, pleading successfully
against the courtesan Neæra, describes her as having seven young girls in
her house, whom she knew well how to train for their calling, as was
proved by the repeated sales of their virginity. One may form an idea of
the shocking depravity of the reigning taste from the sneers which were
lavished upon Phryne and Bacchis, who steadily adhered to natural
pleasures.

The use of philtres, or charms (of which more will be said in the ensuing
chapter on Roman prostitution), was common in Greece. Retired courtesans
often combined the manufacture of these supposed charms with the business
of a midwife. They made potions which excited love and potions which
destroyed it; charms to turn love into hate, and others to convert hate
into love. That the efficacy of the latter must have been a matter of pure
faith need not be demonstrated, though the belief in them was general and
profound. The former are well known in the pharmacopoeia, and from the
accounts given of their effects, there is no reason to doubt that they
were successfully employed in Greece, as well by jealous husbands and
suspicious fathers as by ardent lovers. A case is mentioned by no less an
authority than Aristotle, of a woman who contrived to administer an
amorous potion to her lover, who died of it. The woman was tried for
murder; but, it being satisfactorily proved that her intention was not to
cause death, but to revive an extinct love, she was acquitted. Other cases
are mentioned in which the philtres produced madness instead of love.
Similar accidents have attended the exhibition of cantharides in modern
times.

CHAPTER IV.

ROME.

Laws governing Prostitution.--Floralian Games.--Registration of
Prostitutes.--Purity of Morals.--Julian Law.--Ædiles.--Classes of
Prostitutes.--Loose Prostitutes.--Various Classes of lewd Women.--
Meretrices.--Dancing Girls.--Bawds.--Male Prostitutes.--Houses of
Prostitution.--Lupanaria.--Cells of Prostitutes.--Houses of
Assignation.--Fornices.--Circus.--Baths.--Taverns.--Bakers'
Shops.--Squares and Thoroughfares.--Habits and Manners of
Prostitutes.--Social standing.--Dress.--Rate of Hire.--Virgins in
Roman Brothels.--Kept Women.--Roman Poets.--Ovid.--Martial.--Roman
Society.--Social Corruption.--Conversation.--Pictures and
Sculptures.--Theatricals.--Baths.--Religious Indecencies.--Marriage
Feasts.--Emperors.--Secret Diseases.--Celsus.--Roman Faculty.--
Archiatii.

LAWS GOVERNING PROSTITUTION.

Our earliest acquaintance with the Roman laws governing prostitution dates
from the reign of the Emperor Augustus, but there is abundant evidence to
show that prostitutes were common in the city of Rome at the time when
authentic history begins.

It does not appear that religious prostitution was ever domiciled in
Italy, though in later times the festivals in honor of certain deities
were scandalously loose, and, to judge from the Etruscan paintings, the
morals of the indigenous Italians must have been disgustingly depraved.

In the comedies of Plautus, which are among the oldest works of Roman
literature which have reached us, the prostitute (_meretrix_) and the bawd
(_leno_) figure conspicuously. They were thus, evidently, in the third
century before Christ, well-known characters in Roman society. When the
Floralian Games were instituted we have no means of knowing (no credit
whatever must be placed in the puerile stories of Lactantius about the
courtesans Acca Laurentia and Flora[64]); but it is certain that the chief
attraction of these infamous celebrations was the appearance of
prostitutes on the stage in a state of nudity, and their lascivious dances
in the presence of the people;[65] and there is evidence, in the story
that the performance was suspended during the presence of the stern
moralist Cato, that they had been long practiced before his time.[66]
Indeed, it would not be presuming too far to decide, without other
evidence, that prostitution must have become a fixed fact at Rome very
shortly after the Romans began to mix freely with the Greek colonists at
Tarentum and the other Greek cities in Italy, that is to say, about the
beginning of the third century before Christ.

We learn from Tacitus[67] that from time immemorial prostitutes had been
required to register themselves in the office of the ædile. The ceremony
appears to have been very similar to that now imposed by law on French
prostitutes. The woman designing to become a prostitute presented herself
before the ædile, gave her age, place of birth, and real name, with the
one she assumed if she adopted a pseudonyme.[68] The public officer, if
she was young or apparently respectable, did his best to combat her
resolution. Failing in this, he issued to her a license--_licentia
stupri_, ascertained the sum which she was to demand from her customers,
and entered her name in his roll. It might be inferred from a law of
Justinian[69] that a prostitute was bound to take an oath, on obtaining
her license, to discharge the duties of her calling to the end of her
life; for the law in question very properly decided that an oath so
obviously at war with good morals was not binding. However this was, the
prostitute once inscribed incurred the taint of infamy which nothing could
wipe off. Repentance was impossible, even when she married and became the
mother of legitimate children; the fatal inscription was still there to
bear witness of her infamy.[70] In Rome, as in so many other countries,
the principle of the law was to close the door to reform, and to render
vice hopeless.

There is every reason to suppose that these regulations were in force at a
very early period of the Republic. Of the further rules established under
the imperial regime we shall speak presently. Meanwhile, it may be
observed that there is ground for hoping that, at the best age of the
Republic, the public morals were not generally corrupt. The old stories of
Lucretia and Virginia would have had no point among a demoralized people.
All who are familiar with Roman history will remember the fierce contest
waged by Cato the Censor against the jewels, fine dresses, and carriages
of the Roman ladies,[71] an indication that graver delinquencies did not
call for official interference. This same Cato, after the death of his
first wife, cohabited with a female slave; but, though concubinage was
recognized by the Roman law, and would seem to have involved no disgrace
at a later period, the intrigue no sooner became known than the old censor
married a second wife to avoid scandal.[72] A similar inference may be
drawn from the strange story told by Livy of the Bacchanalian mysteries
introduced into Rome by foreigners about the beginning of the second
century before Christ. It is not easy, at this late day, to discover what
is true and what false in the statement he gives; but there is no
reasonable doubt that young persons of both sexes, under the impulse of
sensuality, had established societies for the purpose, among others, of
satisfying depraved instincts. To what extent the mania had extended it is
not possible to judge; the numbers given by the Latin writers are not very
trustworthy. But we may learn how strong was the moral sentiment of the
Roman people from the very stringent decree which the senate issued on
motion of the Consul Postumius, and from the indiscriminate executions of
parties implicated in the mysterious rites.[73]

Other evidences of the purity of Roman morals might be found, if they were
wanting, in the remarkable fidelity with which the Vestals observed their
oaths; in the tone of the speeches of the statesmen of the time; in the
high character sustained by such matrons as the mother of the Gracchi;
and, finally, in the legislation of Augustus, which professed rather to
affirm and improve the old laws than to introduce new principles.

As we approach the Christian era the picture gradually darkens. Civil wars
are usually fatal to private virtue: it is not to be doubted that the age
of Sylla and Clodius was by no means a moral one. Sylla, the dictator,
openly led a life of scandalous debauchery; Clodius, the all-powerful
tribune, is accused by Cicero of having seduced his three sisters.[74]
Soldiers who had made a campaign in profligate Greece or voluptuous Asia
naturally brought home with them a taste for the pleasures they had
learned to enjoy abroad. Scipio's baths were dark: through narrow
apertures just light enough was admitted to spare the modesty of the
bathers; but into the baths which were erected in the later years of the
Republic the light shone as into a chamber.[75] Even Sylla, debauched as
he was, did not think it safe to abdicate power without legislative
effort to purify the morals he had so largely contributed to corrupt by
his example.[76]

Of the Augustan age, and the two or three centuries which followed, we are
enabled to form a close and comprehensive idea. Our information ceases to
be meagre; on some points, indeed, it is only too abundant.

The object of the Julian laws was to preserve the Roman blood from
corruption, and still farther to degrade prostitutes. These aims were
partially attained by prohibiting the intermarriage of citizens with the
relatives or descendants of prostitutes; by exposing adulterers to severe
penalties, and declaring the tolerant husband an accomplice; by laying
penalties on bachelors and married men without children; by prohibiting
the daughters of equestrians from becoming prostitutes.[77] Tiberius, from
his infamous retreat at Capreæ, sanctioned a decree of the senate which
enhanced the severity of the laws against adultery. By this decree it was
made a penal offense for a matron of any class to play the harlot, and her
lover, the owner of the house where they met, and all persons who connived
at the adultery, were declared equally culpable. It seems to have been not
uncommon for certain married women to inscribe themselves on the ædile's
list as prostitutes, and to occupy a room at the houses of ill fame. This
was pronounced a penal offense; and every encouragement was held out, both
to husbands and to common informers, to prosecute.[78]

In other respects the republican legislation is believed to have been
unaltered by the emperors. The formality of inscription, its accompanying
infamy, the consequences of the act remained the same. Prostitutes carried
on their trade under the ædile's eye. He patrolled the streets, and
entered the houses of ill fame at all hours of the day and night. He saw
that they were closed between daybreak and three in the afternoon. In case
of brawls, he arrested and punished the disturbers of the peace. He
punished by fine and scourging the omission of a brothel-keeper to
inscribe every female in his house. He insisted on prostitutes wearing the
garments prescribed by law, and dyeing their hair blue or yellow. On the
other hand, he could not break into a house without being habited in the
insignia of his office, and being accompanied by his lictors. When the
ædile Hostilius attempted to break open the door of the prostitute
Mamilia, on his return from a gay dinner, the latter drove him off with
stones, and was sustained by the courts.[79] The ædile was bound also, on
complaint laid by a prostitute, to sentence any customer of hers to pay
the sum due to her according to law.[80]

CLASSES OF PROSTITUTES.

It was the duty of the ædile to arrest, punish, and drive out of the city
all loose prostitutes who were not inscribed on his book. This regulation
was practically a dead letter. At no time in the history of the empire did
there cease to be a large and well-known class of prostitutes who were not
recorded. They were distinguished from the registered prostitutes
(_meretrices_) by the name of _prostibulæ_.[81] They paid no tax to the
state, while their registered rivals contributed largely to the municipal
treasury; and, if they ran greater risks, and incurred more nominal infamy
than the latter, they more frequently contrived to rise from their unhappy
condition.

We have no means of judging of the number of prostitutes exercising their
calling at Rome, Capua, and the other Italian cities during the first
years of the Christian era. During Trajan's reign the police were enabled
to count thirty-two thousand in Rome alone, but this number obviously fell
short of the truth. One is appalled at the great variety of classes into
which the _prostibulæ_, or unregistered prostitutes were divided. Such
were the _Delicatæ_, corresponding to the kept-women, or French
_lorettes_, whose charms enabled them to exact large sums from their
visitors;[82] the _Famosæ_, who belonged to respectable families, and took
to evil courses through lust or avarice;[83] the _Doris_, who were
remarkable for their beauty of form, and disdained the use of
clothing;[84] the _Lupæ_, or she-wolves, who haunted the groves and
commons, and were distinguished by a particular cry in imitation of a
wolf;[85] the _Ælicariæ_, or bakers' girls, who sold small cakes for
sacrifice to Venus and Priapus, in the form of the male and female organs
of generation;[86] the _Bustuariæ_, whose home was the burial-ground, and
who occasionally officiated as mourners at funerals;[87] the _Copæ_,
servant-girls at inns and taverns, who were invariably prostitutes;[88]
the _Noctiluæ_, or night-walkers; the _Blitidæ_, a very low class of
women, who derived the name from _blitum_, a cheap and unwholesome
beverage drunk in the lowest holes;[89] the _Diobolares_, wretched
outcasts, whose price was two oboli (say two cents);[90] the _Forariæ_,
country girls who lurked about country roads; the _Gallinæ_, who were
thieves as well as prostitutes; the _Quadrantariæ_, seemingly the lowest
class of all, whose fee was less than any copper coin now current.[91] In
contradistinction to these, the _meretrices_ assumed an air of
respectability, and were often called _bonæ meretrices_.[92]

Another and a distinct class of prostitutes were the female dancers, who
were eagerly sought after, and more numerous than at Athens. They were
Ionians, Lesbians, Syrians, Egyptians, Nubians (negresses), Indians, but
the most famous were Spaniards. Their dances were of the same character as
those of the Greek flute-players; the erotic poets of Rome have not shrunk
from celebrating the astonishing depravity of their performances.[93]

Horace faintly deplored the progress which the Ionic dances--_Ionice
motus_--were making even among the Roman virgins.[94] These prostitutes
carried on their calling in defiance of law. If detected, they were liable
to be whipped and driven out of the city;[95] but as their customers
belonged to the wealthier classes, they rarely suffered the penalty of
their conduct.

Apart, again, from all these was the large class of persons who traded in
prostitutes. The proper name for these wretches was _Leno_ (bawd), which
was of both sexes, though usually represented on the stage as a beardless
man with shaven head. Under this name quite a number of varieties were
included, such as the _Lupanarii_, or keepers of regular houses of ill
fame; the _Adductores_ and _Perductores_, pimps; _Conciliatrices_ and
_Ancillulæ_, women who negotiated immoral transactions, and others. Then,
as almost every baker, tavern-keeper, bath-house-keeper, barber, and
perfumer combined the _lenocinium_, or trade in prostitutes, with his
other calling, their various names, _tonsor_, _unguentarius_,
_balnearius_, &c., became synonymous with _leno_. This miserable class was
regarded with the greatest loathing at Rome.[96]

This hasty classification of the Roman prostitutes would be incomplete
without some notice, however brief, of male prostitutes. Fortunately, the
progress of good morals has divested this repulsive theme of its
importance; the object of this work can be obtained without entering into
details on a branch of the subject which in this country is not likely to
require fresh legislative notice. But the reader would form an imperfect
idea of the state of morals at Rome were he left in ignorance of the fact
that the number of male prostitutes was probably full as large as that of
females; that, as in Greece, the degrading phenomenon involved very little
disgrace; that all the Roman authors allude to it as a matter of course;
that the leading men of the empire were known to be addicted to such
habits; that the ædile abstained from interference, save where a Roman
youth suffered violence; and that, to judge from the language of the
writers of the first, second, and third centuries of the Christian era,
the Romans, like some Asiatic races, appeared to give the preference to
unnatural lusts.[97]

HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION.

Having examined the laws which governed prostitution at Rome, and the
classes into which prostitutes were divided, it is now requisite to glance
at the establishments in which prostitution was carried on.

M. Dufour and others have followed Publius Victor and Sextus Rufus in
supposing that during the Augustine age there were forty-six first-class
houses of ill fame at Rome, and a much larger number of establishments
where prostitution was carried on without the supervision of the ædile. As
it is now generally admitted that the works bearing the name of Publius
Victor and Sextus Rufus are forgeries of comparatively recent date, the
statement loses all claim to credit, and we are left without statistical
information as to the number of houses of prostitution at Rome.[98]

Registered prostitutes were to be found in the establishments called
Lupanaria. These differed from the Greek Dicteria in being of various
classes, from the well-provided house of the Peace ward to the filthy dens
of the Esquiline and Suburran wards; and farther, in the wide range of
prices exacted by the keepers of the various houses. It is inferred from
the results of the excavations at Pompeii, and some meagre hints thrown
out by Latin authors, that the lupanaria at Rome were small in size. The
most prosperous were built like good Roman houses, with a square
court-yard, sometimes with a fountain playing in the middle. Upon this
yard opened the cells of the prostitutes. In smaller establishments the
cells opened upon a hall or porch, which seemingly was used as a
reception-room. The cells were dark closets, illuminated at night by a
small bronze lamp. Sometimes they contained a bed, but as often a few
cushions, or a mere mat, with a dirty counterpane, constituted their whole
furniture. Over the door of each cell hung a tablet, with the name of the
prostitute who occupied it, and the price she set on her favors; on the
other side with the word _occupata_. When a prostitute received a visitor
in her cell, she turned the tablet round to warn intruders that she was
engaged.[99] Over the door of the house a suggestive image was either
painted, or represented in stone or marble: one of these signs may be seen
to this day in Pompeii. Within, similar indecent sculptures abounded.
Bronze ornaments of this style hung round the necks of the courtesans; the
lamps were in the same shape, and so were a variety of other utensils. The
walls were covered with appropriate frescoes. In the best-ordered
establishments, it is understood that scenes from the mythology were the
usual subjects of these artistic decorations; but we have evidence enough
at Pompeii to show that gross indecency, not poetical effect, was the main
object sought by painters in these works.

Regular houses of prostitution, _lupanaria_, were of two kinds:
establishments owned and managed by a bawd, who supplied the cells with
slaves or hired prostitutes, and establishments where the bawd merely let
his cells to prostitutes for a given sum. In the former case the bawd was
the principal, in the latter the women. There is reason to suppose that
the former were the more respectable. Petronius alludes to a house where
so much was paid for the use of a cell, and the sum was an _as_, less than
two cents.[100] Messalina evidently betook herself to one of these
establishments, which, for clearness' sake, we may call assignation
houses; and as it appears she was paid in copper (_æra poposcit_), it is
safe to infer that the house was of slender respectability.

The best houses were abundantly supplied with servants and luxuries. A
swarm of pimps and runners sought custom for them in every part of the
city. Women--_ancillæ ornatrices_--were in readiness to repair with skill
the ravages which amorous conflicts caused in the toilets of the
prostitutes. Boys--_bacariones_--attended at the door of the cell with
water for ablution. Servants, who bore the inconsistent title of
_aquarii_, were ready to supply wine and other refreshments to customers.
And not a few of the lupinaria kept a cashier, called _villicus_, whose
business it was to discuss bargains with visitors, and to receive the
money before turning the tablet.

Under many public and some of the best private houses at Rome were arches,
the tops of which were only a few feet above the level of the street.
These arches, dark and deserted, became a refuge for prostitutes. Their
name, _fornices_, at last became synonymous with _lupanar_, and we have
borrowed from it our generic word fornication.[101] There is reason to
believe that there were several score of arches of this character, and
used for this purpose, under the great circus and other theatres at
Rome,[102] besides those under dwelling-houses and stores. The want of
fresh air was severely felt in these vile abodes. Frequent allusions to
the stench exhaled from the mouth of a fornix are made in the Roman
authors.[103]

Establishments of a lower character still were the _pergulæ_, in which the
girls occupied a balcony above the street; the _stabula_, where no cells
were used, and promiscuous intercourse took place openly;[104] the
_turturilla_, or pigeon-houses;[105] the _casauria_, or suburb houses of
the very lowest stamp.

The clearest picture of a Roman house of ill fame is that given in the
famous passage of Juvenal, which may be allowed to remain in the original.
The female, it need hardly be added, was Messalina:

"Dormire virum quum senserat uxor,
Ausa Palatino tegetem præferre cubili,
Sumere nocturnas meretrix Augusta cucullos,
Linquebat comite ancilla non amplius una,
Sed _nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero_,
Intravit calidum veteri centone lupanar,
Et _cellam vacuam_ atque suam. Tune nuda capillis
Constitit auratis, titulum mentita Lyciscæ,
_Ostendit que tuum_, generose Britannice, ventrem.
Excepit blanda intrantes, atque _æra poposcit_,
Et resupina jacens multorum absorbuit ictus.
_Mox lenone suas jam dimittente puellas_,
Tristris abit, et quod potuit, tamen ultima cellam
Clausit, adhuc ardens rigidæ tentigine vulvæ,
Et lassata viris necdum satiata recessit;
Obscurrisque genis turpis fumoque lucernæ
Foeda lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar adorem."[106]

The passages in italics contain useful information; we shall allude to
some of them hereafter. Meanwhile, it is evident from the line _mox
lenone_, etc., that, at a certain hour of the night, the keepers of houses
of ill fame were in the habit of closing their establishments and sending
their girls home. The law required them to close at daybreak, but probably
a much earlier hour may have suited their interest.

Allusion has already been made to the fornices under the circus. It is
well understood that prostitutes were great frequenters of the spectacles,
and that in the arched fornices underneath the seats and the stage they
were always ready to satisfy the passions which the comedies and
pantomimes only too frequently aroused.[107] This was one formidable rival
to the regular lupinaria.

The baths were another. In the early Roman baths, darkness, or, at best, a
faint twilight reigned; and, besides, not only were the sexes separated,
but old and young men were not allowed to bathe together.[108] But after
Sylla's wars, though there were separate _sudaria_ and _tepidaria_ for the
sexes, they could meet freely in the corridors and chambers, and any
immorality short of actual prostitution could take place.[109] Men and
women, girls and boys, mixed together in a state of perfect nudity, and in
such close proximity that contact could hardly be avoided. Such an
assemblage would obviously be a place of resort for dealers in prostitutes
in search of merchandise. At a later period, cells were attached to the
bath-houses, and young men and women kept on the premises, partly as bath
attendants and partly as prostitutes. After the bath, the bathers, male
and female, were rubbed down, kneaded, and anointed by these attendants.
It would appear that women submitted to have this indecent service
performed for them by men, and that health was not always the object
sought, even by the Roman matrons.[110] Several emperors endeavored to
remedy these frightful immoralities. Hadrian forbade the intermixture of
men and women in the public baths.[111] Similar enactments were made by
Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus; but Heliogabalus is said to have
delighted in uniting the sexes, even in the wash-room. As early as the
Augustan era, however, the baths were regarded as little better than
houses of prostitution under a respectable name.[112]

Taverns or houses of entertainment were also in some measure brothels. The
law regarded all servants waiting upon travelers at inns or taverns as
prostitutes.[113] It would appear, also, that butchers', bakers', and
barbers' shops were open to a suspicion of being used for purposes of
prostitution. The plebeian ædiles constantly made it their business to
visit these in search of unregistered prostitutes, though, as might be
expected from the number of delinquents and the very incomplete municipal
police system of Rome, with very little success. The bakers'
establishments, which generally included a flour-mill, were haunted by a
low class of prostitutes to whom allusion has already been made. In the
cellar where the mill stood cells were often constructed, and the ædiles
knew well that all who entered there did not go to buy bread.[114]

Finally, prostitution to a very large extent was carried on in the open
air. The shades of certain statues and temples, such as those of Marsyas,
Pan, Priapus, Venus, etc., were common resorts for prostitutes. It is said
that Julia, the daughter of the Emperor Augustus, prostituted herself
under the shade of a statue of Marsyas. Similar haunts of abandoned women
were the arches of aqueducts, the porticoes of temples, the cavities in
walls, etc. Even the streets in the poorer wards of the city appear to
have been infested by the very lowest class of prostitutes, whose natural
favors had long ceased to be merchantable.[115] It must be borne in mind
that the streets of Rome were not lighted, and that profound darkness
reigned when the moon was clouded over.

HABITS AND MANNERS OF PROSTITUTES.

A grand distinction between Roman and Greek prostitution lies in the
manner in which commerce with prostitutes was viewed in the two
communities. At Athens there was nothing disgraceful in frequenting the
dicterion or keeping an hetaira. At Rome, on the contrary, a married man
who visited a house of ill fame was an _adulter_, and liable to the
penalties of adultery. An habitual frequenter of such places was a
_moechus_ or _scortator_, both of which were terms of scathing reproach.
When Cicero wishes to overwhelm Catiline, he says his followers are
_scortatores_.[116] Until the lowest age of Roman degradation, moreover,
no man of any character entered a house of ill fame without hiding his
face with the skirt of his dress. Even Caligula and Heliogabalus concealed
their faces when they visited the women of the town.[117]

The law prescribed with care the dress of Roman prostitutes, on the
principle that they were to be distinguished in all things from honest
women. Thus they were not allowed to wear the chaste _stola_ which
concealed the form, or the _vitta_ or fillet with which Roman ladies bound
their hair, or to wear shoes (_soccus_), or jewels, or purple robes. These
were the insignia of virtue. Prostitutes wore the _toga_ like men; their
hair, dyed yellow or red, or filled with golden spangles, was dressed in
some Asiatic fashion. They wore sandals with gilt thongs tying over the
instep, and their dress was directed to be of flowered material. In
practice, however, these rules were not strictly observed. Courtesans wore
jewels and purple robes,[118] and not a few boldly concealed their
profligacy under the _stola_. Others, seeking rather to avoid than to
court misapprehension as to their calling, wore the green toga proudly,
and over it the sort of jacket called _amiculum_, which, like the white
sheet of baronial times, was the badge of adultery. Others, again,
preferred the silk and gauze dresses of the East (_sericæ vestes_), which,
according to the expression of a classical writer, "seemed invented to
exhibit more conspicuously what they were intended to hide."[119] Robes of
Tyre were likewise in use, whose texture may be inferred from the name of
"textile vapor" (_ventus textilis_) which they received.

The law strictly prohibited the use of vehicles of any kind to courtesans.
This also was frequently infringed. Under several emperors prostitutes
were seen in open litters in the most public parts of Rome, and others in
litters which closed with curtains, and served the purpose of a
bed-chamber.[120] A law of Domitian imposed heavy penalties on a courtesan
who was seen in a litter.

In the lupanar, of course, rules regarding costume were unheeded.
Prostitutes retained their hair black, but as to the rest of their person
they were governed by their own taste. Nudity appears to have been quite
common, if not the rule. Petronius describes his hero walking in the
street, and seeing from thence naked prostitutes at the doors of the
lupanaria.[121] Some covered their busts with golden stuffs, others veiled
their faces.

It has already been mentioned that the rate of remuneration exacted by the
prostitutes was fixed by themselves, though apparently announced to the
ædile. It is impossible to form any idea of the average amount of this
charge. The lowest classes, as has been mentioned, sold their miserable
favors for about two tenths of a cent; another large class were satisfied
with two cents. The only direct light that is thrown on this branch of the
subject flows from an obscure passage in the strange romance entitled
"Apollonius of Tyre," which is supposed to have been written by a
Christian named Symposius. In that work the capture of a virgin named
Tarsia by a bawd is described. The bawd orders a sign or advertisement to
be hung out, inscribed, "He who deflours Tarsia shall pay half a pound,
afterward she shall be at the public service for a gold piece." The half
pound has been assumed by commentators to mean half a Roman pound of
silver, and to have been worth $30; the gold piece, according to the best
computation, was about equivalent to $4. But whether these figures can be
regarded as an average admits of doubt, even supposing our estimate of the
value of the sums mentioned in the ancient work to be accurate.

The allusion to Tarsia suggests some notice of the practice of the Roman
bawds when they had secured a virgin. It will be found faithfully
described in that old English play, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," which is
sometimes bound up with Shakspeare's works. When a bawd had purchased a
virgin as a slave, or when, as sometimes happened under the later
emperors, a virgin was handed to him to be prostituted as a punishment for
crime, the door of his house was adorned with twigs of laurel; a lamp of
unusual size was hung out at night, and a tablet exhibited somewhat
similar to the one quoted above, stating that a virgin had been received,
and enumerating her charms with cruel grossness.[122] When a purchaser had
been found and a bargain struck, the unfortunate girl, often a mere child,
was surrendered to his brutality, and the wretch issued from the cell
afterward, to be himself crowned with laurel by the slaves of the
establishment.

Thus far of common prostitutes. Though the Romans had no loose women who
could compare in point of standing, influence, or intellect with the Greek
hetairæ, their highest class of prostitutes, the _famosæ_ or _delicatæ_,
were very far above the unfortunate creatures just described. They were
not inscribed in the ædile's rolls; they haunted no lupanar, or tavern, or
baker's stall; they were not seen lurking about shady spots at night; they
wore no distinguishing costume. It was in broad daylight, at the theatre,
in the streets, in the Via Sacra, which was the favorite resort of
fashionable Rome, that they were to be found, and there they were only to
be distinguished from virtuous matrons by the superior elegance of their
dress, and the swarm of admirers by whom they were surrounded. Indeed,
under the later emperors, the distinction, outward or inward, between
these prostitutes and the Roman matrons appears to have been very slight
indeed.[123] They were surrounded or followed by slaves of either sex, a
favorite waiting-maid being the most usual attendant.[124] Their meaning
glances are frequently the subject of caustic allusions in the Roman
poets.[125] Many of them were foreigners, and expressed themselves by
signs from ignorance of the Latin tongue.

These women were usually the mistresses of rich men, though not
necessarily faithful to their lovers. We possess no such biographies of
them as we have of the Greek hetairæ, nor is there any reason to suppose
that their lives ever formed the theme of serious works, though the Roman
erotic library was rich. What little we know of them we glean mostly from
the verses of Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, Propertius, Catullus, Martial, and
from such works as the Satyricon of Petronius, and the novel of Apuleius,
and that little is hardly worth the knowing.

The first five poets mentioned--Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and
Tibullus--devoted no small portion of their time and talent to the
celebration of their mistresses. But beyond their names, Lydia, Chloe,
Lalage, Lesbia, Cynthia, Delia, Neæra, Corinna, &c., we are taught nothing
about them but what might have been taken for granted, that they were
occasionally beautiful, lascivious, extravagant, often faithless and
heartless. From passages in Ovid, and also in one or two of the others, it
may be inferred that it was not uncommon for these great prostitutes to
have a nominal husband, who undertook the duty of negotiating their
immoral bargains (_leno maritus_).

The only really useful information we derive from these erotic effusions
relates to the poets themselves. All the five we have mentioned moved in
the best society at Rome. Some of them, like Horace, saw their fame
culminate during their lifetime; others filled important stations under
government. Ovid was intimate with the Emperor Augustus, and his exile is
supposed to have been caused by some improper discoveries he made with
regard to the emperor's relations with his daughter. Yet it is quite
evident that all these persons habitually lived with prostitutes, felt no
shame on that account, and recorded unblushingly the charms and exploits
of their mistresses in verses intended to be read indiscriminately by the
Roman youths.

Between Ovid and Martial the distance is immense. Half a century divided
them in point of time; whole ages in tone. During the Augustan era, the
language of poets, though much freer than would be tolerated to-day, was
not invariably coarse. No gross expressions are used by the poets of that
day in addressing their mistresses, and even common prostitutes are
addressed with epithets which a modern lover might apply to his betrothed.
But Martial knows no decency. It may safely be said that his epigrams
ought never again to be translated into a modern tongue. Expressions
designating the most loathsome depravities, and which, happily, have no
equivalent, and need none, in our language, abound in his pages. Pictures
of the most revolting pruriency succeed each other rapidly. In a word,
such language is used and such scenes depicted as would involve the
expulsion of their utterer from any house of ill fame in modern times. Yet
Martial enjoyed high favor under government. He was enabled to procure
the naturalization of many of his Spanish friends. He possessed a country
and a town house, both probably gifts from the emperor. His works, even in
his lifetime, were carefully sought after, not only in Rome, but in Gaul,
Spain, and the other provinces. Upon the character and life of courtesans
in his day he throws but little light. The women whose hideous depravity
he celebrates must have been well known at Rome; their names must have
been familiar to the ears of Roman society. But this feature of Roman
civilization, the notoriety of prostitutes and of their vile arts,
properly belongs to another division of the subject.

ROMAN SOCIETY.

It was often said by the ancients that the more prostitutes there were,
the safer would be virtuous women. "Well done," said the moralist to a
youth entering a house of ill fame; "so shalt thou spare matrons and
maidens." As this idea rests upon a slender substratum of plausibility, it
may be as well to expose its fallacy, which can be done very completely by
a glance at Roman society under the emperors.

Even allowing for poetical exaggeration, it may safely be said that there
is no modern society, perhaps there has never existed any since the fall
of Rome, to which Juvenal's famous satire on women can be applied.[126]
Independently of the unnatural lusts which were so unblushingly avowed,
the picture drawn by the Roman surpasses modern credibility. That it was
faithful to nature and fact, there is, unhappily, too much reason to
believe. The causes must be sought in various directions.

Two marked distinctions between modern and ancient society may at once be
noticed. In no modern civilized society is it allowable to present
immodest images to the eye, or to utter immodest words in the ear of
females or youth. At Rome the contrary was the rule. The walls of
respectable houses were covered with paintings, of which one hardly dares
in our times to mention the subjects. Lascivious frescoes and lewd
sculptures, such as would be seized in any modern country by the police,
filled the halls of the most virtuous Roman citizens and nobles.[127]
Ingenuity had been taxed to the utmost to reproduce certain indecent
objects under new forms.[128] Nor was common indecency adequate to supply
the depraved taste of the Romans. Such groups as satyrs and nymphs, Leda
and the swan, Pasiphæ and the bull, satyrs and she-goats, were abundant.
Some of them have been found, and exhibit a wonderful artistic skill. All
of these were daily exposed to the eyes of children and young girls, who,
as Propertius says, were not allowed to remain novices in any infamy.

Again, though a Horace would use polite expressions in addressing Tyndaris
or Lalage, the Latin tongue was much freer than any modern one. There is
not a Latin author of the best age in whose writings the coarsest words
can not be found. The comedies were frightfully obscene, both in ideas and
expressions. A youth or a maiden could not begin to acquire instruction
without meeting words of the grossest meaning. The convenient adage,
_Charta non erubescit_, was invented to hide the pruriency of authors, and
one of the worst puts in the wretched plea that, "though his page is lewd,
his life is pure." It is quite certain that, whatever might have been the
effect on the poet, his readers could not but be demoralized by the
lewdness of his verses.

Add to these causes of immorality the baths, and a fair case in support of
Juvenal will be already made out. A young Roman girl, with warm southern
blood in her veins, who could gaze on the unveiled pictures of the loves
of Venus, read the shameful epigrams of Martial, or the burning love-songs
of Catullus, go to the baths and see the nudity of scores of men and
women, be touched herself by a hundred lewd hands, as well as those of the
bathers who rubbed her dry and kneaded her limbs--a young girl who could
withstand such experiences and remain virtuous would need, indeed, to be a
miracle of principle and strength of mind.

But even then religion and law remained to assail her. She could not walk
through the streets of Rome without seeing temples raised to the honor of
Venus, that Venus who was the mother of Rome, as the patroness of illicit
pleasures. In every field and in many a square, statues of Priapus, whose
enormous indecency was his chief characteristic, presented themselves to
view, often surrounded by pious matrons in quest of favor from the god.
Once a year, at the Lupercalia, she saw young men running naked through
the streets, armed with thongs with which they struck every woman they
saw; and she noticed that matrons courted this flagellation as a means of
becoming prolific. What she may have known of the Dionysia or Saturnalia,
the wild games in honor of Bacchus, and of those other dissolute festivals
known as the eves of Venus, which were kept in April, it is not easy to
say, but there is no reason to believe that these lewd scenes were
intended only for the vicious, or that they were kept a secret.

When her marriage approached the remains of her modesty were effectually
destroyed. Before marriage she was led to the statue of Mutinus, a nude
sitting figure, and made to sit on his knee,[129] _ut ejus pudicitiam
prius deus delibasse videtur_. This usage was so deeply rooted among the
Romans that, when Augustus destroyed the temple of Mutinus in the Velian
ward in consequence of the immoralities to which it gave rise, a dozen
others soon rose to take its place. On the marriage night, statuettes of
the deities _Subiqus_ and _Prema_ hung over the nuptial bed--_ut subacta a
sponso viro non se commoveat quum premitur_;[130] and in the morning the
jealous husband exacted, by measuring the neck of his bride, proof to his
superstitious mind that she had yielded him her virginity.[131]

In the older age of the republic it was not considered decent for women to
recline on couches at table as men did. This, however soon became quite
common. Men and women lay together on the same couch so close that hardly
room for eating was left. And this was the custom not only with women of
loose morals, but with the most respectable matrons. At the feast of
Trimalchio, which is the best recital of a Roman dinner we have, the wife
of the host and the wife of Habinus both appeared before the guests.
Habinus amused them by seizing his host's wife by the feet and throwing
her forward so that her dress flew up and exposed her knees, and
Trimalchio himself did not blush to show his preference for a giton in the
presence of the company, and to throw a cup at his wife's head when her
jealousy led her to remonstrate.[132] The voyage of the hero of the
Satyricon furnishes other pictures of the intensely depraved feeling which
pervaded Roman society. The author does not seem to admit the possibility
of virtue's existence; all his men and women are equally vicious and
shameless. The open spectacle of the most hideous debauchery only
provokes a laugh. If a man declines to accede to the propositions which
the women are the first to make, it must be because he is a disciple of
the _aversa Venus_, and whole cities are depicted as joining in the hue
and cry after the lost _frater_ of a noted debauchee.

The _commessationes_, which Cicero enumerates among the symptoms of
corruption in his time, had become of universal usage. It was for them
that the cooks of Rome exhausted their art in devising the dishes which
have puzzled modern gastronomists; for them that the rare old wines of
Italy were stowed away in cellars; for them that Egyptian and Ionian
dancing-girls stripped themselves, or donned the _nebula linea_.[133] No
English words can picture the monstrosities which are calmly narrated in
the pages of Petronius and Martial. Well might Juvenal cry, "Vice has
culminated."[134]

It is perhaps difficult to conceive how it could have been otherwise,
considering the examples set by the emperors. It requires no small
research to discover a single character in the long list that was not
stained by the grossest habits. Julius Cæsar, "the bald adulterer," was
commonly said to be "husband of all men's wives."[135] Augustus, whose
youth had been so dissolute as to suggest a most contemptuous epigram,
employed men in his old age to procure matrons and maidens, whom these
purveyors of imperial lust examined as though they had been horses at a
public sale.[136] The amours of Tiberius in his retreat at Capreæ can not
be described. It will suffice to say there was no invention of infamy
which he did not patronise; that no young person of any charms was safe
from his lust. More than one senator felt that safety required he should
remove his handsome wife or pretty daughter from Rome, for Tiberius was
ever ready to avenge obstacles with death. The sad fate of the beautiful
Mallonia, who stabbed herself during a lawsuit which the emperor had
instituted against her because she refused to comply with his beastly
demands, gives a picture of the age.[137] Caligula, who made some changes
in the tax levied on prostitutes, and established a brothel in the palace,
commenced life by debauching his sisters, and ended it by giving grand
dinners, during which he would remove from the room any lady he pleased,
and, after spending a few minutes with her in private, return and give an
account of the interview for the amusement of the company.[138] Messalina
so far eclipsed Claudius in depravity that the "profuse debauches" of the
former appear, by contrast, almost moderate and virtuous.[139]

Nero surpassed his predecessors in cynic recklessness. He was an habitual
frequenter of houses of prostitution. He dined in public at the great
circus among a crowd of prostitutes. He founded, on the shore of the Gulf
of Naples, houses of prostitution, and filled them with females, whose
dissolute habits were their recommendation to his notice. The brief sketch
of his journeys given by Tacitus, and the allusions to his minister of
pleasures, Tigellinus, leave no room for doubting that he was a monster of
depravity.[140]

Passing over a coarse Galba, a profligate Otho, a beastly Vitellius, a
mean Vespasian, and a dissolute Titus, Domitian revived the age of Nero.
He seduced his brother's daughter, and carried her away from her husband,
bathed habitually in company with a band of prostitutes, and set an
example of hideous vice while enacting severe laws against debauchery.
After another interval, Commodus converted the palace into a house of
prostitution. He kept in his pay three hundred girls of great beauty, and
as many youths, and revived his dull senses by the sight of pleasures he
could no longer share. Like Nero, he violated his sisters; like him, he
assumed the dress and functions of a female, and gratified the court with
the spectacle of his marriage to one of his freedmen. Finally, Elagabalus,
whom the historian could only compare to a wild beast, surpassed even the
most audacious infamies of his predecessors. It was his pride to have been
able to teach even the most expert courtesans of Rome something more than
they knew; his pleasure to wallow among them naked, and to pull down into
the sink of bestiality in which he lived the first officers of the empire.

When such was the example set by men in high places, there is no need of
inquiring farther into the condition of the public morals. A censor like
Tacitus might indignantly reprove, but a Martial--and he was, no doubt, a
better exponent of public and social life than the stern historian--would
only laugh, and copy the model before him. It may safely be asserted that
there does not exist in any modern language a piece of writing which
indicates so hopelessly depraved a state of morals as Martial's epigram
on his wife.

SECRET DISEASES AT ROME.

At what period, and where, venereal diseases first made their appearance,
is a matter of doubt. It was long the opinion of the faculty that they
were of modern origin, and that Europe had derived them from America,
where the sailors of Columbus had first contracted them. This opinion does
not appear to rest on any solid basis, and is now generally rejected. The
fact is, that the venereal disease prevailed extensively in Europe in the
fifteenth century; but the presumption, from an imposing mass of
circumstantial evidence, is that it has afflicted humanity from the
beginning of history.

Still, it is strange that Greek and Latin authors do not mention it. There
is a passage in Juvenal in which allusion is made to a disgusting disease,
which appears to bear resemblance to venereal disease. Epigrams of Martial
hint at something of the same kind. Celsus describes several diseases of
the generative organs, but none of these authors ascribe the diseases they
mention to venereal intercourse.

Celsus prefaces what he says on the subject of this class of maladies with
an apology. Nothing but a sense of duty has led him to allude to matters
so delicate; but he feels that he ought not to allow his country to lose
the benefit of his experience, and he conceives it to be "desirable to
disseminate among the people some medical principles with regard to a
class of diseases which are never revealed to any one."

After this apology, he proceeds to speak of a disease which he calls
_inflammatio colis_, which seems to have borne a striking analogy to the
modern _Phymosis_. It has been supposed that the _Elephantiasis_, which he
describes at length, was also of a syphilitic character; and the symptoms
detailed by Aretous, who wrote in the latter half of the first century,
certainly remind the reader of secondary syphilis; but the best opinion of
to-day appears to be that the diseases are distinct and unconnected.

Women afflicted with secret diseases were called _aucunnuentæ_, which
explains itself. They prayed to Juno Fluonia for relief, and used the
_aster atticus_ by way of medicine. The Greek term for this herb being
_Bonbornion_, which the Romans converted into _Bubonium_, that word came
to be applied to the disease for which it was given, whether in the case
of females or males. Modern science has obtained thence the term Bubo. The
Romans said of a female who communicated a disease to a man, _Hæc te
imbubinat_.[141]

We find, moreover, in the later writers, allusions to the _morbus
campanus_, the _clazomenæ_, the _rubigo_, etc., which were all secret
diseases of a type, if not syphilitic, strongly resembling it. It must be
admitted, however, that no passage in the ancient writers directly
ascribes these diseases to commerce with prostitutes.

Roman doctors declined to treat secret diseases. They were called by the
generic term _morbus indecens_, and it was considered unbecoming to
confess to them or to treat them. Rich men owned a slave doctor who was in
the confidence of the family, and to whom such delicate secrets would
naturally be confided. But the mass of the people were restrained by shame
from communicating their misfortunes; as was the case among the Jews, the
unhappy patient was driven to seclusion as the only remedy. However cruel
and senseless this practice may have been as regarded the sufferer, it was
of service to the people, as it prevented, in some degree, the spread of
contagion.

Up to the period of the civil wars, and perhaps as late as the Christian
era, the only physicians at Rome were drug-sellers, enchanters, and
midwives. The standing of the former may be inferred from a passage in
Horace, where he classes them with the lowest outcasts of Roman
society.[142] The enchanters (_sagæ_) made philtres to produce or impede
the sensual appetite. They were execrated, and even so amorous a poet as
Ovid felt bound to warn young girls against the evil effects of the
aphrodisiacs they concocted.[143] Midwives also made philtres, and are
often confounded with the _sagæ_. The healing science of the three classes
must have been small.

About the reign of Augustus, Greek physicians began to settle at Rome.
They possessed much theory, and some practical experience, as the Treatise
of Celsus shows, and soon became an important class in Roman society. It
was not, however, till the reign of Nero, that an office of public
physician was created. Under that emperor, a Greek named Andromachus was
appointed _archiater_, or court physician, and _archiatii populares_ were
soon afterward appointed for the people. They were allowed to receive
money from the rich, but they were bound, in consideration of various
privileges bestowed on their office, to treat the poor gratuitously. They
were stationed in every city in the empire. Rome had fourteen, besides
those attached to the Vestals, the Gymnasia, and the court; other large
cities had ten, and so on, down to the small towns which had one or
two.[144] From the duties and privileges of the _archiatii_, it would
appear they were subject to the ædiles.

It may seem almost superfluous to add that no careful medical reader of
the history of Rome under the empire can doubt but the archiatii filled no
sinecure, and that a large proportion of the diseases they treated were
directly traceable to prostitution.

CHAPTER V.

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ERA.

Christian Teachers preach Chastity.--Horrible Punishment of Christian
Virgins.--Persecution of Women.--Conversion of Prostitutes.--The
Gnostics.--The Ascetics.--Conventual Life.--Opinion of the Fathers on
Prostitution.--Tax on Prostitutes.--Punishment of Prostitutes under
the Greek Emperors.

Perhaps the most marked originality of the Christian doctrine was the
stress it laid on chastity. It has been well remarked that even the most
austere of the pagan moralists recommended chastity on _economical_
grounds alone. The apostles exacted it as a moral and religious duty. They
preached against lewdness as fervently as against heathenism. Not one of
the epistles contained in the New Testament but inveighs, in the strongest
language, against the vices classed under the generic head of luxury. Nor
can it be doubted that, under divine Providence, the obvious merit of this
feature in the new religion exercised a large influence in rallying the
better class of minds to its support.

From the first, the Christian communities made a just boast of the purity
of their morals. Their adversaries met them on this ground at great
disadvantage. It was notorious that the college of Vestals had been
sustained with great difficulty. Latterly, it had been found necessary to
supply vacancies with children, and even under these circumstances, the
number of Vestals buried alive bore but a very small proportion to the
number who had incurred this dread penalty. Nor could it be denied that
the chastity of the Roman virgins was, at best, but partial, the purest
among them being accustomed to unchaste language and unchaste sights. The
Christian congregations, on the contrary, contained numbers of virgins who
had devoted themselves to celibacy for the love of Christ. They were
modest in their dress, decorous in their manners, chaste in their
speech.[145] They refused to attend the theatres; lived frugally and
temperately; allowed no dancers at their banquets; used no perfumes, and
abstained generally from every practice which could endanger their
rigorous continence.[146] Marriage among the Christians was a holy
institution, whose sole end was the procreation of children. It was not to
be used, as was the case too often among the heathen, as a cloak for
immoralities. Christ, they said, permitted marriage, but did not permit
luxury.[147] The early fathers imposed severe penitences on fornication,
adultery, and other varieties of sensuality.

Persecution aided the Church in the great work of purifying public morals,
by forcing it to keep in view the Christian distinction between moral and
physical guilt. At what time it became usual to condemn Christian virgins
to the brothel it is difficult to discover. The practice may have arisen
from the hideous custom which enjoined the violation of Roman maidens
before execution, if the existence of such a custom can be assumed on the
authority of so loose a chronicler as Suetonius.[148] However this be,
this horrible refinement of brutality was in use in the time of Marcus
Aurelius.[149] Virgins were seized and required to sacrifice to idols.
Refusing, they were dragged, often naked, through the streets to a
brothel, and there abandoned to the lubricity of the populace. The piety
of the early Christians prompted the belief that on many conspicuous
occasions the Almighty had interfered to protect his chosen children in
this dire calamity.[150] St. Agnes, having refused to sacrifice to Vesta,
was said to have been stripped naked by the order of the prefect; but, no
sooner had her garments fallen, than her hair grew miraculously, and
enveloped her as in a shroud. Dragged to the brothel, a wonderful light
shone from her body, and the by-standers, appalled at the sight, instead
of offering her violence, fell at her knees, till, at last, the prefect's
son, bolder and more reckless than the others, advanced to consummate her
sentence, and was struck dead at her feet by a thunderbolt.[151]
Theodora, a noble lady of Alexandria, was equally undaunted and equally
faithful to her creed. The judge allowed her three days to deliberate,
warning her of the consequences of obstinacy. She was firm, and was led
into a house of prostitution. There, in the midst of debauched persons of
both sexes, she prayed to God for help, and the sight of the half-naked
virgin bent in fervent prayer struck awe into the minds of the people. At
last a soldier declared that he would fulfill the judgment. Thrust into a
cell with Theodora, he confessed that he was a Christian, dressed her in
his clothes, and enabled her to escape. He was seized and executed; but
the Christian virgin, refusing to purchase her safety at such a price,
gave herself up, and died with him.[152] Similar stories are contained in
several of the Christian fathers.[153]

There is, unhappily, no reason to doubt that in many instances the brutal
mandate of the pagan judges was rigorously executed, and that the faith of
many Christian virgins was assailed through the channel of their virtue.
This appears to have been frequently the case during the persecution of
Diocletian, when we hear of Christian women being suspended naked by one
foot, and tortured in other savage and infernal ways. The practice led to
the clear enunciation of the important doctrine of moral chastity, already
stated by Christ himself in the Gospel. The Romans could not conceive a
chaste soul in a body that had endured pollution, and hence for Lucretia
there was no resource but the poniard. It was left for St. Augustin, St.
Jerome, and the other fathers, to assert boldly that the crime lay in the
intention and not in the act; that a chaste heart might inhabit a body
which brutal force had soiled; and that the Christian virgins whom an
infamous judge had sentenced to the brothel were none the less acceptable
servants of God.[154]

The only retaliation attempted by the early Christians was the conversion
of prostitutes. The works of the fathers contain many narratives of
remarkable conversions of this character, and a learned Jesuit once
compiled a voluminous work on the subject. The Egyptian Mary was the type
of the class. She confessed to Zosimus that she had spent seventeen years
in the practice of prostitution at Alexandria. Her heart being opened, she
took ship for Jerusalem, paid her passage by exercising her calling on
board, and expiated her sins by a life of penitence in the woods of
Judæa. She lived, the legend said, forty-seven years in the woods, naked
and alone, without seeing a man. A chapel was built at Paris during the
Middle Ages in her honor. The painted windows, representing her in the
exercise of her calling on shipboard, were in existence at a very late
period.[155]

In revenge for the victories of the Christians, the pagans accused them of
committing the grossest immoralities. For many centuries the early
Christian congregations met under circumstances of great difficulty, in
secret hiding-places, in catacombs. Their religious rites were performed
mysteriously. Lights were often extinguished to foil the object of spies
and informers. These peculiarities served as the pretext for many obvious
calumnies. It was commonly believed, even by men of the calibre of
Tacitus, that the Christian rites bore strong resemblances to those rites
of Isis which, at an early period of Roman history, had created such alarm
and horror at Rome. Nor were these calumnies confined to the heathen. In
the third and fourth centuries, when sectarian rivalries menaced the
destruction of the Church, similar accusations were freely bandied. That
they were wholly unfounded in every case seems difficult to believe, in
the face of the clear statements of such writers as Epiphanes. What the
precise doctrines of the various sects called Adamites, Cainites,
Nicolaites, and some subdivisions of Gnostics, may have been, it were
perhaps superfluous now to inquire; but it seems not unreasonable to
suppose that, in some instances, men of depraved instincts may have
availed themselves of the cloak of Christianity to conceal the
gratification of sensual habits; or, on the other hand, that minds in a
state of religious exaltation may have stumbled upon impurities in the
search for the state of nature. In comparatively late times we have seen,
in America as well as Savoy, a few persons of weak minds give way to
religious enthusiasm in a manner that warred with public decency. Similar
aberrations may have been more frequent during the seething era which
preceded the establishment of Christianity, and prostitution, in some
shape or other, may have again become a religious rite in certain deluded
or knavish sects. Nor was it unnatural, unjust though it certainly was,
for the heathen to charge Christianity at large with the vices of those of
its followers who worshiped in a state of nudity, and accompanied prayer
with promiscuous intercourse.[156]

Even in the bosom of the true Church practices would break out from time
to time which jarred sadly with the moral theory of the Apostles. Many
persons of both sexes, under the influence of religious enthusiasm, sought
relief for their troubled souls in solitude, and unwisely attempted to
mortify the flesh by practices which too often sharpened the appetites.
One only needs to read the eloquent effusions of St. Jerome to become
satisfied that the course of life adopted by many early Christian
recluses, of both sexes, must have led unwittingly to moral aberrations.
Young men and young women, devoting themselves to a life of seclusion in
the woods, living like wild beasts, without clothing and without shame,
would naturally revive the system of religious prostitution in a more or
less modified shape. On the other hand, in many parts of Europe, Christian
churches thought it not unsafe to accept the legacies of the heathen
religions in the shapes of idols, forms, and ceremonies. Saints succeeded
to the honors of gods; dances in honor of Venus became dances in honor of
the Virgin; statues which were originally intended to represent heathen
deities were saved from destruction by being adopted as fair
representations of Christian saints. Until very recent times there
existed, in various parts of Europe, statues of Priapus, under the name of
some saint, retaining the indecency of the idol, and associated with the
belief of some simple women that the image possessed the power assigned it
in mythology. In processions, during the third and fourth centuries,
sacred virgins were seen to wear round their necks the obscene symbol of
the old worship, and in places the holy bread retained the shape of the
Roman _coliphia_ and _siligines_. St. John Chrysostom complains that in
places he designates, women were baptized in a state of nature, without
even being permitted to veil their sex.[157] A majority of Christian
teachers, unwilling to deprive the masses of a superstitious convenience
afforded them by paganism, allowed them to pray to certain saints not only
for fertility, but for the removal of impotence from husbands and
lovers.[158]

To these immoral features must be added occasional instances of looseness
in conventual life. The preamble of various edicts in France and elsewhere
leaves no room to doubt that, in several instances, immoral persons had
assumed the religious garb, and collected themselves together in religious
communities for the purpose of gratifying sensuality.

These were the aids Christianity afforded to prostitution in its various
forms. They are a mere trifle in comparison with the obstacles it threw in
its way. Independently of the effect produced by the moral teaching of St.
Paul and the Apostles, the rising power of the Church was vigorously
exerted to modify the legislation both of the Eastern and Western empires
on the subject of sexual depravities.

The fathers did not uniformly proscribe prostitution. Saint Augustin said,
"Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society."[159]
Jerome recognized prostitution, and argued that, as Mary Magdalene had
been saved, so might any prostitute who repented.[160] The canons of the
apostles excluded from the ministry all persons who were convicted of
having commerce with prostitutes, and excommunicated those who were guilty
of rape, but they passed no general sentence on prostitutes.[161] But the
apostolic constitution branded as sinful any sexual intercourse _quæ non
adhibetur ad generationem filiorum sed tota ad voluptatem spectat_.[162]
The same principle is asserted in various passages of the work; wine being
denounced as a provocation to impurity, and the faithful are warned
against the society of lewd persons (_scortatores_). The Council of Elvira
pronounced the penalty of excommunication against bawds and prostitutes,
but it expressly commanded priests to receive at the communion-table
prostitutes who had married Christians.[163] St. Augustin conceived that
no church should admit prostitutes to the altar till they had abandoned
the calling.[164] A similar doctrine was expressed by the Council of
Toledo. At a later period, as we advance in mediæval history, we find the
councils recognizing prostitution, and prostitutes as a class. In 1431, at
the Council of Basle, a holy father presented a paper on the subject of
prostitution, in which it was implied to be the only safeguard of good
morals. A century later, the Council of Milan took especial pains to
identify prostitutes as a class. They were to wear a distinctive dress,
with no ornaments of gold, silver, or silk; to reside in places expressly
designated by the bishops, at a distance from cathedrals; to avoid taverns
and hostelries. The execution of the decree was intrusted to the bishops
and the civil magistrates.[165]

The _vectigal_ or tax paid by all persons subsisting by prostitution was
exacted by the emperors, from Caligula to Theodosius. It was usually
collected every five years. Zosimus accuses Constantine of having enlarged
and remodeled the tax, but apparently without foundation. The early
Christians made it a subject of reproach to the emperors.[166] In
consequence of their assaults, Theodosius abandoned that portion of the
law which laid a tax on bawds, leaving the tax on prostitutes. The latter
was levied as rigorously as ever. A contemporary writer describes the
imperial agents hunting for prostitutes in taverns and houses of
prostitution, and forcing them to purchase, by payment of the tax, the
right of pursuing their calling.[167] At length, in the fifth century,
prostitution and the tax on prostitutes, or _chrysarguron_, were formally
abolished by the Emperor Anastasius I., and the records and rolls of the
collectors burned. It is said that some time afterward, the emperor gave
out that he had repented of what he had done, and desired to see the
_chrysarguron_ re-established. The announcement gave great joy to the
debauchees, and numbers of persons prepared to avail themselves of the
re-enactment of the law. The emperor let it be known that he desired to
have matters placed, so far as could be, on their old footing, and would
therefore desire to collect as many as possible of the old rolls and
records. They were gathered together at all parts, and laid at the
imperial feet. Notice was then given to the people to meet at the circus
on a given day; when they were all assembled, the whole collection of
documents was burned, amid the frantic applause of the populace.[168]

It has been asserted, however, that the _chrysarguron_ was revived
subsequently, and was levied under Justinian. That legislator altered the
old Roman laws regarding prostitution, and relieved prostitutes from the
ineffaceable ban of infamy which the republican jurisprudence had laid on
them. He permitted the marriage of citizens with prostitutes, and
encouraged it by his example. His own wife, the Empress Theodora, had been
a ballet-dancer and a prostitute. When she attained the imperial dignity,
her first thought was of her old companions. She built a magnificent
palace-prison on the south shore of the Bosphorus, and in one night caused
five hundred prostitutes in Constantinople to be seized and conveyed
thither. They were kindly treated; their every wish was gratified; but no
man entered their asylum. The experiment was a complete failure. Most of
the girls committed suicide in their despair, and the remainder soon died
of _ennui_ and vexation.

Theodosius had laid heavy penalties on brothel-keepers;[169] Justinian
reiterated them, and increased their weight. The seizure and prostitution
of a girl he punished with death. He who connived at the prostitution of
females was to be expelled from the city where he lived, and any person
harboring him was to be fined one hundred gold pieces. Whatever
legislation could effect to uproot the system of procurers and public
prostitution, Justinian did;[170] but his laws contain no trace of any
harsh policy toward prostitutes. Those unfortunate creatures he regarded
with an indulgent humanity, which, for the sake of human nature, one may
perhaps ascribe to the kindly sympathy of the empress.

CHAPTER VI.

FRANCE.--HISTORY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

Morals in Gaul.--Gynecea.--Capitulary of Charlemagne.--Morals in the
Middle Ages.--Edict of 1254.--Decree of 1358, re-establishing
Prostitution.--Roi des Ribauds.--Ordinance of Philip abolishing
Prostitution.--Sumptuary Laws.--Punishment of Procuresses.--
Templars.--The Provinces.--Prohibition in the North.--Licensed
Brothels at Toulouse, Montpellier, and Avignon.--Penalties South.--
Effect of Chivalry.--Literature.--Erotic Vocabulary.--Incubes and
Succubes.--Sorcery.--The Sabat.--Flagellants.--Adamites.--Jour des
Innocents.--Wedding Ceremonies.--Preachers of the Day.

The Roman accounts of the Gauls represent them as leading virtuous lives.
_Severa matrimonia_ is the expression of the historian. This would appear
to apply more particularly to the women than the men. As is usually the
case among semi-civilized nations, the Gauls, Germans, Franks, and most of
the aboriginal nations of Northern Europe imposed upon the women
obligations of chastity which they did not always accept for themselves.
Adultery, and, in certain cases, fornication, they punished capitally;
but, if the early ecclesiastical writers are to be believed, these rude
warriors were addicted to coarse debaucheries, in which intoxicating
liquors and promiscuous intercourse with females played a prominent part.
The feasts which followed victories in the field, or commemorated national
anniversaries, bore some resemblance to the Roman _commessationes_,
though, of course, they lacked the refinement and the wit which
occasionally strove to redeem those disgraceful banquets. So far as the
females were concerned, there is no doubt the Roman writers judged
correctly. Whether the severity of the climate tempered the ardor of
northern sensuality, or the harshness of the law kept the passions in
check, the female population of Gaul, from the time of the Roman conquest
for at least two or three centuries, was undoubtedly virtuous.
Prostitution was comparatively unknown. An old law or usage directed that
prostitutes should be stoned, but we do not hear of this law being carried
into effect.

Simultaneously with the consolidation of the kingdom of the Franks, we
note that concubinage was an established institution, recognized by the
law and sanctioned by the Church. All the Frank chiefs who could afford
the luxury kept harems, or, as they were called in that day, _gynecea_,
peopled by young girls who ministered to their pleasures. The plan, as it
appears, bore some resemblance to that which is at present in use in
Turkey and some other Mohammedan countries. The chief had one lawful and
proper wife, a sort of _sultana valide_, and other wives whose matrimonial
rights were less clearly defined, but still whose condition was not
necessarily disreputable. How the people lived we are not so well
qualified to say, but no doubt prostitution prevailed to some extent among
them, though in all probability the public morals were purer than they
became toward the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Perhaps the first authentic legislative notice of prostitution in France
is to be found in the Capitularies of Charlemagne. That monarch, who seems
to have seen no mischief in the system of _gynecea_, was severe upon
common prostitution. He directed vulgar prostitutes to be scourged, and a
like penalty to be inflicted on all who harbored them, kept houses of
debauch, or lent their assistance to prostitutes or debauchees. In other
words, Charlemagne treated the same act as a crime among the poor, and as
an excusable habit among the rich.

Our information regarding society in the Middle Ages is necessarily
obscure and scanty, but we have enough to learn that immorality prevailed
to an alarming degree during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries. Probably the rich men who had their _gynecea_ were the most
virtuous class in the nation. Most of the kings set an example of loose
intercourse with the ladies of the court. The armies of the time were
noted for the ravages they committed among the female population of the
countries where they were quartered. Both of these classes seem to have
yielded the palm of debauchery to the clergy. It is a fact well known to
antiquaries, though visual evidence of it is becoming scarce, that most of
the great works of Gothic architecture which date from this period were
profusely adorned with lewd sculptures whose subjects were taken from the
religious orders. In one place a monk was represented in carnal connection
with a female devotee. In others were seen an abbot engaged with nuns, a
naked nun worried by monkeys, youthful penitents undergoing flagellation
at the hands of their confessor, lady abbesses offering hospitality to
well-proportioned strangers, etc., etc. These obscene works of art
formerly encumbered the doors, windows, arches, and niches of many of the
finest Gothic cathedrals in France. Modesty has lately insisted on their
removal, but many of the works themselves have been rescued from
destruction by the zeal of antiquaries, and it is believed some have still
escaped the iconoclastic hand of the modern Church. When such was the
condition of the clergy, and such the notoriety of that condition, it
would be unjustifiable to expect purity of morals among the people.

Louis VIII. made an effort to regulate prostitution. It proved fruitless,
and it was left to the next king of the same name, Louis IX., to make the
first serious endeavor to check the progress of the evil in France. His
edict, which dates from 1254, directed that all prostitutes, and persons
making a living indirectly out of prostitution, such as brothel-keepers
and procurers, should be forthwith exiled from the kingdom. It was
partially put in force. A large number of unfortunate females were seized,
and imprisoned or sent across the frontier. Severe punishments were
inflicted on those who returned to the city of Paris after their
expulsion. A panic seized the customers of brothels, and for a few months
public decency was restored. But the inevitable consequences of the
arbitrary decree of the king soon began to be felt. Though the officers of
justice had forcibly confined in establishments resembling Magdalen
hospitals a large proportion of the most notorious prostitutes, and exiled
many more, others arose to take their places. _A clandestine traffic
succeeded to the former open debauchery_, and in the dark the evils of the
disease were necessarily aggravated. More than that, as has usually been
the case when prostitution has been violently and suddenly suppressed,
the number of virtuous women became less, and corruption invaded the
family circle. Tradesmen complained that since the passage of the
ordinance they found it impossible to guard the virtue of their wives and
daughters against the enterprises of the military and the students.

At last, complaints of the evil effects of the ordinance became so general
and so pressing that, after a lapse of two years, it was repealed. A new
royal decree re-established prostitution under rules which, though not
particularly enlightened or humane, still placed it on a sounder footing
than it had occupied before the royal attention had been directed to the
subject. Prostitutes were forbidden to live in certain parts of the city
of Paris, were not allowed to wear jewelry or fine stuffs, and were placed
under the direct supervision of a police magistrate, whose official or
popular title was _Le roi des ribauds_ (the king of ribaldry). The duties
of this officer appear to have been analogous to those of the Roman ædiles
who had charge of prostitution. He was empowered to arrest and confine
females who infringed the law, either in their dress, their domicil, or
their behavior. It was afterward urged against the maintenance of the
office of _Roi des ribauds_ that it was usually filled by reckless,
depraved men, who discharged its duties more in view of their private
interests and the gratification of their sensuality than from regard to
the public morals. Instances of gross tyranny were proved against them,
and, in the absence of evidence to show that their appointment had been
beneficial to the public, but little regret was felt when the office was
abolished by Francis I.

To return to Louis IX. In his old age he repented of what he had done, and
returned to the spirit of his early ordinance. In his instructions to his
son and successor, he adjured him to remove from his country the shameful
stain of prostitution, and indicated plainly enough that the best mode of
attaining that end would be by re-enacting the ordinance of 1254. Philip
dutifully fulfilled his father's request. Prostitution was again declared
a legal misdemeanor, and a formidable array of penalties was again brought
to bear against offending females and their accomplices. But, like many a
legislative act in more modern times, Philip's ordinance was too obviously
at variance with public policy and popular sentiment to be carried into
effect. It was quietly allowed to remain a dead letter, and, with probably
few exceptions, the prostitutes of Paris pursued their calling
unmolested.

A few years afterward, its nullification was authoritatively sanctioned by
fresh sumptuary laws. A royal edict directed courtesans to wear a
shoulder-knot of a particular color as a badge of their calling. The whole
force of the government was rallied to enforce this rule, and also those
which had been enacted by Louis IX. The records of the court contain
innumerable reports of the arrests of prostitutes for violating these
enactments. When they had taken up their abode in a prohibited street,
they were imprisoned and dislodged; when their offense was wearing
unlawful garments or jewelry, the forbidden objects were seized and sold,
the constable apparently sharing the proceeds of the sale. Pimps and
procurers were dealt with more severely. As usual, the statute-book
contained a variety of conflicting enactments on this subject, and menaced
them with all kinds of penalties, from burning alive to fine and
imprisonment. It appears beyond a doubt that, during the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, several notorious procuresses were burned alive at
Paris. Others were put in the pillory; were scourged, and had their ears
cropped; while many of the richer class escaped with a fine. There are
records of cases in which the procuress was exposed naked to the insults
of the mob for a whole day, and toward evening the hair on her body was
burned off with a flaming torch. Others again were chased through the city
in a state of nudity, and pelted with stones. These barbarous penalties
appear to have been very much to the taste of the people. Procuresses have
always been an odious class, and it is not surprising to find that the
punishment of a notorious wretch of the class was observed as a joyous
holiday by the populace of the French capital. On the other hand, the
prostitutes themselves were often subjects of public sympathy.

Peculiar reasons operated at this period to produce a favorable sentiment
with regard to prostitutes. The horrible depravities of the Templars were
becoming known. Society was horror-struck at the symptom of a revival of
the worst vice of the ancients. There have been, as is known, ingenious
and eloquent efforts made, in comparatively recent times, to throw a veil
over the corruptions of the Templars, and to prove that they fell victims
to royal jealousy, but the argument is not sustained by the facts.
Documents on whose authenticity and credibility no possible suspicion can
be cast, establish incontrovertibly that the sect of the Templars was
tainted with unnatural vices, and that one of the chief secrets of its
maintenance was the facility it afforded to debased men for the
gratification of monstrous propensities. That this was the opinion which
prevailed in Paris at the time of the outburst which finally led to the
suppression of the order, there is no room to question. It is easy to
understand how the horror such discoveries must have awakened would lead
men to entertain more lenient views with regard to a vice which had at
least the merit of being in conformity with natural instinct.

Thus far of Paris only. During the Middle Ages, as is well known, most of
the provinces of France were self-governing communities, which
administered their own affairs, and received no police regulations from
the crown. A complete examination of the subject throughout France would
therefore involve as many histories as there were provinces. Our space, of
course, forbids any thing of the kind, and we can only glance at leading
divisions.

Most of the northern people had adopted, partly from the old Germanic
constitutions and partly from the Roman law, severe provisions against
prostitution, but they were nowhere, apparently, put in force.
Occasionally a notorious brothel-keeper or professional procuress was
severely punished, but prostitutes were rarely molested. In the north and
west of France, indeed, toleration was obviously the natural policy, for
we are not led to believe that in that section of country the evil was
ever carried to great excess. In Normandy, Brittany, Picardy, and the
great northern and western provinces, a virtuous simplicity was the rule
of life among the peasants, and even the cities did not present any
striking contrast. In many provinces, usage, not fortified by the text of
any custom, allowed the seigneur to levy toll upon prostitutes exercising
their calling within the limits of his jurisdiction. Some old titles and
records refer to this practice. One sets down the tax paid by each
prostitute at four _deniers_ to the seigneur. Others intimate that the tax
may be paid in money or in kind, at the option of the seigneur. In many
seigniories this singular tax was regarded with the contempt it deserved.

In the south of France we meet with a different spectacle. There
prostitution had long been a deeply-seated feature of society. The warm
passions of the southerners required a vent, and, in the absence of some
safety-valve, it was obvious to all that the ungovernable lusts of the men
would soon kindle the inflammable passions of the dark southern women.
Public houses of prostitution were therefore established in three of the
largest cities of the south--Toulouse, Avignon, and Montpellier.

That of Toulouse was established by royal charter, which declared that the
profits of the enterprise should be shared equally by the city and the
University. The building appropriated for the purpose was large and
commodious, bearing the name of the _Grand Abbaye_. In it were lodged not
only the resident prostitutes of the city, but any loose women who
traveled that way, and desired to exercise their impure calling. It would
appear that they received a salary from the city, and that the fees
exacted from the customers were divided between the two public bodies to
which the enterprise was granted. They were obliged to wear white scarfs
and white ribbons or cords on one of their arms, as a badge of their
calling.

When the unfortunate monarch Charles VI. visited Toulouse, the prostitutes
of the Abbaye met him in a body, and presented an address. The king
received them graciously, and promised to grant them whatever largess they
should request. They begged to be released from the duty of wearing the
white badges, and the king, faithful to his promise, granted the boon. A
royal declaration specially exempted them from the old rule.[171] But the
people of Toulouse, no doubt irritated by the want of some distinguishing
mark between their wives and daughters and the "foolish women," by common
consent mobbed the prostitutes who availed themselves of the king's
ordinance. None of them could venture to appear in public without being
liable to insult, and even bodily injury. Resolutely bent on carrying
their point, the women shut themselves up in the Abbaye, and did their
best to keep customers at a distance. Their calculation was just; the city
and the University soon felt the effects of the diminution of visitors at
the Abbaye. The corporation appealed to the king; and when, during the
disorders which distracted France at that time, Charles VII. visited
Toulouse, a formal petition was presented to him by the _capitones_,
praying that he would take such steps as his wisdom might seem fit to
mediate between the prostitutes and the people, and restore to the Abbaye
its former prosperity. The king acted with energy. He denounced the
assailants of the prostitutes in the severest language, and planted his
own royal _fleurs de lis_ over the door of the Abbaye as a protection to
the occupants.[172] But the people did not respect the royal arms any more
than they did the "foolish women." On the contrary, assaults on the
Abbaye became more numerous than ever. The prostitutes complained
incessantly of having suffered violence at the hands of wild youths who
refused to pay for their pleasures; and the civic authorities proving
incompetent to check the disorder, the prostitutes found themselves
compelled to seek refuge in a new part of the city, where, it is to be
presumed, they enlisted adequate support among their own individual
acquaintances. For a hundred years they inhabited their new domicil in
peace and quiet. The University then dislodging them in order to occupy
the spot, the city built them a new abbaye beyond the precincts of the
respectable wards. It was called the _Chateau vert_, and its fame and
profits equaled that of the old abbaye.

About the middle of the sixteenth century the city yielded to the scruples
of some moralists of the day, and ceded the revenues of the Chateau vert
to the hospitals; but the grant being made on condition that the hospitals
should receive and cure all females attacked by venereal disease, it was
found, after six years' trial, that it cost more than it yielded. The
hospitals surrendered the chateau to the city. It happened, just at this
time, that many eminent philosophers and economists were advocating a
return to the old ecclesiastical policy of suppressing prostitution
altogether. After a discussion which lasted several years, the city of
Toulouse adopted these views, and closed the Chateau vert. A magistrate,
high in authority, left on record his protest against this course, founded
on the scenes of immorality he had himself witnessed in the suburbs, and
the country in the neighborhood of Toulouse; but the city authorities
adhered to their opinion, and contented themselves with arresting some of
the most shameless of the free prostitutes.[173] From that time forth,
prostitution at Toulouse was subject to the same rules as in the rest of
France.

The history of prostitution at Montpellier was analogous. At an early
period, the monopoly which the crown had granted to the city being farmed
out to individuals, fell into the hands of two bankers, in whose family it
remained for several generations. During their tenure, a brothel was
established in the city by a speculator of the day, but the holders of the
monopoly prosecuted him, and obtained a perpetual injunction restraining
him from lodging or harboring prostitutes.

At Avignon prostitution was legalized by Jane of Naples just before the
cession of the city to the Pope. The ordinance establishing a public
brothel seems to have been drawn with care, and, though doubts have lately
been thrown on its authenticity, they are not so well founded as to
justify its rejection. Prostitutes were ordered to live in the brothel.
They were bound to wear a red shoulder-knot as a badge of their calling.
The brothel was to be visited weekly by the bailli and a "barber," the
latter of whom was to examine the girls, and confine separately all who
seemed infected. No Jew was allowed to enter the brothel on any pretext.
Its doors were to be closed on saints' days, and special regulations
guarded against the prevalence of scenes of riot and disorder.[174]

This ordinance seems to have remained in force during the whole occupation
of Avignon by the Popes, and its penalties were occasionally inflicted on
offenders. But if Petrarch and other contemporary writers are to be
believed, the city was none the less a refuge for debauchees, and a
scandal to Christendom. Petrarch complains that it was far more depraved
than old Rome, and a popular proverb confirms, at least in part, his
opinion.[175]

There were, however, in some southern provinces, severe laws against
prostitution, although some of the penalties seem to have been framed as
much with the view of stimulating as of repressing the passions. In one or
two cities we find accounts of prostitutes and their customers being
forced to walk naked through the streets by way of expiation. In others,
the punishment of the iron cage was inflicted on pimps and procuresses.
When a procuress had rendered herself particularly obnoxious, she was
seized, stripped naked, and dragged in the midst of a great crowd to the
water's side. There she was thrust into an iron cage, in which she was
forced to kneel. When the cage door was closed, she was thrown into the
river, and allowed to remain under water long enough to produce temporary
suffocation. This shocking punishment was repeated several times.

A potent influence over the morals of the southern people, the higher
classes at least, was exercised by the institution of chivalry. It was of
the essence of that institution to promote spiritual at the expense of
sensual gratification. The chevalier adored his mistress in secret for
years, without even venturing to breathe her name. For years he carried a
scarf or a ribbon in her honor through battle-scenes and dangers of every
kind, happy when, after a lustrum spent in sighs and hopes, the charmer
condescended to reward his fidelity with a gracious smile. It is evident
that sexual intercourse must have been rare among people who set so high a
value on the merest compliments and slightest tokens of affection; nor can
there be any question but the effect of chivalry was to impart a high tone
to the feelings and language of society, and to soften the manners of all
who came within its influence.

If, on the other hand, we glance at the literature which flourished in
France during the period of the revival of learning, we can not but infer
that the morals of the people at large were not pure. During the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, the standard reading of
the educated classes among the French was the celebrated _Roman de la
Rose_, a work of remarkable talent, but, at the same time, distinguished
by a cynic vein of philosophy and a singular obscenity of language. No
portion of that work was wholly free from lewd expressions, and it would
be impossible to quote fifty lines of it to-day in a modern language. The
doctrine of the author with regard to women was insulting and
cynical.[176] They were uniformly depicted as being restrained only by
legal difficulties from giving way to the loosest passions; and all men,
in like manner, were painted as seducers, adulterers, and violators of
young girls. Such was the reading of the best society in France. The
_Roman de la Rose_ was to them what Shakspeare is to us.

Nor was it alone of its kind. Of the works which that age has bequeathed
to us, nearly all are tainted with the same grossness of language and
pruriency of idea. All, or nearly all, breathe the air of the brothel. It
was rather a matter of boasting than of shame with the authors. Villon and
Regnier seem to plume themselves on their familiarity with scenes of
debauch, and their extensive acquaintance among the prostitute class. The
best of their works are descriptions of episodes of dissipation; their
most lively sketches have prostitutes, or their fortunes, or their
diseases, for the themes. They seemed to fancy they were imitating Horace
when they borrowed his most odious blemishes. Some of them were actors as
well as poets, and used the machinery of the stage to disseminate their
lewd compositions. Though it was still unusual, or even unlawful, for
women to appear on the stage in their time, the boys who played female
parts were well drilled to the business, and the performances which
delighted the towns and villages of France fell but little short, in point
of grossness, of the theatrical enormities of the imperial era at Rome.

One may form some idea of the popularity of erotic literature at this
period in France from the amazing vocabulary of erotic terms which is
gathered from the works of Rabelais, Beroald de Verville, Regnier,
Brantome, and their contemporaries. There was not a form of lewdness for
which an appropriate name had not been invented; and as to the ordinary
acts and instruments of prostitution, a dictionary of synonyms might have
been compiled without embracing all of them. Monsieur Dufour, in his
conscientious work, fills a couple of pages with the mere words that were
employed to express the act of fornication.

Many events likewise indicate a loose state of morals. The history of the
_incubes_ and _succubes_, filling some space in every treatise on
demonology, is a most curious feature of the morals of the day. The
existence of demons who made a practice of assailing the virtue of girls
and boys was admitted by some of the fathers of the Church,[177] who
quoted the words of Genesis in support of the singular doctrine. They were
of two kinds: _incubi_, from the Latin _incubare_, male demons who
assailed the chastity of girls; and _succubæ_, female demons who robbed
boys of their innocence. The old chronicles are full of accounts of the
mischievous deeds of these evil spirits. As might be expected, the
_incubi_ were more numerous and more enterprising than the _succubæ_. For
one boy who confessed that a female demon had attacked him in his sleep,
and compelled him to minister to her sensuality, there were a score of
girls who furnished very tolerable evidence of having yielded their
virginity to creatures of the male gender, who, they were satisfied, could
be none other than devils. The ecclesiastical writers of the period have
preserved a number of scandalous stories of the kind, which were so well
credited that Pope Innocent VIII. felt impelled to issue a bull on the
subject, and provide the faithful with an efficacious formula of exorcism.

Females, most of whom appeared to be nuns, confessed that they had been
subject to the scandalous visits of the demons for long periods of time,
and that neither fasting, nor prayer, nor spiritual exercise could
release them from the hated plague. Some girls were brought to admit a
similar intercourse, and were burnt at the stake as partakers of the
nature of sorceresses.[178] Married women made similar confessions. They
stated that they were able to affirm that intercourse with demons was
extremely painful; that their frigid nature, combined with their monstrous
proportions, rendered their society a severe affliction, independently of
the sin. It was noticed that the women, married or single, who applied to
the ecclesiastical authorities for relief from this curious form of
torment were almost invariably young and pretty.

In the year 1637 a public discussion took place at Paris on the question,
Whether there exist _succubæ_ and _incubi_, and whether they can procreate
their species? The discussion was long and elaborate. It was conducted by
a body of learned doctors, in presence of a large audience, composed
partly of ladies; and while the judgment of the tribunal appeared to be in
the negative, it was not so emphatic as to settle the question.[179] Even
a century later, when one of the royal physicians undertook to explode the
theory of lewd demons, and to prove that girls had endeavored to conceal
their intercourse with lovers by attributing to them a devilish character,
the public was not convinced, and the _incubi_ were not left without
believers. The laws still pronounced the penalty of death against all
persons, male or female, who had commerce with demons.

Another practice which was brought to a close about the same time was
entitled "_Le sabat des sorciers_," the witches' vigil. It appears that,
at the earliest times of which we have any record, the inhabitants of
France and Germany were in the habit of frequenting nocturnal assemblies
in which witchcraft was believed or pretended to occupy a prominent place.
In the thirteenth century they were denounced by Pope Gregory IX.,[180]
who was satisfied that the devil had to do with them, and that their prime
object was the gratification of sensuality. His bull did not attain its
object. The witches' meetings were still held, or believed to have been
held throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and part of the sixteenth
centuries. The popular belief was that the persons in league with witches
anointed their bodies with magical ointment, bestrode a broom, and were
forthwith carried through the air to the place of meeting; that Satan was
present at the ceremony in the form of a huge he-goat, and received the
homage of the witches and their proselytes; that songs and dances followed
next in order, and that the whole performance was closed with a scene of
promiscuous debauchery.[181] The Inquisition took the matter in hand, and
obtained affidavits from several females averring that they had had
commerce with demons on these occasions, and relating with singular
crudity the peculiar sensations they experienced.[182] On the strength of
this evidence prosecutions were instituted, and many persons were
condemned and executed.

It has been usual in modern times to regard the persecution of the witches
as a proof of the barbarous intolerance of the ancient Church; but, in
truth, a careful examination of the evidence leaves no room for doubting
that witchcraft was only the cloak of real vices. Most of the persons who
were burned in France as sorcerers had really used the popular belief in
magic to hide their own debaucheries, and had succeeded in depraving large
numbers of youth of both sexes. It was stated by a theological writer of
the time of Francis I., that in his day there were one hundred thousand
persons sold to Satan in France.[183] Allowing for some exaggeration, it
must still be inferred from this statement that this form of prostitution
had assumed alarming proportions. Nor is there any good reason for
doubting but priests and other persons of lewd propensities turned the
simplicity of the village girls to account in very many instances, and
richly earned the severe penalty that was inflicted upon them by the arm
of the Church. The vigil, or _sabat_, disappears from history during the
sixteenth century. That it had been for some time before its extinction a
haunt of debauchees and a fertile source of prostitution, the writers on
demonology and the old chroniclers establish incontrovertibly.

Other aids to prostitution were obtained from the very ranks of the
Church. During the Middle Ages numbers of strange sects appeared, many of
which relied for success on the favor they allowed to sensuality. At the
present day it is not easy to determine what proportion of the stories
that are in print respecting many of these sects were the fruit of
sectarian jealousy on the part of their rivals; some of them were
doubtless calumniated, but there are others about whose character and
practices there is no room for controversy. The Flagellants, for instance,
who counted eight hundred thousand proselytes in France in the fourteenth
century, were unquestionably depraved. They marched in procession, men and
women together, through the cities of France, each member of the society
using the whip freely on the bare back of the person before him; and at
night they assembled in country places, and proceeded to more serious
flagellations. The opinion of learned persons ascribed erotic effects to
these flagellations, it being said, apparently with truth, that when the
flagellants had excited their senses by their discipline, they gave way to
frantic debauchery. However this be, it is plain that the spectacle of
naked men and women marching in procession and scourging one another can
not but have been provocative of prostitution.[184]

Another similar sect was the Adamites, who argued that nudity was the law
of nature, and that clothes were an abomination in the sight of God. It is
said that, at first, the Adamites insisted on nudity only during their
religious exercises, and that their proselytes stripped themselves within
the place of worship; but one, Picard, who became a leading authority in
the sect, took the ground that their principles should be carried out
boldly in the face of the world. He and his followers, male and female,
accordingly appeared in the streets in the costume in which they were
born. The Inquisition very properly laid hands on them, punished some, and
exiled the others.[185]

Again: if we pass from individual accidents to the state of society at
large, we shall find many features that can not have been aids to virtue.
Allusion has already been made to the obscene character of much of the
early poetry of France, and to the excessive grossness of those works
especially which obtained, and perhaps deserved, the widest popularity.
Many of the customs of the day were equally adverse to sound morals. To
cite one by way of example: On the _Jour des Innocents_, which fell on the
28th of December, men were allowed to invade the bed-chambers of girls,
and, if they could find them in bed, to administer the chastisement which
used to be common in schools. Hence arose the proverbial expression,
_Donner les innocents à quelqu'un_, which meant to birch a person on the
bare skin. No doubt the old chroniclers were justified in saying that when
the girl was worth the trouble, the invader of the chamber was not
satisfied with inflicting a chastisement.[186]

Marriages were attended with ceremonies far grosser than any that were
practiced in Rome. It was not only decorous, it was fashionable, both for
men and women, to spy out the bed-chamber of the newly-wedded couple, and
the fortunate man or girl who had contrived to see the interior of the
room through a chink in the wall or a hole in the door was loudly
applauded when the result of his or her discoveries was made known.[187]
The invention of bridal chambers is therefore not original in America, as
some have supposed.

Strange to say, neither the lewdness of the poets nor the grossness of the
social habits of the times strikes one as more singular than the tone of
the sermons which were delivered in Paris at the same period. One of the
most famous preachers of the day was Maillard, who rose to eminence under
Louis XI. His sermons on the luxury and corruptions of the times were very
popular. We find him cursing the "burgesses" who, for the sake of gain,
let their houses to prostitutes: "_Vultis vivere de posterioribus
meretricum_," he cries, indignantly. He denounces with extraordinary
virulence the "crimes of impudicity which are committed in churches," and
which "the pillars and nave would denounce, if they had eyes and a voice."
He did not spare his congregation. Turning fiercely to the women who sat
before him, he apostrophized them: "Dicatis, vos, mulieres, posuistis,
posuistis filias ad peccandum? vos, mulieres, per vestros traitus impudiæ,
provocastis alios ad peccandum? Et vos, maquerellæ, quid dicitis?" He
thunders against this latter class, the procuresses, who ought, he says,
to be burned at the stake, especially when, as is often the case, they are
both the mothers and the venders of their daughters. Words fail him to
denounce the intercourse of abandoned women with ecclesiastics; he invokes
the divine wrath upon those of his congregation _quæ dant corpus
curialibus, monachis, presbyteris_. Both he and other famous preachers of
the day pronounced maledictions upon lewd convents, which some of them say
are mere seraglios for the bishops and monks, where every abomination is
practiced.

It was estimated that at this time, say the fifteenth century, when Paris
was comparatively a small city, it contained five to six thousand
prostitutes, who were said by an Italian to be far more beautiful and
attractive than any prostitutes he had seen elsewhere.

CHAPTER VII.

FRANCE.--HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO LOUIS XIII.

The Court.--Louis IX. to Charles V.--Charles VI.--Agnes Sorel.--Louis
XI.--Charles VIII.--Louis XII.--Francis I.--La Belle Feronniere.--
Henry II.--Diana de Poictiers.--Lewd Books and Pictures.--Catharine of
Medicis.--Margaret.--Henry IV.--Mademoiselle de Entragues.--Henry
III.--Mignons.--Influence of the Ligue.--Indecency of Dress.--
Theatricals.--Ordinance of 1560.--Police Regulations.

The memoranda we have already given will enable the reader to form an idea
of the state of society at large. It remains to say something of the
court, which, in some respects, was France.

From Louis IX. to Charles V. inclusive, it is said that the kings of
France set no example of debauchery, and that the court rather encouraged
virtue than vice. When the sisters-in-law of Philip the Handsome
scandalized Paris by their loose life in the Tour de Nesle, into which
they were said to make a practice of inveigling students, whom they
assassinated when their lubricity was satiated, the king had them brought
to punishment and dealt with as though the popular scandal was well
founded in fact. When Charles VI. ascended the throne the scene changed.
This unfortunate monarch was not only himself weak and depraved, but his
wife, Isabel of Bavaria, was more vicious still. The pair encouraged every
practice that could shock modesty or outrage decency. The queen lived
almost openly with her lover, the Duke of Orleans. The king, so long as he
retained his reason, was a leading actor in the scandalous masquerades of
the court, and narrowly escaped losing his life on one occasion when he
disguised himself as a devil, and danced immodestly before the ladies of
the court. Round his loins, as round those of his fellow-demons, a sort of
girdle of tow had been fastened, and all the masqueraders were chained
together. In the midst of their dances, some foolish person threw a
lighted torch at them. Their girdles took fire, and all were burned to
death except the king, whom the Duchess of Berri saved by courageously
raising her skirts and throwing them over the burning monarch.

Charles had had many mistresses in his youth. When he went mad, the
physicians directed the queen to refuse to discharge her conjugal duty.
Charles had enough of his former nature left to resent this privation. He
even employed force, and succeeded at last in compelling his wife to
resume her place in the royal couch. She contrived, however, to defraud
him by hiring a pretty girl to take her place. It is said Charles never
detected the fraud. His wife, meanwhile, gave the reins to her loose
passions, and was known to have had at least a score of lovers.

A very striking picture of the manners of the time is afforded by the
story of Agnes Sorel. She was, as is known, the mistress of Charles VII.,
a lady of good family, and, otherwise than as the king's mistress, of
spotless reputation. Her influence over the king she used for the best of
purposes. It was she who roused him to make the efforts which eventually
expelled the foreigner from France. Her private character was laudable:
she was amiable, generous, kind, and true; yet when she visited Paris in
company with the king, the crowd followed her whenever she appeared in the
streets, insulting her, and calling her a prostitute in the grossest
terms. The king lived with her eighteen years, but never ventured to
acknowledge her publicly as his mistress. Of the four daughters she bore
him, three only were legitimated by his successor.

Louis XI. had a seraglio and a colony of bastards before he became king,
nor did he alter his mode of life when he assumed control of the kingdom.
His favorites were usually chosen from the lowest class of his subjects,
many of whom had gone through an apprenticeship for the king's service in
the houses of prostitution of the capital. Louis never pretended to bear
them any affection; he used them as he used the men of letters who
composed for his diversion the lewd tales which have reached us.

Charles VIII. appears to have been more virtuous than his predecessors,
though, of course, he did not pique himself upon any conjugal fidelity. A
story is told which reflects credit upon his character. It is said that
during his campaign in Italy, when he retired to his chamber one evening,
he found there a young girl of marvelous beauty in a state of complete
déshabillé. She was kneeling and in tears when the king entered. On
Charles inquiring the cause of her sorrow, she confessed that her parents
had sold her to the king's valet for the use of his majesty, and conjured
Charles to spare her. The king was touched by her distress. He inquired
into the facts, and, finding that they were as she stated, and, farther,
that she was betrothed to a youth of the neighborhood, he sent for him and
married the young couple forthwith.

It appears certain that Charles's death was caused by his indiscreet
commerce with the sex. All the chroniclers state that he fell a victim to
the indulgence of his passions, being frail of body and of feeble
constitution.

The court of Louis XII. was purer than that of his predecessors, owing to
the austere virtue of the queen. Louis himself had shared the profligacies
of his family in his youth, but, on becoming king, he allowed his wife to
regulate his household according to her principles. For the first time for
many years, say the old chroniclers, prostitution was banished from court.

We shall have something to say of Francis I. in connection with syphilis,
of which he was a conspicuous and an early victim. At the age of eighteen
his mother stated that he had been punished where he sinned. The
misfortune did not operate as a warning. His life was notoriously
dissolute at a time when profligacy was so much the rule that it was
hardly likely to be noticed. Brantome asserts positively[188] that his
expedition to Italy was prompted by the desire to make acquaintance with a
courtesan of Milan whose charms Admiral Bonnivet had extolled. Previous to
his time, it seems, there had always been attached to the court a body of
prostitutes for the use of the courtiers. Francis suppressed this body,
and actually invited the ladies of the court to take their place. Brantome
reviews this policy, and while he praises it in view of the "joyous
pastimes" to which it led, he is bound to acknowledge that it produced the
greatest immorality ever known in France. The ladies of the town followed
the example of those of the court, and but little was wanting but that
every woman in France became a prostitute.

It was the custom during this reign for the king to invite all his
courtiers and their wives and daughters to lodge at the royal palaces from
time to time. The ladies had apartments by themselves, and to each room
the king had a key. We are assured that the husbands, fathers, and
brothers of ladies who refused to submit to the royal demands had but
little chance of retaining their offices. If they had been guilty of
maladministration or peculation, as was the case with most of them, they
could hope for pardon only through the complaisance of their female
relatives. The story of M. de St. Vallier, who was reprieved on the
scaffold in payment for the favors which his daughter, the beautiful Diana
of Poictiers, had granted to the king, is too well known to need
repetition here.

It was the boast of Francis that he had always respected the honor of the
ladies of the court, and the boast was just, from his point of view. His
visits to his mistresses were always made in a mysterious manner, and at
night. Even to the Duchess of Etampes, who was his acknowledged mistress
and procuress for a period of nearly twenty years, he never behaved in
public in a manner to compromise her reputation. In private he was not so
scrupulous. When this lady's husband disturbed the king one evening,
Francis drew his sword on him, and threatened to kill him instantly if he
dared to reveal what every one knew, or to punish the wife at whose
adultery he had connived for years. His idea seems to have been that words
alone constituted the sin of debauchery. On one occasion he took all the
ladies of the court to see the royal deer in the rutting season; but when
a gentleman ventured a very obvious pleasantry on the scene, he exiled him
from court for life.

His death has been frequently described. Some writers imply, by their
silence, doubts of the authenticity of the story of _La Belle
Ferronnière_; but it rests on very tolerable evidence. This lady, who was
uncommonly beautiful, was the wife of a lawyer or a merchant (the
authorities do not agree on the point). The king solicited her favors,
but, strange to say, was met with a positive refusal. On consultation with
the court lawyers, however, Francis was informed that he could, by the
exercise of his royal prerogative, enjoy the company of any woman he
pleased, and the Ferronnière was accordingly notified that the king
commanded her to yield to his desires. She confided the order to her
husband, who, on reflection, counseled her to submit. Meanwhile
Ferronnière himself used his best endeavors to catch a syphilitic disease,
which he communicated to his wife. She gave it to the king, who died of it
after much suffering.

Henry II. had the merit of fidelity, not to his wife, but to his mistress.
The latter was the famous Diana de Poictiers, whose successful
intercession with Francis I. on her father's behalf has been already
noticed. Brantome asserts that she did not emulate the constancy of her
royal lover, saying that in her youth she had "obliged many persons." He
tells a story which, if true, reflects credit on the temper of the king.
Visiting his mistress one day, he surprised her in the company of a
courtier named Brissac, who had only time to hide himself under the bed.
After spending some moments with Diana, the king asked for some
refreshments. Some boxes of confectionery were brought him, and in the
midst of his meal he took a box and threw it under the bed, saying,
"Halloo, Brissac, every body must live!" Diana lost no portion of her
lover's heart in consequence of her infidelities. This she owed in some
degree to her extraordinary beauty, which she preserved so late in life
that it was commonly reported she was in the habit of using soap made of
liquid gold. Henry was proud of his mistress, and never concealed their
liaison. He had his arms interwoven with hers on many public buildings and
pieces of plate. He used constantly to ride through the streets with the
beautiful Diana on his crupper; and he showed her so marked a preference
over his wife that judicious courtiers never made the mistake of courting
the latter.

But the orderly life of the king was not imitated by the court. According
to Brantome and Sauval, the excesses of the age of Francis were aggravated
under Henry. It was rare, says the former, that ladies presented their
virginity to their husbands; and husbands who objected to the intimacy of
their wives with "kings, princes, noblemen, and others of the court," were
eschewed from society. A woman was held to be virtuous because she begged
her lover to wait till she was married to gratify his desires; married
women who retained their love for the same _galant_ for several years were
considered models of purity. Brantome intimates distinctly that ordinary
debauchery fell short of the desires of the courtiers; incest, sodomy, and
similar enormities could alone satiate the passions of the old debauchees
of the day.

The same writer partially explains the spread of vice by saying that
within the last half century the ladies of France had acquired the arts of
Italy; nor is it doubtful that with the Medicis many of the monstrous
vices which have been peculiar to Italy ever since the age of Imperial
Rome were imported into France. We hear of all kinds of instruments of
debauchery; of lewd books and lewd pictures; of indecent sculptures and
bronzes being sold without let or hinderance in the stores of Paris. It
was the age of Aretino; and besides that famous or infamous writer, a
number of other Italians had competed for the prize of lewdness in
composition. Poets, painters, sculptors, seemed to try how far art could
be prostituted. Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Giulio Romano, Nicollo dell'
Abate, and, indeed, almost all their contemporaries, debased their genius
by the execution of indecent works. Many of these found their way to
Paris. When Pope Clement VII. undertook to prosecute the authors of
indecent works, whether in letters or art, most of the compositions that
were endangered by his bull were transported to France. Brantome alludes
to many of them as being quite common in his time. He describes, for
instance, a silver goblet on which the most indecent scenes were graven,
and which a nobleman of the court always obliged the ladies who visited
him to use at table. Other noblemen had their rooms painted in fresco in
similar taste. It is stated that Anne of Austria caused three hundred
thousand écus worth of frescoes of this kind to be removed from the
ceilings of the palace at Fontainebleau.[189] But in the reign of Henry
II. it does not appear that any one was ever prosecuted for dealing in
this kind of merchandise.

During the three following reigns, it was Catharine of Medicis who gave
the tone to the court, and really ruled the kingdom. All historians concur
in stating that she used prostitution as the mainspring of her policy. She
had a court of sometimes two to three hundred ladies of honor, whom she
employed to worm out the secrets of the politicians of the day. They were
known as the Queen's Flying Squadron, and it appears they performed their
duties successfully; of course, at the cost of whatever virtue or decency
the court still retained. Brantome is still our authority for asserting
that they introduced a new feature of debauchery; they took the initiative
in affairs of this kind, and instead of yielding to the entreaties of
lovers, it was they who pressed their lovers to meet them half way. He
likewise informs us that they aided the establishment in France of other
vices which had hitherto been peculiar to Southern and Eastern climates,
by the revival of practices which had been common among the _hetairæ_ of
Athens.

It has been asserted that Catharine willfully tutored her children in
habits of debauchery, in order to divert their minds from politics, and
retain control over the kingdom, but this scandal does not appear to rest
on authentic evidence. It is unquestionable, however, that Charles IX.,
the author of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, lived in incestuous
intercourse with his sister Margaret, and there seems no reason to doubt
the truth of the story that Catharine more than once entertained the king
and court at a banquet at which nude females served as waiters.

Perhaps the best idea of the morals of the time can be obtained from the
adventures of the Margaret just mentioned, who married Henry IV., King of
Navarre, and afterward King of France. It is said that at the age of
eleven she had two lovers, both of whom claimed to have robbed her of her
virtue. Marrying the King of Navarre, she found means to leave her husband
and reside at Paris, whose air suited her better than the country. Here
her debaucheries were a common theme of scandal, her lovers being counted
by the score. Happening at last to give birth to a child which
mysteriously disappeared, her brother Henry III. sent her to her husband
in a quasi-disgrace. Henry of Navarre refused to cohabit with her. The
king vainly endeavored to reconcile the couple. With more zeal than tact,
he used as an argument with his cousin that the mother of the King of
Navarre had not herself led an irreproachable life. At this Henry burst
into a laugh, and remarked to the envoy that the king was very
complimentary in his letters, his majesty having in the first described
the vices of the wife, and in the second alluded to the frailties of the
mother.

He persisted in refusing to receive Margaret, and she took refuge in the
little town of Agen, but no sooner began to lead her usual life there than
the people rose and expelled her. She found a second refuge in the
fortress of Usson, and there she lived twenty years in a sort of prison
which she converted into a brothel. She was debarred from the society of
men of fashion and courtiers, but for her purposes, servants, secretaries,
musicians, and even the peasants of the neighborhood answered as well, and
of these there was no lack. Returning to Paris in her old age, she did not
alter her course of life. She became outwardly devout, and established a
nunnery and monastery near her hotel; the latter, the people said, in
order to have monks always at hand; but the list of her lovers remained
undiminished to the very verge of her death.[190]

Nor did her husband present any striking contrast to his wife, though he
reflected so severely upon her in the work published under the title _Le
divorce Satirique_. Bayle remarks that, had he not expended so large a
portion of his energy in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, he would have
been one of the greatest heroes of history.[191] He was profuse and
indiscriminate in his attachments; duchess or farmer's daughter, it was
all the same to him. He changed his mistress once a month at least. As an
exception to this rule, his affection for Gabrielle d'Estrées, a very
lovely creature, whom he shared with the Marquis of Bellegarde, and who
bore him, or them, three children, lasted several years. He was not
faithful to her, and made no secret of his infidelities, but he loved her
passionately. On one occasion he left his army in the midst of a campaign,
disguised himself as a peasant, and traveled through the enemy's country
to meet her. He once went to see her, but was stopped at the door with the
announcement that Bellegarde was with her. His first impulse was one of
rage. Drawing his sword, he rushed toward the door, but stopped half way,
and saying, "No, it would make her angry," he returned home. Gabrielle was
a very beautiful and charming person. She was in the habit of having
herself painted in a state of perfect nudity, with her children playing
around her.

When she died, Henry proposed to replace her by Mademoiselle D'Entragues,
whose beauty had made some sensation at court. Negotiations were opened
with the lady, who dutifully placed the matter in the hands of her family,
and father, mother, and brothers began to treat with the king for the
prostitution of their daughter and sister. They asked a hundred thousand
crowns. The king thought the sum large, and offered fifty thousand, but
the family refusing to give way, he acceded to their demands. They then
added that they would like to have a promise of marriage, conditioned upon
the lady's bearing a male child within a year. To this likewise Henry
agreed, in spite of Sully's remonstrances; and Mdlle. D'Entragues became
the acknowledged mistress of the king. It need not be added that the
promise of marriage was never fulfilled.

Some time afterward Henry fell in love with a young lady who was betrothed
to Marshal Bassompierre. As ardent as ever, he sent for the marshal,
explained his feelings, and ordered Bassompierre to renounce his claims.
The marshal obeyed, and Henry married the lady (who was a Montmorency) to
the Prince of Condé. The marriage was hardly over before the king opened
negotiations with the bride. It will be scarcely credited that the
emissary he employed was the mother of the Prince of Condé, who left no
means untried to effect the dishonor of her son. The prince, of less
complacent temper than most other courtiers, refused to allow his wife to
become the king's mistress. He removed her from France, and, just as Henry
was about to send after her, the assassin Ravaillac freed Condé from the
danger.

The disorders of Henry III., the predecessor of the King of Navarre, are
shamefully notorious. There was a time during his reign when, for the same
reason which induced the establishment of _Dicteria_ at Athens,
prostitution almost seemed a desirable institution at Paris. In his youth
he had been a famous seducer of the ladies of honor. An anecdote of his
life at this period not only reveals the tone of the court, but happily
shows that depravity was not so universal as might be imagined. When Henry
was chosen King of Poland, he was anxious to settle his mistress, Mdlle.
de Chateauneuf, by finding her a husband. He applied to a courtier, the
Provost of Paris, M. de Nantonillet, but received the scathing reply that
"M. de Nantonillet would not marry a prostitute till the king had
established brothels in the Louvre."

It is best, perhaps, to throw a veil over the later stories of Henry III.,
his _mignons_, and the frightful infamies that were practiced in Paris in
his time. They may be divined from the fact that Brantome mentions some
orgies in which the king and a party of friends, male and female, stripped
themselves naked, and tried to place themselves on a level with the brute
creation, as rather redeeming instances of his sensuality.

We shall take occasion hereafter to follow the history of the court from
Louis XIII. to modern times. Meanwhile, some features of society bearing
on prostitution in the age we have sketched must be briefly noted.

It is asserted by all the chroniclers that the influence of the League
(_Ligue_) was most pernicious. A sort of religious enthusiasm seems to
have been kindled by the sectarian strife of the period, and practices
which purported to be religious, but were only immoral, were encouraged by
the highest authorities. Religious fanaticism ruled throughout France. Men
and women walked naked in processions which were led by the curates. As
was natural at an age of civil war, violence was freely used toward
females by both of the contending armies. At every city that was taken,
either by the Leaguers or the Huguenots, all the women, married and
single, were violated by the soldiery; such, at least, is the statement of
a contemporary historian. Moreover, in the general confusion, no proper
police was enforced either at Paris or elsewhere, and the windows of
print-shops teemed with lewd pictures, which no one, says the historian,
thought of having seized. It was, in fact, a period of anarchy. The _Moyen
de parvenir_, by Beroalde de Venille, which has reached us, affords some
criterion of the popular literature of the day. Aretino, text and plates,
was much in vogue; and Sanchez and Benedicti left their lay rivals far
behind in the composition of works which may contend for the palm of
lewdness with Martial or Petronius.[192]

Throughout the Middle Ages, and, indeed, up to the middle of the
seventeenth century, great complaint was made by the clergy of the
indecency of the dress of the people of France. About the thirteenth
century it became fashionable to adorn the toe of the shoe or boot with an
ornament in metal; either a lion's claw, or an eagle's beak, or something
of that kind. Some immodest person ventured to substitute a sexual image
in bronze for the usual appendage, and the fashion soon became general.
Women even adopted it, and all the best society of Paris soon exhibited
the indecency on their feet. The king forbade their use by royal
edicts,[193] and a special bull was fulminated against them by Pope Urban
V.,[194] but the monstrous shoes held their ground against both, and were
only disused when fashion set in a different direction. The _Braguette_
was another enormity of the same character. Originally, it is said, the
working-classes invented the idea of a small bag hanging between the knees
in which a knife or other utensil could be carried. The fashion was
adopted about the beginning of the fifteenth century by men of rank, and
became immediately of an immodest nature. All the arts of fashion were
called into requisition to give the _braguettes_ the most novel and
remarkable appearance, and every possible means was used to render them at
once disgustingly indecent and extravagantly rich. They were attached to
the dress with gay-colored ribbons, and, when the wearer was a rich man,
were adorned with jewels and lace. At the time Montaigne wrote,
_braguettes_ had almost gone out of vogue: they were worn only by old men,
who, in the language of the essayist, "make public parade of what can not
decently be mentioned." Women, on their side, invented hoops, bustles, and
low-necked dresses. The libraries contain a large collection of works
written by moralists and preachers of the time against these "indecent
abuses" of the ladies. As they are all in use at the present time, we may
perhaps conclude that the old French moralists were unnecessarily alarmed;
but it is likely that the form of the bustle was by no means as modest as
that of modern crinoline skirts, and that the fashion of ladies' drawers
had not yet come in. Such, at least, is the inference from some of the
criticisms they provoked. The exposure of the breasts was checked for a
time under Louis XIV., but the reform was evanescent, and the custom
against which churchmen thundered in the sixteenth century survives
to-day.

Some allusion has already been made to the theatre. Theatricals were
forbidden by the early French kings, at the instigation of the Church, but
the prohibition was evaded by the performance of scenes from the Gospel
dramatized. From the remains of these Moralities it would appear that they
were always coarse and often immoral. The devil always played a prominent
part, and would have been inconsistent had he not outraged decency. Under
Henry III. women began to appear on the stage, and farces very broad in
ideas and language began to be played instead of the old Moralities. We
are led to believe that nothing was too scandalous to be represented on
the stage; in fact, the idea seems to have been to crowd as much
sensuality and vice into the farces as possible. Scarcely any incident of
life was too indecent to be either portrayed or described, and if the
latter, the description was given in the most undisguised language. It is
altogether impossible to transcribe scenes of this nature. Enough to say
that women were made to go through the pains of childbirth on the stage;
husband and wife went to bed in presence of the public; and when modesty
prompted the retirement of actors for causes still more indecent, a
colleague rarely failed to explain why they had retired and what they were
doing behind the curtain. Many of La Fontaine's most _grivois_ stories
were taken from farces which were once acted with copious pantomime before
the ladies of Paris. Even as late as the reign of Henry IV., plays of this
character were commonly acted at Paris at the Hotel de Bourgogne. It was
usual for the star actor to speak a prologue or an interlude, which was
invariably recommended by its indecency. We have some of the titles of
these prologues, and they were generally of the same character as the one
on the question, _Uter vir an mulier se magis delectet in copulatione_.

Of the number of regular prostitutes exercising their calling in France
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no correct estimate can be
made. It was undoubtedly large. During the religious wars, a writer on the
side of Protestantism undertook to draw up a statement of the number of
prostitutes and lewd women whose vices were chargeable to the clergy. His
estimate is, of course, open to suspicion, as being a sectarian
performance; but, allowing for great exaggeration, it will still appear
alarming. He calculates that there were at that time one million of women,
more or less, who led habitually lewd lives, and ministered to the
passions of the clergy. These were independent of the married women who
were led into adultery, and of the pimps and procuresses who were in
clerical pay.[195]

To return to the laws regulating prostitution, it appears that a serious
effort was made to put it down under the sovereignty of Catharine of
Medicis. An ordinance of Charles IX., dated 1560, prohibited the opening
or keeping of any brothel or house of reception for prostitutes in Paris.
For a short period it seems that the practice was actually suppressed, and
the consequence is said to have been a large increase of secret
debauchery. A few years after the passage of the ordinance, a Huguenot
clergyman named Cayet proposed to re-establish public brothels in the
interest of the public morals, but the authorities of his Church assailed
him so vehemently that his scheme fell to the ground without having had
the benefit of a public discussion, and he was himself driven to join the
Romanists. In 1588 an ordinance of Henry III. reaffirmed the ordinance of
1560, and alleged that the magistrates of the city had connived at the
establishment of brothels. Ordinances of the provost followed in the same
strain, and all prostitutes were required to leave Paris within
twenty-four hours. An ordinance dated 1635 was still more rigorous. It
condemned all men concerned in the "traffic of prostitution" to the
galleys for life, and all women and girls to be "whipped, shaved, and
banished for life, without any formal trial." As might be imagined, this
ordinance was alternately disregarded and made to serve the purposes of
private malice. Men who wished to revenge themselves on their mistresses
accused them of being prostitutes; but _it does not appear that the actual
supply was ever seriously diminished_.

CHAPTER VIII.

FRANCE.--HISTORY FROM LOUIS XIII. TO THE PRESENT DAY.

Exile of Prostitutes.--Measures of Louis XIV.--Laws of 1684 and
1713.--Police Regulations.--Ordinance of 1778.--Republican
Legislation.--Frightful state of Paris.--Efforts to pass a general
Law.--The Court.--Louis XIII.--The Medicis.--Louis XIV.--La
Vallière.--Montespan.--Maintenon.--Literature of the Day.--Feudal
Rights.--The Regency.--Duchess of Berri.--Claudine du Tencin.--Louis
XV.--Madame de Pompadour.--Dubarry.--Pare aux Cerfs.--Louis
XVI.--Philippe Egalité.--Subsequent Sovereigns.--Literature.--Lewd
Novels and Pictures.--Tendency of Philosophy.--The Church.

We have thus sketched the history of prostitution in France from the
commencement of the French nation to the reign of Louis XIII. This chapter
will complete the subject to the present day.

The ordinance of 1560, prohibiting prostitution in any shape, and granting
twenty-four hours only to prostitutes and their accomplices to evacuate
Paris, remained in force till late in the eighteenth century. Though, so
far as the general traffic went, it was a dead letter, it enabled the
police authorities to imprison or exile unruly prostitutes from time to
time, and was the basis of the high-handed measure by which the colonists
of Canada were first supplied with wives direct from the Paris stews. It
also enabled noblemen and officials connected with government to avenge
themselves upon unfaithful mistresses, and to exercise a convenient sort
of tyranny over the pretty _ling_ères and sewing-girls of the metropolis.

In 1684 Louis XIV. made some alteration in the laws governing
prostitution. He provided prisons for the detention of prostitutes, and
armed the lieutenant of police with authority to correct them; and he drew
a broad line of distinction between dissolute women who were not actually
upon the town and the class of prostitutes proper.

A farther police regulation on the subject was made in 1713. By that
measure a sort of regularity was introduced into the procedure against
courtesans and lewd women. They were definitely divided into two classes:
women who led dissolute lives without being precisely prostitutes, and
prostitutes proper. The police were authorized to interfere against both
on complaint of any person who charged them with outraging public
decency. In the case of prostitutes the proceeding was summary. The
culprit was summoned, condemned on slight evidence, and sentenced either
to exile, imprisonment, or, more rarely, to a whipping or the loss of her
hair. With regard to dissolute women who were not regular prostitutes, the
authorities proceeded more cautiously. They were entitled to all the
privileges of other accused persons, sentences rendered against them being
subject to appeal; and, when found guilty, the penalty inflicted was
usually a fine. Occasionally, the houses where they had carried on their
calling were closed, the furniture was thrown out of the window, and a
crier proclaimed their disgrace throughout the city.

Monsieur Parent-Duchatelet, who had the patience to read all the records
of proceedings against prostitutes in the city of Paris from 1724 to 1788,
_infers_ the law from these instances of its application, and concludes:
(1.) That, notwithstanding the ordinance of 1560, brothels were licensed
by the police. (2.) That prostitutes were never troubled except on
complaint of a responsible person. (3.) That brothels were disorderly;
that riots, rows, and murders not unfrequently occurred within their walls
or in their neighborhood. (4.) That the punishment was left to the
discretion of the magistrate. (5.) That the penalties inflicted were
lighter toward the close of the period examined. (6.) That certain streets
in Paris were wholly occupied by prostitutes.[196]

Probably with a view to enlarge the discretion of the magistrates, a new
ordinance was passed in 1778, renewing, in peremptory language, the
prohibitive provisions of the enactment of 1560. This ordinance, which
bears the name, and probably emanated from the office of Lenoir, the
police magistrate, declares that no public woman shall hereafter try to
catch (_raccrocher_) men on the wharves or boulevards, or in the streets
or squares of Paris, under penalty of being shaved, whipped, and
imprisoned; that no householder shall let his house, or any part thereof,
to prostitutes, under penalty of five hundred francs fine, and that
boarding-house keepers shall allow no men and women to sleep together
without seeing their marriage contract.

The most curious feature in connection with this ordinance was the fact
that it was not intended or held to interfere with established brothels,
which the government continued to license as before. It was intended to
affect private prostitutes only. We may judge of its success from the
general statement that, soon after its passage, the streets and squares
were thronged with prostitutes. No woman or modest person could walk the
garden of the Tuileries at night. Lewd women showed themselves at their
windows in a state of nudity, and shocked public decency still more
glaringly by their postures in the streets. It was, in fact, so complete a
failure, that two years after its establishment it was practically
repealed by a new police regulation.

In 1791, the whole body of the legislation of the monarchy was abolished,
and in its stead the republican Legislature enacted a code which was the
only law in force in France. That code making no reference to
prostitution, it was inferred by lawyers that women had a natural right to
prostitute their bodies if they chose, and accordingly the traffic became
open and free. The consequence of this was a tremendous development of the
vice. Prostitutes established themselves in every street, and monopolized
every public place. Paris became scarcely habitable for modest women. An
outcry against this monstrous state of things reached the Executive
Directory in 1796, and that body sent a message to the Council of Five
Hundred, begging them to legislate on the subject. The message was clear
and able, calling upon the council to define "prostitute," and suggesting
that "reiterated offenses legally proved, public notoriety, or arrest in
the act," appeared to constitute proof of prostitution. It seemed to call
for penalties, in the shape of imprisonment, on women exercising this
calling. But neither this suggestion, nor a subsequent project of the same
character was ever carried into effect. Napoleon swept the Palais Royal of
the prostitutes who had made it their head-quarters, and broke up some of
the greatest brothels by harassing their inmates in various ways, but he
made no law on the subject.

In 1811, M. Pasquier, Prefect of Police, drafted a bill for the regulation
of prostitutes, but it never went into effect, and the imperial ordinance
drawn by the prefect has been lost. Five years later, M. Anglis, Prefect
of Police under Louis XVIII., attempted the same thing with no better
success, the law officers of the crown seeming to have supposed that the
general provisions of the articles of the code on public decency and
"outrages upon public morality" covered the particular case of
prostitution. The last efforts that were made in France to obtain a law
for the regulation of prostitution were in 1819 and 1822, when the
ministry seriously thought of settling the whole matter by a royal
declaration. These endeavors had the same fate as the former ones,
leading to no result.

A general impression has prevailed of late years that the moral sense of
the public would be shocked by any legislative act licensing so great a
sin as prostitution; and as the government has assumed, without
constitutional warrant, the control and regulation of prostitutes, and has
exercised as full authority as it could have done had there been a law on
the subject, the deficiency has hardly been felt. A conscientious official
has occasionally experienced qualms of conscience at acting without legal
warrant; the government has sometimes been frightened by a menace of
resistance from some bold lawyer, but no trouble has ever actually arisen,
and custom now gives to the police regulations the force of law.

We shall review these regulations in another place; meanwhile a glance
must be cast upon the progress of morality in France during the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

The gallantry which distinguished the court of Henry IV. became more
refined, though not less criminal, under Louis XIII. Adultery and
seduction were every-day matters in the circles which educated Mary, Queen
of Scots, and developed the wit of the author of Grammont's Memoirs. Every
lady was presumed to have a lover; every man of fashion more than one
mistress. Richelieu boasted that no lady could reject him when he chose to
throw the handkerchief, and Mazarin was accused of intrigues with the
queen herself. Louis did not blush to visit his mistresses at the head of
his guards, and in all the pomp of royalty; and, as an instance of their
influence over him, it has been stated that it was at the request of
Mademoiselle de la Fayette that he consented to visit his wife nine months
before the birth of Louis XIV.

A race of women had sprung up, under the teaching of the Medicis, who
combined political skill with licentious propensities, and conducted state
and amorous intrigues with equal ardor and success. The ladies who
surrounded Anne of Austria and Mary of Medicis, and that brilliant circle
which has been described in the Memoirs of Madame de Longueville and
Madame de Sablé, were undoubtedly as dissipated as they were refined;
their virtues were in inverse proportion to their wit. Paris no longer
witnessed the Louvre converted into a royal preserve, or detestable
debauchees haunting its dark passages; but there reigned throughout the
court an air of polished sensuality, which, in point of fact, must have
been at least equally prejudicial to good morals.

Louis XIV. imbibed the spirit of the age during his minority. Royal
mistresses had become a recognized institution, fathers and husbands
rather courting than dreading dishonor at the hands of the king. After
having dispensed his favors with some impartiality among the ladies of the
court, he discovered, apparently to his surprise, that one of them, a
charming girl, named Louise de la Vallière, really loved him. The only
person who showed much annoyance at the warmth with which the king entered
upon this new liaison was the Duchess of Orleans, Henrietta of England,
the king's sister-in-law, who seems to have expected that she would be the
fortunate recipient of whatever crumbs might fall from the royal table.
She was unable, however, to divert Louis from his purpose; La Vallière
became his mistress, and bore him two children. When he grew tired of her,
as he did soon after the birth of her second child, she retired into a
convent, and expiated her fault by thirty years' austere penitence.

The king then turned his attention to a lady of noble rank, the wife of
the Marquis of Montespan, and in a business manner exiled the marquis to
his estate, and lived with his wife. A woman otherwise virtuous, proud,
and queenly, she lived with the king for fourteen years, and bore him
eight children. These children were openly legitimated by Louis, and were
married by him to members of the royal family. He even contemplated
securing the throne to them, though they were thus doubly adulterine.

The last mistress of Louis XIV. was the famous Madame de Maintenon, the
widow of the poet Scarron; a person of remarkable abilities, and old
enough to have recovered from the passions which were said to have
disturbed her youth. She was introduced to the king as the governess of
his illegitimate children, and by her arts contrived not only to wean the
king's heart from his mistress, but even to alienate the children from
their mother. For thirty-five years she wielded supreme control over
Louis's mind; and whatever may be said of her early life, and however
harsh a judgment must be formed of her political measures, it must be
allowed that, in general, her influence was exercised for the good of
religion and morality. Under her direction the court became positively
devout. Intrigues were concealed, not ostentatiously paraded before the
public eye; and the ladies by whom she was surrounded were obliged to lead
at least outwardly decorous lives. She might not be able to check the
monstrous practices of the Duke of Orleans; but much of the looseness of
the court she could, and really did bring to an end. Her royal lover, who
at first piqued himself upon rising as far above obligations of fidelity
to his mistresses as he considered himself superior to political
obligations to his people, resigned himself to the spiritual direction of
the marquise, and allowed old age to assert its rights in condemning him
to virtue. All things considered, the last twenty years of Louis XIV.'s
reign was perhaps the most moral in the whole history of the monarchy.

This is well illustrated in the history of the literature of the day. The
leading philosophers, writers, and poets of the age of Louis XIV. forbore
to shock decency, and may be read to-day as safely as any modern work.
Preachers--Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue--exercised a potent influence
over the tone of letters and society. Corneille, Racine, and their
contemporaries provided the stage with a repertory that could never bring
a blush to the cheek. Even Molière, who did occasionally let slip a joke
of questionable propriety, for the pit's sake, seems a daring innovator
when he is contrasted with his predecessors. Decency is, in fact, one of
the most striking characteristics of the literature of the age.

We may also date from the reign of Louis XIV. the final extinction of many
of the old feudal rights which were at war with morality. Horrible as it
may seem, there were parts of France where the custom allowed the seigneur
to debauch the daughter of his vassal without obstacle or penalty. In some
provinces it is said to have been customary for the seigneur to enjoy the
first night of every girl married within his manor. In others, the
peculiar authority of the seigneur over the serfs who were attached to the
glebe was held to endow him with the right of using the bodies of their
wives and daughters as he saw fit. No written custom justified these
monstrous privileges, but frequent allusions to them in the old French
writers show that in certain parts they were sanctioned by usage. Louis
XIV. made it his especial business to break down the privileges of the
nobility, and it was no doubt to the general police regulations he made
for the government of the kingdom at large that the extinction of these
rights was mainly due.

With the Regency the scene changes. The Duke of Orleans had long been one
of the most depraved men in France. So long as Louis XIV. lived he had
perforce observed a certain outward decorum; but the death of the
monarch, and the duke's high-handed seizure of the regency, enabled him to
give free scope to his propensities. He resided in the Palais Royal, and
gave suppers there almost every evening to a select circle of roués and
fast women, among whom Madame de Parabère long held the place of honor.
The company not unfrequently varied the entertainment by the performance
of charades and tableaux, among which the judgment of Paris was a favorite
of the regent. The conversation of the guests was so gross as to shock all
but the initiated, and when they separated they were generally all
intoxicated.[197]

The most startling and horrible feature of these entertainments was the
fact that the regent's daughter, the Duchess of Berri, was almost always
present. Her life was a romance. Married while a child to the Due de
Berri, by her passionate temper and her levities she was the bane of her
husband's life. She embraced the infidel and licentious doctrines of the
age in company with her father, and the pair were so fond of each other
that the most horrible suspicions began to gain ground. They were
dispelled for a time by the discovery of an intrigue between the duchess
and her chamberlain, which so provoked the duke that he seized his wife by
the hair and beat her. On his death, which occurred soon afterward, she
gave the reins to her passion, and set an example of scandal. At the
Luxembourg, where she had apartments, she exhibited the state of a queen,
and lover succeeded lover with startling rapidity. At last she seems to
have fallen in love with an officer of her guards, named Riom, whose only
merit was youth. He subdued her. She became as docile and submissive to
him as she had been intractable and haughty with her former lovers, and
all Paris was talking of the transformation. After about a year of this
_liaison_, she gave birth to a child. During the pains of childbirth she
was not expected to live, and the curate of St. Sulpice was sent for in
all haste to administer the extreme unction. The ecclesiastic happened to
be a rigid champion of morality, and he refused to administer the rite
till Riom had been dismissed from the Luxembourg. The duchess would not
consent to part with her lover, and for many hours this strange conflict
went on by the bedside of the failing woman. The curate was obstinate,
however, and no sacrament was administered; but the duchess recovering,
the regent used his authority, and sent Riom to join his regiment. It
killed his daughter. She invited her father to sup with her, and used all
her eloquence to persuade him to let her marry Riom; but the regent
remaining firm, she withdrew to her chamber, took to her bed, and died two
days afterward.

In alluding to the regent's mistresses, a word should be said of the
famous Claudine du Tencin, whose adventures shed a flood of light on the
morals of the day. She was a pretty girl, of respectable, if not noble
family, living in a distant province. To escape from a marriage that was
forced on her, she took refuge in a convent. Instead, however, of suiting
her habits to her place of residence, she contrived to alter the mode of
life at the convent so as to meet her desires, and it became famous for
the gayety of its social entertainments and the liveliness of its inmates.
One of the gentlemen who were allowed to share its hospitality was the
poet Destouches. He was smitten with the pretty Claudine, who acknowledged
the charm of his accomplishments, and, after a few months' intimacy, gave
birth to a male child, who became the mathematician and philosopher
D'Alembert.

Claudine had a brother, an abbé, a man of considerable cunning, and no
principle whatever. He persuaded his sister to go to Paris and seek her
fortune. He obtained an introduction for her to the regent, and Claudine
contrived to produce such an impression that she was soon installed as
titular mistress. This did not last long, however. One day, venturing to
remonstrate with the regent on his loose mode of life, his habitual
drunkenness, etc., her lover lost patience with her, and suddenly summoned
a crowd of his courtiers from the ante-chamber to witness the déshabillé
and listen to the sermons of madame. In revenge, Claudine rushed out and
became the mistress of the prime minister, Cardinal Dubois. Her brother,
the abbé, got a bishopric for his share in the transaction.

At the death of Dubois, Madame du Tencin gave him as successor the Duke of
Richelieu, the most famous lady-killer of the court. But she was growing
old, and ambition had more attractions for her than love. She became an
authoress, wrote religious works and novels, patronized letters, and
brought out Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws. Her salons became the most
fashionable in Paris. It was not a little singular that she should have
been the head of one literary clique, and her son, D'Alembert, the chief
of another--neither positively jealous of the other, yet living on terms
of cold reserve.

Louis XV. trod in the steps of his great-grandfather and the regent. His
amours attracted no attention, being evanescent and trifling, till he
quarreled with the queen, and bestowed the title of mistress on the
Countess of Mailly. This lady had four sisters, three of whom had reached
womanhood. They were jealous of their sister's success, and solicited a
share of the royal favor. The monarch graciously granted their prayer, and
admitted all four into an associate _liaison_. He was much hurt when the
fifth, at the age of sixteen, declined an interest in this delectable
partnership. Falling ill soon afterward, he allowed his confessor to
frighten him into parting with the sisters, and when he got well replaced
them by the wife of the subfarmer of the finances, Madame le Normand
d'Etoiles. He created her Marquise de Pompadour, and compelled the court
to recognize her. Happily for him, she was a person of moderate taste and
habits. She patronized letters, was the friend of Voltaire, and seems to
have employed her influence over the king for his advantage and that of
the public. It is recorded, as an instance of the heartlessness of the
king, that when she died he stood at a window to watch her funeral pass,
and noticing that it was a rainy day, observed, with a smile, "that the
marquise had bad weather for her long journey."

Her successor was Madame Dubarry, a common prostitute, fished out of the
Paris stews in consequence of her skill in debauchery. Her real name was
Vanbernier; but, in order to present her at court, a nobleman of the name
of Dubarry was persuaded to marry her. It was under her reign that the
_Parc aux Cerfs_ (in which Madame de Pompadour was said to have had a
hand), reached its highest point of celebrity and eclat. This was a royal
seraglio filled with the most beautiful girls that could be bought or
stolen. The monstrous old debauchee who filled the throne of France had a
weakness for very young girls, fifteen being the age at which he preferred
his mistresses. Under the skillful directions of Dubarry, a host of pimps
and purveyors searched France for young girls to suit the king's fancy.
Where negotiations could not be effected, the prerogative was stretched,
and the police authorities judiciously blinded; but we are led to believe
that it was seldom necessary to resort to these violent measures, and that
French fathers of that day seldom made difficulties except about the sum
to be paid. That the king was liberal may be inferred from the sum which
this seraglio cost him--not less than one hundred millions of francs. It
was a large, handsomely furnished building at Versailles, giving every
woman her separate apartments. The king rarely visited each one more than
three or four times; but, on the occasion of his first visit, he prided
himself on observing the etiquette of a husband. He insisted on the poor
child whom he was about to ruin kneeling down by the bedside, and saying
her prayers in his presence. It need hardly be observed that the Parc aux
Cerfs was the great reservoir from whence the brothels of the time derived
their supply of recruits. After a residence of a few weeks or months, in
case they became pregnant, the poor children were thrown out upon the
world, and ruin was a necessity.

The last monarch of the old French line, the unfortunate Louis XVI., forms
a bright contrast to his predecessors. His education had been severe, his
principles were naturally strict. Placed upon the throne after the
Revolution had become inevitable, his whole attention was devoted to the
business of reigning, and attempting reforms which came quite too late.
Neither he nor his wife ever gave rise to merited scandal.

The profligate character of the court was, however, sustained by the
Orleans family and their connections. Philippe Egalité was a true
descendant of the regent. On the very eve of the Revolution he indulged in
orgies that were closely imitated from those of the Palais Royal.

Our sketch of the immoralities of the French court naturally ends here.
Though the period of the Directory was marked by a general looseness in
the best French society, and both Napoleon and Louis XVIII. set no example
of conjugal fidelity to their subjects, yet vice was not exhibited so
openly under them as it had been under former kings, and the laws of
decency were not actually set at defiance. Their frailties were private
matters, into which it is scarcely the duty of the historian to intrude.
The same may be said of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. The former had, in
his youth, been a sharer of many of the excesses of the Orleans family,
but at the time he became king he was an old man, and could afford to lead
a decent life. Louis Philippe had never afforded a theme for scandal, and
as king he set an example of rigorous morality.

If we turn back now to the period of the Regency, we shall find letters
sympathizing in the most marked manner with the court. Under the regime of
severe etiquette and decency established by Louis XIV., authors respected
the ear of innocence; under the brutal sway of the regent, and the lewd
influence of the satyr Louis XV., the old prostitution of literature was
revived. Thus we find that the most successful authors of the day, such as
Voltaire, handled themes grossly immoral in themselves, and rendered still
more offensive by their mode of treatment. The most popular novel of the
eighteenth century--Manon Lescant--the work, by the way, of an abbé, is
the narrative of the adventures of a prostitute. Of all the romance
writers of that age, no one was more widely popular or more generally read
than Crebillon _fils_, whose works would almost fall into the hands of the
police at the present time. Diderot, Mirabeau, Montesquieu, and, with few
exceptions, all the most eminent men of France, prostituted their genius
to the composition of erotic works which were widely read by women as well
as men. Of the light poetry of the eighteenth century very little is fit
for modern reading, the poets being, as a general rule, either dull or
depraved. Nor were the arts behindhand. Frescoes differing but little from
those which had adorned Fontainebleau under Francis I. again covered the
walls of rich men's houses; and the most fortunate painters of the day
were those who could best outrage decency without positively suggesting
the brothel. Lewd books and pictures were freely sold in Paris during the
Regency, the reign of Louis XV., and the Revolutionary period. Napoleon
burned all he could find, but there still remained enough to supply the
demand almost ever since.

It should be noticed in connection with the state of morals in France
during the second half of the eighteenth century, that the tendency of the
philosophical doctrines which were then current was to undermine the
respect paid to marriage and chastity. The former, being a sacrament, was
assailed as part of the ecclesiastical system; the latter was conceived to
be at war with the natural, and, therefore, the proper passions of
mankind. Several of the philosophers left it to be inferred from their
writings, or stated broadly, that promiscuous intercourse, or, at all
events, unlimited facilities of divorce, were the natural destiny of the
human race, and that the restrictions which have been imposed on sensual
gratification had no warrant in reason or sound ethics. These foolish
notions brought forth fruits after their kind. Under the Directory,
prostitutes were received into certain societies, and ladies of fashion
became prostitutes. Even under the Empire it was not unusual for a lady to
request her husband to pay her a visit, as it was well, perhaps, to avoid
questions of legitimacy arising at any future period.

There was one branch of society in which morality had made great progress
during the century: that was the Church. It still contained cardinals like
Dubois, and bishops and abbés like Du Tencin, but the vast body of the
country clergy led pure moral lives. This point is placed beyond a doubt
by the silence of the parties opposed to the hierarchy when the Revolution
broke out, and they were so disposed to assail the priesthood on every
vulnerable point. It may be broadly stated that the vices which had
infected the whole body of the clergy during the sixteenth century had
disappeared by the eighteenth; despite the law of celibacy, the country
curates were, as a rule, moral, austere, virtuous men.

CHAPTER IX.

FRANCE.--SYPHILIS.

First recorded Appearance in Europe.--Description by Fracastor.--
Conduct of the Faculty.--First Hospitals in Paris.--Shocking Condition
of the Sick.--New Syphilitic Hospital.--Plan of Treatment.--
Establishment of the Salpétrière.--Bicêtre.--Capuchins.--Hospital du
Midi.--Reforms there.--Visiting Physicians.--Dispensary.--Statistics
of Disease.--Progress and Condition of Disease.

It properly belongs to this chapter to allude to the rise and progress of
the diseases termed syphilitic.

Whether they were of ancient date--whether the "shameful diseases" which
have been mentioned in the chapter devoted to prostitution at Rome were
the same as the modern syphilis--may be decided by the reader. It will
suffice here to say that, throughout the Middle Ages, a species of
disease, termed sometimes leprosy, sometimes _pudendagra_, appears to have
prevailed in France as in other European countries, and to have chosen for
its chief seat the organs of generation. It was not, however, till the
close of the fifteenth century that public attention began to be generally
directed to the subject of sexual disease.

We shall briefly enumerate the earliest notices of its appearance. When
Charles VIII. entered Naples in 1495, he found the city suffering from a
plague (syphilis) to which the prejudice of the natives gave the name of
"French malady." Italy, said the writers of the day, was attacked
simultaneously by the French army and this new disease.[198] Most of the
Italian writers accuse the French of its introduction. Benevenis,
however, says they got it from the Spaniards, and Guicciardini candidly
admits that his countrymen were the real propagators of the malady. German
physicians likewise traced its origin to Naples, and placed it about the
year 1493,[199] ascribing it to an untoward planetary conjunction. The
disease appeared at Barcelona in 1493, and in other parts of Spain in the
following year.[200] But sixty years before, in 1430, public regulations
had been made in London to prevent the admission of persons attacked with
a disease very similar to syphilis into houses of prostitution, and
requiring the police to keep constant watch over such as should show
symptoms of this _infirmitas nefanda_.[201] The first authentic allusion
to the disease in France is the ordinance of the Parliament of Paris,
dated 1497, ordering all persons attacked by the "large pox" to vacate the
city within twenty-four hours, and not to return till they were cured;
providing a sort of hospital for those who can not move; and appointing
agents to bestow four _sols parisis_ on the exiles to pay for their
journey.[202] This ordinance alludes to the disease having been prevalent
for two years.

It may therefore be taken for granted that, whether syphilitic diseases
had existed before or not, they prevailed to a very alarming extent
throughout Europe at the close of the fifteenth century.

To prevent misconception, it may be as well to give the diagnostic signs
of the "French malady" as furnished by Fracastor: "The patients were in
low spirits, and broken down; their faces were pale. Most of them had
chancres upon the organs of generation. These chancres were obstinate;
when cured in one place they reappeared in another, and the work was never
ended. Pustules with a hard surface appeared upon the skin, generally on
the head first. On first appearing they were small, but gradually
increased to the size of an acorn, which they resembled in shape. In some
cases they were dry, in others humid; some were livid, others white and
pale, others again hard and reddish. They burst after a few days, and
discharged an incredible quantity of vile fetid humor. When they began to
suppurate they became true phagedænic ulcers, consuming both flesh and
bone. When they attacked the upper part of the body they gave rise to
malign fluxions, which gnawed away the palate, or the windpipe, or the
throat, or the tonsils. Some patients lost their lips, others the nose,
others the eyes, others the whole organs of generation. Many were troubled
with moist tumors on the limbs, which grew as large as eggs or small
loaves. When they burst, a white and mucilaginous liquor exuded from them.
They were usually found on the legs and arms. Some were ulcerated, others
again remained callous to the last. And, as if this was not enough, the
patients suffered terrible pains, especially at night, not only in the
articulations, but in the limbs and nerves. Some sufferers, however, had
pustules without pains, others pains without pustules; but, in most cases,
both occurred together. The patients were languid, had no appetite,
desired to remain constantly in bed. The face and legs swelled. Some had a
slight fever, but this was rare; others had severe headaches for which no
remedy could be found."[203]

At first, it seems, the faculty, strangely misapprehending its duties,
refused to treat patients assailed by this new plague. As at Rome, they
were left to the tender mercies of quacks, barbers, and old women. About
the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, the extent of the
mischief provoked sympathy from the physicians, and one or two treatises
appeared on the subject. Sudorifics seem to have been the chief agent
employed. Large use was made of holy wood (the wood of the
lignum-vitæ-tree), which was imported from America for the purpose. It was
doses of holy wood, in decoction, which are said to have saved the life of
the great Erasmus.

After the passage of the law of 1497, a house in the Faubourg St. Germain
was appropriated to the reception of the victims of syphilis; but there is
no reason to believe that any attempt was made to treat them there. They
were left to die, or to quack themselves. Eighteen years after, in 1505,
the house in question being too small for the numbers of the sick, and it
being clearly shown that syphilis was not contagious except by sexual
intercourse or positive peculiar contact with the person afflicted, a new
decree of Parliament appropriated funds for the construction of "a
hospital for persons attacked by the large pox (_les grands vérolés_),"
and directed that they should be properly cared for.[204] This decree was
never carried into effect. Thirty years afterward the condition of the
sick was far worse than it had ever been, they being left to die in the
streets. A new decree, in 1535, appointed commissioners to choose a
locality for a hospital; and, notwithstanding some opposition from the
religious authorities, they performed their task. A small hospital was
appropriated to syphilitic patients, and persons suffering from itch,
epilepsy, and St. Vitus's dance. It was soon filled, and several patients
were thrust into the same bed. Owing to mismanagement on the part of the
directors, it was short of linen, lint, and medicine. The Parliament
interfered, but without success; and, in despair, the unfortunate
sufferers contrived to effect an entrance into the hospital general, the
Hotel Dieu. They were soon admitted on the same terms as other sufferers;
but, as the establishment was far too small to accommodate all who sought
refuge there, they were thrust four and five together into the same bed,
and persons with syphilitic diseases lay by the side of men in contagious
fevers, and others with broken legs and arms.

The Parliament interfered a second time. The municipal officers of Paris
were assembled, and called upon to provide a hospital for venereal cases;
but for many years the strenuous opposition of the Hotel Dieu neutralized
all the efforts that were made. It was not till 1614 that the project of
the Parliament was realized, and a syphilitic hospital actually opened.

Up to this time, that is to say, for a period of a century and a quarter,
persons attacked by venereal disease were left to the care of Providence.
Males could, with some exertion, occasionally obtain admission to the
Hotel Dieu, where they often contracted new diseases without getting rid
of the old; but of females, not a word had yet been spoken. No one in that
hundred and twenty-five years had ever raised a voice to plead on behalf
of the prostitutes; it never seems to have occurred, even to the
Parliament which had so much sympathy for the _pauvres vérolés_, that the
women likewise deserved pity and attention.

We possess no information with regard to the treatment used in this new
hospital. It is certain, however, that, in obedience to the law of its
foundation, patients were soundly whipped when they entered and when they
left it, by way of punishing them for having contracted the disease. In
1675 the managers of the hospital declared that this practice deterred
many sick persons from coming forward and confessing their condition; but
it prevailed, apparently, for a quarter of a century afterward.

About the middle of the seventeenth century, under the reign of Louis
XIV., a hospital prison, named the Salpétrière, was established for the
reception of prostitutes; but, by a strange inconsistency, in 1658 it was
closed to women suffering from syphilis (_femmes gatées_), and physicians
were directed to examine all women "who showed symptoms of syphilis on the
face." A few years' experience showed the fallacy of this system. Diseased
women were confined in the place; should they not be treated there? The
physicians thought they should, and accordingly, though in violation of
the rules of the establishment, a small room was appropriated to this
class of patients. It appears that at this time a prostitute found some
difficulty in obtaining admission to the Salpétrière; it being not unusual
for unfortunate creatures to have themselves arrested for vagabondage, and
to submit voluntarily to the whipping which the ethics of the day required
in the case of females as well as males, in order to obtain medical
treatment. It will be seen that our New York system can not claim the
merit of originality. Prostitutes, in fact, flocked to the Salpétrière in
such numbers that the room furnished by the connivance of the authorities
was soon far too small to accommodate them. The hospital managers declared
to the royal government that medical treatment was out of the question in
so crowded an apartment, and that a putrid fever might be expected if
better accommodations were not provided. In reply, the government placed
at their disposal a ward in the hospital of Bicêtre.

This was in 1691. For nearly a hundred years afterward the severe cases of
venereal disease were sent to Bicêtre, the milder ones kept at
Salpétrière. Both establishments were a disgrace to humanity. The patients
were cheated of the food allowed them, and supplied with cheap broth and
cheese in its stead. No baths, and but few medicines were at their
command. Their ward was filthy, close, and in ruin. Patients were often
obliged to wait so long for medical attendance that their maladies became
incurable. The air in which they lived was pestiferous, and no one could
visit the hospital without being shocked at its aspect.[205] Medical men
who saw the place expressed amazement that so many persons should exist in
so small a room. Eight women slept in a bed, and in the room appropriated
to those whose turn for treatment had not come, the patients slept by
gangs, one half sleeping from 8 P.M. to 1 A.M., and the remainder from 1
A.M. to 7 A.M. The floor was covered with dirt and filth, and the windows
were nailed down, for fear of their being broken if opened. There was but
little linen, and that was in rags, and abominably dirty. One hundred
persons only were treated at a time, fifty men and fifty women. A new
batch was admitted to treatment every two months, and, as the hospital
always contained from three to four hundred sufferers, some cases remained
six or eight months without any treatment whatever. Many died before they
reached the hands of the doctors. The diet was the same for all. Those who
had not been admitted to treatment were supplied with coarse bread,
cheese, rancid butter, and (very seldom) a little meat. The surgeons of
Bicêtre usually made fortunes in a short time.[206]

If any thing farther were needed to characterize the hospital of Bicêtre
in the eighteenth century, it would be the rules in virtue of which no
diseased person could claim admission until a complete year had elapsed
from the time of their first application, and every diseased person was
turned out, whether ill or well, after six weeks' treatment. It was stated
to M. Parent-Duchatelet that the average mortality was one hundred women
and sixty men per annum.[207]

In 1787, Dr. Cullerier was appointed surgeon in charge of syphilitic cases
at Bicêtre. He commenced his administration by denouncing the state of
things he found there, and it is mainly from the _memoires_ he addressed
to the government that the preceding facts have been obtained. His
representations seem to have met with but little success. In 1789,
however, the bulk of the prisoners at Bicêtre were set free, and he
immediately availed himself of the increased room to accommodate his
patients.

The reform was so slight, or rather so vast a reform was needed, that the
moment the attention of the republican government was drawn to the
subject, it removed the syphilitic cases from the hospital of Bicêtre to
the hospital of the Capuchins. That establishment was enlarged, and named
the Hospital of the South (l'Hôpital du Midi). Gardens and baths were
provided; ample wards permitted the classification of diseases; the food
was of the best kind, and sufficient in quantity. This immense step was
the work of the republican authorities.

It was, however, only the first of a series of reforms. Originally, men
and women of all grades were admitted promiscuously. This led to grave
inconveniences. The decorum of the hospital was frequently disturbed by
the conduct of some of the men with regard to the prostitutes in the
adjoining wards. To obviate this, a new hospital was set apart, under the
reign of Charles X., for the reception of male patients only. It is the
Hospital de Lourcine.

A still more serious trouble arose from the mixture of prostitutes with
other women who, from the infidelity of their husbands, hereditary
disease, or other causes, found themselves infected with syphilis. For
some time complaints had been made on this head, but an accident, which
occurred in 1828, compelled the authorities to act. The daughter of a
professional nurse, residing in the vicinity of Paris, caught syphilis
from a child her mother was nursing, who had inherited the disease. It
took the shape of a virulent chancre on the palate, and the girl was sent
to the Hospital du Midi for treatment. She found herself thrust among the
vilest prostitutes, whose language and sentiments shocked her so terribly
that she insisted on leaving the hospital at once. The physician on duty
declined to grant her request, whereupon the poor girl contrived to get
into the yard, and threw herself into a well. She was drowned, and on an
autopsy of her corpse it appeared that she was a virgin. This dreadful
incident aroused the public mind. Hitherto the disposal of the prostitutes
had been a subject of dispute between the administration of the hospital
and that of the city, each wishing to thrust them upon the other. The
government now interfered, and special accommodation was provided for
prostitutes at the prison of Saint Lazare. The Hospital du Midi was
devoted exclusively to such women as were not inscribed on the rolls of
the police.

Before these distributions took place, when men and women were
indiscriminately received at the Hospital du Midi, the average annual
admissions, from 1804 to 1814, were 2700; from 1822 to 1828 it exceeded an
average of 3100. Twenty years ago the mortality was said to be less than
two per cent.; it was ten per cent. at Bicêtre.

At the Hospital du Midi, diseased persons who do not desire admission to
the hospital are treated outside, all the medicines they require being
furnished them free of charge.

It would appear, from stray allusions in various old ordinances, that some
sort of medical office had been established in the eighteenth century by
the government, for the purpose of affording gratuitous advice to
prostitutes, and denouncing those who were diseased; but there exists no
positive evidence of any such establishment or office. It was not till
1803 that a regulation was made by the prefect of police, requiring all
public women to submit to be visited by a physician appointed by him. The
plan was a bad one, as the physician was paid by fees which he was
authorized to exact; and it was rendered worse in practice by the
dishonesty of the man chosen for the office, one Coulon. This individual
made money and neglected his duties. The system was altered in 1810, and a
dispensary established, with a strong medical staff, who were directed to
visit all the prostitutes in Paris. This institution is still in
existence; it will be further noticed in the next chapter.

When the dispensary was established, its medical officers were directed to
offer to prostitutes the choice of being treated at home or going to the
hospital. Almost all chose the former. The physicians then undertook to
decide themselves which should go to the hospital and which remain in
their houses. The results of their experience, and the policy it compelled
them to adopt, are shown in the following table, which was compiled by
Parent-Duchatelet:

Year. Treated
at home.
1812 276
1813 300
1814 296
1815 No report.
1816 "
1817 123
1818 No report.
1819 25
1820 19
1821 27
1824 27
1825 7
1826 4

The system of treating prostitutes at home was, in fact, given up. It was
found they could not be compelled to take the medicines given them; and
that, though laboring under the most severe disease, they would not
abstain from the exercise of their calling.

The tables prepared by the sanitary office, or dispensary, at Paris,
afford a clear view of the extent and progress of disease in that city. Of
those which are furnished by M. Parent-Duchatelet, we shall take a few of
the most striking. The following gives the aggregate disease for a period
of twenty years:

Years. Average Total.
Patients. Patients.
1812 51 612
1813 79 948
1814 102 1224
1815 Report missing.
1816 88 1056
1817 76 912
1818 68 816
1819 58 696
1820 62 744
1821 55 660
1822 Report missing.
1823 69 828
1824 84 1008
1825 81 972
1826 93 1116
1827 Report missing.
1828 104 1248
1829 99 1188
1830 91 1092
1831 110 1320
1832 78 936
-----
17376
Add approximate estimate for three years wanting 3250
-----
Total diseased in twenty years 20626[208]

Other tables, apparently drawn with care, show that the proportion of
disease to prostitutes varies widely in different years. In 1828 it was
six per cent., that is to say, six out of every hundred prostitutes were
diseased; but in 1832 it was barely three per cent. Four or five per cent.
would seem a tolerably fair average.[209]

From another table compiled by the same author we gather that, during a
period of eighteen years, January was found the most fatal month for
prostitutes; next came August and September; while February, April, May,
and July seemed seasons less favorable to disease. M. Duchatelet, however,
candidly admits that he can trace the operation of no law here, and
inclines to the belief that the variation is wholly due to chance.[210]

CHAPTER X.

FRANCE.--PRESENT REGULATIONS.

Number of Prostitutes in Paris.--Their Nativity, Parentage, Education,
Age, etc.--Causes of Prostitution.--Rules concerning tolerated
Houses.--Maisons de Passe.--Windows.--Keepers.--Formalities upon
granting Licenses.--Recruits.--Pimps.--Profits of Prostitution.--
Inscription.--Interrogatories.--Nativity, how ascertained.--
Obstacles.--Principles of Inscription.--Age at which Inscription is
made.--Radiation.--Provisional Radiation.--Statistics of Radiation.--
Classes of Prostitutes.--Visit to the Dispensary.--Visiting
Physicians.--Punishment.--Offenses.--Prison Discipline.--Saint
Denis.--Tax on Prostitutes.--Inspectors.--Bon Pasteur Asylum.--
(Note: Duchatelet's Bill for the Repression of Prostitution.)

It remains to describe the state and system of prostitution at Paris at
the present day. The vast importance of the subject will doubtless justify
the length at which it must be treated.

It was usual, during the last century, to estimate the number of
prostitutes in Paris at twenty-five or thirty thousand. Even as late as
1810, the number was said by good authority to be not less than eighteen
thousand.[211] The police rolls show that these calculations were wide of
the mark. According to them, the average number of prostitutes inscribed
had risen, from about 1900 in 1814, to 3558 in 1832, the last year of
which we have any record. Assuming that the number at present is 4500, or
thereabouts, which would suppose an increase equal to that noted before
1832, the prostitutes are one to every two hundred and fifty of the total
population. Of these the city of Paris furnishes rather more than one
third. The remainder come from the departments; those bordering on Paris
being the most fruitful of prostitutes, and the north being largely in
excess of production over the south.

The vast majority of these prostitutes are the children of operatives and
mechanics. Of 828 fathers, there were

Weavers 19
Peddlers 12
Masons and Tilers 28
Water-carriers 11
Stage and Carriage Drivers 35
Shoemakers 50
Farmers and Gardeners 31
Servants 23
Individuals employed in Foundries, etc. 18
Day-laborers 113
Carpenters 31
Liquor-sellers 22
Smiths 23
Grocers and Fruit-sellers 18
Soldiers, on pensions 30
Clock-makers and Jewelers 16
Barbers and Hair-dressers 16
Persons without trade or calling 64
Tailors 22
Plasterers, Pavers, etc. 21
Coopers 11
Painters, Glaziers, and Printers 25

Whereas there were only

Surgeons, Physicians, and Lawyers 4
Teachers 3
Musicians 9

The inference drawn by M. Parent-Duchatelet from this is, that brothels
are supplied from the classes of domestics and factory-girls; and that
girls not bred to work rarely find their way into them. Rather more than
one third of the fathers of these prostitutes were unable to sign their
names.

Of the prostitutes born at Paris, about one fourth were illegitimate; of
those born in the departments, one eighth were illegitimate.

Rather more than half the Paris prostitutes could not write their names; a
degree of ignorance which argues very remarkable neglect on the part of
parents, for at Paris every one may learn to write gratuitously, and a
person who can not write will always experience difficulty in obtaining
employment.

Nearly half the prostitutes were between the ages of twenty and twenty-six
inclusive. One declared herself, or was proved to be, only twelve years
old; thirty-four were over fifty; two were over sixty. On reference to the
rolls of inscription, it appeared that the bulk of the prostitutes
registered themselves between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two; but
thirty-four were inscribed before the age of fourteen, which may be
assumed to be the period of puberty in France, and a few after passing
fifty.

The following table shows the number of years during which the Paris
prostitutes had exercised their calling at the time the inquiry was made:

Time. Number of
Prostitutes.

1 year and under 439
From 1 to 2 years 590
" 2 to 3 " 440
" 3 to 4 " 485
" 4 to 5 " 294
" 5 to 6 " 139
" 6 to 7 " 150
" 7 to 8 " 143
" 8 to 9 " 96
" 9 to 10 " 100
" 10 to 11 " 109
" 11 to 12 " 93
" 12 to 13 " 99
" 13 to 14 " 98
" 14 to 15 " 107
" 15 to 16 " 80
" 16 to 17 " 19
" 17 to 18 " 14
" 18 to 19 " 17
" 19 to 20 " 4
" 20 to 21 " --
" 21 to 22 " 1
" 22 to 23 " --

M. Duchatelet made careful inquiries into the causes of prostitution. He
admits that, the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy information on this
head being very great, many errors may have found their way into his
calculations. He gives them, however, for what they may be worth.

Want 1441
Expulsion from home, or desertion of parents 1255
Desire to support old and infirm parents 37
" " " younger brothers and sisters, or nephews and nieces 29
Widows with families to support 23
Girls from the country, to support themselves 280
" " " " brought to Paris by soldiers, clerks, students,
etc. 404
Servants seduced by masters and abandoned 289
Concubines abandoned by their lovers 1425
----
Total 5183

It appears that there were in Paris, in 1832, two hundred and twenty
"tolerated houses"--that is to say, brothels. The rules regarding these
are numerous. They can not be established in certain localities, such as
the Boulevards, or other great thoroughfares. They must not be within one
hundred yards of a church, or within fifty or sixty yards of a school,
whether for boys or girls; of a palace or other public building, or of a
large boarding-house. The proprietor of the house must have given his
consent before the house can be used as a brothel. Two houses can not be
established side by side, much less can they have the same entry. As a
general rule, a preference is given to small, narrow streets, especially
_culs de sac_, and to places where brothels have been established before.

With regard to the interior of these houses, they must contain a room for
each girl; on no account are two prostitutes allowed to occupy the same
room, much less the same bed. Each room must, moreover, be amply provided
with utensils, soap, and water, for ablution. No house of prostitution can
have back or side doors, or in any way communicate with the adjoining
buildings. No house can contain dark closets, or dark passages, or
concealed hiding-places. In none of them can any trade or traffic be
carried on.

With regard to the class of houses called _maisons de passe_ (assignation
houses), the police authorities require that in every such house two
regular prostitutes, inscribed on the police rolls, shall live
permanently. The object of this rule is to obtain a control and
supervision over these houses. Before it was adopted the police was often
embarrassed by denials of its authority to invade them. It is found that
the prostitutes, being naturally hostile to the mistresses of the houses,
will act as agents of the police in the event of any scandalous
proceedings.

The windows of houses of prostitution must be roughed, as also must those
of rooms where individual prostitutes live. They can only be partially
opened. These regulations were made in consequence of the shocking scenes
that were witnessed at the windows of brothels after the Revolution, naked
women being the least of the scandals that used to be exposed.

No one can keep a house of prostitution in Paris without an authorization
from the police. Men are never permitted to keep establishments of the
kind. A woman who desires to open a house must apply in writing to the
Prefect of Police. On receipt of her application, reference is made to the
Commissary of Police of the ward to ascertain her character. If she has
been condemned for crime or misdemeanor, her request is rarely granted. If
she stands in the police books as a woman requiring supervision, she can
not succeed. Nor can she obtain a license, under ordinary circumstances,
_unless she has been a prostitute herself_. The reason of this regulation
is obvious; no one but a prostitute understands the business thoroughly;
and as the position of brothel-keeper is found to be the most demoralizing
station in the world, it has been the policy of the Paris police to throw
impediments in the way of persons not wholly depraved devoting themselves
to so dangerous a calling. Furthermore, the applicant must have reached a
certain age. She must also be of sober habits, and apparently possessed of
sufficient force of character to be able to command a house full of
prostitutes. She must possess a sum of money sufficient to guarantee her
against immediate failure, and she must own the furniture in the house she
wishes to keep.

When all these conditions are fulfilled, the applicant receives a
pass-book, in which the number of girls she is allowed to keep is
specified. In this book she is bound to enter the name of every prostitute
she receives, whether as a boarder or a transient lodger; her age, the
date of her entry into her house, the date of her inspection by a
physician, and the date of her departure from the house. A printed form in
the beginning of the pass-book reminds the mistress of the house that she
is bound, under heavy penalties, to inscribe on the police rolls every
girl she receives within twenty-four hours of her arrival.

In the event of the neglect of these rules by the keepers of houses of
prostitution, the license is revoked. It is understood that the police
enforce this regulation with due rigor.

Much has been said and written about the manner in which the keepers of
houses of prostitution obtain recruits. M. Parent-Duchatelet, whose
sources of information were the best, gives it as his opinion that most of
the prostitutes are obtained from the hospitals, especially the Hospital
du Midi, where female venereal diseases are treated. It appears that this
hospital and others are haunted by old women who have been prostitutes,
and who, in their old age, eke out a livelihood by enticing others into
the same calling. They soon discover the antecedents and disposition of
every young girl they find in hospitals; and if she be pretty or engaging,
she must either have much principle or careful friends to rescue her from
the clutches of the old hags. While she lies ill on a bed of pain, the
latter are constantly with her, and gain her friendship. They know the
devices that are needed to impose on her simplicity, and not unfrequently
are enabled to strengthen their promises by small donations in money, or a
weekly stipend during her convalescence. For a pretty girl as much as
fifty francs will be paid by a brothel-keeper. As the girls in France,
with few exceptions, come to Paris to be cured when they have contracted
disease from association with lovers, it seems quite likely that, as M.
Parent-Duchatelet supposes, these hospitals are a fruitful source of
prostitutes.

Other brothel-keepers have female agents in the country towns, who send
them girls. One well-known woman, who kept for many years one of the
largest establishments in France, employed a traveling clerk with a large
salary. Some obtain boarders from their own province or native city;
others, who have followed a trade, get recruits from the acquaintances
they made at the workshop. Latterly, it would seem, pimps have carried on
their trade with unusual boldness and success. Some time since it was
noticed that an uncommon number of girls arrived at Paris from Rheims.
They all came provided with the name and address of the houses to which
they were destined, and drove there from the stage-office. Information was
sent to the police authorities of Rheims, and on their arrival the girls
were sent back again. The design of the authorities was baffled for a
while by the cunning of the pimps, who sent their recruits round by other
roads; but the police finally triumphed by refusing, for a year or two, to
inscribe any prostitutes from Rheims.

It is notorious, however, that the same traffic is carried on at the
present day to an alarming extent between London and Paris, London and
Brussels, and other large cities in the neighborhood. Several societies
have been formed, and the police have made great exertions to suppress the
trade, but without any particular success.

It is understood that the prostitutes of Paris receive nothing for their
"labors" but their board, lodging, and dress. The latter is often
expensive. In first-class houses it will exceed five hundred francs, which
in female attire will go as far at Paris as five hundred dollars will in
New York. The whole of the fees exacted from visitors goes to the
mistress, and the girls are reluctantly permitted to retain the presents
they sometimes receive from their lovers. They are usually in debt to the
mistress, who, having no other means of retaining them under her control,
hastens to advance them money for jewelry, carriages, fine eating, and
expensive wines. No written contract binds them to remain where they are;
they may leave when they please, if they can pay their debts; and the
obligation they incur for the latter is one of honor only, and can not be
enforced in the courts.

Houses of prostitution, when well conducted, are very profitable in Paris.
It is estimated that the net profits accruing from each girl ought to be
ten francs or more per day. Many keepers of houses have retired with from
ten to twenty-five thousand francs a year, and have married their
daughters well. The good-will of a popular house has been sold for sixty
thousand francs (twelve thousand dollars).

We now come to the great feature of the Paris system: the inscription of
prostitutes in a department of the Prefecture of Police, called the
_Bureau des Moeurs_. It seems that some sort of inscription was in use
before the Revolution, but no law referring to it, or records of the
rolls, can be found. Various systems were employed during the Republic and
the Empire. The one now in use was adopted in 1816, and amended by a
police regulation of 1828.

Prostitutes are inscribed either

1. On their own request;

2. On the requisition of the mistress of a house; or,

3. On the report of the inspector of prostitutes.

When a girl appears before the bureau under any of these circumstances,
she is asked the following questions, the answers being taken down in
writing:

1. Her name, age, birth-place, trade, and residence?

2. Whether she is a widow, wife, or spinster?

3. Whether her father and mother are living, and what their calling
was or is?

4. Whether she lives with them, and if not, when and how she left
them?

5. Whether she has had children, and where they are?

6. How long she has been at Paris?

7. Whether any one has a right to claim her?

8. Whether she has ever been arrested, and if yes, how often, and for
what offenses?

9. Whether she has ever been a prostitute before, and for what period
of time?

10. Whether she has, or has had, venereal disease?

11. Whether she has received any education?

12. What her motive is in inscribing herself?

The answers to these inquiries suggest others, which are put at the
discretion of the officials. Their practice is so great that they are
rarely deceived by the women; M. Parent-Duchatelet affirms that they could
tell an old prostitute merely by the way she sat down.

The interrogatory over, the girl is taken by an inspector to the
Dispensary and examined, and the physician on duty reports the result,
which is added to the inquiry. Meanwhile, the police registers have been
consulted, and if the girl has been an old offender, or is known to the
police, she is now identified.

If the girl has her baptismal certificate (_extrait de naissance_) with
her, she is forthwith inscribed, and registered among the public women of
Paris. As prostitutes rarely possess this document, however, a provisional
inscription is usually effected, and a direct application is made to the
mayor of the city or _commune_ where she was born for the certificate.
This application varies according to the age of the girl. If she is of age
it is simply a demand for the "_extrait de naissance_ of ---- ----, who
says she is a native of your city or _commune_." If, on the contrary, she
is a minor, the application states that "a girl who calls herself
--------, and says she was born at ----, has applied for inscription in
this office. I desire you to ascertain the position of her family, and
what means they propose to take in case they desire to secure the return
of this young girl."

It often happens that the family implore the intervention of the police;
in that case the girl is sent back to the place whence she came. In many
cases the family decline to interfere, and then the girl is duly inscribed
on the register. She signs a document, in which she states that, "being
duly acquainted with the sanitary regulations established by the
Prefecture for Public Women, she declares that she will submit to them,
will allow herself to be visited periodically by the physicians of the
Dispensary, and will conform in all respects to the rules in force."

Of course this procedure is occasionally delayed by falsehoods uttered by
the women. It often used to happen that the mayors would report that no
person of the name given had been born at the time fixed in their city or
commune. In that case the girl was recalled, and made to understand that
truth was better policy than falsehood. Girls rarely held out longer than
a fortnight or so, and, at the present time, the number of false
declarations is very small indeed. They seem satisfied that the police are
an omniscient machine which can not be deceived.

When the girl is brought to the office either by a brothel-keeper or an
inspector, the proceeding is slightly varied. In the latter case she has
been arrested for indulging in clandestine prostitution, but she almost
invariably denies the fact, and pleads her innocence. The rule, in this
case, is to admonish her and let her go. It is not till the third or
fourth offense has been committed that she is inscribed. When the mistress
of a house brings a girl to the office, interrogatories similar to the
above are put to her. If she has relations or friends at Paris, they are
sent for and consulted. When the girl appears evidently lost, she is duly
inscribed; but if she shows any signs of shame or contrition, she is
often sent home by the office at the public expense. It need hardly be
said that when a girl is found diseased she is sent to hospital and her
inscription held over. It occasionally happens that virgins present
themselves at the office and desire to be inscribed; in their case the
officials use compulsion to rescue them from infamy.

In a word, the Paris system with regard to inscriptions is to inscribe no
girl with regard to whom it is not manifest that she will carry on the
calling of a prostitute whether she be inscribed or not.

From the following table, prepared by M. Parent-Duchatelet from the
records of a series of years, it appears that the mistresses of houses
inscribe over one third of the total prostitutes:

Girls inscribed at their own request 7388
" " by mistresses of houses 4436
" " by inspectors 720
-----
Total 12544

The age at which girls can be inscribed has varied under different
administrators. Under one it was seventeen, under his successor eighteen,
under the next twenty-one years; but now the general rule is that no girl
should be inscribed under the age of sixteen. Exceptions to this rule are
made in the case of younger girls--of thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen, who
lead a life of prostitution, and are frequently attacked by disease. From
a regard to public health, they are inscribed notwithstanding their age.

Only second in importance to the subject of inscription is that of
"radiation," the obliteration of an inscription. This is the process by
which a prostitute takes leave of her calling, throws off the control of
the police, and regains her civil rights. At Rome, as has been shown
already, no such formality as radiation was known to the law; _once a
prostitute, always a prostitute_, was the Roman rule. This system did not
long sustain the test of a Christian examination.

The policy of the French _Bureau des Moeurs_ on this head is governed by
two very simple maxims: 1st. The amendment of prostitutes ought to be
encouraged as much as possible; 2d. But no prostitute should be released
from the supervision of the police and the visits of the Dispensary
physicians until there is reasonable ground for believing that her
repentance and alteration of life are sincere and likely to be permanent.

A person desiring to have her name struck from the rolls of public women
must make a written application, specifying her reasons for desiring to
change her mode of life, and indicating the means of support on which she
is henceforth to rely. In three cases the demand is granted forthwith:
1st. When the girl _proves_ that she is about to marry; 2d. When she
produces the certificate of a physician that she is attacked by an organic
disease which renders it impossible for her to continue the calling of a
prostitute; and, 3d. When she has gone to live with her relations, and
produces evidence of her late good behavior.

In all other cases the office awards a "provisional radiation." For a
period of time, which varies, according to circumstances, from three
months to a year, the girl is still under the supervision of the police,
such supervision being obviously secret and discreet. When the girl passes
triumphantly through this period of probation, her name is definitely
struck from the roll of prostitutes.

When a girl, after having her name thus struck out, desires to be
inscribed afresh, her request is granted without delay or inquiry, it
being wisely supposed that she has repented of her decision. A
re-inscription also takes place when a girl, after radiation, is found in
a house of prostitution even as a servant.

A prostitute is struck from the rolls by authority of the office when she
has disappeared, and no trace of her has been found for three months.

M. Parent-Duchatelet gives the following table of radiations, which, taken
in connection with the table already given of the number of prostitutes
registered, shows the movement of reform:

+------------------------------------------+
| | Women struck off the Rolls of |
| | Prostitutes |
|Years.|-----------------------------------|
| | At their |In consequence| |
| |own request.| of absence. | Total.|
|------|------------|--------------|-------|
| 1817 | 485 | 575 | 1060 |
| 1818 | 477 | 582 | 1059 |
| 1819 | 469 | 571 | 1040 |
| 1820 | 415 | 716 | 1131 |
| 1821 | 433 | 733 | 1166 |
| 1822 | 417 | 739 | 1156 |
| 1823 | 502 | 605 | 1107 |
| 1824 | 442 | 602 | 1044 |
| 1825 | 456 | 527 | 983 |
| 1826 | 486 | 554 | 1040 |
| 1827 | 490 | 542 | 1032 |
| 1828 | 572 | 415 | 987 |
| 1829 | 298 | 536 | 834 |
| 1830 | 334 | 502 | 836 |
| 1831 | 284 | 452 | 736 |
| 1832 | 449 | 718 | 1167 |
| |------------|--------------|-------|
| | 7009 | 9369 | 16378 |
+------------------------------------------+

Once inscribed, prostitutes are divided into three classes:

1st. Those who live in a licensed or "tolerated" brothel.

2d. Those who live alone in furnished rooms.

3d. Those who live in rooms which they furnish, and outwardly bear no mark
of infamy.

In the eye of the law there is no difference between the three classes;
all are equally subject to police and medical supervision. Every girl that
is inscribed receives a card bearing her name, and the number of her page
in the register; a blank column of this card is left to be filled by a
memorandum of the date of each visit by the physicians of the Dispensary.

But the three classes differ in respect of the place where they are
visited. The Dispensary physicians visit the inmates of brothels in the
houses where they live; all other prostitutes visit them at the
Dispensary. Yet another visit is made by the Dispensary physicians to the
Dépôt, or Lock-up, at the Prefecture of Police; as there are always a
certain number of prostitutes arrested for drunkenness or disorderly
conduct every night, it was thought well to seize the opportunity of their
confinement to inquire into the state of their health.

All houses of prostitution are visited by the Dispensary physicians once a
week; the hour of the visit is known beforehand, and every girl must be
present and pass inspection. The examination is private; the result is
noted in a "folio" kept by the physician, and a corresponding memorandum
is made in the pass-book of the house and on the card of the prostitute.
When disease is detected, the mistress of the house is notified, and
cautioned not to allow the girl diseased to receive any visitors. That
afternoon, or the next morning, she comes or is brought to the Dispensary,
where she undergoes a second examination, and, if the result is the same
as at the first, she is forthwith sent to Saint Lazare for treatment.

Free prostitutes, that is to say, those who live in lodgings or rooms
furnished by themselves, are bound to visit the Dispensary, and submit to
examination once a fortnight. They choose the time and day themselves, but
more than a fortnight must not elapse between the visits.

It appears, from tables published by M. Parent-Duchatelet, that these
rules are strictly enforced. Free prostitutes are visited nearly thirty
times a year, and prostitutes in tolerated houses more than fifty times.
We have alluded elsewhere to the results of the visits.

Experience has proved that the only safe method of punishment for
prostitutes is imprisonment. Formerly they were whipped, and at a later
date their hair was cut off; but the humane spirit of modern legislation
has rejected both these punishments as unduly cruel. At the present day,
offenses against the rules concerning prostitution (_delits de
prostitution_) are punished by imprisonment; misdemeanors and crimes
provided against by the code being within the cognizance of the ordinary
courts in the case of prostitutes as well as other persons.

_Delits de prostitution_ have been divided by the _Bureau des Moeurs_ into
two classes, slight offenses and grave offenses; slight offenses are:

1. To appear in forbidden places.

2. To appear at forbidden hours.

3. To get drunk, and lie down in doorways, streets, or other
thoroughfares.

4. To demand admittance to guard-houses.

5. To walk through the streets in daylight in such a way as to attract
the notice of people passing.

6. To rap on the windows of their rooms.

7. To absent themselves from the medical inspection.

8. To beg.

9. To remain more than twenty-four hours in their house, after having
been pronounced diseased by the physician.

10. To escape from the Hospital or Dispensary.

11. To go out of doors with bare head or neck.

12. To remain in Paris after having been ordered to leave, and
presented with a passport.

This class of offenses is punished by imprisonment for not less than a
fortnight or more than three months. One month is the usual term.

A prostitute is held to be guilty of grave offenses when she

1. Insults outrageously the visiting physician.

2. Fails to visit the Dispensary.

3. Continues to prostitute herself after being pronounced diseased.

4. Uses obscene language in public.

5. Appears naked at her window.

6. Assails men with violence, and endeavors to drag them to her home.

These offenses are punished by imprisonment for not less than three
months, and not more than a year, rarely more than six months. The time is
fixed in these cases with reference to the former character of the
prostitute.

When a prostitute is arrested she is taken to the Prefecture of Police,
where there is a room specially appropriated to her class. She is tried
within forty-eight, usually within twenty-four hours of her arrival. When
condemned, she is conveyed in a close carriage or van to the prison.

The prison at Paris usually contains from four hundred and fifty to six
hundred inmates. They are all obliged to work. A few are generally found
incapable, either from idiocy, blindness, or incorrigible obstinacy, of
performing even the simplest work. These are lodged in a department called
"the ward of the imbeciles." The others are allowed to choose their work;
the bulk naturally take to sewing. They are paid a small sum for what they
do, partly as they proceed with the work, and the balance when they leave
the prison. Industrious girls receive, from the money coming to them, from
five to eight _sous_ daily. That this, added to the ample food supplied by
the prison, suffices for their wants, is proved by the frequent purchases
they make of flowers and other superfluities. Formerly, prostitutes in
prison were not expected to work, and at this period fights and
disturbances were of constant occurrence. Now the discipline is excellent
and the prisoners orderly. The only penalty for disobedience of rules or
misconduct is close confinement in the _cachot_.

M. Parent-Duchatelet admits that the prison discipline is so gentle that
the punishment has no terrors for prostitutes. It is quite common to find
girls who have been thirty times condemned to imprisonment. He recommends
the use of the tread-mill as a corrective.

His experience led him to question the utility of nuns and priests in the
prostitutes' prison. He does not think they do any good, and inclines to
the belief that the counsels and visits of married women, who look rather
to the moral than religious reform of the women, would be productive of
more benefit.

The old practice in France was to admit visitors to the prostitutes'
prison at certain hours and in a certain room, but this was found to be
productive of great evils. The scenes in the visitors' room were
outrageous, and a new system was accordingly adopted. No one was allowed
to visit a prostitute but a _bona fide_ relation, and even such a one was
required to obtain a written permit from the Prefecture of Police.

A certain number of prostitutes are sent every year to the prison of St.
Denis. These are those who, from physical or mental infirmities, such as
recto-vaginal fistula, cancer, incurable organic disease, idiocy, etc.,
are incapacitated from pursuing their calling, and run risk of starvation.
Not more than eight or ten of these are sent to St. Denis in the course
of the year. The mortality among them there is not less than twenty-five
per cent. per annum.[212]

Until a few years ago, a tax was levied on the Paris prostitutes for the
support of the Dispensary. Each mistress of a house paid twelve francs per
month; each girl living alone, three francs per month. A fine of two
francs was also laid on all prostitutes who were behind their time in
visiting the Dispensary. The product of these various taxes amounted to
from seventy-five to ninety thousand francs per annum. The system was
abolished on the ground of its immorality. A popular notion is said to
have prevailed that the police received half a million or more from the
tax on prostitution, and attacks on the administration in consequence were
incessant. The police authorities gave way at last, and the municipal
council of the city undertook to defray the cost of the Dispensary for the
future. Similar taxes appear to have existed at Lyons, Strasbourg, and
other cities.[213]

Allusion has been made to inspectors. At the time M. Parent-Duchatelet
wrote there were ten inspectors, who had each charge of one tenth of the
city. Their business was to see that the regulations governing prostitutes
were carried out. They arrested offending women, and transferred them to
the Prefecture of Police. In case of resistance, they summoned the aid of
the ordinary police of the ward. They were not allowed themselves to use
violence either to arrest or drag a girl to prison. They were usually
picked men of good character. Their salary was twelve hundred francs a
year, besides handsome presents.[214]

In conclusion, a word must be said of the establishment called the _Bon
Pasteur_. It is a Magdalen Asylum established many years ago by some
benevolent ladies, and now mainly supported by an annual vote from the
city of Paris, and an allowance from the hospitals. It receives
prostitutes who desire to reform; feeds, clothes, and instructs them;
provides them with places when they desire to leave, or with work when
they wish to remain in the establishment. The rule is that no prostitute
can be received under eighteen or over twenty-five years of age. Beyond
these limits it has been found that the humane efforts of the directresses
of the establishment have rarely led to any result. No compulsion is used
in any case by the managers. Girls are free to leave as they are free to
come. So long as they remain, however, they must conform to the rules of
the establishment, which are strict without being monastic. The average
admissions to the asylum for the first twelve years of its existence were
twenty per annum. The mortality among the residents was very large, being
equal to twenty per cent. on the total number during the twelve years. Of
the whole number (two hundred and forty-five), forty were dismissed for
insubordination; twenty-seven left of their own accord, and probably
returned to their old courses, and fifteen were returned to the police.
The remainder were either restored to their families, or placed in
situations in the hospitals or elsewhere.

Small as these numbers appear in comparison with the large army of
prostitutes exercising their calling at Paris, it is not at all doubtful
but the establishment is a useful one. No one can help but concur with M.
Parent-Duchatelet when he observes that, "did it not exist, it would be
necessary to create it."

NOTE.--As M. Parent-Duchatelet has written the best, we might almost
say the only philosophical work on prostitution extant, it may be
useful to subjoin the test of the statute which he proposed to
regulate the subject of prostitution.

LAW RELATIVE TO THE REPRESSION OF PROSTITUTION.

_Art. 1._ The duty of repressing prostitution, whether with
provocation on the public highway or otherwise, is intrusted at Paris
to the Prefect of Police, and in all the other _communes_ of France to
the mayors respectively.

_Art. 2._ A discretionary authority over all persons engaged in public
prostitution is vested in these functionaries, within the scope of
their powers.

_Art. 3._ Shall constitute evidence of public prostitution either,
1st, direct provocation thereto on the public highway; 2d, public
notoriety; or, 3d, legal proof adduced after accusation and trial.

_Art. 4._ The Prefect of Police at Paris, and the mayors in the other
_communes_, shall make any and all regulations which they may deem
suitable for the repression of prostitution, and such regulations
shall bear upon all those who encourage prostitution as a
trade--lodgers, inn-keepers and tavern-keepers, landlords and tenants.

_Art. 5._ The Dispensary at Paris for the superintendence of women of
the town is placed on the same footing as the public health
establishments. Other similar dispensaries may be established wherever
they are needed.

_Art. 6._ A full report of the proceedings of these dispensaries shall
be forwarded annually to the Minister of the Interior.

M. Duchatelet conceived this short law to be adequate for the purpose.
It may be presumed that he took for granted that the mayors of the
_communes_ would never attempt to carry out original views of their
own on the subject; he doubtless gave them credit for sufficient
self-abnegation to adopt, without question, the elaborate and sensible
plan which experience has taught the authorities of Paris. How far
this assumption was justifiable appears uncertain, in view of the fact
that at Lyons and Strasbourg, the prostitutional system has always
differed from that of the capital. In both those cities a tax has been
levied on prostitutes till a very late period; at Lyons it was
exacted, it is believed, in 1842.

CHAPTER XI.

ITALY.

Decline of Public Morals.--Papal Court.--Nepotism.--John XXII.--Sextus
IV.--Alexander VI.--Effect of the Reformation.--Poem of Fracastoro.--
Benvenuto Cellini.--Beatrice Cenci.--Laws of Naples.--Pragmatic Law of
1470.--Court of Prostitutes.--Bull of Clement II.--Prostitution in
Lombardy and Piedmont.--Clerical Statute.--Modern Italy.--Laws of
Rome.--Public Hospitals.--Lazaroni of Naples.--Italian Manners as
depicted by Lord Byron.--Foundling Hospitals.--True Character of
Italian People.

Birth-place of modern art and literature, dowered with the fatal heritage
of beauty, Italy, in the varied passages of her career among the nations,
has been as remarkable for the vice and sensuality of her children as she
has been eminent for their talents and acquirements.

The heart of the historical student thrills with respectful sympathy over
the sorrows and ennobling virtues of her patriots in all ages, or his
intellect is captivated with enthusiastic admiration and reverence in
considering the monuments of resplendent genius given to mankind by her
sons. Let him turn the page, and his soul recoils in disgust and deepest
horror from the narrative of corruption the most abandoned, ambition the
most unscrupulous, lust the most abominable, crime the most tremendous, to
which the history of the world scarcely offers a parallel, and which
brands the perpetrators with the execration of all succeeding generations.

The most glorious era of the Italian republics immediately preceded their
downfall. Like shining lights, they perished by their own effulgence. The
mutual jealousies of Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Lucca, and the numerous
independent cities and states, stirred up in them a "noble and emulous
rage" to excel each other in the encouragement they gave to art and
letters, and the mighty works produced by their respective citizens. But
the same sentiment also roused them to deadlier feuds, and the common
field of national patriotism being shut up, they exhausted themselves and
each other by desperately-protracted struggles and incredible sacrifices
of blood and treasure. Thus they paved the way to the introduction of the
foreigner and the mercenary, who completed their ruin; until, in place of
the small but illustrious republics which formed a diadem of brightest
gems, arose a system of petty tyrants, who plunged the country into misery
and degradation. These, in turn, were swept away by the strong arm of a
despotism which has never since relaxed its grasp of this loveliest
country of the earth.

No influence played a more important part in bringing about this
catastrophe than that of the court of Rome. By the intrigues of the Roman
pontiffs the mutual jealousies of the states were exacerbated and their
quarrels fomented. While these results were caused by the political
actions of the popes and their advisers, the worst effects were produced
upon public manners and morals by their example. The abuses which had
established themselves among the Roman hierarchy were the natural
consequences of long and undisturbed enjoyment by the clergy of their vast
immunities and privileges. The demoralization and dissoluteness which thus
existed, and which spread its poison throughout the civilized world, but
especially throughout Italy, are attested to posterity by all contemporary
writers.

The enormous iniquity which distinguished such men as John XXII., Sextus
IV., or Alexander VI., is notorious to all. Although the character of
communities is not to be inferred from the actions of exceptional
prodigies, either of virtue or vice, it is evident that the system which
could place monsters like these in the august positions they filled must
have been rotten to the core. The worth of a Leo X. or a Clement VII.
consisted in the absence of the grosser vices rather than in any positive
excellence, and the encouragement given by such men to objectionable
practices did more to confirm a laxity of morals than the odious and
unpardonable offenses of their predecessors.

Some of the political profligacy of the court of Rome, and, through its
example, of the other Italian courts, was owing to the system which had
sprung up of each pope providing for his family. The term _nepote_
(nephew) was in common use as expressing the relationship which existed
between the pope and the individuals selected for advancement. The priests
of all denominations had nephews and nieces to provide for, and the abuses
covered by the term were objects of the keenest satire. In fact, Innocent
VIII. thus provided for eight openly avowed sons and daughters.[215] The
pseudo-avuncular obligations of Sextus IV. were also well known. Other
popes, whose sins were not in this particular direction, having no sons,
adopted a _bona fide_ nephew, and one or two, feeling the want of ties of
kindred or family relationship, actually adopted strangers. In one
instance, the Donna Olimpia, a niece by marriage, and "a lady of ability
and a manly spirit," took the place of a nephew in the court of Innocent
X., without any imputation on the character of either pope or niece.[216]

The effect produced by this example in high places, particularly upon the
clergy, and through them on the community, can be imagined. By a decree of
the Church in the eleventh session of the Lateran Council it appears that
the clergy were accustomed to live in a state of public concubinage, nay,
more, to allow others to do so for money paid to them by permission.
Dante, in one of his daring flights, compares the papal court to Babylon,
and declares it a place deprived of virtue and shame. In the nineteenth
canto of the Inferno, Dante, visiting hell, finds Nicholas III. there
waiting the arrival of Boniface, who again is to be succeeded by Clement.

The Reformation compelled some attention to morals among the clergy, and
for a time an earnest endeavor was made at a purification of the Church.
This was one of the chief labors of the famous Council of Trent. That
council certainly did repress the abuses among the general clergy, but the
law-makers were law-breakers. They could not touch the cardinals,
archbishops, or the Pope himself, and thus little radical change was
effected among the chief dignitaries.[217]

There are not wanting writers who acquit the Italian national character of
blame in the matter, attributing the general corruption partly to the
frightful example of foreign invaders. The invasion of Charles VIII.,
himself a dissolute monarch, with the universal licentiousness of the
French troops, did undoubtedly contribute largely to ruin the morals of
the people at large, but, to use the words of Machiavelli, "If the papal
court were removed to Switzerland, the simplest and most religious people
of Europe would, in an incredibly short time, have become utterly depraved
by the vicious example of the Italian priesthood."[218]

The ecclesiastics did not confine themselves to licentiousness of conduct.
The clerical writers are charged with a taste for that lowest practice of
debased minds, obscenity, in which particular they exceed the lay writers.
Roscoe, an accomplished Italian scholar and a man not given to railing,
maintains this allegation.[219] This reminds us of Pope's lines:

"Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of decency is want of sense."

For the limited range of our present subject, history, so profuse of
illustration of war, bloodshed, and the personal adventures of men
noteworthy by their position or character, is exceedingly chary of
materials. In the case of Italy the testimony as to the morals of men in
high places is superabundant, and these and the legislative enactments of
the period will furnish some of the information of which we are in search.

In the fifteenth century, Charles VIII., in his wars to gain Naples from
the Spaniards, drew down unspeakable miseries upon the wretched Italians.
His armies are reputed to have indulged in every excess of unbridled
license and rapine; and it was during the siege of Naples that the
venereal disease is said to have first made its appearance, although the
particulars given of this malady in Chapter IX., under the head of France,
show that syphilis existed in Naples two or three years before the siege.
As generally happens with new diseases, whether from fear or ignorance of
the means to control them, it was represented that the affliction was of a
malignity never since known. Its frightful ravages and disgusting
character impressed the minds of men with a belief that it was a new
scourge, sent specially as a punishment for the debauchery and
prostitution of the period, each party retorting on the other the charge
of having introduced it, and styling it _Morbo-Gallico_ or _Mal de
Naples_, according to the nation to which they belonged. No class seems to
have been exempt from it. Sextus della Rovere, nephew of Sextus IV., one
of the wealthiest and most dissolute ecclesiastics of the age, was "rotten
from his middle to the soles of his feet."[220] Even the haughty and
majestic Julius II. would not expose his feet to the obeisance of the
faithful, because they were discolored by the Morbus Gallicus:[221] Leo,
his accomplished and munificent successor, was said to have owed his
elevation to the fact that he was in such a depraved state of body as to
render necessary a surgical operation in the Consistorium while the
election was proceeding, the cardinals selecting the most sickly candidate
for the papal tiara.[222] An unequivocal allusion to the pontiff's
pursuits is found in an honorary inscription to Leo X. on his entrance
into Florence, of which he was a native.

_Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora: tempora Mavos
Olim habuit; nunc sua tempora Pallas habet:
Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypra semper erit._
Formerly Venus reigned supreme, then Mars, now Pallas:
Mars was, Pallas now is, Venus shall always be.

Cardinals were not ashamed to contend openly for the favors of celebrated
courtesans, and Charles VIII., when on his march to Naples, was provided
by Ludovico Sforza and his wife Beatrice, his liberal entertainers, with
the most beautiful women that could be procured.[223] Charles, indeed, is
by some authors asserted to have been actually the first who introduced
the venereal disease into Italy.

An eccentric trophy of public license is to be found in the poem of
Fracastoro, a physician and accomplished writer--a really elegant
production under the title of Syphilis. The argument of it is drawn from
the sufferings of Syphilus, a shepherd who has been punished by Apollo
with a malignant disease for impiety. In this work the author introduces
the reader to the inner regions of the earth; to the mines, minerals, and
attendant sprites, and explains the discovery of mercury, and its
beneficent and healing influences on the invalid, who, once cured, is
enjoined to pay his vows to Diana.

In 1520, that turbulent and reprobate artist Benvenuto Cellini, in his
autobiography (one of the most spirited representations of national
manners extant) gives an account of a syphilitic disease which he
contracted from a courtesan. He says little of the mode of cure, but it
is evident from the above that the use of mercury was known at a very
early period after public attention was generally directed to the
disorder.

The excesses of this iron age were not limited to ordinary licentiousness;
crimes against nature seem to have been prevalent, and are even alleged to
have been a source of revenue. In a collection of papal lives which has
fallen under our notice, but which is not very particular in giving its
authorities,[224] we find it stated that a memorial was presented to
Sextus IV. by certain individuals of the family of the Cardinal of St.
Lucia for an indulgence to commit sodomy, and that the Pope wrote at the
bottom of it the usual "_Fiat_."

The case of Beatrice Cenci is better attested. Every one recollects the
accumulated horrors of the story. The father, hating his children, his
wife, all mankind, introduces prostitutes to his house, and debauches his
daughter Beatrice by force. Through the instrumentality of a bishop she
procures him to be murdered, and, with her step-mother, was executed for
the crime, the Pope refusing to show any mercy. The Count Cenci had been
addicted to unnatural offenses, and had thrice compounded with the papal
government for his crimes by paying an enormous sum of money, and the
narrator says that the acrimony of the Pope toward the wretched daughter
was for having cut off a profitable source of revenue.

In Naples, the laws on the subject of prostitution were extremely severe.
Previous to the thirteenth century, every procuress endeavoring to corrupt
innocent females was punished, like an adulteress, by mutilation of her
nose. The mother who prostituted her daughter suffered this punishment
until King Frederick absolved such women as trafficked with their children
from the pressure of want. The same prince, however, decreed against all
who were found guilty of preparing drugs or inflammatory liquors to aid in
their designs upon virtuous females, death in case of injuries resulting
from their acts, and imprisonment when no serious harm was effected. These
laws proved insufficient for their purpose, and toward the end of the
fifteenth century profligacy ran riot in Naples. Ruffiani multiplied in
its streets, procuring by force or corruption multitudes of victims to
fill the taverns and brothels of the city. Penalties of extreme severity
were proclaimed against them. The Ruffiani were ordered to quit the
kingdom, and prostitutes were prohibited from harboring such persons among
them. Any woman who disobeyed was condemned to be burned in the forehead
with an iron, whipped in the most humiliating manner, and exiled.

Under King Roger a charge of seduction was never taken, but William, the
successor of that prince, punished with death the crime of rape. The
victim, however, was required to prove that she had shrieked aloud, and
that she had preferred her complaint within eight days, or that she had
been detained by force. When once a woman had prostituted herself, she had
no right to refuse to yield her person to any one.

In Naples, prostitutes, in spite of the law passed to confine brothels to
particular quarters, established themselves in the most beautiful streets
of the city in palatial buildings, and there, with incessant clamor,
congregated a horde of thieves, profligates, and vagabonds of every kind,
until the chief quarter became uninhabitable. In 1577 they were ordered to
quit the street of Catalana within eight days, under pain of the scourge
for the women, the galleys for such of the proprietors as were commoners,
while simple banishment was declared against the nobles.

One example of good legislation was the pragmatic law of 1470, to protect
unfortunate women against the cupidity, the extortions, and the frauds of
tavern-keepers and others. Men were in the habit of going into places of
amusement with single girls, contracting a heavy debt, and then leaving
their victims to pay. These were then given the choice of a disgraceful
whipping or an engagement in the house. They often consented, and spent
the remainder of their days in dependence on their creditors, without
ability to liberate themselves. By the new law, masters of taverns were
forbidden to give credit to prostitutes for more than a certain sum, and
this only to supply them with food and clothing absolutely necessary. If
they exceeded this amount they had no means of legal recovery.

The most remarkable feature in Neapolitan legislation on this subject was
the establishment at an unknown, but early date, of the Court of
Prostitutes. This tribunal, which sat at Naples, had its peculiar
constitution, and had jurisdiction over all cases connected with
prostitution, blasphemy, and some other infamous offenses. Toward the end
of the sixteenth century it had risen to extraordinary power, and was
prolific of abuses. It practiced all kinds of exaction and violence, every
species of partiality and injustice, and even presumed to promulgate
edicts of its own. The judges flung into prison numbers of young girls,
whom they compelled to buy their liberty with money, and sometimes even
dared to seize women who, though of lax conduct, could not be included in
the professional class. This was discovered, and led to a reform of the
court in 1589. Its powers were strictly defined, and its form of procedure
placed under regulation, while the avenues to corruption were narrowed.
The institution existed for nearly a hundred years after this.

In Rome, in the eleventh century, a brothel and a church stood side by
side, and five hundred years after, under the pontificate of Paul II.,
prostitutes were numerous. Statutes were enacted, and many precautions
taken, which prove the grossness of manners at that epoch. One convicted
of selling a girl to infamy was heavily fined, and if he did not pay
within ten days had one foot cut off. The nobility and common people alike
indulged habitually in all kinds of excess. Tortures, floggings,
brandings, banishment, were inflicted on some to terrify others, but with
very incomplete success. To carry off and detain a prostitute against her
will was punished by amputation of the right hand, imprisonment, flogging,
or exile. The rich, however, invariably bought immunity for themselves.

Among the most extraordinary acts of legislation on this subject was the
bull of Clement II., who desired to endow the Church with the surplus
gains of the brothel. Every person guilty of prostitution was forced, when
disposing of her property, either at death or during life, to assign half
of it to a convent. This regulation was easily eluded, and proved utterly
inefficacious. A tribunal was also established having jurisdiction over
brothels, upon which a tax was laid, continuing in existence until the
middle of the sixteenth century. Efforts were made to confine this class
of dwellings to a particular quarter, but without success.

In some of the Italian states, as in Lombardy, men were forbidden to give
prostitutes an asylum. They were prohibited from appearing among honest
citizens, and were prevented from purchasing clothes or food, and from
borrowing money by the hire of their persons.

After a time, however, a system of licensed brothels, in imitation of the
institutions founded at Toulouse and Montpellier, was introduced into
parts of Italy, and the brothels became very numerous. There was one at
Mantua, and Venice was a very sink of prostitution. In 1421, the
government enlisted women in this service to guard the virtue of the other
classes. A matron was placed over them, who governed them, received their
gains, and made a monthly division of profit. The names of several women,
the most notorious and beautiful of the Venetian courtesans, are preserved
by Nicolo Daglioni. A very small sum was paid them by their patrons.

The laws regulating prostitution and prostitutes seem to have had a
wonderful similarity throughout Europe. Among other enactments were those
regulating clothing, which were at one time promulgated in every state.
Some of these were sumptuary, and merely prohibited the wearing of
fashionable attire. Others directed particular costumes as a badge of the
prostitute's calling, and to distinguish them in public from
well-conducted women. At Mantua, prostitutes, when they appeared in the
streets, were ordered to cover the rest of their clothes with a short
white cloak, and wear a badge on their breast. At Bergamo the cloak was
yellow; in Parma, white; in Milan, at first black woolen cloth, and then
black silk. If disobedient, they might be fined; and in case of a second
offense, whipped; and any one might strip off the garment of a girl
illegally attired.

In the Duchy of Asola, in Piedmont, a regulation was established that a
mother could disinherit her daughter for leading a vicious life, but she
lost this privilege if it was proved that she had connived at her
immorality. The father had equal authority, but with one curious
limitation. When, says the law, a father has sought to marry his daughter,
and has endowed her sufficiently, if she refuses to marry and becomes a
prostitute, he may cut her off; but if he have opposed her marriage until
she has reached the age of twenty-five, and she then become a libertine,
he can not refuse to bequeath her his property; and the woman, on every
opportunity to marry, is bound to present herself before her father and
demand his consent. If he refused it, he was not allowed to punish her in
cases where, at the age of thirty, she became a harlot.

The efforts to root out prostitution from houses and neighborhoods in
Italy had, as elsewhere, the result of driving loose women to places of
public resort. The baths were regularly frequented in every city in the
Peninsula (hence the use of the word _bagnio_, as expressive of a
disreputable place), so that there was scarcely a bath-keeper who was not
also a brothel-keeper.

In Avignon, which, in consequence of the schism of the popes, may be
considered a second Rome, a statute of the Church, in 1441, interdicted to
the priests and clergy the use of certain baths, notorious as brothels.
The license of prostitution was soon taken away in Avignon. The residence
of the popes in that city had attracted a concourse of strangers from all
parts of the globe, and brothels sprung up at the doors of the churches,
and close to the papal residence and bishops' palaces. They brought so
much scandal on the community that an edict was passed driving prostitutes
out of the city.

In endeavoring to investigate the condition of prostitution in modern
Italy, our inquiries and researches have been almost profitless, from the
dearth of reliable statistical information as to any part of that most
interesting country. In the fine arts, and in certain departments of
abstract science, the republic of letters can show numerous records of
Italy's state and progress. In all that tells of the people, their
condition, their relations to each other, and their rulers, the statements
of writers, both native and foreign, are so contradictory, so imbued with
party passions and prejudices, or so flippantly careless and inaccurate,
that we must peruse them with constant suspicion. At the same time,
official documents are so sparingly given to the world that it is hopeless
to fall back upon them.[225]

It is customary to think and speak of Italy, like Germany, as a whole. In
reality, however, a wide difference prevails among the inhabitants of
Piedmont, Tuscany, and Austrian Italy, the Papal States, and Naples. Rome,
though not the political capital of Italy, must be considered the capital,
in virtue of her papal court, her past traditions, and her large concourse
of foreigners. But even her manners scarcely give the tone to the
remainder of the country.

In Rome, prostitution is tolerated, though not legally permitted. There
are no statistics from which the number of prostitutes can be calculated.
At one time there were said to be five thousand of these unfortunates in
the city; but this estimate is only another sample of the carelessness
which is to be observed in writers on this subject. Under Paul IV. there
were only fifty thousand inhabitants; forty years after they had increased
to one hundred thousand. Public prostitutes are now as rarely seen in the
streets of Rome as in those of other Italian cities. It is said, also,
that there are scarcely any public brothels.[226] There is a law that a
woman guilty of adultery shall be imprisoned for three months, but Italian
usages are averse to legal proceedings; the scandal is offensive to
society; besides, the courts require positive proof of the offense. With
regard to seduction, the laws are equally stringent; but such cases, when
brought to notice, are usually compromised by permission of the
authorities, either by payment of a sum of money, or by marriage. Syphilis
is always of considerable extent in Rome, and the venereal ward in San
Jacomo is always full.[227] After the siege of Rome by the French in 1849,
the disease was frightfully prevalent.

In 1798 there were thirty thousand poor, or about one fifth of the
population of Rome, upon the lists of the curates of the several parishes.
Under the administration of the French, up to 1814, the proportion had
been diminished to one ninth. Since that period it has been on the
increase.

There are in Rome nineteen hospitals for the treatment of the sick. In
eight public hospitals the average number of patients daily is about
fourteen hundred, who cost nineteen cents each per day. There are fourteen
semi-convents where young girls are gratuitously received and educated,
receiving a small dowry when they leave to marry or become nuns. The
Hospital of St. Roch is for pregnant women.[228]

The Albergo dei Poveri at Naples is the finest poor-house in Italy. It
accommodates upward of three thousand paupers of both sexes, and is
provided with workshops and schools, so as to afford suitable employment
and instruction. Notwithstanding this model establishment, and numerous
others, whose annual revenues amount to nearly two millions and a half of
dollars, Naples is infested with a large mendicant population in addition
to the numbers accommodated in the poor-houses. The Lazaroni are a class
peculiar to the place. Many of them utterly refuse to work, and prefer to
subsist on the smallest coin of the kingdom which they can gain by
begging. They bask in the sun all day, sleep on the ground or on the steps
at night, and starve with the utmost complacency. An Epicurean might find
in this abnegation of the cares of life a sound practical philosophy. That
such a class is in the highest degree obnoxious to society must be
apparent to every one. In the famous rising of Cardinal Ruffo, at the
time of the French occupation in 1805, the Lazaroni perpetrated the most
frightful excesses, and are said to have been relied on by the imbecile
Bourbon government as their chief friends and supporters against the
dangers of French Republicanism. Modern progress has drawn even Naples and
the Lazaroni within its magic circle, and an accomplished traveler
expresses doubts of their alleged unconquerable laziness, for he has seen
them work, wear clothes, sleep at home, earn money when they had a chance,
and conduct themselves very much like other people.[229] Perhaps, as with
the Irish, a want of fair remuneration may be at the root of their
idleness.

A singular institution of Italian society is the _Cicisbeo_, or _Cavaliere
Servente_. This is a distant male relative, or friend, who invariably
attends a married lady on all occasions of her appearance in public. He
pays her all conceivable attentions, and performs even the most servile
offices; carries her fan, her parasol, or her lapdog. We are not aware
that any foreigner has been able to settle this anomaly of social life to
his satisfaction. The Italians themselves sometimes maintain that there is
no immorality or impropriety in the arrangement--that it is a matter of
etiquette, in which the heart is in no way concerned. The husband is
perfectly cognizant of it, and the appearance of the cicisbeo with the
lady is more _de regle_ than that of her husband. Originally, there can be
very little question that the institution was of an amorous character, and
the parties met privately at the Casini, where certain apartments were
specially dedicated to the use of the ladies and their cavalieri.[230]
With the French occupation of 1800 the custom became the subject of
immoderate raillery and satire, and there is reason to believe it has been
but partially revived.

In place, however, of the cicisbeo or cavaliere servente, whose services
and attentions were a form of society, it is, we fear, undeniable that
more intimate though less avowed relations exist between many Italian
ladies and other men than their husbands. That there are numerous and
admirable exceptions to the rule, if it be a rule, we freely admit; but,
unless the concurrent testimony of all writers and travelers in Italy be
absolutely false, and either basely slanderous or culpably careless, the
marriage vow can only be regarded as a cloak for a license that is
inadmissible to the unmarried woman.

The testimony of a profligate man is rarely to be taken against women; and
though the witness be a lord and a poet, we do not know that this should
make a difference were the case one of mere abuse. Coupled, however, as
the inculpation is with extenuatory remarks, we think Lord Byron's
observations valuable. In a letter to Mr. Murray, the celebrated London
publisher (February 21, 1820), he says:

"You ask me for a volume of manners in Italy. Perhaps I am in the case
to know more of them than most Englishmen. * * * * * I have lived in
their houses, and in the heart of their families, sometimes merely as
_Amico di Casa_, and sometimes as _Amico di Cuore_ of the _Dama_, and
in neither case do I feel justified in making a book of them. Their
moral is not your moral; their life is not your life; you would not
understand it; it is not English, nor French, nor German, which you
would all understand. * * * * * I know not how to make you comprehend
a people who are at once temperate and profligate, serious in their
characters and buffoons in their amusements, capable of impressions
and passions which are at once sudden and durable. * * * * * I should
know something of the matter, having had a pretty general experience
among their women, from the fisherman's wife up to the _Nobil Dama_
whom I serve. * * * * * They are extremely tenacious, and jealous as
furies, not permitting their lovers even to marry if they can help it,
and keeping them always to them in public as in private. * * * * * The
reason is, that they marry for their parents and love for themselves.
They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honor, while they pay
the husband as a tradesman. You hear a person's character, male or
female, canvassed, not as depending on their conduct to their husbands
or wives, but to their mistress or lover. If I wrote a quarto I don't
know that I could do more than amplify what I have here noted. It is
to be observed, that while they do all this, the greatest outward
respect is to be paid to the husbands, not only by the ladies, but by
their _serventi_, particularly if the husband serve no one himself
(which is not often the case, however), so that you would often
suppose them relations, the _servente_ making the figure of one
adopted in the family. Sometimes the ladies run a little restive, and
elope, or divide, or make a scene, but this is at the starting,
generally when they know no better, or when they fall in love with a
foreigner, or some such anomaly, and is always reckoned unnecessary
and extravagant."

As a counterpoise to these opinions of Lord Byron, it is but fair to give
that of M. Valery, a traveler whose personal opportunities may have been
less than in the case of the noble poet: "The morals of the Italian
cities, which we still judge of from the commonplace reports of travelers
of the last century, are now neither better nor worse than those of other
capitals; perhaps at Naples they are even better."

The Countess Pepoli, a lady of patriotic and literary family, has written
an able educational manual, in which she claims consideration for the
number of "good and virtuous women" in Italy, whose existence is ignored
by the prejudiced writers of extravagant diatribes. But we are afraid that
the very exception, and the pains she takes to prove the temptations to
which the married woman is exposed, only affirm the truth of the general
charge.

Whatever allegations of veracious or exaggerated unchastity or immorality
may be made against the Italians, they are generally to be laid at the
door of the aristocracy and upper classes. Among the humbler Italians, the
peasantry and the country poor, there is no ground for ascribing to them
either greater idleness or worse morals than are to be found in other
parts of Europe.

Foundling hospitals are to be met with in most great cities of Continental
Europe. Among Protestants, a strong prejudice exists against these
institutions. That they prevent infanticide is self-evident. Their
operation as an encouragement of illicit intercourse can not be estimated
without some minute inquiries into the illegitimacy of places which
encourage them, and of others which are without them.

The proportion of children in the foundling hospitals of Italy is
certainly large, but it is believed, on good grounds, that a considerable
number of them are legitimate, and are abandoned by their parents on
account of their poverty. Of the really illegitimate, there are no means
of saying with accuracy (nor, as far as we know, have any attempts been
made to do so) to what class of society the infants belong. Meanwhile,
although there is no ground for assuming a larger proportion of
illegitimate children than in northern climates, on the other hand, the
publicly displayed prostitution of Italy is infinitely less.

Naples has a population of about four hundred thousand. Of fifteen
thousand births there are two thousand foundlings; we can not say
illegitimates, for, owing to the reasons already specified, there are no
means of ascertaining the facts.

In Tuscany, in 1834, there were twelve thousand foundlings received into
the various hospitals.

The Hospital of the Santo Spirito at Rome is a foundling asylum with a
revenue of about fifty thousand dollars per annum.

About one in sixteen of these children is claimed by its parents; the
majority are cared for, during infancy and childhood, either in the
hospitals or with the neighboring peasantry, with whom they are boarded at
a small stipend. When of sufficient age they are dismissed to work for
themselves; but in many of the hospitals they have some claim in
after-life on occasions of sickness or distress.

We have already alluded to the wide differences of national character in
the various political divisions of Italy. The vices of laziness,
mendicancy, and their kindred failings of licentiousness and unchastity
are chiefly confined to the towns, large and small.[231] The peasantry of
Naples and of the Papal States are industrious, temperate; and the peasant
women, even those who, from the vicinity of Rome, frequent the studios of
the artists as models, are generally of unexceptionable character.[232]
The mountaineers of the Abruzzi, long infamous as banditti (a stigma
affixed by the French or other dominant powers on those who resisted their
rule), in harvest-time brave the deadly malaria of the Campagna to earn a
few liri honestly for their starving children, although in so doing the
many that never return to their mountain homes show the risks that all
have run. The corn, wine, and oil raised in Italy, the well-supplied
markets of Rome and other cities, are evidence that the peasantry do not
all eat the bread of idleness. The Papal States contain some of the
finest, richest, and best cultivated provinces in Italy.[233] It is in the
towns we must look for the worst results of misgovernment and bad example.

CHAPTER XII.

SPAIN.

Resemblance between Spanish and Roman Laws on Prostitution.--Code of
Alphonse IX.--Result of Draconian Legislation.--Ruffiani.--Court
Morals.--Brothels.--Valencia.--Laws for the Regulation of Vice.--
Concubines legally recognized.--Syphilis.--Cortejo.--Reformatory
Institutions at Barcelona.--Prostitution in Spain at the Present
Day.--Madrid Foundling Hospital.

Between the ancient Spaniards and the Romans a most intimate connection
subsisted from an early period of the Roman republic, and the laws and
customs of the former bore the closest resemblance to those of the latter.
This affinity continued so long as the Roman empire had a name, and after
the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, the ties of
kindred and dependence were drawn still closer, for the Spanish kingdom
has ever been the favored heritage, and its rulers the most obedient sons
of Rome. Thus the maxims of the Roman civil law were early incorporated
into the political system, and they still remain the chief pillars of
Spanish jurisprudence. Accordingly, we find, in their legislation on
prostitution, that the Spaniards, together with the general theories,
adopted the specific enactments of other Latin nations.

By the code of Alphonse IX., in the twelfth century, procurers were to be
condemned to "civil death." Such offenders were thus classified:

1. Men who trafficked in debauchery; these were to be banished.

2. Keepers of houses of accommodation, who were to be fined, and their
houses confiscated.

3. Brothel-keepers who hired out prostitutes, which prostitutes, if
slaves, were to be manumitted; if free, were to be dowried at the cost
of the offenders, so that they might have a chance of marriage.

4. Husbands conniving at the prostitution or dishonor of their wives:
these were liable to capital punishment.

5. A class of persons styled Ruffiani (whence the modern word
ruffian).

These latter were analogous to the pimp and bully of the present day, and,
from the repeated and very severe laws against them, seem to have given
great trouble to the authorities. They were banished, flogged, imprisoned;
in short, got rid of on any terms. Girls who supported them were publicly
whipped, and the general laws upon the matter were similar to those noted
in the previous chapter on Italy.

In Spain, the profligacy of public morals attained a pitch beyond all
precedent, possibly owing, in some measure, to Draconian legislation.
Further laws were, from time to time, passed against the Ruffiani, as
preceding edicts had fallen into desuetude, and their presence and traffic
was encouraged by the prostitutes. These latter were forbidden to harbor
the men, and on breach of this prohibition were to be branded, publicly
whipped, and banished the kingdom. Procurers, procuresses, and
adulteresses were punished by mutilation of the nose. Mothers who
trafficked in their children's virtue, _except under pressure of extreme
want_, were also liable to this barbarous punishment.

In 1552 and 1566, edicts were again passed against the Ruffiani. They
were styled a highly objectionable class, dangerous to public order. On
the first conviction as a ruffiano, the offender was sentenced to ten
years at the galleys; for a second conviction, he received two hundred
blows or stripes, and was sent to the galleys for life.

Up to this time the court of Spain seems to have been almost as strongly
tinctured with licentiousness as those of other nations. About the middle
of the fifteenth century, Henry IV. divorced his wife, Blanche of Aragon,
after a union of twelve years, the marriage being publicly declared void
by the Bishop of Segovia, whose sentence was confirmed by the Archbishop
of Toledo, "_por impotencia respectiva_, owing to some malign influence."
Henry subsequently espoused Joanna, sister of Alphonse V., King of
Portugal. The bride was accompanied by a brilliant train of maidens, and
her entrance into Castile was greeted by the festivities and military
pageants which belonged to the age of chivalry. In her own country Joanna
had been ardently beloved; in the land of her adoption her light and
lively manners gave occasion to the grossest suspicions. Scandal named the
Cavalier Beltran de la Cueva as her most favored lover. He was one of the
handsomest men in the kingdom. At a tournament near Madrid he maintained
the superior beauty of his mistress against all comers, and displayed so
much prowess in the presence of the king as induced Henry to commemorate
the event by the erection of a monastery dedicated to St. John.[234] It
does not appear, however, whom Beltran de la Cueva indicated as the lady
of his love on this occasion.

Two anecdotes may be mentioned as characteristic of the gallantry of the
times. The Archbishop of Seville concluded a superb _fête_, given in honor
of the royal nuptials, by introducing on the table two vases filled with
rings garnished with precious stones, to be distributed among his female
guests. At a ball given on another occasion, the young queen having
condescended to dance with the French embassador, the latter made a solemn
vow, in commemoration of so distinguished an honor, never to dance with
any other woman.

While the queen's levity laid her open to suspicion, the licentiousness of
her husband was undisguised. One of Joanna's maids of honor acquired an
ascendency over Henry which he did not attempt to conceal, and after the
exhibition of some disgraceful scenes, the palace became divided by the
factions of the hostile fair ones. The Archbishop of Seville did not
blush to espouse the cause of the paramour, who maintained a magnificence
of state which rivaled royalty itself. The public were still more
scandalized by Henry's sacrilegious intrusion of another of his mistresses
into the post of abbess of a convent in Toledo, after the expulsion of her
predecessor, a lady of noble rank and irreproachable character.

These examples of corruption influenced alike the people and the clergy.
The middle class imitated their superiors, and indulged in an excess of
luxury equally demoralizing and ruinous. The Archbishop of St. James was
hunted from his see by the indignant populace in consequence of an outrage
attempted on a youthful bride as she was returning from church after the
performance of the nuptial ceremony.[235]

Under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella a total change was effected.
"They both exhibited a practical wisdom in their own personal relations
which always commands respect, and which, however it may have savored of
worldly policy in Ferdinand, was in his consort founded on the purest and
most exalted principles. Under such a sovereign, the court, which had been
little better than a brothel in the preceding reign, became the nursery of
virtue and generous ambition. Isabella watched assiduously over the
nurture of the high-born damsels of the court, whom she received into the
royal palace, causing them to be educated under her own eye, and endowing
them with liberal portions on their marriage."[236]

Joanna, the second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, was unfortunate in
her marriage to Philip, son of the Archduke Maximilian, and sovereign--in
right of his mother--of the Low Countries. The couple embarked for
Flanders in the year 1504, and soon after their arrival the inconstancy of
the husband and the ungovernable sensibility of the wife occasioned some
scandalous scenes. Philip was openly enamored of one of the ladies in her
suite, and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally
assaulted her rival, and caused the beautiful locks which had excited the
admiration of her fickle husband to be shorn from her head. This outrage
so affected Philip that he vented his indignation against Joanna in the
coarsest and most unmanly terms, and finally refused to have any farther
intercourse with her.[237]

Public brothels were established in Spain, as in other countries of
Europe, one of great extent being in existence in Valencia in the
fifteenth century. It constituted a complete suburb in itself, similar to
the Ghetto, or Jews' suburb of most capital cities. Indeed, from its
description, it is doubtful if it was not a rogue's sanctuary, similar to
the well known Alsatia in London. It was surrounded by a wall with one
gate only, at which a warder was stationed. He was a public city officer,
and one of his duties was to warn all comers of the risk their property
ran in visiting such a place. If they wished to leave valuables in his
care they could do so, and receive them on their exit. There were some
hundreds of girls resident in this vast den of iniquity. To add to the
disgrace of the locality, the place of public execution was at its gate.

In 1486, the rents, profits and emoluments of the public brothels of
Seville were assigned to Alonzo Fajardo, the master of the royal table.

In 1559, there is an enactment in Granada fixing the rents to be paid by
the women for their rooms and accommodation in public brothels, and also
detailing the furniture and food with which they were to be provided in
return. This is similar to the minute legislation of the German cities.
This public provision having been made, no person was allowed to lend
these women bed-linen.

The authorities of various cities might not permit a prostitute to reside
in the town without previous examination by a duly licensed physician, who
was to declare, upon oath, whether the woman then was or had recently been
diseased.

By some of the Spanish laws, _varraganas_ (kept mistresses or concubines)
seem to have been a legal institution, for men of rank were forbidden to
take slave-dancers, tavern-servants, procuresses, or prostitutes as
concubines. This breach of the ordinary institutions of Christianity may
probably have been a compromise of Moorish and Christian usages and
morals. Before the final deadly struggle which ended in the expulsion of
the Moors, intermarriages were not uncommon among the two peoples.
Interchange of friendship and close intimacy existed between the races,
and a mutual tolerance of each other's laws and customs was maintained,
except by the enthusiasts of either religion.

The Spanish jurists distinctly recognized the woman's right to recover the
wages of her infamy. The scholiasts struck out various fine distinctions,
for which the monkish dialecticians were so deservedly ridiculed by the
free-thinkers of the eighteenth century, and these were debated and
discussed with the utmost eagerness.[238] One question was whether, if
the man paid beforehand, and the woman refused to complete the contract,
he could compel her? The weight of opinion seemed to be that, as he
contemplated an immorality, he could neither recover the money nor enforce
the agreement. Another equally important point was the use to which the
gains of prostitution might be lawfully applied. The legality of their
gains would seem to have overridden the mode of their expenditure, but
casuists thought otherwise, and, by a royal edict of Alphonse IX., it was
decided that priests could not receive funds obtained from such impure
sources.

By the old Spanish law prostitutes were subjected to various disabilities
in matters of inheritance or testamentary disposition. As mentioned in the
review of the old German customs, the Church considered it a meritorious
act to marry a harlot, on the assumption that thereby a brand was saved
from the burning.[239] It is related of a young man that, while being led
to the scaffold, a courtesan, struck by his manly beauty and bearing,
offered to marry him, whereby, in virtue of a law or usage, his life would
be saved. He rejected her proposition, as existence was not worth
redemption at such a price. It is added that his life was nevertheless
spared, in consideration of his spirit and courage.

In 1570, by order of Philip II., the regulations in force in the principal
towns of Andalusia were extended to those of Castile. By these it was
enacted that a woman became a prostitute of her own free will, and that no
one could compel her to continue such, even though she had incurred debts.
A surgeon was directed to pay her a weekly visit at her house, and report
to the deputies of the Consistory those who were diseased, in order that
they might be removed to hospital. The keeper of a brothel could not
receive into his house any one who had not been previously examined, nor
allow any one who was diseased to remain there, under a fine of a thousand
maravedis, with thirty days' imprisonment. Each room was to contain
certain furniture, and the house was to be closed on holidays, during
Lent, Ember Week, and on all fast days, under a punishment of a hundred
stripes to each woman who received visitors, as well as to the keeper of
the house. These and other orders were to be hung upon different parts of
the house, under a fine (about six dollars) and eight days' imprisonment.

The subject of venereal disease in Spain has acquired some interest from a
generally received opinion that its appearance was made in that country,
whence it was disseminated throughout Europe. Columbus and his crew were
reported to have introduced it from America, but later investigations have
proved that syphilis was not known on this side of the Atlantic until
imported by Europeans. Facts have been advanced in preceding pages showing
its almost simultaneous appearance in Italy and Spain, and we recur to the
subject now merely with reference to the theory of its American origin. A
late work, _Lettere sulla Storia de Mali Venerei, di Domenice Thiene,
Venezia_, 1823, enumerates some proofs on the question. The main points
are: 1. That neither Columbus nor his son allude, in any way, to such a
disease in the New World. 2. Among frequent notices of the disease in the
twenty-five years following the discovery of America, there is no mention
of its originating there, but, on the contrary, a uniform derivation of it
from some other source is assigned. 3. That the disorder was known and
described before the siege of Naples, and therefore could not be
introduced by the Spaniards at that time. 4. That it was known in a
variety of countries in 1493 and the early part of 1494; a rapidity of
diffusion irreconcilable with its importation by Columbus in 1493. 5. That
the first work professing to trace its origin in America was not published
till 1517, and was the production, not of a Spaniard, but a foreigner. The
question of its origin is more definitely settled by a letter of Peter
Martyr, noticing the symptoms in the most unequivocal manner, and dated
April 5, 1488, about five years before the return of Columbus. Some doubts
have been thrown upon the accuracy of this letter, but they do not
invalidate it.[240]

In Madrid, in 1522, a special hospital for venereal patients was founded
by Antoine Martin, of the order of St. Jean de Dieu. In 1575 the Spaniards
passed an ordinance that no female domestics under forty years of age
should be taken to service by unmarried men. The tenor of this law
bespeaks the evil intended to be remedied.

In the present day, little is done in Spain in reference to prostitution
by legislation on the subject. In his memoir on the subject to the
Brussels Congress, Ramon de la Segra tells us that the old edicts have
gradually become obsolete, and that neither the municipal authorities or
general government take any farther interest in the question than an
occasional enforcement of the catholic laws against immorality and women
of ill fame. It is said that in Seville first-class houses of prostitution
have a custom of retaining the services of a physician at their own
expense, whose office is to attend and make examinations of the women.
Cadiz is notorious for its attractive climate and its dissipations.[241]

In the last century a tone of manners prevailed in the Spanish peninsula
which was materially changed by the French occupation sweeping away many
of the laxities of the age. In 1780 the Italian system of an attendant
upon married ladies was adopted in Spain. These were termed _Cortejos_,
and it is stated that in the cities they were principally military men,
but in the country the monks performed the duty. The fidelity and
affection of the women were directed to their gallants, and it even was
thought discreditable, without very sufficient reason, to be guilty of
fickleness in this particular. Married men were even the _cortejos_ of
other men's wives, neglecting their own, or leaving them to follow the
bent of their private inclinations. No husband was jealous, but it was
etiquette for Spanish ladies to keep up an external decorum, and to
abstain from marked attentions to a _cortejo_ in the husband's presence,
although he might be perfectly aware of his wife's infidelity, and of her
lover's presence in the house.[242] A curious illustration of this
extraordinary state of public manners is given in an incident that
occurred in Carthagena. A gentleman one morning remarked to a friend,
"Before I go to rest this night the whole city will be thrown into
confusion." He occasioned this public disorder by going home an hour
sooner than his usual time, whereby his wife's _cortejo_ was compelled to
beat a precipitate retreat. The _cortejo's_ arrival at his own house
produced a similar effect, which was multiplied through polite society all
round the town.

By the Spanish laws, which were in many provinces especially favorable to
women, they could make _ex parte_ cases against their husbands of ill
treatment, and if they had beaten them the punishment might be made very
severe. These laws were, as may be supposed, the frequent means of
flagrant injustice.

In Barcelona there was a Magdalen institution, having the double object of
reforming prostitutes and of correcting women who failed in the marriage
vow, or who neglected or disgraced their families. The former department
was called the Casa de Galera; the latter, the Casa de Correccion. The
prostitutes were partially supported at the public cost, their extra food,
beyond bread and meat, being provided by their own labor, to which they
were obliged to devote themselves all day. The lady culprits were
supported by their relations. They were imprisoned by the sentence of a
particular court, on the complaint of a member of their family, and they,
as well as the prostitutes, were required to work. When deemed necessary,
these offenders received personal correction. Drunkenness was one of the
grounds of incarceration. The precise offenses are not mentioned by our
author,[243] but the fashions and customs of nations are so distinct, that
indiscretion, or even familiarity in one, might be immorality in another.
A leading principle in Spanish manners is not to give offense. People may
be as vicious as they please; it may be even notorious that they are so,
but their manners must be outwardly correct. There is little doubt the
violation of this maxim was the principal cause of imprisonment.

In Barcelona there was also, in 1780, a foundling hospital liberally
supported. A curious custom was observed in reference to the girls. They
were led in procession when of marriageable age, and any one who took a
fancy to a young woman might ask her hand, indicating his choice by
throwing a handkerchief on her in public.

In the Asturias certain forms of disease appeared with excessive
virulence, and were very common. Syphilis was prevalent. There was a
hospital at Oviedo for its cure, but patients had considerable reluctance
to apply to it. Whether incident to this prevalence of syphilis or not, we
have no means of ascertaining, but leprosy was very general, and there
were twenty or more large houses for its cure in the Asturias. The common
itch in a highly aggravated form was also general, and often productive of
parasitical vermin.

The present state of Spanish society is the subject of the usual
discrepancies between travelers, owing to their different prejudices,
means of information, or opportunities of making observations. No country
of Europe retains more of its original peculiarities and national habits
than Spain. Under the fervid sun of Andalusia, the same rigorous
observance of proprieties is hardly to be found as in the northern climate
of Biscay, whose hardy sons have ever been the defenders of their rights
and political privileges. Madrid, as the capital, might be thought a fair
illustration of the habits and manners of the great bulk of the city
populations, whose peculiarities of race have not been smoothed away by
intercommunication, the traveling facilities of Spain being yet among the
worst in Europe. The descendants of the Goth and the Moor are still
distinct in character. A general prejudice exists as to the morality of
Southern nations in Europe, and the Spanish women are by no means exempt
from a full share of this unfortunate opinion. Nevertheless, a recent
writer says:

"I speak my sincere opinion when I say that, with the exception of a
few fashionable persons, whose lives do indeed seem to pass in one
constant round of dissipations, whose time is spent in driving on the
Prado, attending the theatre, the opera, or the ball-room, precisely
as their compeers do in every other great city, the Spanish women are
the most domestic in the world, the most devoted to the care of their
children, the most truly pious, and the best _ménagères_. This latter
circumstance may arise from the fact that their fortunes are rarely
equal to their rank, and that a lavish expenditure would soon bring
ruin upon the possessors of the most ancient names and most splendid
palaces in Madrid."[244]

This opinion is confined solely to the higher classes of the city of
Madrid. It expresses nothing as to the great bulk of the population, and,
however gratifying the record of worth may be, we fear the eulogy must be
taken _cum grano salis_.

Of the education of Spanish women, Mrs. Donn Piatt states that, by reason
of the small fortunes of the nobility, the daughters of an ancient house
must be made useful before they are accomplished; that the first
consideration, however, is their religious education, to which, and to the
preparation for confirmation--the great juvenile rite of Catholic
countries--the utmost care and attention are devoted. Next after their
religious tuition, the greatest pains are taken to make them accomplished
housekeepers. They are taught to make their own clothes, to keep accounts,
to regulate their expenditure, and to attend to the most minute details
of the family economy. The advantages of a good solid education are not
neglected; their natural capacity and innate taste for the arts,
especially as musicians and painters, rapidly develop themselves, under
very moderate tuition, to acquirements of a superior character, and the
productions of young women of high station are spoken of with much
admiration. One trait of Spanish character that speaks loudly in favor of
the women is the devotion, respect, and obedience paid by sons to their
mothers long after age has relieved them from maternal tutelage.

In Madrid there is a hospital for foundlings, which are said to amount to
about four thousand annually. These are actual foundlings, exposed
publicly to the compassion of the charitable. It is principally served by
the Sisters of Charity. The infants are intrusted to nurses, and at the
age of seven they are transferred to the _Desamparados_ (unprotected)
college, where they receive instruction in the simpler rudiments of
education, and their religious and moral training is cared for. There is
also an asylum to which others are drafted to learn some practical
handicraft, such as glove-making, straw-hat making, embroidery, etc., and
which seems, in a great measure, a self-supporting institution.

There are three Magdalen Hospitals: St. Nicholas de Barr, founded in 1691
for women of the better class, who are banished for misconduct from the
homes of their husbands and fathers; that of the _Arrepentidos_, for
penitents; and that of the _Recogidos_, founded in 1637, for the
correction of women sent there by their families, in order that they may
be induced to return to the paths of virtue.

CHAPTER XIII.

PORTUGAL.

Conventual Life in 1780.--Depravity of Women.--Laws against Adultery
and Rape.--Venereal Disease.--Illegitimacy.--Foundling Hospitals of
Lisbon and Oporto.--Singular Institutions for Wives.

A writer on Portugal, in the year 1780, complains of the scandalous
licentiousness of the monks and nuns, of whom there were no less than two
hundred and fifty thousand in a population of two millions. It is said
that the convent Odivelas, the harem of the monarch John V., contained
three hundred women, accounted the most beautiful and accomplished
courtesans in the kingdom. The great Marquis de Pombal suppressed many of
these convents, and was the general reformer of the religious orders.

Of the effect of such an example from such quarters on the population at
that time, sunk, as they were, in the most imbecile ignorance, little need
be said. The women of Portugal were reputed to surpass all European
females in gallantry, and their attractions were such that only one
interview was necessary to complete the conquest. To this condition of
common immorality, the rigor of their husbands and male relations may have
contributed not a little. They are said to have been outrageously jealous,
and to have made no scruple of murdering any stranger who gave them even
the weakest grounds of suspicion.

In the fundamental laws of Portugal, promulgated in 1143, it is enacted
that, "if a married woman commit adultery, and the husband complain to the
judge, and the judge is the king, the adulterer and adulteress shall be
condemned to the flames; but if the husband retain the wife, neither party
shall be punished."

In the case of a rape perpetrated on the person of a lady of rank, all the
property of the ravisher went to the lady; and in case the female were not
noble, the man, without regard to his rank, was obliged to marry her.

The writer whom we have already quoted[245] speaks of the venereal disease
as being, at the time he wrote (1770-1780), habitual in Portugal, and that
the Portuguese not knowing how to cure it, its malignity had become so
intensified that, in some cases, individuals who had contracted a peculiar
form of the malady had died in a few hours, as though struck down by an
active and deadly poison. This is most probably the exaggeration of
popular opinion on the subject. More recent writers are chary of
information, and avoid the mention of matters so offensive to ears polite.

The manners and morals of the higher ranks of society must have undergone
a material change for the better in the present century, for an English
nobleman (Lord Porchester, since Earl of Caernarvon) speaks in very
favorable terms of the propriety, amiability, and excellence of the
Portuguese ladies, which, excepting in the matter of intellectual
education, left them in no wise behind the worthy of their sex in other
countries of Europe.

Among the lower classes, however, it would not seem that the tone of
morals had been very much amended, whether we consider their regard for
female virtue, or their cultivation of the maternal tenderness and
solicitude natural to all created beings.

In the neighborhood of Oporto, country women may be met conveying little
babies to the Foundling Hospital, four or five together, in a basket.
These helpless creatures are the illegitimate children of peasant girls,
openly deserted in the villages, and thus forwarded by the authorities to
the care of those pious strangers who undertake their nurture and
preservation.[246]

In these cases, says Mr. Kingston, the females are not treated by their
parents with any harshness or rigor. They are rather compassionated for
their misfortune, and are only sent away from home when found obstinately
persistent in a course of evil.

As may be supposed, the foundling hospitals have abundant claims on their
funds. The Real Casapia, at Belem, near Lisbon, and another hospital in
Lisbon attached to the Casa de Misericordia, receive together nearly three
thousand children, who are brought up to different callings, and otherwise
prepared for active life, as is usual in such institutions. There is a
similar asylum, equally frequented, in Oporto. In this city there is also
an asylum in which husbands may place their wives during their own absence
from home. It often happens that ladies, on such occasions, enter the
asylum of their own accord.

There is also in Oporto an establishment in the nature of a Penitentiary,
in which husbands may immure their faithless wives, or even those who give
grounds of suspicion. It is presumed that in the nineteenth century, even
in Portugal, this must be done under color of some legal authority.

CHAPTER XIV.

ALGERIA.

Prostitution in Algiers before the Conquest.--Mezonar.--Unnatural
Vices.--Tax on Prostitutes.--Decree of 1837.--Corruption.--Number of
Prostitutes and Population.--Nationality of Prostitutes.--Causes of
Prostitution.--Brothels.--Clandestine Prostitution.--Baths.--
Dispensary.--Syphilis.--Punishment of Prostitutes.

A pamphlet has lately appeared in France on the subject of Prostitution in
Algiers. Its author, Dr. E. A. Duchesne, has rendered service by
collecting a large number of important facts and statistical data.[247]

When the French conquered Algiers in 1830, they found prostitution
established there, and prevailing to a large extent. So far as we are able
to ascertain, it had always been a leading feature of Algerian society;
travelers had noticed it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In
1830 it was estimated that, with a population of thirty thousand, Algiers
contained three thousand prostitutes. We have already had occasion to
notice the unreliable character of similar estimates in general, but there
is no doubt that the number of lewd women at Algiers under Arab rule was
inordinately large. They were mainly Moors, Arabs, and negresses. All were
under the control of the chief of the native police--the Mezonar. He kept
a list of them, and laid a tax amounting to about two dollars per month on
each. As he paid a fixed sum to the government for the privilege of
collecting this tax, it was to his interest to increase the number of
prostitutes as much as possible, and he appears to have done so. He kept
in his employ a number of spies, who watched women suspected of immoral
habits, and denounced them whenever they were detected, in which event
they were inscribed on the Mezonar's list, and became prostitutes for
life. He was empowered to compel every prostitute to discharge the duties
of her calling, and was frequently applied to by strangers to supply them
with women. He was not allowed, however, to lease women to Christians or
Jews. Twice a year the Mezonar gave a public fête, to which all the male
inhabitants of Algiers were invited; the prostitutes formed the female
portion of the assemblage, and the public officer profited by the
increased patronage they obtained during the festivities, as well as by
the sale of tickets for the entertainment.[248]

It is right also to add that the French found that other feature of
Oriental manners, unnatural habits, largely developed at Algiers. The
cafés, the streets, the baths, the public places were full of boys of
remarkable beauty, who more than shared with the women the favor of the
wealthier natives. Owing to a criminal negligence on the part of the
French authorities, no systematic endeavor has ever been made to eradicate
this shameful vice, which appears still to prevail to an alarming extent.

The influx of population, mainly soldiery, into a city thus steeped in
immorality, produced natural results. A few weeks after the invasion, the
French general was compelled to establish a Dispensary, and to decree that
all dissolute women must undergo an examination there once a week. A tax
of five francs per month was laid upon prostitutes to defray the expenses
of the establishment. Within less than a year, such grave abuses had crept
into the collection of this tax that it was resolved to farm it out, and
it was adjudged at auction to a man who agreed to pay 1860 francs per
month for its proceeds. In 1832 the monthly tax was raised successively to
seven 44/100, and nine francs per girl, and on these rates it was farmed
to one Balré, who paid 1666-80/100 for the privilege of collecting it. He
was also entitled to levy and retain the amount of all fines imposed by
the police on prostitutes, and to charge women ten francs each time they
went to a fête outside the city, and five francs if the fête were within
the limits. The profits of the farm were so great that in 1835 Balré was
able to pay the government 2250 francs (four hundred and fifty dollars)
per month.[249]

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 prostitutes 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 prostitute 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 pass-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 prostitutes, 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 pass-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
prostitutes to an enormous extent, in the shape of fines, dues for going
to balls, 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 passed, 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
prostitution.[252] We compile the following table from several given by
Dr. Duchesne:

+-------------------------------------------------+
| |Registered | POPULATION. |
|Year.|Prostitutes|-------------------------------|
| |(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 prostitutes 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 prostitutes 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 prostitution at Algiers, Dr. Duchesne 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
prostitute. 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
prostitution.[254]

There are fourteen houses of prostitution at Algiers, all kept, it seems,
by Europeans, and the greater part by retired prostitutes. 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
partnership. Their rooms are generally shabby and ill furnished.[255]

Arab prostitutes 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 prostitutes, clandestine
prostitution is very extensively practiced at Algiers. We have no details
or even approximate estimates of the number of clandestine prostitutes,
but it doubtless exceeds that of the registered women. Many of them are
attached to the garrison, and are handed from regiment to regiment,
shielded 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. Duchesne
had reason to believe that syphilis prevailed to an alarming extent among
the secret prostitutes, 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 prostitutes. 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. Duchesne
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 quantity 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
prostitutes; and the necessary offices, etc. The staff of the Dispensary
consists of a director, treasurer (_econome_), physician, apothecary,
clerk, cook, assistant apothecary, porter, five laborers, and four police
agents. All the washing 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,
assisted 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. Duchesne 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]

Prostitutes 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 Institutions.--Foundlings.--Estimate of the
Marriage Ceremony.--Regulations as to Prostitution.--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 institutions have been originated and maintained.

The hospitals and other eleemosynary institutions 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
institutions, 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 Hôtel 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 prostitution 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 debauché_ and
_les maisons de passe_; these are visited by _les filles éparses_, who
keep their appointments there. The two classes of houses are distinguished
by different-colored lanterns hung over the doors.

All classes of prostitutes are required to be examined twice a week; those
who live in brothels of the first and second class are visited by the
physicians, while the very poor women of the third class, 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 prostitutes, while the half-starved, ill-dressed
pauper of the third class 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
Prostitutes.--The Hamburger Berg and its Women.--Physique,
Peculiarities, and Diseases of Prostitutes.--Dress.--Food.--
Intellectual Capacity.--Religion.--Offenses.--Procuresses.--
Inscription.--Locality of Brothels.--Brothel-keepers.--
Dance-houses.--Sunday Evening Scene.--Private Prostitutes.--
Street-walkers.--Domestic Prostitution.--Unregistered Prostitution.--
Houses of Accommodation.--Common Sleeping Apartments.--Beer and Wine
Houses.--Effect of Prostitution 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 Prostitutes.--Hamburg Magdalen
Hospital.

The ancient legislative enactments respecting prostitution 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 prostitution 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 nobody 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 accumulated 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 circumstances. 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 hellers for each hank. On Sunday, Lady-day, and Twelfth-day,
after vespers, and in Passion 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 prostitution.

In 1764, and again in 1767, the Hamburgers enacted very severe laws
against offenders, under the title of "_delicta carnis_," by which both
sexes 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.

In Germany, prostitution received a terrible impulse from the French
Revolution, when the general disruption of public obligations paved the
way to unbounded private license. Probably the licentiousness of Europe at
the end of the last and commencement of the present century was more
extravagant than at any other time. The irruption of immigrants at the
fall of the French monarchy flooded Hamburg with Parisian morals and
customs. Places of entertainment and sensual gratification arose in all
directions, the homely, simple manners of the _Vaterland_ were subverted,
and a less rigid line of conduct took their place. In the words of a
writer of the day: "Our eating-houses were metamorphosed into restaurants;
our dancing-rooms into saloons; our drinking-shops into pavilions; our
cellars into halls; our girls into demoiselles; in short, we were
thoroughly polished up by the immoral shoal of immigrants. Quick and
unrestrained strode the crowd over our pleasant streets, and modesty and
respectability fled with averted faces, to the sorrow of the few good
men."

The name _demoiselle_ was granted to many of the common women, their
places of resort being called "Ma'amselle houses." In those days the
Hamburgers saw, with astonishment, houses fitted up and furnished in the
style of mansions, with costly upholstery and cabinet-work.[264] Among the
women were the _femmes entretenness_, who received their friends at
certain hours, and whose favors were dispensed for a Louis d'or or a
ducat. They frequented the first and second boxes of the German and French
theatres, and drove through the public streets in handsome carriages. Some
of the keepers of this class of houses had physicians in their pay, whose
services were always available by the inmates. _Petits soupers_ were given
here, and sometimes a ball took place.

These were literally the aristocracy of prostitution. The second, third,
and fourth grades resided in inferior streets or in the suburbs, differing
in their attractions according to the rank which they assumed, but all
equally shameless and unequivocal in their conduct and appearance.

Notwithstanding this rapid spread of prostitution, the police of the city
can not justly be charged with neglect of duty, any public outrage being
followed by condign punishment. At one time a whole ship-load of nymphs of
the _pavé_ was dispatched to the colonies; at another a raid was made on
the most conspicuous houses, some of the inmates alarmed into decency of
conduct, and the incorrigible publicly exhibited in the streets, decorated
with inscriptions signifying their offenses. The voice of the few was
powerless against the corruptions of the many. The pamphlets and papers of
the time teem with the proffered services of go-betweens, and even the
Hamburg ladies themselves were far from perfection, if we may credit the
evidence of a fictitious petition, praying, among other things, that the
ladies restrict the indecency of their costume, and not make such a
liberal display of their charms.

It was impossible such an extravagant state of society should long exist;
a reaction was inevitable; and we find, accordingly, an ordinance enacted
in 1807 by the Proctor Abendroth in reference to the matter. It recognized
brothel-keeping and prostitution as a calling, and permitted it under
certain restrictions. A tax on the class was imposed, and means were
prescribed by which a register of all persons engaged therein was to be
kept, and their health and general good conduct maintained and enforced.
The official justification of the tax is found in the order itself, which
declares that, "for the purposes aforesaid" (police register and
supervision, medical examination, maintenance in sickness, poverty, etc.),
"and in order that the public shall be at no charges, each housekeeper
shall, for every woman residing with him, pay two marks to the Proctor's
treasury. The surplus of this treasury shall go to the Hospital."

During the French occupation in 1811, the police renewed and enforced the
stringent regulations on the subject of common houses and women. The
preamble of their "Instructions" (April, 1811) is worthy of notice:

"Public and personal safety require a constant inspection, as well of
the public houses dedicated to debauchery, as of the women and girls
who frequent the same, live therein, or dwell there from time to time.
This inspection must also be extended to those places which are not
expressly appointed for dwelling-houses, but which, nevertheless, must
be included among the public houses, inasmuch as they serve for refuge
to the women and girls who wander about the streets."

"The grounds of this inspection are two-fold. In one respect they
belong to the maintenance of public order: it is needful that no one
be withdrawn from the eye of the police, nor find an asylum in such
houses. It is likewise expedient that the magistracy take notice of
disgraceful and disorderly proceedings, or prevent those which take
place too often in the town. The other grounds respect the public
health. The habits of debauchery have become so general, and
inspection has, for some years, become so difficult, that the most
dangerous maladies have increased to an unprecedented extent. All
classes of society complain, and call loudly for regulations to
restrain these evils. These considerations have moved the General
Police Commissary to renew, in full force, the before-enacted laws and
regulations, and to order them to be enforced with rigor in the
present state of affairs."

After the withdrawal of the French, the vigilance of the police
authorities seems to have relaxed, if we are to judge by complaints
published at the time, in which they are accused of complicity with the
unfortunates who infested the streets of Hamburg, and are said, "by the
agency of a trifling bribe, to be able to ply their hideous trade
unobstructed, and to the great annoyance of the virtuously disposed, who,
after certain hours of the evening, are unable to pass along the streets."

In 1820, "the previously existing police regulations against prostitutes
being proved very ineffectual, insomuch that they infest the public
streets and ways, not only to the offense of decency and propriety, but to
the endangerment of public order and safety," it was ordered that the
regulations should be renewed, and additional powers were given to the
police to enforce the registry of individuals coming within the scope of
the law.

At this time we find some information as to the number of prostitutes, who
are stated to be about five hundred, chiefly foreigners, and their
receipts from their patrons, but we have no guide to the number of women
who pursued their calling privately, which must have been large.

The civic administration of the Senator Hudtwalcker is marked by earnest
endeavors to control prostitution and restrict it within known bounds.
Some of his views on the subject met much opposition. He wished to close
up one end of a notorious street, and to wall up the back windows,
stationing a watchman constantly at the end left open. After great
personal attention to the subject, he published the result of his
experience.[265] His principles are those upon which the present police
regulations of Hamburg are based. He says:

"All brothel-keepers and girls should be distinctly made to understand
that their infamous and ruinous calling is only _tolerated_, not
permitted, or authorized, or even well wished. Still less can they
feel that they have any right to compare themselves with worthy
citizens as though their calling, because an impost is levied on them,
can be put on a level with other permitted callings. They must
remember that this impost is raised solely to defray the necessary
cost of police supervision, and of the cure of maladies brought on the
common women by their own profligate course of life."

"2. Public or private brothel-keeping to be notified to the police;
the regulations to be read over and subscribed; offenders to be
punished by bread and water, and the House of Correction. If an
uninscribed woman have the venereal disease, the fact is _prima facie_
evidence of prostitution."

"3. Change of residence to be notified, under penalty."

"4. The concession may be withdrawn by the authorities at their
pleasure."

"5. Houses of accommodation will only be tolerated,

(_a._) where the landlord is inscribed;

(_b._) where a resident girl is inscribed;

(_c._) where an inscribed girl is the party using it."

"6. Women from abroad, kept by single men, must obtain the police
residence permission, and should pay the tax for the first class,
without, however, being subject to medical visits. They have the right
of the free use of the General Infirmary. Should such a girl be proved
to have intercourse with several men, or, being venereal, to have
infected others, she should be treated as a public woman."

7, 8, 9. Prescribe the identification of individuals subscribing; the
details of their place of birth; the consent of parents when living; also,
"That any brothel-keeper detaining an innocent girl on false pretenses
shall be punished with fine and imprisonment, and the concession be
withdrawn."

"10. Female servants or relatives of brothel-keepers residing with
them to be over twenty-five years of age."

"11. No prostitute is suffered to keep children of either sex over ten
years of age; even her own must be brought up elsewhere if she
continues her calling."

12. Prohibits solicitation of passengers.

"13. No common woman to be in the streets after eleven at night
without a male companion."

14. Limits the places to which prostitutes may resort.

"15. Young people, under twenty years, not to enter a brothel."

"16. No music or gaming in brothels, nor liquor-selling, except by
special permission."

"17. Noise and uproar in brothels punishable."

"18. No brothel-keeper or inscribed woman to permit extortion or
violence to a customer, but they may detain persons who have not paid.
Thefts or foul dealing prohibited; the landlord _prima facie_
responsible."

"19. No compulsion or violence of the women by the keeper, nor by
guests with his cognizance."

"20. A woman wishing to return to a virtuous life at liberty to do so,
notwithstanding any keeper's claims. If they disagree as to such
claims, the police to settle them, but in no case has the keeper any
lien on her. Nevertheless, this privilege not to be abused. If a woman
returns to her evil courses, the keeper's claims on her revive, and
she may even be punished. Limitation, according to the class of a
woman, of the right of borrowing money."

"21. If parents or relatives will undertake the reclamation of a
prostitute, the police will compel restitution of her person,
irrespective of the keeper's claims, or even of the woman's own
refusal."

"22. A woman changing her residence, and disputing any settlement with
the keeper, can have the same rectified by the police."

"23. The women to be subjected every week to medical visitation. No
woman, during menstruation, or with any malady in the sexual organs,
to receive visits from a man. No woman to be approached by a man
diseased, or reasonably suspected of disease. To this end, a statement
of the signs of venereal disease to be furnished."

"24. The orders of the public physician are imperative, and must be
strictly observed. Want of personal cleanliness increasing the
virulence of syphilis, the directions of the physician on this matter
to be imperatively followed."

"25. The medical officer to report the result of examination to the
police, and to enter the same in a book to be kept by each woman, to
be produced on demand."

"26. A woman finding herself to be venereally infected to report
either to the keeper or the police; in other illness to report to the
medical officer, who will direct her course of treatment at home, or,
in venereal and infectious cases, at the hospital. In cases of
pregnancy she is to report herself to the medical officer."

"27. A keeper punishable for the disease of a man in his house, and
liable for the charges of cure."

The remaining sections relate to the collection of the tax; the penalties
for violation are fine and imprisonment.

Having thus briefly sketched the progress of legislation on prostitution
in Hamburg, based upon the principle that "prostitution is a necessary
evil, and, as such, must be endured under strict supervision of the
authorities," it seems an appropriate place to copy the following remarks
of an eminent local writer:

"That brothels are an evil no one can deny; still, the arguments
against the sufferance of brothels are, except as to that
incontestable truth, no answer to the 'necessity,' which is the very
_gist_ of the thing, and which necessity is based on the
uncontrollable nature of sexual intercourse, and on the circumstances
of our social condition."

"The sufferance of brothels is necessary,

"1. For the repression of profligacy, of private prostitution as well
as of its kindred crimes, adultery, rape, abortion, infanticide, and
all kinds of illicit gratification of sexual passion. The latter cases
occur very rarely with us. Of Pæderasty or Sodomy we find but few
instances; and of that unnatural intercourse of women with each other,
referred to by Parent-Duchatelet as common among the Parisian girls,
we find no trace."

"The sufferance of brothels operates to the suppression of private
prostitution, in so far as brothel-keepers and the 'inscribed' women
are, for their own interest, opposed to it, and are serviceable to the
police in its detection. Unquestionably, private prostitution is an
incalculably greater evil than public vice."

"2. On grounds of public policy in regard to health. It is quite
erroneous to suppose that these legalized brothels contribute to the
spread of syphilitic maladies. This should rather be imputed to the
private prostitution which would ensue on the breaking up of the
brothels, and from which that medical police supervision that now
limits the spread of infection would, of course, be withdrawn. The
experience of all time proves that, by means of secret prostitution,
the intensity and virulence of venereal disorders have been
aggravated, to the multiplication of those appalling examples familiar
to every medical reader, and which cause one to shudder with horror;
while numerically, disease and its consequences have been carried into
every class of society. It is precisely our knowledge of these very
facts which has induced the sufferance, or, rather, the regulation of
these brothels."

"3. _Suppression is_ ABSOLUTELY IMPRACTICABLE, inasmuch as the evil is
rooted in an unconquerable physical requirement. It would seem as if
the zeal against public brothels implied that by their extinction a
limitation of sexual intercourse, except in marriage, would be
effected. This is erroneous, for reliable details prove that for every
hundred brothel women there would be two hundred private prostitutes,
and no human power could prevent this. In a great city and frequented
sea-port like Hamburg, the hope of amending this would be purely
chimerical."

Thus much for Hamburg legislation, and the sound arguments in its favor.
We will now give some facts illustrative of the vice as it exists at the
present time, using a pamphlet by Dr. LIPPERT, entitled "Prostitution in
Hamburg. 1848."

It must be premised that, for the purpose, Hamburg is divided into two
parts: the city proper, and the suburb of St. Paul. The latter is under a
distinct municipal authority, and is the ordinary residence of seamen and
those depending on a seafaring life.

For many years the police returns of the city proper would show about five
hundred of the registered "common women" (_eingeschrieben Dirnen_), and
one hundred registered brothels. The police regulations requiring monthly
payment of the personal and house tax, and also a renewal of the
permission to keep brothels at the same time, is a very convenient method
of obtaining a census of the class. The following is a statement of the
largest and smallest monthly number of registered women for several
years:

Year 1883 Largest number, 550 Smallest number, 456
" 1834 " " 550 " " 450
" 1835 " " 481 " " 441
" 1836 " " 546 " " 473
" 1837 " " 514 " " 484
" 1844 " " 502 No reports.
" 1846 " " 512 No reports.

These monthly reports do not show any marked variation at any particular
period, the rise and fall being arbitrary. The fluctuation is not very
great in the aggregate, although from November, 1834, to January, 1835,
there was a decrease of 86 (or nearly one fifth), while between November,
1835, and January, 1836, there was a corresponding increase. Since that
time the numbers have remained steadily at about one point.

The housekeepers' (_bordelwirth_) return does not vary to the same
extent.
The average is 105
But it decreased in 1844 to 90
" " " 1845 " 93
" " " 1846 " 96
Of these housekeepers in the last-named year (1846) there were
Males 60
Females 36--96
In December, 1844, there were
Registered women 502
who were subdivided into those
Living in registered houses 294
Living privately 208--502
In May, 1845, there were
Registered women 505
who were subdivided into those
Living in registered houses 326
Living privately 179--505
(At this period there were four registered houses without any women in
them.)
In August, 1846, there were
Registered women 512
who were subdivided into those
Living in registered houses 334
Living privately 178--512

These figures show that the number of those living privately is gradually
diminishing, more of them being concentrated in the registered houses.

Dr. Lippert is of opinion that prostitution decreases in the summer and
increases in the winter months. The statistics will certainly support this
theory, but the difference is so small as scarcely to warrant its
reception as a rule.

Thus the months of May and July, for five years, give a
monthly average of 499-5/10
and the months of November and January for the same time
give a monthly average of 501-1/10
--------
showing an average increase in the winter months of 1-6/10

or about one third of one per cent. on the average number
of prostitutes.

In reference to the classes from which the ranks of the common women in
Hamburg are recruited, Dr. Lippert states that four fifths are from the
agricultural districts of the vicinity; that they live as house-servants,
tavern-waiters, or in other callings for a time, and then become
prostitutes "as a matter of business." Without any desire to controvert
his opinion on local questions, it may be doubted whether bad example,
vicious education, ignorance of moral or religious obligations, or
temptation, are not sufficient to account for their fall, aside from this
sweeping denunciation, this commercial view of the question, opposed as it
is to all experience in every civilized country where any inquiries on the
subject have been made.

The private prostitutes, whether registered or unregistered, are mainly
seamstresses or others dependent upon daily labor. These women seem to
retain some natural sense of the disgrace attached to open and avowed
courtesans, and in their secrecy and quiet retain a few feminine
characteristics of which the common brothel woman is destitute.

We have no reliable detail of private unregistered prostitution, or of
mere houses of accommodation in Hamburg; but an important fact is to be
found in the number of illegitimate children, and the decrease, in
proportion to the population, of the number of marriages. The following
results are taken from Neddermeyer's "Statistics and Topography of
Hamburg."

In 1799, the marriages were about 1 in 45;
From 1826 to 1835, " " " " 1 " 97;
In 1840, " " " " 1 " 100.

The proportion of illegitimate to legitimate children is about 1 to 5, the
actual number of illegitimate births being as follows:

Years Illegitimate
Births.
1826 649
1827 606
1828 723
1829 801
1830 786
1831 805
1832 926
1833 867
1834 846
1835 730
1836 807
1837 771
1838 762
1839 765
1840 754
1841 749
1842 702
1843 655
1844 797
1845 778
1846 779

The population of Hamburg was in 1826 100,902
" " " " 1840 124,967
" " " " 1846 130,000 or upward was assumed
as the number.

We have now to examine the physiological and pathological peculiarities of
the Hamburg prostitutes.

The police regulations require that no registered woman shall be under
twenty years of age; but in this they have a discretionary power, so as to
keep under inspection and supervision some younger girls whom neither the
work-house nor prison can reclaim, the experience of the Hamburg
authorities having convinced them that such _punitive institutions are
seldom successful in the work of reformation_; a truth which will, ere
long, be more generally acknowledged, especially in reference to abandoned
women, than it is at the present day.

The official list for 1844 shows that of the registered prostitutes there
were

Under 20 years of age 16
From 20 " to 30 years 401
" 30 " " 40 " 74
" 40 " " 50 " 11
---
Total 502

In 1846, of women living in registered houses, there were

From 20 years to 30 years of age 199
" 30 " " 40 " " 50
" 40 " " 50 " " 8
---
Total 257

The birth-places of the 502 women reported in 1844 included most of the
countries in Germany. There were from

Hamburg 108
Hanover 101
Prussia 81
Holstein 78
Other parts of Germany 129
Holland 2
Russia 2
France 1
---
Total 502

The nativity returns for 512 women, in 1846, do not vary materially from
the above, the difference in the foreign-born being that there were four,
instead of five, born out of Germany. These tables show that about one in
five are natives of Hamburg city and territory. Dr. Lippert notices this
fact as a small proportion, and accounts for it by enumerating the
difficulties of local relationship, parentage, etc., which would be
opposed to the registration of native women. These circumstances favor
the presumption that many of the unregistered women are city born.

The Hamburger Berg, or St. Paul's Suburb, is on the west side of Hamburg,
and has already been mentioned as the abode of seamen and their
dependents. Brothels were tolerated here, in deference to the wants of the
inhabitants, at a time when they were strictly excluded from the city
proper. The women and the houses are of a different type from those of
other parts of Hamburg. All the prostitutes live in registered houses,
unregistered or private traffic in this quarter being rigorously opposed
by the authorities. The brothels and their inmates are in the most
flourishing condition at the end of autumn, when the home voyages are
completed and the sailors paid off. For a time mirth and excitement bear
the sway; when the wages are all spent, things relapse into their old
condition, and sometimes the keepers dismiss some of their women, the
supply being in excess of the demand.

During the year 1846 the number of registered women in this district was

January 186
May 189
August 181
December 169

The 169 women registered in December were distributed among nineteen
tolerated houses. In seven of these music and dancing were permitted, and
they contained respectively 21, 13, 11, 19, 20, 18, 29 women, leaving only
26 women to inhabit the remaining twelve houses.

The ages of these women were

Under 20 years 27
From 20 " to 30 years 129
" 30 " " 40 " 13
---
Total 169

The places of birth do not vary materially from the proportions given
already. Other matters relating to this particular class will be found
hereafter.

In their _physique_ the great majority of the registered women present no
pleasing aspect. Generally taken from the rudest classes, they are coarse
and unattractive in their appearance, and from the consequences of
irregular indulgence and continual exposure, they soon lose the womanly
characteristics they once possessed. But this is not a portrait of the
whole. Among the unregistered private women may be found some of
considerable beauty. The registered women who reside in private, or in
first-class brothels, have some prepossessing members of their ranks,
while the St. Paul suburb has few but of the roughest kind. Physical
strength seems more in demand among the _habitués_ of that section than a
graceful form or a pretty face.

In their bodily peculiarities and diseases there is no difference between
the public women of Hamburg and those of other cities. At the commencement
of their career they frequently become thin and emaciated, but after a
time, probably owing to their idle life and good food, regain their
substance. In their phrenological development we find a marked
preponderance of the animal instincts over the intellectual faculties. The
effect of their mode of life will depend somewhat upon individual
constitution. The teeth of women of the town are generally bad, but in
Hamburg they are in excellent order--much better than the majority of the
general population. Their complexion is pale, and they endeavor to remedy
this by the constant use of coarse cloths, applications of eau de Cologne,
and other stimulants, but very rarely by painting, except among the lowest
classes. They soon lose their hair from dissipation, the use of pomatum,
curling irons, etc. It is, however, in the rough, harsh voice that the
most conspicuous result of their calling is shown.

We will leave, for the present, the medical portion of this inquiry, and
give a sketch of their domestic or every-day life. It must be borne in
mind that the police divisions are into "registered" or "unregistered,"
and "public" or "private" women.

The public women (_öffentlichen dirnen_) are under the special control and
supervision of a police authority charged with this duty. Without his
express cognizance and permission they can not be registered, or "written
in" (_eingeschrieben_), nor can they have liberty to change their
residence, or to be "written out" (_ausgeschrieben_). This officer is the
collector of the impost upon them and upon the brothel-keeper
(_bordelwirth_), which is paid over to the fund (_meretricen kasse_). We
can not give the detailed application of this money, but, in general
terms, it does not swell the revenues of the city, and, to avoid public
scandal, is applied exclusively to the police and medical services
required by the class.

The keepers and women are of three grades. It does not clearly appear
whether a woman can select the class with whom she will associate. We are
inclined to think the magistrates decide this point, and allot her to the
one for which she seems best adapted.

In their apparel and food there exists the usual difference that may be
found in all places and ranks of life. The police regulations, and the
generally sober style of dress among the Hamburgers, restrict any immodest
display of the person or extravagance of attire. The first-class women are
generally costumed with taste and elegance, while among the lower ranks
plain and serviceable garments are in demand. In most cases of the
registered women residing in brothels, the keeper supplies the clothes,
and very often charges extravagant prices for them. Extortionate demands
in this respect are a fruitful source of complaints to the police, who
moderate the bills with no very tender sympathy for the creditor. The
clothes and jewelry of some of the first-class women are hired from some
clothes-lender (_vermietheinnen_), but others seldom resort to this
expedient, excepting for trinkets.

The food of the house-women is good and plentiful, varying according to
the rate of the brothel in which they live. The old sumptuary laws are not
in force, but the interest of the keeper induces him to desire a prudent
popularity among his women, and to maintain the character of his house by
the liberality of his entertainment both in quantity and quality. A
considerable portion of their liquids is coffee, of which they are very
fond. Wines and liquors are supplied by the house only on holidays, but
visitors can purchase them at any time they wish. Drunkenness is
comparatively rare among the better class, partly owing to the care of the
keeper, but more from dread of the police supervision and consequent
punishment.

In their intellectual capacity there is nothing to distinguish the
prostitutes in Hamburg. Few can read, and fewer still can write. Those who
can read seek their amusement in the old romances of the circulating
libraries, seldom perusing that libidinous style of publications known
among us as "yellow-covered literature." _En passant_, this seems the
universal practice of the class, wherever any inquiries have been made.
Like other ignorant persons, they are superstitious. Lippert mentions one
particular omen connected with their calling: she who picks up any article
which has been thrown away is sure to receive a visit from a man soon
after. He does not say whether this has been verified by experience.

Their ordinary routine of life is one of useless idleness. They rise about
ten and take breakfast, of which coffee is the staple. The morning is
loitered away in dressing, reading novels, playing cards or dominoes, and
kindred occupations. In some of the lower-class houses they dispel their
_ennui_ by assisting in domestic work, but this is a matter of favor which
they are careful shall not become an obligation. By the middle of the day
they are ready for dinner. In the afternoon they add the finishing touches
to their dress, and wait the arrival of visitors. Some resort to the
public lounges or dancing saloons to form or cultivate acquaintances, but
the aristocracy of the order hold it more becoming to their dignity to
stay at home and wait for their "friends."

In that fine and peculiar quality of modesty, which adds the crowning
grace to woman's charms, even the prostitute is not wholly deficient. Some
trace of the angel attribute is visible, but mostly in the private women,
where a regard for the decent proprieties of life yet lingers amid the
wreck of character, and to such it frequently forms the chief attraction.

Religion has an influence over some, strangely at variance with its
dictates as are their lives, but a large majority are entirely destitute
of any such sentiment. Occasionally, Biblical pictures may be seen in the
rooms of brothels, but merely as ornaments, for they are neutralized by
the contiguity of others more consonant with the place.

In their relations to the male sex there are differences between women
residing in public brothels and those living privately, whether registered
or unregistered. Partly from inclination, but mainly from policy on the
part of the keeper, the former seldom own allegiance to any particular
lover. It is true that any one who is able and willing to pay liberally
can come and go as he pleases, provided he does not interfere with the
girl's "business" in other profitable quarters. Not so with the private
women, who frequently have particular "lovers" to whom they show much
kindness, although from them they often receive but little sympathy or
protection, many of these men not scrupling to exist entirely upon the
earnings of a woman whom they would publicly insult if they met her away
from home.

In their personal conduct toward each other the women residing in one
house are constrained and envious. In the first class there is a
ceremonious retention of the forms of politeness, but they are too
frequently brought into personal rivalry to entertain much good feeling.
In the lower classes jealousy often finds vent in reproaches or blows, and
frequently a conflict ensues requiring the interposition of the host or of
a neighboring police officer. Among those who live alone warm friendships
are not uncommon; much timely assistance is afforded in times of sickness
or want; good offices are reciprocated; and it sometimes happens, in the
delicate matter of their visitors, that a man who has been in the habit of
favoring one woman will not find his attentions welcomed by others.

Their crimes and offenses include the ordinary category, but it is
asserted that theft is less common in Hamburg than elsewhere, and, when it
does take place, it is more frequently committed by the irregular members
of the body than by the duly registered women. It will be perceived that
the system of registration offers too many facilities for detection, a
fact to which the unusual honesty must doubtless be ascribed. Personal
quarrels and assaults, or drunkenness among the older members, consign
them to the House of Detention or House of Correction. Those imprisoned
from various causes generally amount to one hundred or one hundred and
twenty.

The licensed brothels are supplied with inmates by females
(_kupplerinnen_) whose services are recognized by the authorities. In case
of any emergency, the keeper applies to one of the procuresses, and if the
girl she offers suits him, the candidate is first subjected to a medical
examination. Passed safely through this ordeal, she is taken to the police
office and "written in" to her new keeper, who is bound to discharge
certain of her debts, as the amount due his predecessor, for instance. If
the medical officers report her sick, she is sent to the infirmary if she
belong to Hamburg, but if a foreigner is dispatched out of the city
forthwith. In cases where a woman thus applying to the authorities has not
previously lived as a prostitute, she is usually exhorted by the
magistrate to abandon her intention and return to the paths of virtue, a
routine piece of benevolence which is usually fruitless. The ordinary
police fee for registration is two marks, the physician's fee is one mark,
and the agent's usual remuneration four marks.

The registered women are thus kept strictly under the eye of the police,
and, whenever they are disposed to quit their wretched life, have the
special protection of that body. The keepers naturally throw all possible
obstacles in the way of such a determination, especially if a girl is much
in debt; but, by some means, whenever a woman is under any restraint, and
is consequently unable to apply personally to the police, an anonymous
note finds its way to the office, and speedily effects the desired object.
The authorities do not sympathize in any way with the brothel-keepers,
but use all their energies to serve the women whenever any occasion
offers.

The registered women are designated as "Brothel women" (_Bordell dirnen_),
who live in licensed houses; as "Private women" (_für sich wohnende
dirnen_) when they live by themselves, in which case their landlords are
mostly mechanics, hucksters, or laundresses; and the common
"Street-walkers" (_Strassen dirnen_), who ply their trade in the streets,
and find shelter in the abodes of indigence and misery. These last are the
lowest grade of the registered women.

Most of the brothels (_bordelle_) are in the oldest parts of the city, to
which they were originally limited, but the leading houses may be found in
the _Schwieger strasse_, a street of moderate traffic in a good
neighborhood. Here the women are seated at the windows, conspicuously
dressed up and prepared for the public eye, making themselves known to
passengers by their gestures and salutations. Some of these houses
accommodate as many as fourteen inmates. They are well supplied with good
mahogany furniture and fine draperies, and are neat and elegant
throughout. The women are generally from twenty to twenty-five years old,
and are attractively dressed and decorated. The venereal disease is very
rare among this class, great attention being paid to personal cleanliness,
and the bath very frequently used. The men who visit this neighborhood
consist of merchants, the richer public and business employés, officers,
and especially the numerous commercial men who resort to Hamburg at all
seasons of the year.

The denizens of the _Dammthorwall_, the _Drehbahm_, and _Ulricas strasse_
lead but a dull life, as it is the custom in those localities for the
women to sit at the windows all day. Their great diurnal event is the
visit of the hair-dresser (_friseurian_), who, while contributing to the
adornment of the person, a very serious affair, owing to the quantity of
false hair required, and the necessity of making to-day's effect vary from
yesterday's, also retails the latest items of interesting news or scandal.
Whenever any of these women go out to walk, it is customary for the keeper
to send together two who are at variance with each other, so as to
establish a mutual check. The hair-dressing and walk over, the next
important occurrence is dinner, after which they spend their time solely
at the doors or windows.

The hours of closing in these first and second rate brothels are not so
strictly enforced by the police as in the lower parts. Occasionally the
women are allowed to visit the balls at the celebrated Hall of Mirrors, or
other well-known dancing saloons in the vicinity.

In first-rate houses the accounts between the keeper and the women are but
little understood. As already observed, some of them hire their clothes;
others purchase from the landlord on credit, and he charges accordingly;
but these matters trouble the women very slightly. If they leave one house
to reside in another, the new keeper pays the old one's bill; if a woman
abandons prostitution entirely, the host's demand is totally
irrecoverable.

In the second and third rate houses the charges for board and lodging are
better understood. It will average about twenty marks (five dollars) a
week, washing, fire, and light being extra charges. The keeper will supply
fortunate or attractive women with articles of dress to any reasonable
amount, but his liberality is restricted toward those who have fewer
visitors. His endeavor is to keep all in debt, and in this he is usually
successful. Their ornaments are usually the property of the landlord, and
form a common stock distributed among his boarders in the manner best
calculated to increase or display their powers of fascination, and resumed
by him at discretion.

Passing over some intermediate classes of brothels, which present no
remarkable characteristics, to those in the _Gangen_, we find the lowest
grade of registered houses and registered women. Most of these are
drinking-shops, and the police exercise the right of determining the
prices to be charged for liquors. Here may frequently be seen host,
guests, and girls, drinking and frolicking together in a small back room,
where scenes of gross indelicacy (to use a mild term) frequently take
place. The women in this district have literally to work hard, and are
generally required to perform all the domestic labor of the establishment.
In winter it is a common occurrence for them to take a shovel and clear
the snow and ice from the pavement in front of their domicile. Like others
of their calling, they are seldom out of the landlord's debt, their board
costing them from ten to fourteen marks weekly (say three to four
dollars). Washing, fire, and light cost a dollar more, and the
hair-dresser's charge is about fifty cents. In addition to this, they must
pay the weekly medical and monthly police tax. They spend a miserably
monotonous existence, seldom leaving the house for weeks or even months,
except when they are required to visit the doctors or the police. Their
visitors are from the roughest and most animalized of the population, and
the treatment they receive is merely that of purchasable commodities,
intended to supply the grosser wants of men whose lives are centred in
sensuality. Like their compeers of the St. Paul Suburb, they are usually
women of great strength and endurance, but soon degenerate into mere
passive, passionless tools. Could it be imagined that they were of
reflective habits, it would be impossible to conceive a more severe
punishment than their own sense of the degradation, the total loss of all
womanly feelings, exhibited in their daily existence.

The brothel-keepers, among whom are some Jews, have no striking
peculiarities as a class. It has been already shown that both sexes are
engaged in the hideous trade, and, despite the police regulations and
restrictions, the obligations and disabilities under which they are
placed, it is undoubtedly a most lucrative occupation. The rental of a
registered house is usually double the ordinary charge for similar
tenements. There are some keepers who own the houses in which they live.
In their liabilities must be included the regulation which makes them
responsible for thefts committed in their houses, and for any violence or
disorder which may take place there, the penalties for which are fine,
imprisonment, and loss of license. They also sustain considerable losses
from the repentance of some of their inmates; but, in spite of all
untoward circumstances, they contrive to make money rapidly.

The period during which they continue in _business_ is uncertain, many of
them continuing their houses from inclination long after they have
accumulated sufficient property to retire. Of the female keepers some are
young and handsome, but these do not find much favor with their women, who
dread the effects of an opposition. They are rarely married, but cohabit
with some man for the sake of his protection. Among these _pro tempore_
husbands are some whose qualifications and previous positions render it
surprising that they should consent to purchase existence from so polluted
a source.

The housekeepers of the Hamburger Berg are not only under a separate
municipal jurisdiction, but are in themselves a different class of people.
They are mostly men, their dealings being principally with sailors, and
their visitors sometimes demanding more physical strength than a woman
could command to restrain them within the prescribed limits. Their houses
are but indifferently furnished, and the whole arrangements are very
humble and unpretending in character. A few years ago fatal quarrels were
not uncommon among their customers, but this pugnacious tendency has been
materially checked by a stricter and more constant police visitation. Even
now, jealousy will sometimes cause a furious contest between two of the
hardy sons of Neptune. The singular fidelity of some sailors to particular
women will account for this. When a man returns from a long voyage, he is
desirous of paying his attentions to the female who has before shared his
affections and his wages, and if he finds her under the protection of
another man, the natural result is a trial of strength as to who shall be
the possessor of the beauty in dispute. These tournaments, or the general
fray which sometimes arises at the close of the Sunday evening dance,
require to be subdued by no gentle means: hearty blows are far more
effectual peace-makers than words or threats.

Some of these registered hosts have followed their calling for many years.
One noble incident in connection with them must not be omitted. In the
severe winter of 1846, the landlord of the "Four Lions," a brothel-keeper
of twenty-four years' standing, maintained at his own cost, for some
months, nearly one hundred poor families, many of them with three or four
children each.

In the dance-houses there is music every evening except Saturday; on
week-days from six to eleven, and on Sundays from four to eleven. At
eleven the music is stopped, and at twelve the house is peremptorily
closed. The evenings during the week are comparatively dull affairs, and
male visitors are sometimes so scarce that the women are compelled to
dance with each other, or sit in inglorious idleness. A scene of the
wildest uproar and most uncontrolled mirth is exhibited on Sunday
evenings. Every variety of national dance may then be seen--cachucha,
reel, jig, contré-dance, waltz, and hornpipe have each their several
admirers. Songs and shouts are heard in every conceivable dialect, and the
room becomes literally "confusion worse confounded" until the hour arrives
for closing.

Of the registered women living by themselves there is little to note. They
are more industrious than those in brothels. Many of them have a fixed
occupation, but resort to prostitution to increase their income. Money
earned in this way is occasionally required for the common necessaries of
life, but is more frequently spent in personal gratification, in the way
of fine dresses, ornaments, etc., or is appropriated to support the
extravagance of some lover, who repays the generosity by a little
flattering attention, or an occasional escort to some dancing saloon in
the suburbs. The visitors to these women are more select than those to the
courtesans hitherto described.

In the lowest ranks of prostitution, the common "street-walkers," to be
met at all times and places, under all circumstances and of all ages, we
find the most prolific sources of infection. A certain, though very small
remnant of decency, seconded by the invaluable watchfulness of the police,
secures the visitor from disease among the inmates of registered houses,
but the street-walker is under no such control. Young girls scarcely more
than children, old women almost grandmothers, ply their frightful trade on
the "walls" around the city, and in other obscure places, where a trifling
present will purchase their caresses. Their principal customers are young
boys and very old men, their practices being continued under the shades of
evening until the arrival of the night-watch drives them to their wretched
dens.

The Hamburg police are perfectly cognizant of these proceedings, and wage
perpetual war against individuals, but find it altogether impossible to
suppress the class, among whom are the habitual tenants of the jail and
the House of Correction. No one can differ in opinion from Dr. Lippert,
who says, "In this class of women the most pernicious results of
prostitution are to be found."

Private or domestic prostitution, so widely extended in every great town,
exists in less proportion in Hamburg than in other capital cities of the
same extent. That disgraceful union in evil occasionally met with on the
Continent, in which husband and wife mutually agree to follow their
inclinations or lusts untrammeled by each other, is scarcely known. The
kept woman is comparatively rare. The expense attendant upon such an
appendage of luxury is a serious consideration, and none but the wealthy
patrician or successful business man venture on the step. It is assumed,
on very good authority, that there are not fifty "mistresses" in Hamburg.
Those residing there are under no police control, as in a public point of
view they commit no breach of law.

Under the second head of private prostitution we find those who, having
legitimate employment, increase their earnings in this manner. We have
alluded already to the same class of registered women, but the greater
portion keep themselves aloof from police observation as long as possible.
They are composed of needle-women, laundresses, hair-dressers, shop-girls,
and others, but it must not be supposed that they represent the majority
of women dependent upon those occupations. The contrary is the fact; for
in Hamburg, as every where else, are to be found many bright examples of
chastity in the midst of poverty; of patient, persevering industry and
integrity in unfavorable circumstances. Those working women who are
willing to accept the price of sin are known in the streets by a peculiar
gait, by their searching and inviting glances, or their treacherous but
winning smile, and also by frequently walking in the same neighborhood.
They are seldom seen abroad during the day, but in the afternoon, about
"'change hours," they begin to resort to the streets near the _Bourse_,
encountering the men as they hurry to and from the centre of business. In
the evening they promenade in the vicinity of the hotels and theatres, on
the _Jungfernstig_, the new walls, etc., when night helps their
_incognito_, and shrouds them in a little more mystery. They are fond of
attending the theatres and dancing saloons on Sundays and holidays, like
the Parisian _grisette_, in company with a lover, but the sum of their
enjoyment is complete if they can participate in the annual Shrove Tuesday
ball and masquerade at the Apollo Saal, the Elb Pavilion, or the theatre.

Another class of private prostitutes is known to the police by the term
"_Winklehuren_" (hedge w----). These are of the lower class of female
operatives. Servant-girls, from their proximity to the junior members of
families, often spread disease in the household of their employers. Dr.
Lippert records as a medical fact that examinations have frequently shown
the domestics in the highest families to be literally saturated with
venereal disease, and he states his opinion that six out of every ten
servant-girls who are found in the streets at night are accessible to
pecuniary temptation. This ratio is very large, but as it is a local
matter with which he is presumed to be well acquainted, it would be out of
place to attempt either to sustain or controvert it.

All these private prostitutes resort to the houses of accommodation
(_Absteigequartiere_), which exist in spite of the constant watchfulness
of the police. When they are hunted up and rooted out of one place, they
reappear under another guise elsewhere; a removal being facilitated by the
slender nature of their equipment, which seldom consists of more than
furniture for one room. For "genteel" delinquents, they are placed where
the accommodation is veiled under the French disguise of _petits soupers_,
or some such flimsy artifice.

To the question, "What becomes of the prostitutes?" Hamburg offers no
special reply. Under favorable circumstances, they abandon their calling,
and become the wives of mechanics or small tradesmen; or they carry on
some business for themselves, and strive to become reputable members of
society; or they become companion to some man, and follow his fortunes,
usually reverting to common prostitution. When their charms are entirely
lost, and no hope remains of earning a living from their sale, they
sometimes, but very rarely, become brothel-keepers; sometimes procuresses;
and, more frequently, servants in the registered houses.

Some of the dancing saloons already mentioned have attained European
celebrity. They stand in the same relation to common women as the exchange
does to the mercantile community. Their female visitors are mostly
prostitutes, a fact which deprives the scene of many fascinations existing
in other cities. In the end of the last century there was no public place
expressly designed for dancing, until, with the many equivocal blessings
disseminated by the French Revolution, they also became an institution.
The Hamburg saloons are conducted with order and quiet, and are generally
closed about one o'clock in the morning. One of the most important, the
Bacchus Hall, was burned down some few years since, and the authorities
have, as yet, refused to grant a license for its re-erection.

As public places which in some degree facilitate prostitution, mention
must be made of the common sleeping apartments locally called "deep
cellars" (_tiefen kellar_). These are roomy vaults, many feet under
ground, in which the poor find nightly shelter at very low prices. They
are provided with beds and bedding. In the depth of poverty to which some
of their customers have fallen, they can not afford to pay two schellings
(about four cents) for the luxury of a bed, and these repose their weary
limbs on some foul straw, or on the ground, at the charge of half a
schelling. Some of these cellars are fifteen or twenty feet below the
surface of the street, and it will not require a very vivid imagination to
portray their horrors.

The beer and wine houses of Hamburg are tolerably free from prostitution;
but a new class has lately sprung up, called "cellar-keeping"
(_kellerwirthschaff_), and in these the guests are served by females in
fancy costume, Swiss, Polish, or Circassian, as the case may be. Many of
these contain private rooms for prostitution, and, although they are
closely watched by the police, who sometimes ungallantly expel the fair
foreigners and close the establishments, they still flourish, others being
speedily opened elsewhere to fill up the gap.

From this general description of prostitutes, their habitations, and
customs, we will proceed to a consideration of their condition as to
health, and the extent and virulence of syphilis among them, still taking
the pamphlet of Dr. Lippert for our guide.

It is generally imagined that the excessive action of the generative
organs interferes with the power of procreation in common women. Dr.
Lippert undertakes to controvert this opinion, with what success medical
men whose professional experience has been among this class will be able
to judge. He supports his views by general assertions rather than by
specific facts, but refers, in corroboration, to well-known instances in
which children have been born while the mothers were living in a state of
open prostitution, as also to those cases where women who have abandoned
the habit of promiscuous intercourse confine themselves to one man by
marriage or cohabitation, and then become mothers. He attributes their
sterility during prostitution to their wild and irregular life, their
constant exposure to weather, etc., and argues that the powers of
conception are suspended, but not destroyed thereby. He also introduces
the fact that abortions are frequently produced in Hamburg by the common
women themselves, or by some old crones who preside over their orgies, and
are stated to have a long list of drugs applicable to this purpose, which
they use in a reckless manner. The medical police are not unaware of these
proceedings, but find them difficult to detect, as a woman will endeavor
to avoid the stated examination by pleading excessive menstruation, or
inventing some story she thinks likely to deceive, until all traces of the
abortion are removed. The remarks of Dr. Lippert would lead to the belief
that the _excessive use_ of the female organs was more favorable to health
than the disuse would be, a conclusion which most physicians will not be
willing to admit. He adds, "Cancer of the womb occurred but once in my
experience of eleven years at the General Infirmary, and cases of
prolapsus uteri are very rare."

A disease incident to common women, _Colica scortorum_ (W----'s Colic),
happens in Hamburg as elsewhere, but is attributed to exposure to the
weather more than any other cause. It consists of pain in the womb,
extending across the abdomen round to the loins, and sometimes including
the whole region of the stomach. It is frequently accompanied with gastric
derangement, sickness, or diarrhoea.

The enlargement of the clitoris, so much insisted on by some writers,
Lippert altogether doubts, except as a very exceptional case; nor does he
admit any effect of prostitution on the rectum unless induced by unnatural
intercourse. As a general result of his observations, he concludes that,
"apart from syphilitic affections, the generative organs of a prostitute
do not usually differ from those of a virtuous woman."

We find some returns of diseases not directly connected with prostitution;
thus, cases of itch, which is now becoming rare, were in

1836 62
1837 76
1838 87
1839 98
1844 38
1845 22
1846 36

Of other general maladies, including fevers, inflammation of the lungs,
liver, womb, etc., rheumatism, small-pox, piles, jaundice, gout, dropsy,
and diarrhoea, the following are reported:

1837 62
1838 90
1839 100
1844 85
1845 76
1846 77

Convulsions are more rare than in the female sex in general; of hysteria
there is scarcely a trace, and a few cases of epilepsy are ascribed to the
use of ardent spirits.

Delirium tremens seldom occurs. The vigilance of the police, and the
prompt committal to prison of every prostitute found drunk and disorderly,
may account for this. The proportion of cases of delirium tremens was only
about one in one thousand.

Mania sometimes shows itself. Remorse may produce this, as may a violent
affection for some particular man.

Of the actual extent of venereal disease in Hamburg, or any other city, it
is impossible to speak with certainty, but the fact that in the general
hospital there it is of a very mild type is an argument in favor of
medical inspection. Dr. Lippert says:

"The usual form is gonorrhoea, with its complications, bubo,
inflammation of the scrotum, phymosis, paraphymosis, etc. Inflammation
of the prostate gland, and stricture, are comparatively rare. Disease
of the rectum is very rare, but there are examples."

"We have excoriations and irritations of the sexual organs. The simple
chancre is common; the indurated chancre not unfrequent; the
phagedænic chancre is seldom met with. In general, the sores have a
mild character, and heal easily with simple treatment and regular
topical applications. _Herpes preputialis_ is extremely general. This
is a group of small pustules, quickly healing up, but as quickly
breaking out again, often in regular periodical recurrence. It is
found especially on men who have suffered from gonorrhoea or chancre."

"Secondary syphilis, ulcers of the neck, eruptions, syphilitic
inflammation of the eyes, tumors, etc. These prevail more at some
times than at others; how far the _genus epidemicum_, the weather and
season, the idiosyncrasy of the person, or the intensity of the
infection operate, we have yet to learn."

"_Tertiary syphilis is rare._"

"In sea-ports it is often observable that the disease takes peculiar
aspects, and what may be called exotic forms are occasionally
encountered. With sailors, syphilis is frequently latent or only
partially cured, and is intensified by their habits and diet. Sexual
intercourse with them will produce it in an exaggerated character.
This is not so much the case in Hamburg, owing to the constant and
prompt medical attention; still, some distinction is observable
between the venereal maladies of the city women and those of the St.
Paul Suburb. Among the latter the cases of a malignant type generally
occur."

The negro sailor is held in very bad repute by these women, and some
keepers will not allow him to enter their houses, believing that infection
from a colored man is of the worst kind, and almost incurable.

The medical returns for the year 1846 give the following tables relating
to the women in the St. Paul Suburb:

"In January there were 186 women, of whom 15 were sick; the diseases
were

Venereal disease 9
Itch 1
Colic 1
Gastric fever 1
Rheumatic fever 1
Catarrh of lungs 1
Calculus 1
--
Total 15

"In May, of 189 women, 21 were sick:

Venereal disease 9
Itch 8
Gastric fever 2
Inflammation of lungs 1
Spitting of blood 1
--
Total 21

"In August, of 181 women, 17 were sick:

Venereal disease 13
Colic 2
Itch 1
Rheumatism 1
--
Total 17

"In December, of 161 women, 18 were sick:

Venereal disease 6
Itch 6
Sprain 1
Colic 1
Gastric fever 2
Disorder of digestive organs 1
Cold on the chest 1
--
Total 18

This would give an average of about ten per cent. of the women of the
suburb sick."

From the facts we have quoted, it is evident that the virulence of
syphilitic affections among the registered women is unquestionably
mitigated. "_Tertiary syphilis is rare_;" secondary syphilis but
occasional, while primary forms have lost their malignity. "There is a
marked aggravation of the disease during the summer months, when a
considerable influx of strangers takes place. This was particularly
observable after the great fire in 1842."

_The mildness of the disease, and its easy control, can be ascribed to
nothing but the weekly medical supervision. The women are visited at their
own houses, and any reluctance or refusal renders them liable to
punishment._

Contrasted with this state of affairs, we have the severity of syphilis
among unregistered women, who conceal their disease as long as they can.
Of those arrested, many are found to be diseased in an aggravated form. In
the year 1845, of 138 unregistered women sent to prison, 43 had syphilis,
or nearly one third of the whole. Parent-Duchatelet says this proportion
is exceeded by the same class in Paris, where the infected amount to one
half the illicit prostitutes.

The "_Kurhaus_" is a medical institution especially designed for bad
characters who are arrested by the police, be they registered or
unregistered. The General Infirmary has also a venereal ward. The police
authorities contribute annually, from the amount raised by the impost on
brothels and prostitutes, 5000 marks ($1500) to the funds of this
infirmary. From the following facts this would seem an inadequate amount.
In 1844 there were received and treated 580 females with syphilis; the
total residence amounting to 30.387 days, or a _pro rata_ average of
53-1/2 days each, the stipend allowed for which service would be about
_four and a half cents per day_.

The number of female cases of syphilis received into the same institution
in 1843 was,

Registered women 480
Unregistered women 74
---
Total 554

and in 1845,

Registered women 521
Unregistered women 71
---
Total 592

The state of the male venereal patients proves the same general
amelioration in the character of the disease. The cases, however, are
worse than among the registered women, which must be ascribed to the
dislike of men to enter the hospital until such a course becomes
unavoidable. The numbers received were, in

1843 355
1844 335
1845 316

Some returns are given by Dr. Lippert of the amount of sickness in the
garrison; but he has not stated the number of soldiers, so no comparison
can be drawn from his information. The figures are as follows:

1843, Gonorrhoea 90
Chancre 67
Secondary syphilis 13--170
1844, Gonorrhoea 58
Ulcers 63--121
1845, Gonorrhoea 89
Ulcers 79--168

The treatment of syphilis adopted in the Hamburg hospital was introduced
by Dr. Fricke, one of the first to apply the non-mercurial system.
Ricord's practice is also followed, and Hydropathy has been tried. It
would be out of place to enter into any arguments here as to the relative
merits of these systems.

The mortal diseases of the Hamburg prostitutes are incidental to their
course of life. Exposure to the weather, alternate extremes of want and
luxury, night-watching and constant excitement, induce consumption,
inflammation of the lungs, dropsy, internal and abdominal complaints;
gastric, rheumatic, or nervous fevers; and these, or chronic diseases
resulting from renewed venereal infection, lead to the

"Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history."

Before dismissing this subject, we will give a sketch of the

HAMBURG MAGDALEN HOSPITAL.

This institution was founded in 1821 through the exertions of the
Burgomaster Abendroth and others, and was constructed on the model of a
similar asylum in London. The object is to reclaim women from vice by
means that can be applied only in a place expressly dedicated to the
purpose.

The number of inmates is small; only twelve can be received. The business
of the asylum is conducted by a committee, including two ministers, a
physician, three female overseers, and a matron. The overseers are
respectable married women or widows, who voluntarily undertake the duties
of a sub-committee. They assume the direction of the household affairs
alternately for a month each. They meet frequently at the house, assist in
Divine service, and take care of the girls who are discharged. These are
provided with situations or placed in business, and require to be upheld
and maintained in their new character.

The chaplain assists the ladies' committee in their duties, but directs
his energies particularly to the religious instruction of the inmates.
Frequent meetings for prayer are held, and every half year the sacrament
is administered to such as he deems duly prepared to receive it, and who
have a competent knowledge of its importance and efficacy.

To be qualified for admission, the applicant must be young, and must have
a desire to amend. The limited room will not allow the reception of old or
worn-out women, who would flock there in crowds to obtain a shelter under
which they could die in peace. When a woman's application is granted, she
must go through a novitiate of four or eight weeks. During this time she
works and eats with the other inmates, but sleeps alone, and is closely
watched by a member of the committee. When her novitiate expires and she
is fully received, she is requested to give an explicit account of her
life, every particular of which is recorded. Her name is not disclosed to
her companions, but she, as are all the others, is known only by a
Christian name.

The women are employed in all kinds of housework, needlework, or, when
practicable, in any manner which will accustom them to continued physical
exertion. Their previous life having made indolence almost "second
nature," this course is adopted to inculcate the necessity of industry. A
strict account of the produce of their labor is kept, and a portion is set
apart as a fund for their benefit.

The time of their stay is usually about two years. When they leave they
give the chaplain a written promise of good conduct, and receive from him
a Bible and a Prayer-book, and the sum of money accumulated for them. The
results of this benevolent attempt are sufficient to encourage the
laborers in the good work, and we can not but think that their endeavors
must be productive of great good, based as they are upon the sound
principle of receiving but a few women, and treating them as members of
one family, in opposition to the general theory of such institutions,
whose managers attempt to crowd in as large a number as a large building
will contain, and, in the endeavor to generalize rules for reformation,
lose the valuable opportunities for noticing and acting upon individual
traits of character.

The particulars of the subsequent life of twenty women are given as
follows:

Continued faithful to their promises 6
Removed from where they were placed 10
Relapsed into vice, only 1
Died 1
Unknown 2
--
Total 20

CHAPTER XVII.

PRUSSIA.

Patriarchal Government.--Ecclesiastical Legislation.--Trade Guilds.--
Enactments in 1700.--Inquiry in 1717.--Enactment in 1792.--Police
Order, 1795.--Census.--Increase of illicit Prostitution.--Syphilis.--
Census of 1808.--Ministerial Rescript and Police Report, 1809.--
Tolerated Brothels closed.--Re-enactment of the Code of 1792.--
Ministerial Rescript of 1839.--Removal of Brothels.--Petitions.--
Ministerial Reply.--Police Report, 1844.--Brothels closed by royal
Command.--Police Embarrassment, and Correspondence with Halle and
Cologne.--Local Opinions.--Public Life in Berlin.--Dancing Saloons.--
Drinking Houses.--Immorality.--Increase of Syphilis.--Statistics.--
Illegitimacy.--Royal Edict of 1851.--Recent Regulations.

Among the warlike Germans in the days of Herminius, sexual intercourse was
looked upon as enervating to youth, and discreditable or even disgraceful
to men until their valor had been proved by deeds of arms, and their
experience authorized them to assume the duties of husbands and fathers.

In the Middle Ages, when the legislative and executive functions were
vested in one individual, and the rights and obligations of the governing
power were of a paternal or patriarchal character, we find much of their
law-giving directed to the preservation of morality, the repression of
extravagance, and the minute regulation of public economy. In their edicts
against prostitution this paternal spirit was visible, in conjunction with
what may be considered a due regard to the rights and interests of the
law-givers, the punishments being professedly directed against a breach of
morality or a public scandal, because it was a disgrace to families, and a
peril to husbands and fathers, rather than a vice in itself. The
provisions tacitly sanctioned its existence; and while they severely
punished any invasion of domestic peace or infraction of marital rights,
it seems to be conceded that, when no such relationships were involved,
illicit intercourse was regarded as an allowable solace or an actual
necessity for the physical requirements of unmarried men.

We learn from the German historian Fiducin ("_Diplomatischen Beitrage zur
Geschichte der Stadt Berlin_"), that the German laws rendered it
obligatory on every honorable man to espouse a virtuous maiden, and the
term "_hurenkind_" (illegitimate child) was the bitterest form of
reproach. The early statutes were very severe in the punishment of
immodest females, and some carried this principle so far as to require
that a woman who led an unchaste life in her father's house should be
burned at the stake. The ecclesiastical legislation moderated this
severity, and crimes against morality became sins which were expiated by
public penance. The citizens of Berlin became convinced that the penances
of the Church were not sufficiently potent to counteract the evil, the
morals of the clergy themselves being frequently impeached, and secular
government was suggested in place of ecclesiastical. This seemed
especially necessary, because the canon law, which ordained the celibacy
of the priesthood, pronounced it to be a work of mercy to marry an erring
woman, in opposition to the Berlin sheriff law (_schoffen recht_)
declaring the children of such marriages illegitimate; and persons were
not wanting who held the opinion that the work of mercy recommended by the
Church was at times advocated by the clergy as a means of covering their
own frailties.

The same writer records instances as late as the close of the sixteenth
century in which adultery was punished by death, the offenders in each
case being married persons. He also cites the records of the fourteenth
century to show that the same punishment was inflicted on those who acted
as procurers or procuresses, wherever family honor was encroached on.

In the sixteenth century the law required that an immodest woman belonging
to any reputable family should be publicly shorn of her hair, and
condemned to wear a linen veil; nor was any distinction made between
unmarried women and widows against whom the offense was proved.

About the same period the trade guilds enacted stringent laws prohibiting
the admission of improper characters to their public festivals, and
restraining their members from marrying women of that class. To attain
this end, any master tradesman who designed to marry was compelled to
introduce his intended bride at a meeting of the company, that all might
be convinced of her discreet character and conduct, and any who married
without observing this requirement were expelled the association. The
guilds inflicted the same penalties on any of their members who had
intercourse with improper characters, or who seduced a virtuous woman and
subsequently married her.

A certain recognition of the existence of public women may be traced
throughout these regulations, which appear to have admitted the necessity
from regard to the rigorously enforced sanctity of the domestic circle,
but, at the same time, endeavored to prevent the increase of immorality by
attaching odium to its followers.

Again, turning to the pages of Fiducin, we find that, "in all the great
towns of the German Empire, the public protection of women of pleasure
(_lust dirnen_) seems to have been a regular thing," in proof of which he
says, "Did a creditor, in taking proceedings against his debtor, find it
necessary to put up at an inn, one of the allowed items of his expenditure
was a reasonable sum for the company of a woman during his stay (_frauen
geld_)." This was a question of state etiquette in Berlin in 1410, a sum
having been officially expended in that year to retain some handsome women
to grace a public festival and banquet given to a distinguished guest,
Diedrich V. Quitzow, whose good-will the citizens desired to cultivate.

During this period of toleration the expediency of controlling public
women was unquestioned; but the first Berlin enactment of material
importance to this investigation bears date in 1700, and is remarkable as
clearly enunciating the principles which have been adhered to, with only a
short interval, ever since. The first section declares, "By law this
traffic is decidedly not permitted (_erlaubt_), but simply tolerated
(_geduldet_) as a necessary evil."

Sections 2, 3, and 4 require the keeper of any house of prostitution to
give notice to the commissary of the quarter when any of his women leave
him, or when he receives a new one, and restrain him from keeping more
women than are specified in his contract.

Sections 5 to 9 provide that a surgeon shall visit every woman once a
fortnight, "for the purpose of protecting the health of revelers
(_schwarmer_), as well as that of the women themselves;" that every woman
shall pay him two groschen for each visit; and that, upon observing the
slightest signs of disease, the surgeon shall require the housekeeper to
detain the woman in her room. If the keeper neglect this order, he is made
responsible for the entire costs of the illness which any visitor could
prove was contracted from one of his women. If the surgeon finds the woman
already so far infected that she can not be cured by cleanliness and
retirement alone, he is authorized to order her removal to the Charité,
"where she will be taken care of in the pavilion free of charge."

Sections 10 and 11 provide that the debts of a woman must be paid before
she can remove from one house of prostitution to another, or before she
can leave one house to commence another on her own account.

Section 12 enjoins that any woman who desires to quit her mode of life
altogether shall be entirely discharged from any debts to the housekeeper.

The last section requires every housekeeper who has music to pay six
groschen a year for the permit to his musicians, the money to be applied
to the benefit of the poor-house.

The "toleration but not authorization" clause is the noticeable feature in
these regulations, and indicates the policy which was then generally
adopted throughout the kingdom.

In reference to the period succeeding the issue of these rules, which
continued in force till 1792, we find some information in the pages of
Fiducin. Thus, in 1717, an inquiry proved that the inmates of brothels,
and also the secret prostitutes, were mostly the children of soldiers, who
"had been brought to vice as a trade, either from the want of a proper
bringing up or of a skillful handicraft."... _All measures for the
extermination of the evil having been found ineffectual_, "they were
obliged to adopt the system of a larger toleration of common brothels, to
be strictly watched over by the police, as a necessary outlet for the
tendency to immorality." The number of houses of ill fame increased in
proportion to the population, the influx of strangers, and the additions
to the garrison made under Frederick II.; and still more so after the
close of the seven years' war. In the year 1780, there were one hundred
such houses in Berlin, each containing eight or nine women. They were
divided into three classes; the lowest were those in which the women
dressed in plain clothes, and were frequented mostly by Hamburg or
Amsterdam mariners; the second class of women paraded themselves with
painted faces, haunted the more retired corners of the town, had little
attractive about their persons or dress, and were principally visited by
mechanics and laborers; the third, and apparently the most select of the
kind, was a description of coffee-house, frequented by females, who were
designated "_Mamselles_:" these did not live in the houses, but used them
merely as a convenient rendezvous.

In 1792 a new code of regulations appeared, the bulk of which continued in
force in Berlin and other towns for many years. The rules of 1700 were too
vague, made no provision for a variety of cases likely to arise, and were
silent as to the question of private prostitution. Many inconveniences had
arisen from these omissions, and, in consequence, a memorial was addressed
to the government by the police director, Von Eisenhardt, containing
suggestions for amendments to the law.

The preamble of the royal reply to this application acknowledges the
attention of the police to the matter with much satisfaction; admits
prostitution (_hurenanstalten_) to be "a necessary evil in a great city
where many men are not in a position to marry, although of an age when the
sexual instincts are at the highest, in order thereby to avoid greater
disorders which are not to be restrained by any law or authority, and
which take their rise from an inextinguishable natural impulse;" but
expressly reiterates that it is "only to be tolerated (_zu dulden_);" and
that it can not, "without impropriety and consequences injurious to
morality, be established by the public laws, which do not contain any
sanction whatever to common prostitution."

The sections following this preamble provide that any one who seduces a
woman, or induces her to carry on a venal traffic with her person, shall
be liable to one year's imprisonment in the House of Correction, and on
repetition of the offense, besides doubling the punishment, shall be
whipped and driven from the country; declare any man or woman who
communicates the venereal disease liable for the expenses of the cure and
incidental damages (_sonstigen interesse_), together with imprisonment for
three months, commutable by paying a fine of one hundred dollars; prohibit
taking young women from the country into houses of prostitution by any
device against their will, and authorize the punishment of any man who
willfully infects a common woman.

In reference to the special directions touching brothels and prostitutes,
the document provides, "as a leading point, that every thing which exceeds
the mere gratification of the natural passions, and tends to the
advancement of debauchery, or the misuse of our toleration of a necessary
evil, must be prevented;" and accordingly the women are prohibited from
increasing their attractions "by painting or distinguishing attire," and
also from soliciting passengers in the public streets, or at the doors or
windows of their houses, "as this is not only in contravention to public
morals, but especially perilous to male youth; and such means of
increasing the gains of people seeking their livelihood in this manner is
not to be tolerated." For similar reasons, the keepers of houses were
restrained from offering wines or other strong drinks to their visitors,
although it is admitted "they can not be prevented from providing
refreshments," yet stimulants are forbidden, "because they are great
inducements to debauchery, whereby other excesses may be caused."

The orders farther provide that no woman shall become a resident in a
house of prostitution without previously appearing before the police, and
obtaining permission from them; and the police are directed not to allow
this permission to any female under age, unless they are satisfied that
she has previously made a trade of prostitution. The section containing
this stipulation is prefaced by a statement that "keepers of these houses
seek especially to obtain blooming young girls, who can not be procured
without infamous seduction, calculated to lead to debauchery."

In reference to precautions against infection, it provides that the
prostitutes and keepers of houses shall be instructed by some competent
surgeon in the signs of venereal diseases, so that they may detect it in
their visitors or themselves; also that any man communicating infection
to a prostitute may be sentenced to make ample compensation if the woman
can identify him; and farther, that the punishment inflicted upon girls
infecting their visitors shall also be inflicted on the housekeepers, "as,
although they may be innocent, their being included in the punishment for
an incident of their trade is for the general weal." All fines received
were to accrue to the medical institutions provided for the cure of
syphilis.

Again, it was deemed that "the venereal disease was much extended by
common street-walkers," and no women but such as resided in the known
houses, where medical visits of inspection were constantly paid, were to
be tolerated, and the night-watch were instructed to arrest those common
women who were in the habit of plying their trade in the streets after
dark--a portion of the penalty exacted being awarded to the officers who
made such arrests, "to encourage their zeal." But they were strictly
cautioned against annoying innocent persons, "inasmuch as blunders in such
matters create ill impressions against the authorities, and because the
honor and happiness of the person might be irretrievably injured, so that
it would be better to pass over a guilty person here and there, than to
inculpate a single innocent one." The royal rescript concludes by
directing that a strict _surveillance_ be kept over the females of the
garrison, many of whom are stated, in very plain language, to be of
improper character.

These directions were subsequently embodied in the general statute, or law
of the land (_landrecht_), and upon that the police regulations which we
quote hereafter were based.

The statute formally declares procurers and procuresses liable to
imprisonment for from six months to three years in the House of
Correction, with "a welcome and farewell;" _Anglice_, a sound whipping
when admitted, and another when discharged. In the cases of parents or
guardians who may aid in or connive at the prostitution of their children
or wards, the term of imprisonment is doubled, and made more severe. It
requires all common women to reside in the tolerated houses "under the eye
of the state," which houses are only to be permitted in populous cities,
and "not elsewhere than in retired and back streets therein, the consent
of the police authorities having been first obtained." And in any case
where a house of prostitution was established without this consent, or in
defiance of the public orders, the keeper was to be liable to one or two
years' imprisonment. The police are strictly commanded to keep all
tolerated houses under strict and constant _surveillance_; to make
frequent visits in company with medical men, so as to check the progress
of venereal disease; to prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors therein;
to see that no woman was introduced without the knowledge and permission
of the authorities, under a fine of fifty thalers, for each offense; and,
more especially, that no innocent female was, by force or deceit,
compelled or induced to live therein; which latter offense imposes "a
public exhibition," in the stocks or pillory, we presume, and from six to
ten years' imprisonment, with "welcome and farewell," on the keeper, who
was not to be allowed to keep such a house again under any circumstances.

The police are farther enjoined to see that the mistress of the house
informs the authorities of the pregnancy of any woman residing in the
house as soon as she is aware of it herself, but if it is concealed she
(the mistress) is liable to imprisonment, especially if a secret birth
takes place. The mistress is required to take charge of any woman who
becomes pregnant, if there is no public institution to which she can be
removed, and is at liberty to seek compensation from the father of the
child, or, if he can not be found, she has a claim upon the mother. The
child must be removed from the house as soon as it is weaned, and is to be
cared for at the public cost if the parents have not means to do so.

If the keeper of the house, or the inmates themselves, conceal any
venereal infection from the knowledge of the police, they render
themselves liable to imprisonment from three months to a year, with
"welcome and farewell."

If thefts, assaults, or other offenses occur in such houses, the keeper
is, in all cases, liable to the injured party, who can not in any other
way obtain his indemnity, and is also suspected of complicity in the
offense so long as the contrary can not be substantiated; and if it is
proved that he did not exert all his power to prevent such occurrences,
his neglect is to be punished by fine or imprisonment.

No woman desirous of leaving a tolerated house to change her mode of life,
and support herself honestly, can be retained against her inclination, and
no difficulties may be thrown in the way of her doing so; nor will the
master be allowed to force her to remain, even though she may be in his
debt, under the penalty of the loss of his permission from the police.

Prostitutes who do not conform to the regulations and place themselves
under supervision, are to be arrested and imprisoned for three months,
and, when their term of imprisonment has expired, are to be sent to the
"work-houses," and detained there until they have inclination and
opportunity for honorable employment. Any females, not being inmates of
the tolerated houses, who had intercourse while suffering from disease,
and thereby infected men, are declared liable to an imprisonment for three
months.

This comprehensive legal enactment left many matters of detail to the
discretion of the police, and accordingly they issued their rules. The
opposition these subsequently encountered makes them important in the
history of Prostitution in Berlin, and although they are in many points a
mere repetition of the terms of the statute, we give them _in extenso_.
They are entitled,

"PROVISIONS AGAINST THE MISLEADING OF YOUNG WOMEN INTO BROTHELS, AND
FOR PREVENTION OF THE SPREAD OF VENEREAL DISEASE.

"_Preamble._ It has been brought to notice that simple young girls,
especially from the smaller towns, under the craftiest pretensions to
place them in good situations, have been brought to Berlin, and,
without their knowledge of the fact, taken to brothels, and therein,
against their will, led astray to their ruin, and to the life of a
common prostitute.

"At the same time, it is matter of remark that common prostitutes,
after they have been diseased, continue their practices as long as the
state of their sickness permits, and thereby farther infection is
extraordinarily increased and extended.

"With the express view of meeting such infamous seductions, and the
highly injurious results of the before-mentioned communication of
venereal disease, the following directions are brought to the
cognizance and perfect information of the keepers of houses of
prostitution, and of the females who make a trade of their persons.

"1. No one can set on foot a brothel, or keep women for the purposes
of prostitution, without having communicated previously with the
Police Directory on the subject, and obtained their permission in
writing. Whoso acts contrary to this shall, together with absolute
withdrawal of his license, be liable to one or two years in the House
of Correction.

"2. Every brothel-keeper must, before taking a girl into his service,
produce her before the Police Directory, and must not conclude any
contract with her until the Police Director has given him written
leave to do so; whereupon, forthwith the conditions upon which the
keeper and said woman have agreed are to be registered with the
police, and an abstract thereof shall be given to each party, for
which eight groschen are to be paid as fees. The before-mentioned
brothel-keepers, to whom the Police Director's toleration is extended,
must, at his order, produce the common prostitutes, and submit the
same to a similar license, and the conditions must be drawn up for
them in the before-mentioned manner. If a keeper omits the same, and
is accused of having any woman for common use in his house for
forty-eight hours without such notice, he shall pay a fine of fifty
thalers, and, upon the third offense, in addition to the said fine,
his trade shall be stopped, and he shall not carry on the same any
more. Further, it shall be no excuse that the person in question was
not there for the purpose of prostitution, inasmuch as he is enjoined
to point out every female whom he receives into his house, without
exception, and neglect of this shall be taken as a proof of
contravention. Under penalty of the same punishment, he must give a
similar notice if a common woman comes to him from another house.

"3. Females under age, who have not, before the publication of these
ordinances, notoriously abandoned themselves to common prostitution,
are not to be received by any brothel-keeper, and when he produces
such persons before the Police Directory the permit shall not be
allowed. If he acts contrary to this prohibition, he shall be punished
with two years' labor in jail.

"4. The departure from a brothel of any woman who desires to change
her mode of life, and to subsist in a respectable manner, is not to be
checked or prevented. Even on account of sureties entered into or
debts incurred, the keeper is not to retain any such against her will,
at the risk of losing his permit, and the police are charged to give
every assistance. If, however, any such person desire only to remove
to another house of prostitution, this can not be done without the
consent of her former keeper, until after three months' notice given,
when it will be permitted upon proof of brutal treatment by the
keeper, or other good and reasonable grounds shown to the police. No
woman who seeks to quit a brothel for the purpose of carrying on
prostitution for pay on her own account will be permitted to do so;
and if any person, having, on pretense of an honest calling, quitted a
house of prostitution, shall be adjudged guilty of prostitution on her
own account, she shall have four weeks at the House of Correction,
with a welcome and farewell. And whereas it is known that many
brothel-keepers, who treat their girls with an unbearable harshness,
keep so strict a watch upon them that they can not succeed in bringing
their complaints before the authorities, information shall from time
to time, _ex-officio_, and without the presence of the keeper, be
taken, whether the girls have any well-founded complaints to bring
forward against the said keeper.

"5. The common prostitutes in the brothels are strictly prohibited
from enticing or inviting passengers in the streets, with looks or
signs from the houses or windows, and the keepers are on no account to
permit the same. Diligent regard to this is to be had by the police,
and those who act contrary will be punished, the first time with
three days, and, on a repetition of the offense, with a week's
solitary confinement, one half of the time on bread and water. The
keeper who is shown to have been party to the same will suffer double
punishment.

"6. In these houses the keepers shall not supply visitors with wine,
brandy, liquor, punch, or other strong drinks, or with food, but only
with tea, coffee, chocolate, beer, or similar beverages; further, it
is not permitted for the visitors to bring in drink or food. For every
case of contravention the keeper shall pay five thalers, or a week's
detention; on repetition, he shall be punished more severely; if this
will not suffice, the permit shall be withdrawn from the house. No
brothel-keeper shall allow any guest to remain after twelve o'clock at
night, nor allow any one to enter after that hour. Whoso acts contrary
shall, for the first offense, pay ten thalers; on repetition, the fine
is doubled; for the third time, the keeper shall lose his permit.

"7. Should thefts, assaults, or other offenses take place in such
houses, the keeper is in all cases liable to the injured party if he
can not get his redress elsewhere. Further, the said keeper is
suspected of complicity in the offense so long as the contrary is not
proved, and if it appear that he did not use all possible means for
the prevention of such offense, he shall be punished by fine or in
person.

"8. In case any innocent female shall, by fraud or violence, be
brought into any brothel, the keeper and those who are accomplices in
such infamous offense shall undergo public exhibition, and four to ten
years' House of Correction, with welcome and farewell. Besides this,
the permit will be withdrawn. It shall be no excuse for him to allege
that he neither knew nor assisted the said seduction, inasmuch as he
had no right to receive any female into his house without first giving
notice thereof to the Police Directory, and receiving from them, after
inquiry into the circumstances, permission to do so.

"9. In like manner, a brothel-keeper may not, under penalty of twelve
months' imprisonment, give any one (whatever his rank may be) facility
to carry on criminal intercourse with any woman who has been brought
into his house; and it is absolutely forbidden for any person to bring
a female to such house, and there to have any private communication
with her, which shall be only with the regular women of the place,
inasmuch as by section 2 no keeper is permitted to receive any woman
as servant-maid, or under any pretense whatever, among his inmates,
without previous notice to the police, and their assent to the same.

"10. In order to combat the frequent infection of common prostitutes,
and, if possible, prevent them from severe attacks of venereal
disease, or its farther extension, and at the same time not only to
restrain the rapid progress of this highly pernicious malady, but, so
far as possible, entirely to root it out, the brothel-keepers and the
women kept by them are bound to give their most observant attention
thereto, both for their own advantage, and also for the diminution of
their own misfortunes and severe punishment. To this end, the
brothel-keepers are not to oppose the appointed surgeons in each
quarter, so often as the same make their visits to the women at their
houses; and every woman shall be subject to these visits. For the
information of every brothel-keeper, and of the prostitutes kept by
him, a copy of printed directions, prepared by competent authority,
shall be given to the brothel-keeper, whereby the signs of actual
infection and of the commencement of venereal disease may be known,
and they shall be clearly instructed by the duly appointed surgeon how
to form an opinion upon their own state of health, and be able to
explain the same on his visits, so that thereby the detection of
venereal disease at any time may be facilitated. Furthermore, upon
perceiving the symptoms whereby venereal disease is known in a man,
they should abstain from carnal intercourse with him.

"11. Should a woman suspect that she is infected, she must permit no
one to have connection with her, but shall mention the same as well to
her keeper as to the surgeon of the district, upon which steps shall
forthwith be taken for her cure. If she neglect this she shall be
punished with detention, three months for the first time, on
repetition of the offense with six months in the House of Correction,
with welcome and farewell. If the said woman, through concealment of
her venereal malady, has given occasion to a wider spread thereof, she
shall the first time be liable to twelve months in the House of
Correction, with welcome and farewell. In case the brothel-keeper
shall know of the diseased condition of such woman, and shall not
hinder her from the exercise of her trade, or shall keep her therein,
he shall be liable to the same punishment, and, moreover, shall be
liable to the costs and charges of cure and attendance of the man so
infected by such woman, if he requires it, or if he can not pay such
expenses. For this reimbursement a brothel-keeper shall be held liable
even if he did not know the diseased condition of a woman kept in his
house, inasmuch as such obligation shall, for the public weal, be
taken to be a risk and burden incident to the trade permitted to be
carried on by him.

"12. On the other hand, a prostitute can prosecute any one for having
infected her by means of connection, and such person shall, upon the
complaint and showing of her and the brothel-keeper, bear the expense
of cure and maintenance for so a long time as, pursuant to the orders
of the authorities of the Charité, the woman may have to remain in the
Charité; and further, shall be liable to a fine of fifty thalers, or
three months' imprisonment in the House of Correction.

"13. If any woman, before declaring her venereal disease, shall have
concealed it so long that, by opinion of competent persons, she must
have known the same for a considerable length of time, she shall,
whether she shall or shall not have infected other persons, be liable
to the same punishment as if she had infected others.

"14. Whereas, it has been the practice for the women to conceal their
venereal diseases; and whereas, they have intrusted themselves to
incompetent persons for cure; and whereas, the brothel-keepers are
bound to refund to the Charité the expenses of the cure and
attendance, which sometimes fall ruinously heavy upon them: it is
hereby directed, for the removal of this difficulty, that a healing
fund (_heilings casse_) shall be established, by means whereof the
keepers and their women, on the occurrence of disease, may be relieved
of the heavy expenses to which they are put, and may be assured
against the destruction of their bodies and health, which ensue from
the growth of this terrible disease. To this fund every brothel-keeper
shall contribute a monthly sum of six groschen (twelve cents) for each
woman that he keeps, and shall give in a statement of the name and
place of birth of such woman; for which, at the commencement of the
following month, he shall receive an acknowledgment, and he shall
recover such sum from every woman on whose account he shall have paid
the same. Nevertheless, any brothel-keeper who shall have allowed more
than one of these monthly payments to run into arrear with the women,
shall not, on that account, be able to prevent her leaving him, if, as
before ordered, she desires to change her way of life. If a woman goes
from one brothel to another without the six groschen having been paid
for her, the brothel-keeper to whom she goes must pay this amount in
due time for her. This shall happen notwithstanding that she is bound
to give notice of her removal to the police commissary of the quarter.
The monthly payment of this tax is to be made to the duly appointed
medical officer of the quarter, who shall pay over the whole amount of
the same to the collector of the healing fund, who shall give him for
the same a receipt under his own hand; whereupon the comptroller shall
compare the list of the same with the list of the brothel-keepers and
women in the several districts, and shall compel defaulters to pay the
outstanding tax.

"15. A perfect account is to be kept of this healing fund, and out of
the same every diseased woman shall be taken to the Charité, and,
without farther charges to herself or keeper, shall be maintained and
thoroughly cured without being sent, as formerly directed, to the
work-house. Farther, the woman shall not intrust herself either to the
visiting surgeon or to any other person for cure, but such shall take
place only in the Charité.

"16. No brothel shall be tolerated in the respectably inhabited and
frequented streets and squares of the city, but they shall be
established at a moderate distance from the same, so that the police
can watch them and speedily correct any disorder; otherwise only in
the smaller streets and thoroughfares.

"17. The matters that are ordered and prescribed in the foregoing
articles to the brothel-keepers, are also to be observed by female
brothel-keepers under like penalties.

"18. Single women living by themselves for purposes of prostitution
must give in their notices to the Police Directory in the same manner
as the women in the brothels; must also undergo examination by the
medical officers of the quarter in which they reside; must pay their
six groschen a month to the healing fund, and be subject to all the
directions applicable to brothel-keepers and their hired women, and to
the like punishments in case of offending against the directions.

"19. Procurers and procuresses, who make it their business to provide
opportunities in their houses for criminal intercourse of men and
women (whatever their condition), shall be strictly watched, and, upon
conviction, shall be liable to three months' detention in the House of
Correction.

"20. The street-walkers roaming the streets after dark are not to be
tolerated, but where they can be met with are to be taken into
custody, and after being cured, if they are affected with venereal
disease, shall be sent from six to twelve months to the House of
Correction.

"21. Whoever can not pay the fines shall receive a corresponding
corporal (_am leibe_) punishment.

"22. Informers shall receive half the fines paid in, and the remaining
fines shall be collected and distributed as the reward of those who
make discovery and information of any contraventions of these
regulations.

"23. In those cases mentioned in section 3, wherein, together with a
breach of these regulations, a crime against the laws of the state is
committed, the criminal department of the High Court will take
cognizance of it, and the remedies proceed from them to the criminal
deputation of the Chamber of Justice.

"24. In order that no one who, whether as keeper or girl, makes a
trade of prostitution, shall be in a position to excuse themselves on
account of their ignorance of this code of regulations, a copy of them
shall be given to every person at the time of registration, for which
six groschen shall be paid, and carried to the reward fund for
informers."

The royal rescript, the statute, and the police ordinance of 1792 are
founded upon the principle that prostitution is a necessary evil, which,
if unregulated, tends to demoralize all society, and inflict physical
suffering on its votaries; but, as it can never be suppressed, it is
tolerated in order that those who practice it may be brought under
supervision and control. In furtherance of this idea, another police order
was promulgated in 1795, prohibiting music and dancing at the tolerated
houses, and limiting the resort of prostitutes to public places of
amusement. The immediate effect of this measure was to close several
coffee-houses served by women (_mädchen tabagieen_). At the same time,
the women were classified into first, second, and third classes, and the
monthly tax graduated to one thaler (sixty-eight cents), two thirds of a
thaler, and one third of a thaler, which was appropriated to the healing
fund, as directed by the regulations of 1792. This impost was doubled at a
subsequent period in consequence of public calamities.

To enforce the police directions and collect the tax, a census of the
public prostitutes in Berlin was taken in June, 1792, when they amounted
to 311. The toleration was withdrawn from some of these for various
reasons, and the numbers were, in

July 269
August 268
September 249
October (a period of fairs and other assemblages) 258
And the average finally settled at about 260

in a population of 150,000.

In the exercise of the discretionary power vested in the police of Berlin,
as in most other cities of Continental Europe, they found it necessary to
extend their toleration so as to include in their supervision those
private prostitutes who could not be permitted to reside in the tolerated
houses because they had not reached the age prescribed by law, which in
Prussia fixes majority at twenty-four years; and also another class who
were secretly visited at private lodgings by those wealthy libertines
whose pride would not allow them to enter a common brothel, and whose
_amours_ consequently exposed them to liabilities which the spirit of the
law justified the police in encountering. The persons (mostly widows) with
whom the private prostitutes resided were made answerable to the police,
and subjected to the same rules as the tolerated houses.

Under the new scale of impost there were, in 1796,

6 brothels of the 1st class, with inmates 16
8 " " 2d " " 33
40 " " 3d " " 141
---190

Private prostitutes of the 1st class 39
" " " 2d " 28
--- 67
Total 257

About this period, an epoch of general political movement, men of the
highest rank in Prussia began to doubt the propriety of tolerating
prostitution, and orders were given, in opposition to the remonstrances of
the police, to take measures which would effectually compel
brothel-keepers to close their houses. This appears to have been the first
positive attempt at absolute repression, and the police intimated that
illicit prostitution would be its inevitable result. In reply, they were
directed that, if their prediction should be verified, they must pursue
the vice more closely. In 1800 the number of registered women had
decreased to 246, _but it was notorious that illicit prostitution had
increased largely_. This fact was not denied by the police. They ascribed
it, very justly, to the restrictions imposed on the tolerated houses,
which were now actually less than ever, at a time when the resident
population of Berlin was twenty thousand more than at the last
computation, exclusive of a large influx of troops and foreigners. They
were not supported in their views, but were ordered, on the ground of
extensive disease among the soldiery, to "crush out" the illicit
prostitution, and this order they vainly endeavored to accomplish. An
inquiry into the comparative state of the venereal disease was directed at
the same time, and the state physician reported that _there was less
disease among registered than illicit prostitutes, and inferred that a
diminution of tolerated, but strictly guarded regular brothels, was not
for the public benefit_.

The year 1808, when the French army overran Europe, was a period of
general war and trouble; the police regulations fell into abeyance, and
prostitution became comparatively free and uncontrolled. The French
military commanders in Berlin made complaints to the police of the lawless
state of the town, particularly specifying some of the brothels, which had
become nests of gamblers, wherein robbery, duels, suicides, and other
offenses were of frequent occurrence. The results of an inspection were as
follows:

50 brothels containing women 230
Private prostitutes 203--433
In addition to this, there were of notorious illicit
prostitutes known to the police (60 of whom were stated
to have disease in its worst forms) 400
And also reasonably suspected of prostitution 67
---
Making an aggregate known to the authorities of 900

There were also seventy dance-houses, which were known as places of
accommodation. The population at this time was about 150,000. The figures
thus given, from an official enumeration, are the best practical
commentary upon the effects of the abandonment of a tried system of
_surveillance_.

The state of affairs disclosed by this inquiry called forth a ministerial
rescript, dated May 8, 1809, which we copy:

"The brothel-houses are, by reason of the great influence they have on
morality and health, a very important branch of police administration.
_We should desire to be satisfied whether it is more desirable to
suppress or tolerate them._ In any case, it is, however, improper and
injurious to license them, and thus to give them a certain sanction;
still less can they be tolerated in public neighborhoods of a city. It
is rather to be desired that, upon every convenient and properly
occurring opportunity, they should be stamped with the well-merited
brand of the deepest depravity and infamy. We have therefore commanded
the Police Directory to effect the removal of all such houses into
quiet, retired streets of the suburbs and liberties, and we direct you
to take into consideration whether a like regulation can not be
accomplished here in the city of Berlin; whereupon you will make to us
a well-considered report. You are also to take into consideration what
can be done to brand such places with the deepest depravity and
infamy."

In obedience to this order, which had doubtless emanated direct from
royalty itself, Herr Von Gruner, the head of the Berlin police,
communicated a report containing his conclusions, as follows:

"1. That closing, or even limiting the brothels, would lead to very
general ill health."

"2. That, in consequence of the exertions of the police, illicit
prostitution had been diminished very much, and even the number of the
registered women had decreased."

"3. That in 1809 there were in Berlin

1 first class brothel containing women 6
20 second " " " " 75
22 third " " " " 117--198
Private prostitutes 113
---
Total registered 311

That this number might seem larger than before, but the passage of
troops and the large garrison of Berlin had led to the increase, and
evidently a great increase of secret prostitution and its results
would have been experienced in place of the registered prostitution,
had not an extension of this same registered prostitution been
tolerated."

"4. That particular streets in which brothels were to be found were
certainly no longer suitable places on account of the greater traffic
which they had gained, and these houses might, on that account, be
removed to back streets, including the _Königsmauer_, etc."

"5. That he did not know in what manner 'the brand of depravity and
infamy' could be impressed on the trade of prostitution, except by
directing a particular costume, differing from the clothing of
respectable women."

In continuation of this report, the commissary states his opinion
"that it would be dangerous to public order to keep the common houses
in narrow limits, as it would bring together all the idle people,
which might lead to a disturbance; that a special costume for the
women would be of no use at home, and out of doors it would only give
occasion for a public scandal without effecting the purpose of their
reform; that, lastly, he objects to the toleration of private
prostitutes, as there is no good result from their registration except
their health, and the general regulation in that and other matters is
much better secured in the brothels."

Among the official correspondence on this matter we find another document
worthy of notice. It is a report by a sub-inspector to the superior police
authorities, dated January 16, 1810.

"There are forty-four such houses of prostitution, and, compared with
the population of Berlin, 180,000, that is not many. They are divided
into three classes, and, together with the prostitutes living on their
own account, are controlled in conformity with the regulations of
February 2d, 1792. In compliance with such rules, they pay the taxes
to the healing fund.

"Past negligent mismanagement has unfortunately permitted several
brothels in much-frequented streets. Their removal to more retired
places I find highly desirable. It is urgent that no more private
women of the town should be tolerated, but rather that they should, if
they can not return to good conduct, be sent into the brothel-houses,
or, where they are not natives of Berlin, be sent out of the city
forthwith, or otherwise be sent to the House of Industry. These women,
living alone, are very perilous to morality and health, inasmuch as
they can not be so perfectly controlled as in the brothels in modesty
of deportment, cleanliness, and retirement; also because they are able
to withhold themselves from medical inspection, and to carry on their
trade when they know themselves to be suffering from venereal
diseases. The lists of the prostitutes under treatment at the Charité
demonstrate this. The opinion that this living alone favors a return
to virtue is not supported by experience; were it even so, the
disadvantages enumerated are more important than so rare and
problematical a benefit.

"The question, 'whether the toleration of brothels in large cities,
and their regulation by the police, so that infected females should
not be permitted therein, is advisable, in order to counteract the
seduction of respectable females?' can not be categorically answered
in the affirmative. Still, in Berlin, it seems that brothels, if not a
necessary evil, can not be momentarily abolished, but such steps must
be devised as will gradually remove the evil, and make the disgrace
generally noticeable. To this end, the above propositions, touching
private prostitutes and removal of brothels from public streets, will
be carried into effect. Express limitations of the brothels to two or
three streets would give occasion to gatherings on holidays that
might lead to riots and other excesses.

"A special external designation of prostitutes would only lead to
uproar, without causing the women to feel the odium of their calling
more than at present."

The remainder of this report is unimportant. In October, 1810, a public
order was made for effectuating its recommendations.

After this event the king became impressed with an idea of the impolicy
and impropriety of the "toleration" system, and a lengthy correspondence
ensued between the various departments and state officials on the subject;
the royal rescripts enunciating the oft-repeated opinions on the subject
in general, objecting to the details of the police management, or
directing reports on some particular incident of the system; the police
authorities, fortified by experience as opposed to theory, adhering to the
toleration practice, and demanding increased powers to restrain private
prostitution, and compel all such persons to enter the public houses. The
matter was brought to a close in 1814 by an order from the crown for a
total closing of the tolerated brothels. The police president, Lecoq,
thought it advisable to communicate with the authorities of the town of
Breslau before he complied with this order, requesting some information as
to the state of public morals there, it being stated that there was not a
single brothel or registered prostitute to be found within its limits.

The reply from the Breslau officials was in the affirmative as to the
fact. As to the results, they had consulted with the state physician and
the hospital physician, and their opinion was that closing the brothels
and withdrawal of toleration _had not been advantageous_, as, in spite of
the police vigilance, illicit prostitution had increased since, and
procuresses carried on their arts more extensively, their operations being
altogether secret, and under no police control; _that the venereal disease
had not decreased_; _that nothing counteracted it so effectually as the
medical inspection of known brothels_; _and that its secret spread had
been so great as to extend its ravages, through the instrumentality of
female servants, into respectable families_; that the hospital returns
proved but little, because the cases were suffered to run on or were
privately cured, but these returns were given as follows:

Venereal cases in Illegitimate births
Years. Breslau Hospital. in Breslau.
1805 155 ....
1806 202 ....
1807 323 ....
1808 233 ....
1809 150 ....
1810 118 382
1811 98 316
1812 139 282
1813 159 222

The years 1800 and 1807 were those of the French invasion. In 1812 the
brothels in Breslau were closed.

The general peace of 1814 diverted the energies of crowned heads and
leading statesmen from matters of internal policy, and the police of
Berlin were left at liberty to pursue their old plans. Then the
inhabitants began to object to brothels, and to petition against those in
their immediate neighborhood. This drew from the police an argumentative
document, in which they fully reviewed the question, but refused the
prayer of the petition.

The change of localities, alterations in the law, and other circumstances,
made a re-enactment of the code of 1792 desirable, and this took place in
1829. The alterations are chiefly in minor details of no general interest,
but the law against frequenting places of public amusement was made part
of this police order, which declared that the presence of prostitutes at
houses of public entertainment was strictly forbidden. The most material
change consisted in some very minute directions for guarding against
venereal disease. To this end, every brothel-keeper was required to
furnish each woman in his house with a proper syringe, which she was
directed to use frequently, under the orders of the medical visitors. The
private prostitutes were directed to observe similar precautions, and in
place of a fixed weekly inspection by a medical officer, he was ordered to
make his visits at uncertain intervals.

At this time there were thirty-three brothels in Berlin. Some of the
citizens renewed their petitions for a removal of a portion of them, but
with no better success than before.

In 1839, the morality of the system of toleration was again questioned by
those in authority, and the Minister of the Interior, in a rescript to the
authorities of the Rhine provinces, alluded to the matter of prostitution,
and expressed himself as strongly opposed to any system of toleration. We
quote a portion of his remarks:

"As for the granting of licenses to brothels, I can not accede to it,
inasmuch as the advantages to be gained are, in my opinion, illusory,
and in no degree countervail the inconvenience of the state sanction
thus afforded to discreditable institutions. All attempts by the
police to introduce decency and propriety by means of brothel
regulations are idle. * * * * Brothels are not an invention of
necessity, but are simply an offshoot of immoral luxury.(?) * * * * No
one has a right to expect himself to be protected from injury and
disease while seeking the gratification of unreasonable sexual
enjoyments. * * * * The opinion that brothels are outlets for
dangerous arts of seduction has never been substantiated. * * * * Had
the police ever realized the suppression of illicit prostitution by
means of tolerated brothels, then, indeed, a decided opinion might be
formed as to the utility, in a sanitary point of view, of brothels."

Opinions of this nature from such a quarter, notwithstanding their
absurdity in many respects, could not be without their effect, and induced
the citizens to renew their petitions for the suppression or removal of
some of the tolerated houses of prostitution. In 1840, a ministerial order
enjoined such removal. It was promptly obeyed: some brothels were at once
suppressed, and others were removed and concentrated in a notorious spot
called the Königsmauer. The relative number of brothels and prostitutes in
the years 1836 and 1844 was as follows:

1836, brothels 33 Prostitutes 200
1844, " 24 " 240
-- ---
_Decrease_ of brothels in 1844 9
_Increase_ of prostitutes in 1844 40

Forty more women crowded into a less number of houses; an average of ten
prostitutes to each brothel, instead of six as before, is but a poor
commentary on enforced suppression.

The known inclination of the highest persons in the kingdom to put down
brothels speedily induced a renewal of the agitation against them. So far
as locality was in question, it was admitted that no more suitable place
could have been found. The Königsmauer was a spot shunned by decent people
from old times, out of the way, and with few inhabitants but those
interested in the traffic, there was nobody to suffer, and the whole
argument virtually turned upon the moral consequences of the government
regulations and their utility to the public.

Among the petitions of 1840, one had been presented "from a number of
Berlin citizens" to Prince William, the uncle of the king, stating that
these brothels were an abomination; that many of them were splendidly
fitted up, in which all means of excitement were used; that the women
appeared at the windows exposed and bare-necked; in short, the
memorialists said all that is customarily said on such occasions. But they
seem to have forgotten that the police possessed both power and
inclination to suppress such grievances, or else it never occurred to
these "Berlin citizens" that their assistance given to the police would
have speedily checked the evils. The memorial was handed to the king
himself, and he required a report upon the matter from the Director of
Police. This was duly furnished, and represented,

"1. That the corruption of manners in Berlin, and in the parts of
Berlin complained of, was not more extreme than in other great cities
of Germany, and in like places.

"2. That in the limitation of the ineradicable vice of prostitution by
her police regulations, Berlin had greatly the advantage of Vienna;
for in 1840, Berlin (including the garrison) had a population of
350,000 souls, among whom there was, of course, a very large number of
unmarried men. That the syphilitic cases in the Charité had been in

1838, men 569 Women 634 Total 1209
1839, " 695 " 738 " 1433
1840, " 704 " 757 " 1461

Assuming that one third of the venereal cases in Berlin were treated
privately, this gives an average of 1 in 450, or in every four hundred
and fifty men there is one syphilitic subject, whereas M.
Parent-Duchatelet's calculation for Vienna is 1 in every 250."[266]

The same report continues:

"Every official will bear out my assertion that the number of brothels
is in inverse proportion to illicit prostitution; that is, the fewer
of the former, the more of the latter, and the greater the difficulty
of dealing with them, and preventing syphilis."

In 1841 another memorial was presented, with further complaints against
the same houses in the Königsmauer. This was referred to the police
authorities with the brief injunction, "Make an end of the nuisances about
which there are so many complaints."

The _Schulkollegium_ of the province of Brandenburg now joined their
influence to swell the public outcry that the few houses of prostitution
on the Königsmauer were hurtful to public morals, and a bad example to
youth, and, on the ground of interest in their students and pupils,
demanded that they be closed. The police, who had previously taken every
precaution against a violation of public decency, now deputed a special
inspector to give his personal attention to the locality. He reported
there was no valid ground of complaint as to the outward conduct of the
inhabitants, or the internal management of the houses. Thus satisfied as
to the nature of the opposition, the police treated the college officials
somewhat cavalierly, and recommended them to prohibit their students
visiting such an out-of-the-way place: a very sensible piece of advice,
and the best that could have been given under the circumstances.

According to Dr. Behrend (who has written on Prostitution in Berlin), the
leading spirits of this agitation were a clergyman, and a distiller who
had a brewery and spirit-store in the vicinity of the Königsmauer. The
clergyman proceeded upon moral and religious grounds, and led the crusade
against brothels as a public disgrace, unworthy a Christian nation. We do
not learn what line of argument the distiller adopted, or whether the
prohibition of liquor in houses of prostitution influenced his zeal. These
agitators applied to the police with a succession of general complaints as
to the luxury of the houses, the gains of the women, the bad example to
the young, and other topics of a similar nature. They met with but scant
favor; however, they were assured that every possible means should be used
to keep the offenders within the bounds of existing rules.

The memorialists then carried their grievances to various influential
people, and at length to Count Arnim, the Minister of the Interior, to
whom a petition was presented, praying the entire suppression of all
tolerated brothels. This petition contained all the allegations and
arguments which could possibly be advanced against the places in question,
augmented by much rhetorical flourish about the degradation of royal
officers; the desecration of the baptismal register produced by
prostitutes at the time of inscription; the insult to majesty in allowing
brothels to exist in a street called Königsmauer, and many similarly
weighty points. The practical knowledge of the police as to the effect of
registration in checking more baneful excesses was theoretically disputed;
the propositions on which the toleration system was based were denied; the
defense of the plan by those cognizant of its working was entirely ruled
out; so that, to a person unacquainted with both sides of the question, a
sufficient _ex parte_ case was presented.

The ministerial reply was favorable, but not conclusive; it was to the
effect that,

"1. The number of brothels is to be reduced one half, which are to be
removed beyond the city walls to the most retired position possible,
where annoyance to the neighbors is not to be feared.

"2. For the control of those remaining, patrols of gens d'armes are to
be kept afoot, and relieved six times a day.

"3. Every third breach of the regulations, whether in small or great
matters, will be followed by the closing of the house.

"Should these orders not be sufficient, the police are empowered to
close all the houses, for it must be understood that brothels are not
licensed, but only tolerated as necessity requires, and care for
public decency permits."

The police authorities foresaw difficulties in the details of these
proceedings, and asked for more explicit instructions, which were
supplied. In the second communication was this remarkable passage:

"Should a diminution in the number of brothels take place, and thereby
the number of common prostitutes be affected, we shall then learn by
experience whether consequences injurious to public morality and order
ensue, and the decision of the main question can then be made with
certainty, whether we can not advance to the entire abolition of
brothels."

In following the prescribed course, and overthrowing an established system
in order to furnish ministerial "experience" of the trouble it would
cause, the police instituted a series of inquiries, and embodied the
result in a report to the Minister of the Interior, dated July, 1844,
which shows that there were

26 brothels, containing women 287
Registered private prostitutes 18
---
Total 305

The amount received and disbursed on account of the healing fund was also
reported in thalers, thus:

1841. Received 3384 | Disbursed 1027
1842. " 3393 | " 861
1843. " 3365 | " 689

It concludes with the opinion entertained by the police:

"As for the influence which the extinction of brothels may have upon
the morals, safety, and health of society, the police authorities
think themselves obliged, as before, to declare against the expediency
of the proceeding. What should be done in case this course should be
adopted is a question that requires much consideration. Meanwhile, the
police are of opinion it would be highly objectionable to close the
brothels before other measures are prepared in reference to
prostitution."

No such measures were prepared. The king would hear no farther argument
upon the matter; and, by positive "royal command," the brothels were
closed and registered prostitution stopped, December 31, 1845. Berlin
became (nominally) as virtuous as an edict from the throne could make it.
The majority of the prostitutes were either sent to their former homes or
supplied with passports for places out of the kingdom. A few were left
houseless, friendless, and destitute. History does not say whether the
friends of enforced continence provided for these sufferers.

This summary edict seriously embarrassed the police, especially as the
state laws tolerating prostitution were unrepealed. They applied to the
authorities of Halle and Cologne, where a similar measure had been
enforced, and the substance of the replies received was as follows.

From Halle:

"Since the French occupation, the brothels had been put down. There
had been a few persons charged with prostitution, whom the police
caught _now and then_, and sent to jail, where they were cured. There
were, however, very few vicious persons in Halle, and there had been
no need of special provision. It was not difficult to find honest
livelihood for the common women. As to syphilis, there had been no
increase of cases since the last of the brothels."

The authorities of Cologne had no such pleasing tale to tell. They say,

"At the end of the French occupation, the authorities had put down all
the licensed brothels, and, at the same time, made vigilant search for
private prostitutes. Legal difficulties had for many years been in the
way, as the laws made no provision against private prostitution, when
not carried on as a trade for gain, and the technical proof was
difficult. Against procurers and procuresses the law was ineffective,
except in cases where the seduced female was under age. When the
amendments in the law had taken place, the police had worked
vigorously, and in the years 1843 and 1844, a time when illicit
prostitution had enormously increased, they had presented three
hundred cases of that offense.

"_As regarded syphilis, the city physician was of opinion that, in
late years, the disease had increased among all classes, and had
appeared in a much worse type._

"In consequence, however, of the increased energy of the police,
affairs had become under better control, and the number of private
brothels had materially diminished, so that there are now but about
fifteen in the city. The secret prostitution was not, however, under
any control. The police found it impracticable to keep vicious persons
in check, who (in default of other accommodation) committed the most
depraved acts in stray vehicles or any suitable hiding-place."

The writer of this official communication added his private opinion, based
upon the experience of some years, that "no effective steps could be
devised to suppress prostitution: all that could be done would be to
palliate it, and keep it under _surveillance_."

These statements were not calculated to relieve the anxiety of the Berlin
officials, who were pressed by the ministers to devise plans for executing
the royal orders. They accordingly met, in much embarrassment, and
prepared a scheme which was not acceptable to the superior powers. It was
ordered, eventually, "that the women suspected of prostitution, being
about 1000 or 1200 in Berlin, should be warned by the police to
discontinue their practices. If found out, they were to be punished, and,
after punishment, to be continued under _surveillance_ until good
behavior. During such period they were to be periodically examined for
disease, at the police office, by medical men; the punishment to be made
more severe on the repetition of the offense."

These orders, following immediately the suppression mandate, will strike
every one as reaffirming the principles of the toleration system in the
most important particular--the regard for public health. The police used
all their energy to enforce them, but at the same time represented their
fears of the consequences, namely, the spread of prostitution, the
increase of disease, and a general licentiousness of habits.

It now remains to trace the effects of the suppression of registered
brothels, and local authorities afford abundant and satisfactory proof
that the fears of the police were realized.

The _Vossicher Zeitung_ (July, 1847), says:

"Well meant but altogether erroneous is the proposition that brothels
can be dispensed with in times of general intelligence and education,
and that now this relic of barbarism can be done away with. Already,
only two years after the closing of the brothels, this deception has
been exploded, and we have bought experience at the public cost. The
illicit prostitutes, who well know how to escape the hands of the
police, have spread their nets of demoralization over the whole city;
and against them, the old prostitution houses, which were under a
purifying police control in sanitary and general matters, afforded
safety and protection."

In another local paper we find:

"Prostitution, which had previously kept out of sight in dark and
retired corners, now came forward boldly and openly; for it found
protection and countenance in the large number of its supporters, and
no police care could restrain it. The prostitutes did not merely
traverse the streets and frequent the public thoroughfares to hunt
their prey, thereby insulting virtuous women and putting them to the
blush, they crowded the fashionable promenades, the concerts, the
theatres, and other places of amusement, where they claimed the
foremost places, and set the fashion of the hour. They were
conspicuous for their brilliant toilettes, and their example was
pre-eminently captivating and pernicious to the youth of both sexes."

From a work called "Berlin," by Sass, we obtain the annexed view of

PUBLIC LIFE IN BERLIN.

"No city in Germany can boast of the splendid ball-rooms of Berlin.
One in particular, near the Brandenburg gate and the Parade-ground, is
remarkable for its size, and presents a magnificent exterior,
especially in the evening, when hundreds of lamps stream through the
windows and light up the park in front. The interior is of
corresponding splendor, and when the vast hall resounds with the music
of the grand orchestra, and is filled with a gay crowd rustling in
silks or satins, or lounging in the hall, or whirling in the giddy
waltz, it is certainly a scene to intoxicate the youth who frequent it
in search of adventure, or to drink in the poison of seductive and
deceiving, although bright and fascinating eyes. Should the foreigner
visit this scene on one of its gay nights, he may get a glimpse of the
depths of Berlin life. Many a veil is lifted here. This splendid scene
has its dark side. This is not respectable Berlin. This whirling,
laughing crowd is frivolous Berlin, whether of wealth, extravagance,
and folly, or of poverty, vice, and necessity. The prostitute and the
swindler are on every side. Formerly the female visitors were of good
repute, but gradually courtesans and women of light character slipped
in, until at length no lady could be seen there. And the aforesaid
foreigner, who lounges through the rooms, admiring the elegant and
lovely women who surround him in charge of some highly respectable
elderly person, an 'aunt,' or a '_chaperone_,' or possibly in company
with her 'newly-married husband,' seeks to know the names and position
of such evident celebrity and fashion. 'Do not you know her? Any
police officer can tell you her history,' are the replies he receives.
There is a class of men at this place who perform a function singular
to the uninitiated. These worthies are the 'husbands' of the
before-mentioned ladies. They play the careless or the strict
cavalier; are Blue-beards on occasion; appear or keep out of sight,
according to the proprieties of the moment."

From the same writer we extract the following sketch of a

DANCING SALOON.

"The price of admission is ten groschen (about twenty cents), which
insures a company who can pay. The male public are of all conditions,
and include students, clerks, and artists, with, of course, a fair
share of rogues and pickpockets. The majority of the women are
prostitutes: there may be found girls of rare beauty, steeped to the
lips in all the arts of iniquity. The philosopher may see life
essentially in the same grade as in the last description, but in a
somewhat less artificial condition. Scenes of bacchant excitement and
of wildest abandonment may be witnessed here. The outward show is all
mirth and happiness; pleasure unrestrained seems the business of the
place. Turn the picture. The most showy of the costumes are hired; the
gayety is for a living; the liberty is licentiousness. These
creatures, who, all blithesome as they seem, the victims of others who
fleece them of every thing they can earn, are now engaged in securing
victims from whom they may wring the gains which are to pay the hire
of their elegant dresses, or furnish means for further excesses, or
perhaps to pay for their supper that evening. It is the fashion of the
place for each _gentleman_ to invite a _lady_ to supper, where the
quantity of wine drunk is incredible. How many a young man has to
trace not merely loss of cash and health to such a place, but also
loss of honor! The _ladies_ who have no such agreeable partners sit
apart, sullen and discontented; oftentimes they have no money to pay
for their own refreshments. Pair by pair the crowd diminishes, until
toward three or four o'clock, when the place is closed."

The lowest dancing-houses are the _Tanz wirthschaften_, inferior to the
saloons, where (again quoting)

"The dance is carried to its wildest excess, to ear-splitting music in
a pestilential atmosphere. The poor are extravagant; drunkenness and
profligacy abound. Servants of both sexes, soldiers and journeymen,
workwomen and prostitutes, make up the public. Here, on the most
frivolous pretenses, concubinage and marriage are arranged, and from
this scene of folly and vice the family is ushered to the world. The
wet-nurse is met here, "the type of country simplicity," who, after a
night of tumult and uproar with her lover, will go in the morning to
nurse the child whose mother neglects her parental duties at the
dictates of fashion. The working classes have their representatives,
who drown their cares in drink, while boys and girls make up the
motley party. In these assemblies there is a difference. Some are
attended by citizens of the humbler classes, by working men and women;
others by criminals and their paramours. In these latter resorts the
excesses are of a more frightful character than in those where a show
of decency restrains the grosser exhibitions; youth of both sexes are
among the well-known criminals, who are habituated to smoking,
drinking, and the wildest orgies, long before their frames have
attained a proper development. Physiognomies which might have sprung
from the most hideous fancy of poet or painter may be met with."

In an anonymous pamphlet, entitled "Prostitution in Berlin," is another
hideous picture:

"In the Königstadt there is a drinking saloon where, besides the wife
of the host, there are two young girls who exceed all compeers in
shamelessness and depravity. The elder betrays secondary syphilis in
her voice; the younger has such noble features, is of such beauty, and
is altogether of such prepossessing appearance, that the infamy of her
conduct is incredible. In the evening these girls and the host are
generally drunk. At one or two in the morning the place is a perfect
hell, the whole company, guests, host, and girls, being mad with
liquor. Some are dancing with the girls to the tinkle of a guitar, the
player of which acted her part in one of the abolished brothels;
others are roaring obscene songs. If the guitar-player has brought her
daughter, then the tumult of the den is complete. It is never closed
before four o'clock in the morning, when the girls retire to their
dwellings in company with one or the other of their guests."

In reading these descriptions, it must be remembered that, under the
toleration system, the police would not permit prostitutes to visit places
of public amusement, nor would they allow music and dancing in the
brothels.

Another part of Dr. Sass's work contains a truly horrid picture of the
immorality of the city. We transcribe it, in conclusion of this branch of
the subject:

PRIVATE LIFE IN BERLIN.

"... Let us enter the house. The first floor is inhabited by a family
of distinction; husband and wife have been separated for years; he
lives on one side, she on the other; both go out in public together;
the proprieties are kept in view, but servants will chatter. On the
second floor lives an assessor with his kept woman. When he is out of
town, as the house is well aware, a doctor pays her a visit. On the
other side the staircase lives a carrier, with his wife and child. The
wife had not mentioned that this child was born before marriage; he
found it out; of course they quarreled, and he now takes his revenge
in drunkenness, blows, and abuse. We ascend to the third floor. On the
right of the stairs is a teacher who has had a child by his wife's
sister; the wife grieves sorely over the same. With him lodges a
house-painter who ran away from his wife and three children, and now
lives, with his concubine and one child, in a wretched little
cupboard. On the left is a letter-carrier's family. His pay is fifteen
thalers (twelve dollars) a month, but the people seem very
comfortable. Their daughter has a very nice front room, well
furnished, and is kept by a very wealthy merchant, a married man.
Exactly opposite there is a house of accommodation, and close by there
is a midwife, whose sign-board announces 'An institute for ladies of
condition, where they can go through their confinement in retirement.'
I can assure the reader that in this sketch of sexual and family life
in Berlin I have 'nothing extenuated, nor set down aught in malice.'"

In estimating the effects of the suppression of brothels, it will be
necessary to take medical testimony. In Dr. Loewe's pamphlet,
"Prostitution with reference to Berlin, 1852," we find:

"In vain the Charité, after the ordinary wards were full of venereal
patients, set aside other parts of the building. The patients were
still poured in from the houses of detention, until, at length, the
directors of the Charité refused farther admission, the consequence of
which was a long and angry correspondence between them and the police.
The Minister of the Interior interfered, and ordered more
accommodation for the Charité. This was done, but the new wards were
soon filled with venereal females; the patients exceeded the
accommodations, and at last it was found necessary to take the Cholera
Lazaret for syphilitic cases. Against this arrangement the magistracy
of Berlin remonstrated that the present influx of venereal patients
must be regarded as the inevitable, natural consequence of the
abolition of the brothels; that this abolition had not originated with
them, therefore they were not bound to provide for it."

Dr. Behrend, to whose work we have already alluded, gives much statistical
information, from original documents, showing the results of suppression.
He says:

"In 1839, out of 1200 women brought to punishment for begging and
similar offenses, there were about 600 common unregistered
prostitutes. In 1840, the period of reducing the number of brothels,
there were 900 such women. In 1847, a year after their suppression,
there were 1250 notorious prostitutes. Those, in the opinion of the
police, constituted but a portion of those who practiced prostitution,
but yet had an apparent means of living. Behind the Königsmauer the
traffic is carried on worse than formerly, while the place itself is
the scene of disorder and irregularity, which used not to be under the
former system. These offenses can not be punished, owing to the
difficulties of technical proof which must always exist. The police
have done what is possible by continually patrolling the streets, and
arresting openly objectionable characters, and even those who are
informed against as being diseased, but they can do no more. _The
prostitution which was formerly confined within a limited district is
now spread over the whole town._"

Respecting the influence of the withdrawal of toleration upon the public
health, Behrend concludes there is a greater amount of syphilis. He gives
the following list of cases in the Charité:

Year 1840 Females, 757 Males, ---
" 1841 " 743 " ---
" 1842 " 676 " ---
" 1843 " 669 " ---
" 1844 " 657 " 741
" 1845 " 514 " 711
" 1846 " 627 " 813
" 1847 " 761 " 894
" 1848 " 835 " 979

He also investigated the average time each patient was under treatment, as
tending to show the malignity of the disease, and reports:

Year 1844, men, 21-5/6 days; women, 31-2/3 days; both sexes, 26-3/4 days.
" 1845, " 26-6/7 " " 42-8/9 " " " 34-2/3 "
" 1846, " 30-1/2 " " 51-1/2 " " " 40-7/8 "
" 1847, " 34-1/9 " " 43-2/3 " " " 38-2/3 "
" 1848, " 33-1/3 " " 53-1/6 " " " 43-1/2 "

These facts are corroborated by the registers of the Military Lazaret.
From returns made to the police department by Herr Lohmeyer, General Staff
Physician, it appears there were in the garrison

In 1844 and 1845, 735 syphilitic cases. Of these,

633 cases of primary syphilis required 17,916 days of attendance;
102 " " secondary " " 4,947 " "
--- ------
735 " " " 22,863 " "

In 1846, and the first six months of 1847, there were 618 cases:

501 cases of primary syphilis required 17,788 days of attendance;
117 " " secondary " " 5,213 " "
--- ------
618 " " " " 23,001 " "

Dr. Behrend states, as the results of conversations and communications
with many of the medical profession, and of his own experience:

"1. That in the last four years there are more cases of syphilis.

"2. That, in consequence of the increased facilities for
communication, the disease has spread to the small towns and villages.

"3. That it has been introduced more frequently into private families.

"4. That the character of the disease is more obstinate, thereby
operating severely on the constitution and on future generations.

"5. That, since the abolition of the toleration system, unnatural
crimes have been much more frequently met with."

As to the influence on public morals, he contends that the abolition has
produced the most injurious consequences, particularly alluding to the
desecration of matrimony. He says:

"It is common for persons of vicious habits to arrange a marriage, for
the purpose of enabling them to avoid the police interference. This
marriage bond is broken when convenient, and other marriages are
formed: sometimes two couples will mutually exchange, and go through
the ceremony."

He also made inquiries as to illegitimacy, and publishes some voluminous
tables on the subject. From them we condense a

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF THE LEGITIMATE AND ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS IN BERLIN
FROM JANUARY 1, 1838, TO MARCH 31, 1849.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Years | Births. | Ratio of |
| |---------------------------------| illegitimate to |
| |Legitimate.|Illegitimate.|Total. |legitimate Births.|
|--------------|-----------|-------------|-------|------------------|
| 1838 | 8,587 | 1196 | 9,783| 1 in 7·2 |
| 1839 | 7,820 | 1412 | 9,232| 1 in 5·5 |
| 1840 | 9,019 | 1487 | 10,506| 1 in 6· |
| 1841 | 9,024 | 1557 | 10,581| 1 in 5·7 |
| 1842 | 10,269 | 1928 | 12,177| 1 in 5·3 |
| 1843 | 10,370 | 1969 | 12,339| 1 in 5·2 |
| 1844 | 10,958 | 2000 | 12,958| 1 in 5·4 |
| 1845 | 11,402 | 2138 | 13,540| 1 in 5·3 |
| 1846 | 11,717 | 2140 | 13,857| 1 in 5·4 |
| 1847 | 11,294 | 2204 | 13,498| 1 in 5·1 |
| 1848 | 12,113 | 2303 | 14,416| 1 in 5·2 |
|3 mos. of 1849| 3,278 | 646 | 3,921| 1 in 5·1 |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Having rapidly traced the Berlin experience of the various methods of
controlling prostitution for nearly three fourths of a century, it only
remains to say that the increased evils of illicit prostitution, and the
total inability of the police to counteract them; the spread of the
venereal disease, and its augmented virulence; the palpable and growing
licentiousness of the city; the complaints of public journals; the
investigations of scientific men; and the memorials of the citizens
generally, reached the royal ear, and induced an ordinance in 1851,
restoring the toleration system, and entirely repealing the edict of 1845,
which had produced such disastrous results.

The experiment of "crushing out" had been fairly tried. The king and his
ministers lent all their energy and inclination to the task, and, after
six years' attempt, it was admitted to be a futile labor, and entirely
abandoned. Berlin will have to suffer for years from the consequences of
this misdirected step, for it is an easy matter to abandon all control,
but an exceedingly difficult one to regain it. Now that the police are
reinvested with their former authority, they strive, by every possible
means, to repair the evils of the interregnum. Their most recent
regulations are embodied in the following

DIRECTIONS FOR KEEPERS PERMITTED TO RECEIVE FEMALES ABANDONED TO
PROSTITUTION INTO THEIR HOUSES.

"1. The duties hereby imposed upon the keeper are not to be taken to
relieve him from the ordinary notices to the police respecting persons
taken into his house or employment.

"2. The keeper must live on the ground floor of his house, near the
outer door, in order to watch all entrance into his house, and to be
ready to interfere in case of tumult or uproar therein.

"3. The keeper has the right to refuse any person admittance into the
house. For preservation of order and quiet in, and in front of his
house, the keeper will have the requisite assistance from the police.

"4. Dancing and music in the house are strictly forbidden; billiards,
cards, and other games are also forbidden, whereof the keeper is to be
particularly watchful.

"5. In order to avoid quarrels with the visitors, the keeper must
affix, in each of his rooms, a list of prices of refreshment, to be
previously submitted to the undersigned commission for approval.

"6. The agreement which the keeper enters into with the females living
in his house must be also communicated to the undersigned commission.
In case of dispute as to this agreement between the keepers and the
females, both are to address themselves to this commission.

"7. Each of the females receives a printed list of directions, which
she is strictly to follow. It is the duty of the keeper to make
himself well acquainted with these directions, and to see that they be
followed.

"8. It is for his own interest that the keeper should keep his house
in order and quiet, and should also give attention to the cleanliness
and health of the female inmates. Each of these is ordered to obey him
in every thing relating thereto, and should any of them be
contumacious, the keeper is to appeal to the police commissary, or to
the undersigned commission, but he can not himself chastise or use
force with any female.

"9. If the keeper know or suspect any female to be sick with venereal
disease or itch, he must give notice to the visiting medical officer,
or to the undersigned, and the person is to be kept apart until she
has been examined. In default of this notice, or even of the privacy
required, the keeper is liable to the same punishment as the law
inflicts for being knowingly accessory to illness of other people.

"10. If the keeper knows or suspects that any of the females are
pregnant, he must give notice thereof to the visiting medical officer.
Neglect of this involves the punishment of concealing pregnancy.

"11. Every person is to be visited thrice a week by a medical officer,
on appointed days and hours; and, besides, according to the order of
the commission, at hours not appointed. These visits the keeper is to
facilitate in every way.

"12. For these visits, indispensably requisite for the health of the
female inmates, the keeper is to provide beforehand,

"(_a._) An examination chair, of an approved pattern.

"(_b._) Two or three specula.

"(_c._) Several pounds of chloride of lime.

"(_d._) For every female, besides necessary linen, her own washing
apparatus, her own syringe, and two or three sponges.

"13. The keeper is strictly charged that he cause the women to observe
decency and propriety whenever it is allowed them to walk abroad in
the streets, or to take exercise in the open air for the sake of their
health. If any of these persons require to take any such necessary
walk, the keeper can not refuse her, but must provide a suitable male
companion, who is to take charge of her. She is to be respectably and
decently clad, is not to stand still on the streets, nor to remain out
longer than is requisite for completing her business or for proper
exercise.

"14. In case any woman manifests a fixed desire to give up her
profligate mode of life, the keeper shall make no attempt to turn her
from it, and can not, even on account of sureties he may be under,
hinder her from carrying out her determination. Moreover, the keeper
must present the woman with apparel suitable to a woman of the serving
class, in case she should be destitute of the same."

15. Provides for change of keepers.

"16. The keeper is expected to give all assistance to the commission
in their efforts to lead such persons back to an honest livelihood;
especially so in their endeavors to suppress illicit prostitution, and
to detect the sources of venereal infection."

CHAPTER XVIII.

LEIPZIG.

Population.--Registered and illicit Prostitutes.--Servants.--
Kept-women.--Brothels.--Nationality of Prostitutes.--Habits.--
Fairs.--Visitors.--Earnings of Prostitutes.

But very few remarks are necessary concerning prostitution in Leipzig,
where no striking peculiarity marks the common women as a class, and the
legislation is based on the ordinary German principle of toleration.

If we reckon its garrison as a part of the population of the town, the
number of inhabitants will amount to about one hundred thousand, nearly
one third of whom are soldiers or transient residents. It is subject to
many fluctuations at various times, but the general average may be assumed
at the number stated. Of the permanent residents there are about six
hundred well known and professed male rogues and blacklegs; these are
under the constant and vigilant _surveillance_ of the police. They
unquestionably exert a considerable influence on the female morality of
the place, not only from their own _amours_, for which men of this
character are notorious wherever located, but by the agency they
frequently assume to arrange the "pleasures" of their victims and
acquaintances.

It need, therefore, occasion no surprise to ascertain that, in addition to
about three hundred registered prostitutes who are subject to medical and
police supervision, there are about twelve hundred women who notoriously
frequent the city, from the neighboring towns and villages, for purposes
of prostitution, whenever a large influx of visitors makes it probable
that Leipzig will be a lucrative market for them. These are not directly
under any police control. To this number of fifteen hundred avowed and
known prostitutes, who are to be found in the city during busy seasons of
the year, must be added the class of irregular or private courtesans,
mostly composed of domestics. It is estimated there are three thousand
servant-girls in the city, and the habits of a large number of them leave
no doubt as to the propriety of including them in this enumeration;
indeed, those who have had the best opportunities for observation do not
hesitate to assert that at least one third are vicious. Assuming this to
be an accurate calculation, we have 2500 prostitutes, or one in every
forty of the gross population, exclusive of kept mistresses, or those
frail women in the more aristocratic circles of society who should
properly be classed with them. In this respect we have no reason to
conclude that Leipzig is either better or worse than other large cities of
the present day.

There are about sixty-six common brothels in Leipzig, the majority of
which are registered and closely watched by the police. They are situated
in the lowest and least frequented parts of the city, and many of them
present, in excess, some of the worst features of such places. To escape
their annoyances as far as possible, and retain that outward show of
respectability most acceptable to their visitors, many of the prostitutes
have private lodgings in various parts of the town, resorting to every
conceivable disguise to conceal or modify their real character. Very many
of them are said to be married women, whose husbands not merely connive
at, but frequently compel this loathsome trade for the sake of its
emoluments.

The proprietors of the tolerated brothels "assume a virtue if they have it
not," and seek to disguise their houses under the names of coffee-houses
or restaurants; a course recognized by the authorities, who do not insist
upon calling such places by the vernacular designation, as is done in
Hamburg or Berlin.

The women inhabiting these houses are principally natives of Altenburg,
Berlin, Dresden, or Brunswick; those from the latter district are noted by
travelers for their personal beauty. Very few Polish women are found here.
The requisite supply of women is kept up through the agency of
procuresses, as in Hamburg, who are remunerated by the brothel-keepers in
proportion to the distance they have traveled to secure recruits, or
according to the attractions of the girl, or her probable success in the
establishment.

In regard to dress, manners, conduct, and the other incidents of their
calling, there is little distinction between the prostitutes of Leipzig
and those of other European cities. A late anonymous writer gives them
credit as a class for a studious, literary habit, and names a somewhat
intelligent selection of light works as those they prefer to read, such as
the writings of Fredrika Bremer, Bulwer, Walter Scott, Caroline Pichler,
Schiller, and others. If this statement be correct, it may be accounted
for by the great local demand for literature, books and furs being
universally known as the great staples of Leipzig, and the fact can
scarcely be assumed as indicative of any especial inclination for
_belles-lettres_. Prostitution and studious habits or reflective minds are
very seldom associated. The majority of the brothel-keepers are stated to
be anti-literary in their tastes. They keep the women plentifully supplied
with cards and dominoes, which they use more for the purpose of predicting
good fortunes to their visitors and themselves than for gambling. We have
never heard that any of their liberal prognostications have been verified.
Apparently the same usages and habits of life prevail among the common
women of Leipzig as among those of Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, London, or
elsewhere. Indolent from the nature of their position, envious from their
relationship to their compeers, their life would seem to pass in a routine
of doing nothing with considerable zest, or of quarreling among each other
with noteworthy animation.

No material variation from the ordinary routine of sickness caused by
prostitution has been discovered in Leipzig. Syphilis has its average
number of victims, the intensity of the malady being diminished or
aggravated as a less or greater number of strangers may happen to be in
the city.

The medical and police surveillance of prostitutes in European countries
being modeled almost literally from one system, as is also the strictness
with which it is now enforced, it is unnecessary to say any thing of its
workings in Leipzig farther than the fact that the variable and floating
nature of the population, at times, makes its application a difficult
task. A description of it would be only a repetition of what has already
been said of Paris, Hamburg, or Berlin.

The great fairs draw a large concourse of strangers from all parts of the
world to Leipzig, and its geographical position beyond the centre of
Europe brings it so close to the frontiers of Turkey, Poland, the Danubian
provinces, and Russia, that the scene at these meetings is perhaps more
motley and curious in race, costume, and characteristics than in any other
city in the world. Among so heterogeneous a mass there exist many
standards of morality. The semi-barbarous habits of some of the visitors
entail a large share of sorrows on the prostitutes; more, in fact, than
are generally experienced by any but the very lowest grade of women in
other places. When in the tolerated houses, these rude hordes abandon
themselves to the grossest licentiousness, use expressions compared with
which the ordinary conversation of brothels is chaste and refined, and
seek to extinguish every vestige of shame or womanly feeling in their
companions. If a woman ventures to remonstrate at such extravagant
lewdness, the reply is, "Well, now, be silent. I have paid you, and you
are mine as long as I have you." It may therefore be easily credited that
during such periods no shadow of decency can be found in the common
houses. Any which exists (and truth compels the admission that it is very
rare during the crowded season) can only be traced among those women who
have private lodgings.

The only compensation for such depravity is found in the large sums
obtained by the women from their lovers, in some cases amounting to forty
thalers (about thirty dollars) per week. Of this, one half always goes to
the brothel-keeper as his share, and, calculating his expenses to be five
thalers per week for the board and lodging of each woman, it will be seen
that his profits are not inconsiderable. The sum retained by the women is
spent for articles of dress, pleasure, etc. This calculation is for a time
when the town is in the full tide of commercial prosperity; but if we
assume the average receipts at ordinary times to be one half only, we
shall be able to form a tolerably good idea of the financial result of
prostitution in Leipzig.

CHAPTER XIX.

DENMARK.

Prostitution in Copenhagen.--Police Regulations.--Illegitimacy.--
Brothels.--Syphilis.--Laws of Marriage and Divorce.--Infanticide.--
Adultery.--New Marriage Ordinances.

Prostitutes are very numerous in Copenhagen. This might be expected from
the mixed character of the city, at once a capital, military station, and
sea-port. It has been remarked by a traveler of great experience[267] that
it is very rare to see a drunken man or a street-walker in Copenhagen; all
seem to have a home or a place to go to, and the general character of the
Danes is that of an orderly, educated, well-conducted people.

Some of the prostitutes of Copenhagen live in a kind of hotel, where they
hold public entertainments; others live in brothels; and others still have
private lodgings. There is nothing remarkable enough about them to call
for any particular description. They are under police regulation to some
extent, and receive a sort of half permission, which is not withdrawn
during good conduct. A regulation is extant which professes to limit the
number of children they are allowed to bear, without becoming amenable to
the law as criminals. It requires that the mother of more than two
illegitimate children be fined and imprisoned. As may be readily imagined,
the law is very rarely enforced, its impolicy, if rigorously applied,
being self-evident, since it would operate as a direct premium for
abortion.

"Formal concessions are not granted either to public prostitutes or those
with whom they lodge; neither are there in Denmark brothels, in the
ordinary sense of the term, as they are found in other countries."[268] So
writes a Danish official. His distinction is too nice to be appreciated.
The Copenhagen police know of the existence of such women, and put them
under strict regulations, not altogether prohibitory. They control and
interfere with prostitutes; they do not tolerate them--that is to say,
they do not issue a regular license to them or to the brothel-keepers.
Consequently, there are no recognized brothels. The house in which
courtesans live is a private dwelling, so far as the police are concerned,
and is only interfered with when it becomes disorderly, the keeper not
being accountable for the women or their conduct.

Nevertheless, the police regulations prescribe the number of women
recognized as prostitutes who may live in any house, and from their
official reports, it seems that there were in Copenhagen in

1850 201 prostitutes.
1852 198 "

In the latter year there were sixty-eight persons who were authorized to
lodge from one to four women each, the total of the women permitted to
live in these houses being 139, and the remaining 59 being allowed to
reside in private apartments. "Care is taken that they are all treated in
the general hospital, and that they shall not be treated elsewhere, unless
they give a sufficient guarantee not to propagate disease, or their
personal position requires certain consideration, a thing which can seldom
apply to the generality of prostitutes." The meaning of this regulation is
not very clear, nor is "certain consideration" an intelligible phrase; it
may imply pregnancy, or it may mean influential friends. The medical
officer visits all cases which the police refer to him, and makes the
necessary examinations, receiving his fees from the police.

The rules for detection and suppression of syphilis in Copenhagen are very
stringent. All persons under arrest are required to declare if they are
then, or have been lately diseased, and are liable to punishment if they
conceal or misstate the facts. A visit of inspection is made when a ship
is about to go to sea. All non-commissioned officers, musicians, and
soldiers are examined on entering and leaving the service, and also
regularly every month during their stay in it.

To check the propagation of venereal disease, every soldier who is
attacked is obliged to state the source of his infection, whereupon
information of the individual is given to the police. Those who do not
give early intimation of their disease are liable to bread and water diet
for a certain time after their cure. In 1797, all the inhabitants of
several districts were obliged to submit to an examination, ordered by the
chancellor, on account of the frequency of syphilitic cases therein.

The following table, taken from Berhand's minute on Copenhagen, shows the
working of the system there for seven years. The most remarkable feature
is the large number who married or went to service, which would seem to
indicate a more charitable feeling on the part of the Danes than is
usually evinced toward these unfortunates:

+----------------------------------
| | Prostitutes registered. |
| |--------------------------|
|Years.| At |During| |
| |commencement| the |Total.|
| |of the year.|year. | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|------|------------|------|------|
| 1844 | 297 | 34 | 331 |
| 1845 | 284 | 43 | 327 |
| 1846 | 256 | 18 | 274 |
| 1847 | 241 | 22 | 263 |
| 1848 | 116 | 27 | 143 |
| 1849 | 208 | 19 | 227 |
| 1850 | 196 | 23 | 219 |
+----------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------+
Prostitutes abandoned their calling. |
---------------------------------------------------------------------|
Went to |Transferred|Sent to| |Left the| |Committed| |
service.| to the |Prison.|Married.|Country.|Died.|Suicide. |Total.|
|commission | | | | | | |
| for the | | | | | | |
| Poor. | | | | | | |
--------|-----------|-------|--------|--------|-----|---------|------|
20 | 13 | 1 | 16 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 63 |
14 | 27 | - | 24 | 4 | 3 | - | 77 |
15 | 16 | 2 | 13 | 1 | 2 | - | 49 |
20 | 17 | 1 | 17 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 62 |
15 | 16 | 1 | 16 | 2 | 7 | - | 51 |
17 | 10 | 1 | 9 | - | 6 | 1 | 44 |
18 | 7 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | 27 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------+

By a code of 1734, promises of marriage might be either verbal in the
presence of witnesses, or written and certified by two witnesses. Widows
acting against the consent of their guardians, and women of bad repute,
were excluded from the benefit of this code. A servant pregnant by her
master, her master's son, or any one domiciled in her master's house,
could not plead a promise of marriage. Corroborative testimony was
sometimes required in affiliation cases, where the putative father denied
his liability on oath.

Divorce was allowed on simple abandonment for seven years; desertion for
three years; in case of sentence of perpetual imprisonment; of
ante-nuptial impotence; of ante-nuptial venereal disease; of insanity; and
of adultery. Divorce by mutual consent might also take place, but three
years' separation from bed and board was requisite as a preliminary. The
king had a prerogative of divorce, without cause shown.

Illegitimate children were to be supported by their father until two years
old, according to his rank in life. They could not inherit the paternal
property, but might take the mother's. They could be legitimatized by
subsequent marriage or adoption.

Infanticide was punished by beheading, and exhibiting the head of the
criminal on a spike.

Adultery is punished by law in both husband and wife. Practically it is
seldom noticed.

In 1834 a new ordinance was proclaimed fixing all the minutiæ of marriage
contracts, parental obligations, and the general laws of sexual
intercourse. A man is a minor until eighteen, and under some degree of
parental authority to twenty-five, at which age he becomes a citizen. The
woman is under tutelage all her life. Guardians are assigned to widows,
who control their legal powers, but a widow may choose her own guardian.
The laws of divorce are similar to those of France. The practice of formal
betrothal is as common in Denmark as in Northern Germany, and implies a
real and binding engagement, not to be broken without cause shown, or
without discredit to one or both parties. Whether this custom favors
illegitimacy is still a disputed point in Denmark.

CHAPTER XX.

SWITZERLAND.

Superior Morality of the Swiss.--Customs of Neufchatel.--
"Bundling."--Influence of Climate.

This country, from her republican form of government, and her comparative
isolation from the rest of the world, presents matter of peculiar interest
to the inquirer into the nature and working of social institutions.
Protected, as are the Swiss, from violent contrasts of excessive wealth
and extreme indigence, the moral condition of their people will compare
favorably with that of most nations. The simplicity of patriarchal
relations is maintained both in their national and municipal governments;
and although many customs are retained which smack strongly of the
despotism of the Middle Ages, they can not be said to materially check the
welfare of the people. In the absence of the emulation encouraged by the
constant contemplation of luxury and wealth, the wants of the population
are few and easily satisfied. Their virtues, however, partake of the bold
and rugged nature of their country; and while there may be little of that
practical vice and immorality which are the usual accompaniments of
society in most kingdoms and states, we are not prepared to assert their
superiority over the rest of mankind in innate virtue. Hardness of heart
and selfishness of disposition will be found as rife in Switzerland as
elsewhere; it is the manifestation only that differs.

Authors are so universally deficient of remark on the subject of
prostitution, or even of immorality in Switzerland, that, if we may judge
from their silence, nothing of the kind exists there. "The Swiss
population is generally moral and well-behaved. A drunkard is seldom seen,
and illegitimate children are rare," says Bowring.[269]

In Neufchatel, which, except politically, can hardly be considered part of
Switzerland, a custom exists strongly similar to one in Norway, and a
general usage among Lutherans, namely, that of associating before
marriage. This, as Washington Irving says of the "delightful practice of
bundling," is sometimes productive of unfortunate results. A lady writer
says that public opinion upholds the respectability of the females if they
are married time enough to legitimatize their offspring. Instances have
occurred of two couples quarreling, and a mutual interchange of lovers and
sweethearts taking place, the nominal fathers adopting the early-born
children.[270]

The frugal thrift of the great bulk of the Swiss population, their
distribution over the country in small numbers, the absence of large
masses of human beings pent up in the reeking atmosphere of cities, their
constant and intimate association with their pastors, and the hope which
every individual cherishes of purchasing with his savings a small patch of
his beloved native soil as a patrimony, seem to discourage prostitution as
a trade. The influence of climate, also, must not be forgotten; and Mr.
Chambers, in accounting for the general good conduct of the Swiss
peasantry, lays much stress on their temperate habits, the use of
intoxicating liquor among them being very rare indeed.

CHAPTER XXI.

RUSSIA.

Ancient Manners.--Peter the Great.--Eudoxia.--Empress Catharine, her
dissolute Conduct and Death.--Peter's Libertinism.--Anne.--
Elizabeth.--Catharine II., infamous Career and Death.--Paul.--
Alexander I.--Countess Narishkin.--Nicholas.--Court Morality.--
Serfage.--Prostitution in St. Petersburg.--Excess of Males over
Females.--Marriage Customs.--Brides' Fair.--Conjugal Relations among
the Russian Nobility.--Foundling Hospital of St. Petersburg.--
Illegitimacy.

The brutality, drunkenness, and debauchery which accompany semi-barbarism,
and of which the old Russian manners had more than a due proportion,
continued to be characteristic of the people of that country until a very
recent period; while their amiability, their plastic disposition, their
highly imitative faculty in the arts, and their capabilities of
improvement, are noted by many writers. Just emerged from savage life as a
nation, they have been moulded and welded as one mass by the steady and
undeviating policy of their sovereigns, among whom we have examples of
vast mental powers and towering ambition, combined with the lowest
depravity and the most shameless profligacy, exemplifying in the same
individual the extremes of human nature.

Previous to Peter the Great, Russia was comparatively unknown, and in the
Elizabethan age of England the Czar of Muscovy was considered only as a
barbarian, whose subjects were far inferior in civilization to the Tartars
of the Crimea. Indeed, it was not till the eighteenth century that the
Russians were admitted within the pale of European politics, or their
power reckoned as an element in the calculations of statesmen.

The most important, we might almost say the only lawgiver previous to
Peter the Great, was Ivan III., who reigned in the early part of the
sixteenth century. Among the laws of that period, which were all
sanguinary, was one fixing the value of a female life, in case of death by
misadventure, at half the life of a man. Slavery was the institution of
the state, each child being the absolute property of its parent. The women
were more enslaved than among the Asiatics, no law protecting them against
their husband's violence. A wife who killed her husband was to be buried
alive up to the neck, and a guard was set around her to see that no one
supplied her with food or the means of ending her sufferings.[271] Females
lived in the strictest seclusion, and had no weight nor authority in the
household. Their duties were to spin, to sew, and to do menial work.

Peter I. came to the throne, as most Russian sovereigns have done, either
through intrigue or usurpation. Both before and after Peter, the will and
caprice of the ruling power was paramount. He might appoint his successor,
either during life or by will, and such appointment was often set aside by
a more powerful competitor. In Peter's public life, in his aspirations for
the general welfare, in his self-devotion, in his conceptions of all that
was wanting to his country's elevation and greatness, and in his iron will
and supernatural energy, he was a hero; in his private life, in his
passions, his tastes and habits, he was on a level with the lowest of
mankind.

Our object is the delineation of national characteristics, and individual
propensities or delinquencies are unimportant except so far as they
illustrate national character. It has been well observed that a people's
virtue or vice does not consist in the arithmetical increase or decrease
of immoral actions, but in the prevailing sentiment of an age or people,
which condemns or approves them. It is in this respect that the conduct of
monarchs and courtiers becomes of importance in the estimate of national
manners, especially in a despotism. The Czar of Russia is at once the
religious and political leader of his people, and his personal conduct
becomes the standard of their moral relations, offering encouragement and
support to the good, or sanction and justification to the depraved.

Peter's first wife, Eudoxia, was a woman of virtue and merit. Neither her
youth nor beauty secured the affections of her husband. She did not escape
the voice of slander. Gleboff, her alleged lover, was impaled by Peter,
who went to see him writhing in his death agonies, when the wretched man
avenged himself in the only way left him: he spat in the Czar's face.
Eudoxia was subsequently sent to a nunnery at Moscow by Peter's orders,
and at last took the veil under the name of Helena.

Scarcely had Peter attained the crown when he formed a connection with
Catharine. The romantic history of her origin and elevation is too well
known to repeat here. Her husband, a Swedish dragoon, was living; and she
was the mistress first of Marshal Sheremeloff, then of Mentchikoff, in
whose house Peter saw her, and whence he took her. She acquired great
influence over the Czar's untamed ferocity, and, to her infinite credit,
this influence was always used to mitigate the fearful rigor of his
punishments, and to soothe his otherwise implacably revengeful spirit.
During the lifetime of her husband and of his first wife, Peter married
her.

The pleasing traits of Catharine's character were obscured by the
irregularity of her life. Raised, by the affection of Peter, to the
imperial throne, she set an example of dissoluteness to her subjects.
There is ample reason for believing that she had several intrigues during
Peter's lifetime, but the case of Moens de la Croix is beyond question,
and the discovery of her infidelity in this instance led to her separation
from Peter and the death of her lover.

In 1724, after the campaign against the Turks, in which Catharine had
accompanied the Czar, and had, by her spirit and example, kept up the
courage of the army amid great difficulties and reverses, Peter determined
on publicly crowning her; a ceremony very unusual in Russia, and almost
tantamount to declaring her his successor.

Moens de la Croix was the young brother of Anne de la Croix, one of
Peter's early mistresses. He was Catharine's chamberlain. His office
brought him in close attendance on the empress, and an intimacy was
established. This was for a time notorious to every one except Peter
himself. At length, however, his suspicions were aroused, and, by setting
spies on Catharine, he became a personal witness to her infidelity. The
first explosion of his resentment was terrific, and he was on the point of
executing both the empress and her paramour, but by the temperate advice
of some of his friends, who counseled him to avoid a scandal, it was
determined to arrest Moens on a false charge of conspiracy.

Moens and his sister were accordingly seized and confined in an apartment
in the winter palace. Peter permitted nobody to approach them, and took
them their food with his own hands. When they were examined as to the
conspiracy, Moens, to save the empress with the public, confessed to every
thing. He was accordingly condemned and beheaded. His sister was knouted
and sent to Siberia.

Catharine had presented her lover with her miniature on a bracelet, which
he always wore. As he walked to his death, he managed to deliver it,
unperceived, to the Lutheran minister who accompanied him, with
instructions to convey it back to the empress privately, which was
accomplished. The Czar was a spectator of the execution, after which the
head of the culprit was fixed on a stake, according to custom. To terrify
Catharine the more effectually, Peter drove her round the head of her
lover. Happily for her, she managed to preserve self-control during the
torture of this horrid spectacle. After this the Czar only spoke to her in
public.

At Peter's death, Catharine ascended the throne of Russia by virtue of a
pretended dying declaration of her husband. She went through a pantomime
of sorrows and tears over his body, but, as soon as she was firmly seated,
she abandoned herself to pleasure and voluptuousness, and had two lovers,
Prince Sapicha and Loewenwolden, at the same time. "These two rivals
equally strove to please her, and alternately received proofs of her
tenderness, without suffering their happiness to be marred by jealousy."
The irregularity of the empress's life, and her intemperate use of ardent
liquors, hastened her death, which took place in her thirty-ninth year.

Peter himself was a wretched example of conjugal infidelity and low
debauchery. His associates were often of the very lowest of the populace.
It is true that in his time the highest were not much removed from their
inferiors in decency of manners; while the inferiors often had the
advantage, if not of intellectual cultivation, at least of practical
intelligence, in which Peter took delight. He spent many of his hours
drinking brandy and other liquors with sailors, carpenters, and artisans,
irrespective of his temporary assumption of the working man's pursuits. He
consorted indiscriminately with women of all sorts and conditions.
Eventually he contracted the venereal disease. From neglect, and the
general depravity of his life, the disease became so aggravated that at
last it proved the indirect cause of his death. He himself used to say
that he had taken it from Madame Tchnertichoff, wife of the general and
diplomatist of that name. Upon the fact being mentioned to her, whether
casually or with _malice prepense_ does not appear, she is reported to
have replied very naïvely that she had not given it to him, but that he,
on the contrary, had such loose habits and low associates that he had
given it to her.[272]

It was in 1722 that Peter was attacked with this malady, and while
suffering from it he marched into Persia, and shared the fatigues of the
meanest soldier throughout the campaign. The heat, drought, and constant
dust increased the disease frightfully, and the pains became so
excruciating that he could not conceal them from his immediate attendants.
Still, however, he would not consult the court physician, but directed his
servant to get advice as if for some one else. He then went to the hot
baths of Plonetz, and apparently recovered. But it seems the disease was
not cured; it was merely palliated by this treatment, and he was obliged,
on a relapse, to have recourse to the regular physicians, and for three
months his life was despaired of. At last he recovered; but now, in spite
of all warnings, he resumed his usual habits of life, renewed his long and
severe journeys, his public works, and his general activity of mind and
body, while he in nowise amended other and more injurious pursuits and
practices.

On November 5, 1724, while on a journey to Finland, he stopped at the port
of Lachta. There, from the shore, he saw a small vessel full of soldiers
and sailors which had struck upon a shoal. Perceiving their imminent
danger, he shouted to them, but the boisterous wind drowned his voice. He
sprang into a skiff, pulled out to the shoal, and, having reached the
vessel, jumped into the water, got her off, and landed the passengers all
safe. He neglected all the precautions necessary in the then state of his
health, and was seized with violent fever, and at the same time his former
pangs came on with all their old force. He was taken back to St.
Petersburg, where he obtained partial relief from his sufferings. He
employed one of his intervals of ease in celebrating the great festival of
blessing the waters of the Neva, and by his intemperance in the
festivities renewed his attack, and after a period of protracted agony,
died on the 28th of January, 1725.

Peter is described as having been excessively libidinous in temperament,
and his coarse promiscuous amours were made the common subject of his
jocularity, even in the presence of Catharine. He was even addicted to
abominable depravities, which are stated by contemporary writers to have
been the common practice of the Russians at that time.[273] Peter at times
gave way to fits of lust, in which, like a furious beast, he regarded
neither age nor sex. Unnatural vices were punished in the Russian army at
this time by an express military regulation, and the crime was a standing
reproach with the people, who were said to have acquired it from the
Greeks of the lower empire.[274]

Anne, the successor of Peter and Catharine, had two publicly avowed
lovers--Dolgorouki and Ernest John Biren. The latter was the better known,
as his influence and importance during Anne's reign were very great.
Dolgorouki had become one of the deputies to announce to Anne her
succession to the throne, which office he accepted, with the hope of being
able to resume his former intimate relations with his future sovereign.
When he entered the apartments, he found a man in mean apparel seated by
the side of the princess. He ordered him to withdraw, and, upon his
inattention to the order, took him by the arm to turn him out, when the
empress stopped him. This unknown person was Biren, who became regent of
the empire.[275]

Anne was not sunk in the same abyss of profligacy as her successor
Elizabeth, nor in brutality as her ancestor Peter. She had been brought up
in Courland, and had acquired some little refinement of ideas and manners.
Gluttony and drunkenness were somewhat less in vogue at her court, but
dissipation, ruinous gambling, and boundless extravagance were in full
fashion. The whole court became a body of buffoons and jokers, and the
most absurd and preposterous fashions of dress, the rudest and most
boisterous romps and gambols were generally practiced. As a specimen of
court manners, the practical joke played on Prince Galitzin, in which
there was as much malice as fun, may be remembered.

Having given offense by changing his religion, the prince was compulsorily
married to a girl of the lowest birth. A palace was built in his honor,
but the material was ice, and all the furniture was composed of the same.
The wedding procession, consisting of more than three hundred persons in
their national costumes, who had been collected from all the provinces of
Russia, passed along the streets. The newly-married couple were mounted in
a pagoda on the back of an elephant. When the ball was over, the bride and
bridegroom were conducted to their nuptial chamber, like the rest of the
house, all of ice, and were there installed in an ice bedstead, and guards
were posted at the door to prevent them escaping from the room before
morning.

Anne died in 1740, and, after a short interregnum, Elizabeth, daughter of
Peter I., came to the throne. She inherited all her father's vices and
sensuality, but none of his great qualities. Before she became empress,
Elizabeth had outraged all propriety; had openly carried on an improper
intercourse with the sub-officers and soldiers of the guards who had been
quartered near her dwelling. The lust and drunkenness in which she
wallowed indisposed her from all longings after greatness. But there were
others who needed her name, and a conspiracy being formed, she became
empress in spite of herself. Her chief paramour at the time was Grunstein,
sergeant in the guards, who was elevated to the rank of major-general. The
other soldiers and non-commissioned officers who had been the ministers of
her lewdness were made officers. These individuals frequented the common
public houses, got drunk, made their way into the houses of persons of
condition, and committed all sorts of depredations with impunity. When the
men who could boast of the empress's favors became intolerable, they were
drafted off to the army, as officers in regiments on service.

Elizabeth is said to have been privately married to Razamoffsky, as also
to the well-known Chevalier d'Eon, who visited the court of Russia in the
disguise of a woman, and undoubtedly enjoyed Elizabeth's favors, whatever
may be the truth about her marriage to him. Elizabeth withdrew herself for
whole months from business, and was drunk for days or even weeks
consecutively. She had a reputation for humanity; but, although she
sentenced no one to death, not less than eighty thousand of her subjects
were tortured or sent to Siberia during her reign. Her extravagance was
such that when she died there were in her wardrobe some fifteen thousand
dresses, thousands of pairs of sleeves, and several hundred pieces of
French and other silks.

Catharine II. of Russia was, like Peter, a compound of the noblest
intellectual endowments, with a moral organization of unsurpassed
depravity. She has usually been considered a monster of lust; but she was
no less infamous for her cruelty, and for the total absence of all those
qualities and feelings which form the chief grace and beauty of woman's
inner life. Her favorite dining-room in the Tauric palace was adorned with
pictures representing the sacking of Ohkzakoff and Ismail, in which the
painter had surpassed the gloomy vision of a Carravaggio, and had depicted
the assault, the carnage, the mutilation, and all the hideous details of
such scenes. In these Catharine is said to have taken great delight. She
hated music, and never could permit other sounds than those of drums,
trumpets, and similar barbaric instruments within her hearing; and yet it
is said that, in her outset in life as Princess of Anhalt Zerbst, she had
a womanly heart, delicacy of taste, and refinement of intellect;[276] that
it was not till long after her husband, Peter III., had insulted her by
open neglect of her very winning person and youthful graces, and had
abandoned her for the vulgar and ugly Princess Woronzoff, that she
committed herself to the terrible career which she afterward pursued so
steadily.

The Duchesse d'Abrantes, in her memoir of Catharine, tells us that her
first lover, Soltikoff, was forced upon her as a matter of public policy
by the crafty and unscrupulous Bestujeff, the able minister of Elizabeth,
for the sake of procuring an heir to the Grand Duke Peter. Catharine
remonstrated, and threatened to complain. "To whom will you complain?"
asked the minister, coldly. Catharine submitted, and accepted the lover
thus imposed upon her. At the time of this adultery for expediency sake,
Catharine was deeply intent upon study, with a view to qualify herself
worthily for her future destiny, disgusted as she was with the indecencies
of the Russian court!

Subsequently, it was considered expedient to remove Soltikoff. Catharine
had given birth to a child, and was not pleased with this dismissal; but
the impassible Bestujeff only sneered at her remonstrances and professions
of affection for the dismissed lover, and recommended her to choose
another. This was a lesson she was not slow to carry out. The list of her
paramours was little less numerous than that of Elizabeth.

After Catharine had caused Peter III. to be murdered, and had ascended the
throne as empress in her own right, she abandoned herself to the fullest
gratification of her passions, both royal and personal. Besides the vulgar
crowd whom she selected as the recipients of her filthy favors, the world
knew, as the public and recognized paramours, the names of Orloff, by whom
she had a son called Count Bobruski, Wassilitchikoff, Potemkin, Louskoi,
Mornonoff, and Zuboff.

These were appointed in a manner that was reduced to a system, and an
etiquette was established as precise as that of naming a state minister.
When Catharine was tired of her present favorite, one of her intimate
friends was commissioned to look out for another. At other times, her
notice having fallen on some young man who pleased her fancy, she
signified her wishes to some female friend, and thereupon an entertainment
was arranged at the lady's house, which the empress honored with her
presence, and thereby gained an opportunity of closer acquaintanceship
with the chosen individual. He then received orders to attend at the
palace, where he was introduced to the court physician, and examined as to
his general health and physical condition. After this he was placed under
the charge of a certain Mademoiselle Protasoff.[277] The various
examinations having been successfully passed, the favorite was installed
into the regular apartments of office, which were immediately contiguous
to those of the empress. On the first day of his installation he received
one hundred thousand rubles (about twenty-five thousand dollars) for
linen, and an allowance of twelve thousand rubles per month; besides
which, all his household expenses were defrayed. He was required to attend
the empress wherever she went, and was not permitted to leave the palace
without her permission. He might not converse familiarly with other women,
and if he dined with his friends, it was imperative that the mistress of
the house should be absent.

When a favorite had completed his term of service he received orders to
travel, and from that moment all access to her majesty was denied. The
favorites rarely rebelled against their destiny in this particular; but
Potemkin and Orloff, who had far other views than those of dalliance, had
the temerity to disobey the order, and succeeded in retaining power and
the friendship of the empress long after their personal claims on her
tenderness were at an end. On terminating the intimacy, the favorite
usually received magnificent gifts. Potemkin, after he had ceased his
functions as favorite, became pander to his royal mistress, thereby
securing the double advantage of the favor of the empress and the
patronage of the favorite, from whom he levied a handsome fee for the
introduction. Potemkin and Orloff were at one period rivals, in which
contest Orloff was at last defeated; but when Potemkin reached his pride
of place, he became so necessary to Catharine in his higher capacity that
he set up and pulled down the favorite of the hour as he pleased, and even
ventured upon the most extravagant flights of insolence and personal
disrespect to the empress. Orloff had been also the rival of Poniatowski,
but his superior capacity and brutal energy of will made him respected
and feared by Catharine long after she had ceased to like him.

The pecuniary results to the state, enormous as was the plunder, was
perhaps the least of the evils sustained through this system of iniquity.
The registered gifts to the twelve favorites amounted to upward of one
hundred million dollars.[278] Lanskoi, who had held no political offices,
and the whole of whose fortune was drawn from the flagitious profits of
his post of dishonor, died, after less than four years of office, worth,
in cash only, and exclusive of valuables, seven millions of rubles.
Potemkin's wealth, which was accumulated from all sources of public
robbery and private extortion, was fabulous. At his death he owned two
hundred thousand serfs; he had whole cupboards filled with gold coin,
jewels, and bank-bills; he held thirty-two orders, and his fortune was
estimated at sixty million dollars.[279]

In the closing days of Catharine's reign she found a lower deep into which
to plunge. When upward of sixty, she took into office, as her favorite,
Zuboff, who was not quite twenty-five. She now formed the Society of the
Little Hermitage. This was a picked company of wits and libertines, of
both sexes, over whose scenes of debauchery and revelry the empress
presided. An inner penetralia even of these orgies was established, and
called the Little Society.

The pernicious influence of such an example, set for so long a period of
time by a sovereign distinguished for ability, and whose reign had been
rendered famous by its successful foreign enterprises, was the almost
universal corruption of the Russian court and aristocracy of both sexes.
The women, in imitation of her majesty, kept men, with the title and
office of favorites. This was as customary as any other piece of fashion,
and was recognized by husbands. Tender intrigues were unknown; strong
passion was still more rare; marriage was merely an association. There was
a club, called the club of natural philosophers, which was a society of
men and women of the highest classes, the object of whose meetings was
indiscriminate sexual intercourse. The members met to feast, and after the
banquet they retired in pairs chosen by lot. This club was afterward put
down by the Russian police, in common with all other secret societies. A
hospital was founded by Catharine for fifty ladies affected with venereal
disease. These were all to be taken care of; no question was permitted as
to name or quality, and the linen of the establishment was marked with
the significant word "discretion."

Catharine's end was sudden and frightful. She had grown corpulent, and her
legs and body had swollen and burst. She moved about with considerable
difficulty, although her imperious will would not allow her to give way in
her career either of ambition or profligacy. She was at the Little
Hermitage November 4, 1796, in remarkably high spirits, and even joked her
buffoon, Leof Nauskin, among other things, as to his death and his fears
thereupon. The next morning the dread messenger, of whose advent she had
made sport, brought his orders for her. She fell into an apoplectic fit,
and, after thirty-seven hours of insensibility, died unblessing and
unblessed, to be succeeded by Paul, her detested son by her first lover
Soltikoff.

The emperor, or as he was better known by Napoleon's sobriquet, the mad
Emperor Paul, was too remarkable for his eccentricities to make himself
conspicuous for his gallantries. Even in this particular he preserved his
eccentricity. He neglected his wife, an amiable and handsome woman, the
mother of Alexander and Nicholas, for an ugly mistress, Mademoiselle
Nelidoff, and for another, Mademoiselle Lapukhin, who would not accept his
addresses, but to whom he nevertheless professed the patient devotion of
Don Quixote. The most noteworthy circumstance, in this connection, of
Paul's life was the indirect effect of female frailty in procuring his
murder. The enemies who subsequently plotted his downfall and destruction
procured their return from banishment through the offices of a certain
Mademoiselle Chevalier, a French actress who ruled Kutaisoff, who on his
part ruled the Czar.

As we approach our own times, the description of historical characters
becomes liable to the tinge of prejudice or partiality.

Alexander, the son and successor of Paul, was distinguished by the amenity
of his disposition and the philosophical tone of his political theories.
He was married at an early age by order of his grandmother Catharine, who
in his case insisted on making him a good husband, and took numerous
precautions for that purpose, all of which her example neutralized or
belied. The selection made for him might, under the conditions of humble
life or a free choice, have turned out happily. As it was, he preferred
the society of the ladies of his court, and in particular of the Countess
Narishkin, by whom he had three children. The countess proved inconstant,
and all his children by her died, to Alexander's deep grief.

After the loss of these illegitimate children, the affections of Alexander
were turned toward the empress, whose true worth he recognized when it was
too late. She was struck with disease, and he was on a journey to Southern
Russia to select a suitable spot for a residence for her, when he was
seized with the fever of which he died.

If Alexander's mild character had but little influence on his subjects,
the name of his successor, Nicholas, has been identified with the very
existence of the Russian people, as much as any sovereign since Peter the
Great. His example and expressed will have had immense effect, both for
good and evil. It is almost impossible to arrive at the true character of
Nicholas at the present time, for the reasons just mentioned. In his
private life as husband and father, and in his public life as ruler and
politician, writers are diametrically opposed to each other. Party
prejudice denies him all worth, or makes him a very Socrates. Golovin and
authors of the democratic school affirm, in addition to his other
offenses, that Nicholas had several illegitimate children, and also "that
no woman could feel herself secure from Nicholas's importunities;" while
writers like Von Tietz, Jermann, and other panegyrists of the Russian
court, describe Nicholas as an exemplary husband and father, a model to
his subjects in his domestic relations. They allege farther, that the
gross immorality which has been the chief feature of Russian society was
very much discouraged, and rendered altogether unfashionable by the
estimable manners of the imperial family.

Truth is rarely found in extremes. The prevalent usage among sovereigns in
this century has been "to assume a virtue if they have it not," and to
maintain a respectable exterior for the sake of public opinion. So politic
a ruler as Nicholas was not likely to reject this. He did all that could
be done to bring virtue into good repute at court. But too many little
incidents are told of him to justify a belief in his perfect spotlessness.
The characters of individuals, even as rulers, would be unimportant to us
were it not that in Russia society is in a transition state, and shows
itself plastic in the hands of an energetic emperor. "The state! I am the
state!" was perfectly true in the mouth of Nicholas. By his subjects he
was held in an esteem little short of idolatry, and he was, in every sense
of the word, the most remarkable man in his vast dominions.

Thompson, an English traveler, who has spoken very favorably of the
personal worth of the Emperor Nicholas, says of the morality of the upper
classes among the Russians, "Denied the advantages of rational amusement
and innocent social enjoyments, deprived of those resources which, while
they dispel _ennui_, elevate the feelings, the mind resorts to sensual
indulgences and to the gratification of the passions for the purpose of
finding recreation and relief from the deadening pressure of despotism.
Immorality and intrigue are of universal prevalence, and (in a social
sense) are hardly looked upon as criminal acts, while gambling and
debauchery are the natural consequences of the tedious monotony from which
all seek to escape by indulging in gross and vicious excitement."

Under the system of serfage, now approaching its end, it was almost
impossible that there should be such a thing as public morality in the
lower classes. The Russians, both noble and serf, are false and dishonest
to a proverb. Prostitution in such cases is a superfluous term: a woman
had no right or opportunity to be virtuous.

The morality of St. Petersburg is undoubtedly of the lowest, and yet we
have not met with any accounts of local prostitution there. It is a city
of men, containing one hundred thousand more males than females.[280]
Kelly says the women form only two sevenths (2/7) of the entire
population, and calls it "an alarming fact." The climate is unfavorable to
female beauty, and it is generally conceded that the men are handsomer
than the women. The German girls have an almost exclusive reputation for
good looks in St. Petersburg. By reason of the disproportion of the sexes,
it is said that ladies can not venture out unattended. This is etiquette
among the higher classes of all Continental Europe, and the simple fact,
without the reason, would not be surprising.

The attention to minutiæ which distinguishes a despotism, and which is so
remarkable a feature of Russian state craft, does not allow us to suppose
there are no statistical papers on the subject of prostitution; on the
contrary, it is perfectly well known that such are in existence. The
secrecy which is scrupulously maintained in all public matters, and the
watchful vigilance of the police over strangers, prevents them obtaining
any information except on the most patent and notorious subjects. The
remarks of travelers on Russian society are very vague and general, and
unsupported by any of those details which could alone authenticate them.

We have already alluded to the ancient Oriental seclusion of women among
the Russians. This was so strict that a suitor never saw, or at least was
presumed never to have seen, the face of his bride before marriage. In
1493, Ivan the Great told a German embassador who demanded his daughter in
marriage for the Margrave of Baden, that Russians never showed their
daughters to any one before the match was decided. Peter the Great
abolished this lottery, and directed that the parties might see each
other, but he still found it necessary to promulgate a strong ukase
against parents compelling children to marry against their wishes.

The compromise of the ancient custom which has been brought about by this
law is that the elders of the family usually pre-contract for the juniors:
then succeeds the bridal promenade, at which the young people, if unknown
to each other, are led accidentally to meet in the same walk. Having thus
managed an interview, the father of the young man, if all the
preliminaries have been satisfactory so far, sends to the bride's father,
and a general family meeting takes place, at which the arrangements are
completed, the dowry determined, and then follows the betrothal. The elect
pair kneel down on a fur mat and exchange rings. The preparations for the
marriage are commenced, during which time the lovers have frequent
opportunities of meeting and becoming better known to each other; this is
a general period of visiting and parties. On the wedding-day the
bridemaids unbraid the lady's hair, and she receives her husband with
flowing locks. This is a remnant of ancient Russian usage, when the
greatest outrage that could be committed on a woman was to unbraid her
hair. It is generally believed that among the lower orders the wife is
bound to draw off her husband's boots on the wedding-day, and also that
the Russian peasant beats his wife at the commencement of her married
life, so as to indicate supremacy. As to the substantial observance of the
latter practice modern travelers differ, although it would seem that
symbolically it is still maintained.[281]

A curious exhibition takes place on Whitsunday in the Petersburg summer
garden, called "The Bride's Fair." All the marriageable daughters of the
Russian tradesmen turn out on that day for a promenade. The young men, in
their best attire, come forth to view them. The brides expectant do not
limit their display to their charms, but second them by attractions of a
more substantial character, adorning themselves with trinkets, jewels, or
even now and then with silver tea-spoons, plate, and other valuables
useful in housekeeping. This has been inveighed against as indicative of
the prevalent indelicacy of the Russians, a sort of bride-market. Is it
more reprehensible than many customs nearer home? It is now, however,
falling into disuse.

The conjugal relations of the Russian nobility were extremely loose and
indefensible during the time when vice was fashion, and virtue in a
courtier would have been deemed condemnation of the higher powers. Then,
and even down to the reign of the Emperor Nicholas, marriage was simply an
affair of convenience--the husband living at Moscow or St. Petersburg, the
wife in Paris or Italy; such separations frequently lasting for
years.[282]

The Foundling Hospital at St. Petersburg, the _Wospitatelnoi Dom_, is the
most magnificent foundation of the kind in Europe, and it pleases the
authorities to give information upon its features. The endowments are
enormous, owing to the munificence of successive sovereigns, who have made
it a kind of state caprice. The annual expenditure exceeds five millions
two hundred thousand rubles.[283] The number of children in this
institution is commensurate with its wealth. Upward of twenty-five
thousand are constantly enrolled on its books.

The lodge is open day and night for the reception of infants. The daily
average of children brought is about twenty. The only question asked is if
the child has been baptized, and by what name. If not baptized, the
ceremony is performed by a priest of the Greek Church. At the time of
leaving, the mother receives a ticket, the duplicate of which is placed
around the child's neck. The mortality which takes place among these
helpless victims of sin and misfortune is enormous. Some die in the lodge
when just received; more perish during the tedious ceremonies of their
baptism, which last several hours. The total number of deaths among
children in the asylum and those out at nurse is probably three thousand
per annum, or about one in four of the whole number committed to its
charge.[284]

The children are given in care of wet nurses for about six weeks, when
they are sent into the country until six years old. They are then brought
back to the institution and educated in a superior manner; the girls being
qualified as governesses in Russian families, and the boys as artisans in
the imperial manufactories. In cases of special capacity, they receive a
scientific or musical education.

An incident which is said to have occurred at this institution has gone
the rounds of the press. The story is, that one of the young women having
given birth to an infant, and the delinquent not being discovered, the
Emperor Nicholas heard of the occurrence, and made a visit of inspection.
Having summoned the pupils before him, he demanded to know the guilty one,
adding that, if she came forward, she should be pardoned. No one obeyed
the invitation, and he was going away, with threats of disgracing the
whole body, when one girl, to save her companions, came forward, threw
herself at his feet, and confessed her fault. Nicholas kicked her out of
the way, exclaiming that it was too late.[285]

A Lying-in Hospital is one of the appendages of this establishment.
Pregnant women may enter there four weeks before their confinement, and
the strictest secrecy is maintained as to their name and character. Even
the omnipotent Czar respects the privileges of the place.

The institution at Moscow is on a similarly gigantic scale, and is managed
after the same fashion.

The empress is the mother of the foundlings, which, be it observed, are
mostly the children of such as can not or do not desire to keep their
offspring. Free access, on appointed days, is permitted to the parents of
the children; and, under special circumstances, the empress will permit a
child to be removed from the institution, if the parents prove their means
and disposition to support it properly.

Kohl, who gives us particular, and even minute accounts of the management
and arrangement of the public hospitals, makes no mention whatever of the
syphilitic wards. The high system of efficiency in which the military
infirmaries are maintained might have encouraged a hope for more detailed
information on this subject.

CHAPTER XXII.

SWEDEN AND NORWAY.

Comparative Morality.--Illegitimacy.--Profligacy in Stockholm.--
Infanticide.--Foundling Hospitals.--Stora Barnhordst.--Laws against
Prostitution.--Toleration.--Government Brothels.--Syphilis.--Marriage
in Norway.

The ancient Scandinavian peninsula, land of the Scald and the Rune, with
its Vikings and Beisckers, has sent down to us many a legend of war and
conquest, but few of social manners or moral relations. The high esteem in
which the ancient Germans held their women, and the affinity of laws and
customs between the Norsemen and the Teutons, justify us in believing that
the blue-eyed maids of the Scandinavian heroes were as much respected for
virtue as beloved for beauty. The eternal virgins in the Walhalla of
Western mythology were not associated with the grosser pleasures with
which the impure fancy of the Koran invested the houris of the Mohammedan
Paradise; and the Norsemen, through their posterity, the Normans,
introduced, among the other amenities of chivalry, that prominent
obligation of true knighthood, "_devoir aux dames_," perhaps not the least
humanizing incident of the institution.

Passing, by a long stride, at once to modern times, we find in the joint
kingdom of Sweden and Norway two territories as distinct in their social
condition as they are in their geographical divisions. Norway has always
been remarkable for a simple and hardy population of fishermen and small
farmers, elements in the highest degree favorable to virtue and
independence, and their poverty and isolation from the continental
interests of Europe have exempted them from politics and war. Sweden, on
the other hand, though not much wealthier as a nation, has had an
hereditary nobility, and the ambition and ability of some of her monarchs,
especially of the great Gustavus, caused her to play a part in history
wholly disproportionate to her territorial importance. If, however, the
historical significance of Sweden be somewhat greater than that of the
less pretentious sister kingdom, statistics do not accord to the former
the same estimation, in point of morals, as they concede to the latter.

The average of illegitimate births, though not infallible, is generally
accepted as a fair test of the immorality of a people. Taken by this
standard, Sweden ranks lower than almost any country of Europe. But if the
character of the general population be indifferent, that of Stockholm
"out-Herods Herod."

In Stockholm, in 1838, there were 1137 illegitimate to 1577 legitimate; in
1839 there were 1074 illegitimate to 1492 legitimate births.

The average of illegitimate to other births in the capital and throughout
the country was as follows:[286]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| | 1835. | 1838. | 1839. |
|-----------------------|------------|------------|------------|
|In Stockholm | 1 in 2·44 | 1 in 2·47 | 1 in 2·38 |
|In other towns | 1 in 6·18 | 1 in 6·18 | 1 in 6·40 |
|In the country | 1 in 20·41 | 1 in 20·01 | 1 in 20·01 |
|Throughout the kingdom | 1 in 15·20 | 1 in 14·69 | 1 in 14·94 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

As regards the average of the whole kingdom, the proportion is much the
same as that of England and France. What, then, must be the condition of
the towns, and, in particular, of the capital?[287] The figures are such
as to justify the allegation against Stockholm of being the most immoral
capital in Europe, and also the presumption that the late decrease in its
population, from which it is but recently recovering, is a direct
consequence of the vice that stains it.

With so large an amount of illegitimacy, it is not surprising that
infanticide should be of common occurrence. The penalty of this crime is
death, although, from a growing aversion to capital punishment, it is
generally commuted.

There are numerous foundling hospitals throughout the kingdom of Sweden;
one in particular, the _Stora Barnhorst_ in Stockholm, established by
Gustavus Adolphus, originally intended for the children of military men of
broken health and fortunes. It has been perverted from the simplicity of
its original foundation, and now receives children of all comers, who pay
an entrance fee of about thirty-five dollars. No questions are asked on
the presentation of an infant to the asylum, and, excepting the fee, it is
in no respect different from the ordinary foundling hospitals. This very
fee, however, it is considered by some writers, makes all the difference,
as it in some measure justifies those parents who, having adequate means,
choose to release themselves of the care and expense of their offspring,
and who use this payment as a salve to their consciences, considering that
they have to that extent done their duty. The Stora Barnhorst is wealthy,
having an income of above one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per
annum.

In 1836, prostitution was forbidden, by express enactment, throughout all
Sweden, and women who had not a legally recognized occupation were liable
to imprisonment as disorderly characters. The prostitute, of course, came
within the category. It was asserted at the time that there was no common
prostitution, but a counter statement was made by the jurist Angelot, who
affirmed that every house of entertainment was a brothel, and every
servant a loose woman.

This prohibitory system did not work so well as had been anticipated, and
in 1837 a change was effected. A large hotel was taken by the corporation,
and, after the plan of various cities in the Middle Ages, was managed by
public officers. Thus a government brothel was established. Nor did this
lewdness by authority have the desired effect. The brothel was filled with
women, but no customers appeared. Private brothels were resorted to for a
time, and were opened under regular licenses. They have now disappeared,
and as the inefficient police management never succeeded in repressing
illicit prostitution, even while tolerated brothels were in existence, it
will surprise no one to learn that Stockholm is now one vast, seething
hot-bed of private harlotry.

There are Lock Hospitals throughout Sweden, established by public funds,
and kept up by direct taxation as a charge upon the municipal rates. The
Stockholm Hospital for syphilis in 1832 received seven hundred and one
patients, of whom one hundred and forty-eight were from the country, and
the remainder from the city. The capital contained in that year 33,581
persons of both sexes above the age of fifteen, consequently _one person
in every sixty-one was affected with syphilis_.

The superficial aspect of society in Sweden is certainly not such as here
described. The upper classes are cultivated, polite, and observant of all
the usual refinements of modern society, while to the humbler classes,
excepting that intercourse is free and unrestrained among them, there is
no ground for attributing any unusual departure from modesty and
propriety. Neither are the laws remarkably stringent: although
difficulties are thrown in the way of affiliation, they are the same in
principle as those which have been adopted by the modern statute law of
England. Still, that there is such an excess of immorality can not be
doubted. The official statistics of the country prove it, were any
possible doubt thrown upon the statements of the many travelers, of the
highest repute for correctness and reliability, who have noticed it. The
latest publication upon the matter is from Bayard Taylor, who, writing
from Stockholm under date May 1, 1857, says,

"I must not close this letter without saying a word about its
(Stockholm's) morals. It has been called the most licentious city in
Europe, and I have no doubt with the most perfect justice. Vienna may
surpass it in the amount of conjugal infidelity, but certainly not in
general incontinence. Very nearly half the registered births are
illegitimate, to say nothing of the illegitimate children born in
wedlock. Of the servant-girls, shop-girls, and seamstresses in the
city, it is very safe to say that scarcely one out of a hundred is
chaste, while, as rakish young Swedes have coolly informed me, a large
proportion of girls of respectable parentage are no better. The men,
of course, are much worse than the women, and even in Paris one sees
fewer physical signs of excessive debauchery. Here the number of
broken-down young men and blear-eyed, hoary sinners is astonishing. I
have never been in any place where licentiousness was so open and
avowed, and yet where the slang of a sham morality was so prevalent.
There are no houses of prostitution in Stockholm, and the city would
be scandalized at the idea of allowing such a thing. A few years ago
two were established, and the fact was no sooner known than a virtuous
mob arose and violently pulled them down. At the restaurants young
blades order their dinners of the female waiters with an arm around
their waists, while the old men place their hands unblushingly upon
their bosoms. All the baths in Stockholm are attended by women
(generally middle-aged and hideous, I must confess), who perform the
usual scrubbing and shampooing with the greatest nonchalance. One does
not wonder when he is told of young men who have passed safely through
the ordeals of Berlin and Paris, and have come at last to Stockholm to
be ruined. * * * * Which is best, a city like Stockholm, where
prostitution is prohibited, or New York, where it is tacitly allowed,
or Hamburg, where it is legalized?"

We have spoken of the difference between Sweden and Norway in their moral
relations. At first this is not apparent, for illegitimacy is as frequent
in one as the other; but there are attendant qualifying circumstances,
which go to constitute a material variation in the conclusion to be drawn
from the unexplained fact. We may remark that street-walking and open
prostitution are rare. Illegitimacy is of considerable extent, averaging
one in five, or, in some parts, one in three of the total births.

The people are betrothed by the practice of the Lutheran Church a long
time before the actual marriage. This is considered as nothing more than a
wholesome check upon hasty unions in a general point of view. In Norway,
however, this probationary period is extended to a limit beyond the
endurance of flesh and blood. The wedding is a prodigious merry-making,
and it is absolutely indispensable that the means for an extravagant
hospitality should have been accumulated before the parties dare attempt
the public ceremony. The profusion is so great as sometimes to dissipate a
whole year's earnings. The obligation to this expense increases the delay
required by the Church, and it frequently happens that the affianced
cohabit before the nuptial benediction is pronounced. As the betrothal is
a half-marriage, the arrangement loses part of its offensive character in
the eyes of the parties themselves, and also of their neighbors. The
children are legitimatized by the subsequent marriage, which takes place
in by far the largest number of cases. In those occasional instances where
the wedding ceremony is not duly completed, there is a particular legal
act by which a child can be acknowledged. Failure of marriage under such
circumstances, or failure of natural duty to offspring, is against the
sentiment of the people. While these facts do not alter the actual
concubinage or illegitimacy, it is easy to understand that a considerable
difference exists between such conduct, however reprehensible, and those
habits which may be fairly characterized as licentiousness or profligacy.

Norway is very far from being free of syphilis. Bayard Taylor says,
"Bergen is, as I am informed, terribly scourged by venereal diseases.
Certainly I do not remember a place where there are so few men, tall,
strong, and well made as the people generally are, without some visible
mark of disease or deformity. A physician of the city has recently
endeavored to cure syphilis in its secondary stage by means of
inoculation, having first tried the experiment upon himself, and there is
now a hospital where this form of treatment is practiced upon two or three
hundred patients, with the greatest success, another physician informed
me. I intended to have visited it, but the sight of a few cases around the
door so sickened me that I had no courage to undertake the task." We have
no means of ascertaining whether the malady exists with the same virulence
in the interior as on the coast. The habits of the people would seem
adverse to the supposition that it does.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY TO THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

Aboriginal Morals and Laws.--Anglo-Saxon Legislation.--Introduction of
Christianity.--St. Augustine.--Prostitution in the Ninth Century.--
Court Example.--Norman Epoch.--Feudal Laws and their Influences.--
Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts.--General Depravity.--Effects of
Chivalry.--Fair Rosamond.--Jane Shore.--Henry VIII.--Elizabeth.--James
I.

The first references to prostitution which we find in the works of the
early British annalists are so vague that it is difficult to derive from
them any very definite idea as to its extent and character. Among the
crude efforts at legislation there are laws to enforce chastity among
women, but whether the necessity for these enactments was owing to general
licentiousness or to the existence of a regular class of prostitutes does
not appear.

At the period of the Roman invasion, the morals of the Britons were as low
as might be expected from their nomadic habits. The population was divided
into small communities of men and women, who appear to have lived
promiscuously, no woman being attached to any particular man, but all
cohabiting according to inclination, the carnal instinct being the feeling
which regulated sexual intercourse. A sort of marriage was instituted, but
with no idea that either of the parties to it should be restricted by its
obligations. Its only object seemed to be to provide means for rearing the
children, and to fix somewhere the responsibility of their nurture and
support. A society constituted as this was can, of course, be considered
scarcely a step removed from barbarism. The regulation to provide for the
children was necessary to prevent depopulation; its tendency was to remove
from the woman's path every obstacle to lust; over the man it exercised
but very slight control.

A still farther proof of the demoralized condition of the people is found
in the gross ceremonies attending these marriages. The man appeared on his
wedding day dressed in all the rude trappings of the time; the woman was
entirely naked. A repulsive coarseness marked their licentiousness, and
the rudeness of manners was nowhere more conspicuous than in the
relations existing between the sexes.

It is to be presumed that the Anglo-Saxons imported into England the laws
and customs prevailing in their own country. The rules they made against
adultery were frightfully severe. When a couple were detected in the
commission of the offense, the woman was compelled to commit suicide, to
avoid the greater tortures awaiting her if she refused. Her body was then
placed on a pile of brushwood and consumed. Nor did her partner in guilt
escape punishment; he was usually put to death on the spot where her ashes
lay collected. These penalties would appear to be sufficiently severe, but
in some instances worse were inflicted. Where the case was one of peculiar
aggravation, the adulteress was hunted down by a number of infuriate
demireps of her own sex, each armed with a club, a knife, or some other
formidable weapon, and stabbed or beaten to death. If one party of her
pursuers became weary of the sport, another took their places until the
victim expired beneath the blows.

These extremely rigid ideas of the Anglo-Saxons do not seem to have been
consistent, for while adultery was punished in the severe manner
described, incest was not only permitted, but commonly practiced; and it
was even the custom for relations to marry within the closest degrees of
consanguinity.

But they were not long located in England before the more savage traits of
their character were softened down, and the women soon found amusement
more suitable to their sex than that of chasing their erring sisters as
quarry. The marriage ceremonies also assumed a more refined and decent
character, although the wife continued to be regularly purchased by her
husband, and the contract was still considered a mere matter of bargain
and sale. By the laws of Ethelbert marriageable women were made
commodities of barter, and enactments of this character are to be found in
existence long subsequent to his reign.

As the Anglo-Saxons were a hardy, vigorous race, and existed chiefly by
hunting, fishing, and a rude and imperfect system of agriculture, it is
not probable that prostitution existed among them to any great extent. The
fatigues of the chase and field exhausted the energy of the body, and
diminished the desire and capacity for sexual indulgence, and, living in
small detached communities as they did, they knew nothing of the
stimulating incentives of city life.

Yet that prostitutes existed, and lived by the wages of their profession,
is proved by the fact that women (who were entitled by law to hold and
dispose of property) bequeathed their wealth to their daughters, with the
occasional stipulation that they should live chaste lives in the event of
their remaining single, and not earn money by prostituting their persons.

In the reign of Canute a law was enacted by which any one found guilty of
adultery was to be punished by the loss of the nose and the ears.[288] In
the course of time the crime came to be punished by a fine paid to the
husband of the woman. This penalty soon fell into disrepute, as it was
found that some husbands and wives took advantage of it to extort fines
from persons possessing more money than prudence. By a subsequent
enactment the male adulterer became the property of the king, who might
send him to the wars, or employ him at hard labor as he pleased. By a law
of Edgar's time the adulterer of either sex was compelled to live, for
three days in each week, on bread and water for seven years. This was
treating the evil on physiological principles.

We can not infer any very strict condition of morals as the result of this
harsh legislation. When punishment is carried to an extreme entirely
disproportioned to the offense, it is as likely to fail in its object as
mistaken lenity. Forgery and arson were more frequent in England when
punished with death than they are at present; and although we have no
statistics of the time from which we can deduce any positive conclusions,
we may reasonably imagine that neither the death penalty, nor the other
barbarous punishments substituted for it, exercised any very powerful
influence in the diminution of the crime among our hardy progenitors. It
may have taught them greater caution and dissimulation in the prosecution
of their evil purposes, but it did not render them the less eager to
profit by the opportunities thrown in their way.

It has been already shown that the founders of Christianity treated
illicit sexual indulgence as a sin, and resorted to extreme measures for
its suppression, but yet, to some extent, tolerated prostitution. Shortly
after he had established himself in Britain, Augustine put some curious
queries to the Pope touching the manner in which chastity among converts
to the new faith should be enforced. The nature of these interrogatories
and replies forbids their appearance here.[289]

That Augustine required to be instructed on such prurient details proves
that he was a believer in the Jewish observances of physical ablutions and
cleansing of the person being necessary to the removal of moral
impurities, and that he carried his scrutiny into the morals of his flock
much farther than was consistent with modesty and good sense. However much
his religious teachings might have improved the manners of the people, the
regulations alluded to would have exercised no very salutary or
efficacious influence over them.

The lives of the early kings and rulers of Britain serve to illustrate the
morals of the nation during their respective reigns, not only by
exhibiting individual examples where the condition of the masses is hidden
from view, but by affording us an index to that condition when it is
considered that the manners of the court have, in all ages and all
countries, exercised an important influence on those of the people.

Augustine converted Ethelbert, but his son Endbald deserted the Christian
Church because it refused its sanction to his mother-in-law becoming his
wife. It is true that he afterward divorced her, and returned to
Christianity, but in this he was influenced rather by satiety than by the
promptings of a reviving faith. Many of the other kings of the Heptarchy
were as remarkable for the headstrong ardor of their passion as Endbald.
Canulph of Wessex had, in the year 784, an intrigue with one of his female
subjects, and frequently quitted his court to enjoy her society in the
country. During one of these clandestine excursions he was surprised and
surrounded in the night by the followers of Kynchard, a rival pretender to
the throne, and murdered in the arms of his mistress.

In the ninth century prostitution seems to have been a prevailing vice
throughout the country, and frequent references are made to it in the
discussions of the period. In the arguments used in favor of tithes, in
the time of Athelstan, it was held by some canonists that the clergy had a
right to demand one tenth of the profits earned by prostitutes in the
exercise of their calling. It is but right to add that the Church did not
persist in enforcing this extraordinary claim.[290]

Edwy, who ascended the throne at the early age of seventeen, became
involved in a controversy with the monks on the question, then first
started, of the celibacy of the clergy. The celebrated Dunstan favored
the new doctrine, but Edwy opposed it. The youthful and inexperienced
prince was no match for his sagacious antagonist, as he soon after
discovered. On the day of his coronation, which took place soon after his
marriage with his cousin Elgiva, whom he loved and resolved to wed, though
she was within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church, his
nobles were indulging in the pleasures of the banquet, when it was
discovered that Edwy had stolen away. Dunstan and Odo, Archbishop of
Canterbury, conjecturing the cause of his absence, proceeded to the
private apartments of the queen, and found him in her company. They tore
him from her, and dragged him back to the party. Elgiva's face was seared
with a red-hot iron to destroy her beauty, and she was transported to
Ireland. Her wounds being soon healed, and all trace of the injuries
removed, she returned to her own country, but was met by a party the
archbishop had sent to intercept her, and put to death. Thus, professedly
to preserve the morals of the king, these high ecclesiastics committed
crimes of far greater gravity than a marriage even between persons more
nearly related than Edwy and Elgiva.

Edgar, who succeeded Edwy, was of a still more passionate and licentious
disposition. He broke into a convent, and carried off one of the nuns,
named Editha, who was remarkable for her beauty. In the heat of passion,
he violated her person; and for the double offense of abduction and rape,
the Church, according to the peculiar morality of the times, punished him
by compelling him to resign his crown for the period of seven years. By a
curious inconsistency, he was permitted to retain possession of Editha,
who lived with him as a concubine.

Another of his mistresses he obtained by a less violent process. In
passing through Andover, he accidentally met the daughter of a neighboring
noble, who fascinated him by her remarkable beauty. Listening only to the
suggestion of his passion, he proceeded immediately to the residence of
the maiden's mother, and, informing her of the violent love with which she
had inspired him, demanded that she should be permitted to share his bed
that night. The mother, fearing to excite the king's anger by a refusal,
resorted to a stratagem, by which she hoped to evade his wrath, and, at
the same time, preserve the chastity of her daughter. She directed a
handsome waiting-maid to introduce herself into the young lady's chamber,
and the king was admitted after dark. When Edgar discovered the trick
which had been played on him, he manifested no resentment, and the
accidental partner of his bed became afterward his favorite mistress.

These were not his only amours. Elfrida, daughter of the Earl of
Devonshire, was distinguished by extraordinary beauty, and the fame of her
charms reached the court, although she resided in the country in strict
retirement, and had never been a mile from home. Edgar, hearing of her
beauty, and doubting whether her appearance justified the extravagant
praise lavished on it, sent one of his trusted favorites, Earl Athelwold,
to her father's residence to make a report to him on the subject.
Athelwold himself, like many a similar envoy, fell in love with the young
lady, and informed the king that rumor had greatly exaggerated her merits,
and that she was positively ungainly. This was sufficient to allay the
king's curiosity, and Athelwold shortly afterward secured the young lady's
hand in marriage. He explained the matter to Edgar by remarking that it
was her fortune which induced him to overlook her homely features. The
king desired him to introduce her at court, and Athelwold persistently
refusing, the king suspected the true state of the case. He intimated to
the earl that he had determined to visit the castle where she resided, and
the husband, dreading the consequences, implored his wife to conceal her
beauty as much as possible. Elfrida, woman-like, did precisely the
contrary, and set off her charms by the richest and most becoming toilette
in her wardrobe. Edgar was so enraged at the deception practiced on him
that he put the unfortunate earl to death, and married the widow.

The infusion of Danish blood does not seem to have exercised an improving
influence on Anglo-Saxon manners. Judging from the following, the contrary
may be inferred.

Ethelred kept a number of Danish troops in his pay, who were stationed in
different parts of the country. A complaint was made to the king that the
Danes had attained such a pitch of refinement, and made such an advance in
luxury, that they combed their hair daily, and were guilty of other acts
of personal embellishment equally reprehensible. Worse still, it was
averred that the women looked with favor on these practices of the Danes,
and that the latter debauched the wives and daughters of the English, and
disgraced the nation.[291] It is evident that women who could thus easily
be led away were only virtuous from the want of opportunity.

The legislation of this period shows that prostitution was not only
tolerated, but indirectly encouraged.

If a man seduced the wife of another, he was compelled, by an early Saxon
law, to pay a fine to the husband, and to procure for him another woman,
whom he was to remunerate for admitting him to her bed.[292] This was not
only offering a direct premium to prostitution by providing for the
debauching of a woman every time another chose to be seduced, but it shows
that females were in the habit of cohabiting with men for hire. The fines
for adultery were graduated according to the rank of the woman. If she
happened to be the wife of a nobleman, her chastity was valued at the
moderate sum of six pounds sterling (about thirty dollars); while the wife
of a churl brought to her husband as a salve for his injured honor about a
dollar and a half. The effect of these enactments could not but exercise a
demoralizing and injurious influence on the manners of the people. They
reduced the estimate of female chastity to that of a cheap marketable
commodity, whose loss could be repaid by a small money compensation.

By the laws of Ethelbert a man was permitted to buy a wife, provided the
purchase was made openly, and many such transactions are recorded, the
price being sometimes paid down in money, and sometimes in palfreys and
other kinds of property. The practice, however, was soon modified, and it
became necessary to obtain the consent of the bride. The husband was
compelled to support and protect her, and to treat her with respect. A
couple desirous of contracting marriage were formally betrothed in
presence of the priest, and this practice, having something of an
ecclesiastical obligation without any of its legal force, was frequently
productive of the same evil consequences as in Norway at the present day.
This custom of betrothal prevailed down to the time of Elizabeth.

The Normans introduced into England, if not a higher standard of morals,
at least a greater refinement in vice. Their laws were moulded by the
spirit of the feudal system which they imported with them. Under their
sway society was divided into two classes--feudal lords and their vassals.
The lord could dispose of the person and property of the vassal, limited,
indeed, by certain restrictions, but still leaving so much power in his
hands as to render the latter a virtual slave.

Thus, by the laws of the time, a vassal who seduced or debauched his
lord's wife or near relative, or who even took improper liberties with
them, might be punished by the forfeiture of his land. When a baron died,
the estate escheated to the king, who took immediate possession, and kept
it until the heir applied to do homage for it, and pay such a fee as the
king might demand. If the heir happened to be a minor, the king retained
possession of the estate until he reached his majority; and when the
inheritance devolved on a female, the king might give her any husband he
thought proper. He often turned this privilege to account by selling the
right to the hand and fortune of an heiress. Geoffrey de Mandeville paid
Henry III. a sum equal to about twenty thousand dollars for permission to
wed Isabel, countess of Gloucester, with the right to all her lands and
revenues. Even a male heir could not select his own bride except by
purchasing permission from the king, otherwise he had to accept his
majesty's choice.

We have no means of estimating the amount of licentiousness arising from
these arbitrary regulations, but we only require a little acquaintance
with human nature to arrive at the conclusion that they must have been a
prolific source of vice. The husband being selected by the king from
purely mercenary or interested motives, no attention was, of course, paid
to disparity of ages, or other circumstances on which the purity of the
marriage-bed depends. When the inclinations are forced in this way, women,
as well as men, are apt to revenge themselves on their partners by seeking
illicit enjoyments. Mercenary marriages, when projected, as they are even
in our day, from sordid motives on the part of parents or guardians,
almost invariably lead to infidelity, and many an old dotard, who forces
himself upon a girl under age, merely serves as a screen for her
clandestine amours.

In the reign of Henry III., grave disputes occurred between the civil and
ecclesiastical courts on the subject of bastardy. The common law deemed
all children to be illegitimate who had been born before marriage. By the
canon law they were held to be legitimate if the parents married
subsequent to their birth.

When a dispute of inheritance arose, it was customary for the civil to
issue writs to the spiritual courts, directing an inquiry to be instituted
into the legitimacy of the claimants; and as the bishops always returned
answers in accordance with the canon law, all persons whose parents had
married at any period were legitimate. When it is considered how strongly
most parents feel for the honor of their offspring, the tendency of such
decisions to increase prostitution becomes apparent. It may be considered
unjust to inflict disabilities on the child for the sins of the parent,
but such penalties undoubtedly have the effect of imposing a check upon
concubinage.

We have stated that the king claimed the disposal of the hands and
fortunes of heiresses: the barons claimed a still greater privilege from
their tenants. In some localities the feudal lord insisted upon enjoying
the person of one of the daughters of each tenant who happened to be
blessed with a plurality of them. He returned her to her parents within a
given time.

Every extreme is followed by a reaction in the opposite direction. The
abject condition of women, as indicated by the foregoing facts, led to the
institution of chivalry, which elevated her from the position of a slave,
and the mere instrument of sensual gratification, to that almost of a
deity, thus assigning her a rank as much above her real sphere as her
former one had been beneath it.

Previous to the advent of this system, women could not appear at any
public exhibition or place of amusement unless accompanied by a band of
armed retainers. Any female encountered alone and unprotected was liable
to insult.

Chivalry, if it did not put an end to, greatly modified this state of
things. By its rules each of its members was constituted a champion of
female virtue and honor. No man was admitted into the order whose valor
was not above suspicion, and a word uttered by him derogatory to the _beau
sexe_ excluded him from its ranks. No woman, however, was deemed worthy of
knightly protection who had not preserved her honor, it being to that
quality alone that knighthood volunteered its safeguard. At public
ceremonies, if a woman of easy virtue ventured to take precedence of a
woman of honorable fame, she was immediately reminded of the impropriety
of her conduct by some member of the order, and compelled to retire to the
rear.

This recognition of virtue had a strong tendency to promote female
chastity. It could not put a stop to voluntary prostitution, but it at
least prevented virtuous women being necessitated to yield their honor to
force. It held out, moreover, an attractive premium to correct conduct
among the sex by making it the object of heroic exploits, celebrated in
the romantic lays of minstrels and troubadours. Its observances have a
fantastic aspect in the light of modern civilization, but they
unquestionably exercised a powerful corrective influence over the female
character, so degraded at its commencement, while, at the same time, they
elevated that of the male sex by teaching them to respect themselves.

In the wars of the period, it was against the rules of chivalry to take
women prisoners. When a town was captured and entered by victorious
troops, the first step taken was to make proclamation that no violence
should be offered to any female. This conduct was so much at variance with
the notions and habits of soldiery, that the feelings which sustained
chivalry must have taken deep root in the minds of all classes to restrain
the passions of the military, strengthened as they were by dissolute
habits, and the absence of opportunity for their gratification during
service in the field.

To such an extreme was this feeling of deferential courtesy to the sex
carried, that the Normans were severely censured for their conduct at the
capture of the castle of Du Guesclin, it being alleged that they disturbed
the repose of the ladies. But as the tendency of every human institution
is to degenerate from its original purpose, the rigid purism which marked
the foundation of chivalry soon began to relax, and disorders crept in and
sapped the basis of a system which was too theoretically perfect to have
any extended duration.

It is difficult to ascertain the precise character of the relations which
existed between the Troubadours and the mistresses to whose service they
devoted themselves, and who were frequently married women. The knight
Bertram happened to lose the favor of his mistress, the wife of Talleyrand
de Perigord, in consequence of stories which had been related to her
implicating his fidelity, and charging him with dividing his knightly
attentions. He protests his innocence of these accusations in a lay as
impassioned as that of a lover to the object of his adoration, and invokes
a number of knightly calamities upon himself if his devotion to her be not
above suspicion.

It is hardly credible that the loves of such ardent admirers was
immaculate Platonism. On the other hand, the fact that husbands were
rarely or never jealous of them, goes some way to refute the idea that
they had a more serious character. The lords of those times were proud of
the protestations of regard offered to their ladies, and rewarded the
Troubadours with rich and valuable presents. The lords of our day, grown
wise by experience, make a point of keeping all such interlopers at a
distance.

While chivalry poised its lance in defense of the Lucretias, and then of
the Dulcineas of the day, the religious view of the commerce of the sexes
was particularly ascetic.

Although the most profound devotion was paid to woman in the abstract by
the order, the Church sought to encourage perpetual celibacy, the
seclusion of women, and the separation of the sexes. The clergy were
forbidden to marry, and the idea seemed to prevail that it was impossible
for men and women to mingle without being under the influence of
lascivious ideas, and ready to carry them into practice as soon as
opportunity offered. The attempt to organize society on such a basis had
an inevitable tendency to produce demoralization. Its obvious result,
instead of promoting chastity was to increase secret licentiousness and
encourage prostitution.

Even the voluntary vows of knights and troubadours were, in the end, as
little observed as these ecclesiastical precepts. The profligacy of the
Troubadours became open and undisguised, and the virtue of their
mistresses naturally kept pace with their example. The knights who
enlisted in the Crusades, with a large amount of zeal and but a small
share of wealth, supported their retainers by robberies on the way, and
the females who accompanied them acted as camp followers usually do. No
institution which deals merely in external observances can restrain
immorality in circumstances favorable to its development, and hence
chivalry was forced to yield before more powerful influences. That it
served its purpose in elevating the condition of woman, and in giving a
better tone to society at large, it would be unjust to deny.

Even when chivalry declined and ceased to inspire feats of
knight-errantry, we find women, instead of falling back into the degrading
position they had formerly occupied, employing themselves in intellectual
pursuits, publishing books, mixing in public controversies, distinguishing
themselves in the acquisition of languages, and even taking a leading part
in the political affairs of the times.

Among the women who acquired a historical notoriety by their position as
royal mistresses, during the epoch comprised between the Norman conquest
and the reign of Henry VIII., were the Fair Rosamond, concubine of Henry
II., and Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV. The misfortunes, as well
as the generous qualities of these fair sinners have thrown a sort of halo
around them.

Rosamond, surnamed the Fair on account of her exquisite beauty, was the
daughter of Walter, Lord Clifford, and was educated in the nunnery of
Godstow. The popular tradition concerning her is that Henry, hearing of
her charms, paid her a visit, but, finding her virtue inflexible, had to
exercise his authority as sovereign to compel her to yield to his wishes.
He placed her in a building erected in the midst of a labyrinth at
Woodstock, access to which could only be obtained by a clew of thread.
Henry located her here to protect her from the jealousy of his queen
Eleanor. She bore the king two sons, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury,
and Geoffrey, Bishop of Lincoln. During the king's absence in France he
intrusted the keeping of Woodstock and the care of the Fair Rosamond to
one Lord Thomas, who endeavored to seduce her. In revenge for the
rejection of his overtures, the faithless warden conducted Queen Eleanor
to her retreat, and the latter is said to have mixed a cup of poison,
which her minions compelled the unfortunate Rosamond to drink. It is also
alleged that the queen struck the poor girl on her lip with her clenched
hand.[293] Some assert that Rosamond died a natural death in a convent at
Oxford, and attribute the origin of the story of poisoning to the figure
of a cup which was sculptured on her tomb. It is more probable that this
effigy was placed there to commemorate the actual event. Rosamond was
buried in the church of Godstow, opposite the high altar, where her
remains lay undisturbed until they were ordered to be removed, with every
mark of indignity, by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, in the year 1191. She was
regarded by the people as a saint, if not a martyr, and wonderful legends
were related concerning her.

Jane Shore, the celebrated concubine of Edward IV., was the wife of
Matthew Shore, a goldsmith in Lombard Street, London. Edward possessed a
good figure and pleasing address, and was fond of athletic sports and
exercises, which he enjoyed in company with the citizens, among whom he
became exceedingly popular. His popularity extended to many of the
citizens' wives, and it was not considered out of the natural course of
things that Mrs. Shore should be removed from Lombard Street to shine at
court as the royal favorite. Historians represent her as extremely
beautiful, remarkably gay in temperament, and of uncommon generosity. The
king, it is said, was no less charmed with her temper and disposition
than with her person. She never made use of her influence over him to the
prejudice of any one, and if she ever importuned him it was in favor of
the unfortunate.

After the death of Edward she attached herself to Lord Hastings, and when
Richard III. cut off that nobleman as an obstacle to his schemes, she was
arrested as an accomplice on the ridiculous charge of witchcraft. This
accusation, however, terminated in a public penance, with the loss of
whatever little property she possessed. Notwithstanding the severities
exercised against her, it is certain that she was alive in the reign of
Henry VIII., when Sir Thomas More mentions having seen her, poor and
shriveled, without the least trace of her former beauty. Mr. Rowe, in his
tragedy of "Jane Shore," has adopted the popular story related in the old
ballad, of her perishing from hunger in a ditch where Shoreditch now
stands, but Stow assures us that that street was thus named previous to
the time of Jane Shore.

The example of none of the English kings had a greater influence in
bringing the marriage tie into disrepute than that of Henry VIII. An
effort has been made by Mr. Fronde, in his new history of England, to
redeem the character of this monarch from some portion of the obloquy with
which it is covered, but there is no doubt that he was an unmitigated
monster. Curious to say, during his youth and early manhood he betrayed no
evidence of the brutal passions which afterward moved him. He was the
husband of Catharine for seventeen years before his domestic conduct
incurred reproach. At that late period of his career he conceived a
violent passion for Anne Boleyn, and, in order to get her to share his
bed, sought to divorce his wife. From this period he seemed to become the
prey of a restless concupiscence, which sought gratification in new
objects of indulgence, and his passion for the women he married and
beheaded was as short-lived as it was violent.

There is reason to believe that his marriage with Anne Boleyn was more
than adulterous. It is said Anne's mother had been more complaisant to
Henry than her duty to her husband or the laws of morality would have
sanctioned, and we have the authority of Bishop Fisher for concluding that
Anne was the result of this illicit connection, and that, when the king
expressed an intention of marrying her, Lady Boleyn exhorted him to
abandon his design, as Anne was his own daughter. Henry was not to be
deterred by an obstacle of this sort. He had great difficulty in procuring
a divorce, and in the mean while he and Anne had become so intimate that
she began to exhibit proofs of the connection which could not be
concealed. A private marriage was resorted to, considerations of state
rendering it prudent to keep the union secret.

Catharine was divorced through the instrumentality of Cranmer, but Henry
did not long continue to repose confidence in his new bride. Soon after
the marriage was made public, and she had been formally inaugurated as
queen, she attended a tilting-match at Greenwich, accompanied by the king
and a large concourse of spectators. The king observed her exchange
amorous signals with one of the combatants, who was also one of her
paramours. Henry had entertained suspicions of her connection with this
man, and this proof, as he regarded it, of her infidelity aroused his
jealousy. He left the scene on the instant and returned to Westminster,
where he issued orders to have her immediately arrested. She was thrown
into prison, and tried on the joint charges of adultery and incest. She
was accused of having committed adultery with four separate members of the
king's household, and of having had incestuous intercourse with her own
brother, Lord Rochford. She was tried, found guilty, and executed.

Whether she committed the entire criminality laid to her charge it is
impossible to say, but that the incidents of the career just described
were in perfect unison with the doings of Henry and his court there is no
doubt. Of the influence of such examples on the morals of the people at
large, there is, unfortunately, as little question. If court manners and
court styles are zealously followed, the vices that spring from them are
not less assiduously improved upon.

Henry's strong sexual passions, as well as his arbitrary disposition, were
bequeathed to his daughter Elizabeth. However historians may differ as to
the degree of her depravity, they all agree that her right to the title of
"Virgin Queen" was exceedingly ill founded. Many of her delinquencies with
persons of the opposite sex were notorious, although perhaps difficult of
proof. While she had not the slightest claim to beauty, she delighted in
flattery, and could swallow any amount of gross and fulsome adulation. Her
vanity so blinded her that she never perceived that the extravagant
praises lavished on her personal attractions were merely covert satire.

It is said that Elizabeth indulged in almost indiscriminate lewdness, and
that Leicester, Hatton, Essex, Mountjoy, and numerous others shared her
favors. In one of the notes appended to Hume's fourth volume, the nature
of Elizabeth's dealings with a large number of her favorites is set forth,
the author of the statement being the Countess of Shrewsbury.

Mary, Queen of Scots, at a time when friendly relations existed between
her and Elizabeth, wrote to the latter that the countess had reported that
Elizabeth had given a promise of marriage to a certain courtier, but,
finding the marriage inexpedient, had dispensed with the ceremony and
admitted him to her bed. The countess also stated that she had been
equally indulgent to Simier, the French agent, and that Hatton, another of
her paramours, had spread many reports indicative of her extreme sexual
passion.

The immediate successors of Elizabeth were of a different personal
temperament, and did not abandon themselves to such scandalous excesses.
James I. had no mistresses, and was not of a character to seek pleasure in
extravagant licentiousness, but his court was not free from the scenes
which had disgraced those of Henry and Elizabeth. James, being desirous of
uniting the Earl of Essex with the Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the
Earl of Suffolk, had the young couple betrothed, although they had not
attained the age of puberty. The earl was only fourteen years of age,
while Lady Frances was but thirteen, and it was deemed proper for the
youth to travel until both should have arrived at the maturity necessary
for the consummation of the marriage relation. After four years spent on
the Continent, the earl returned to England, and found his affianced bride
in the full lustre of extraordinary beauty, and of the fame which great
personal charms excite. He had also the mortification to find himself
repulsed when he approached her as a husband, and was met by every
manifestation of dislike and contempt. He complained to her parents on the
subject, and they compelled her to accompany him to the country.

Although the young countess obeyed this mandate literally, the feud
between her and Essex was far from terminated: she recognized him as her
husband in name only, and sedulously kept herself aloof from his society,
nor could any of his endeavors overcome her repugnance. The lady persisted
in her obstinacy; the husband redoubled his attentions and importunities,
but, finding that she was invincible, he finally abandoned the pursuit,
and separated from her.

The cause of this strange conduct on the part of the countess was the
passion which she entertained for a Scotch adventurer named Robert Carr,
who had found a favorable reception from the king, by whom he was created
Viscount Rochester. She believed that by refusing to consummate her
marriage with Essex she would not be considered by the world in the light
of his wife, and she hoped to procure a divorce, which would enable her to
marry Rochester.[294] As their mutual attachment was ardent, and their
opportunities for being together frequent, they anticipated the
probability of a marriage, and indulged their passions without waiting for
the ceremony. They did not find as much trouble in procuring a divorce as
they had anticipated.

The king, who had a strong partiality for Rochester, favored their views,
and Essex, finding that his suit was hopeless with his wife, opposed no
obstacle to the nullification of his marriage. The grounds on which the
countess sued out the divorce were of rather a curious character. The
chief allegation against Essex was impotency. At that time a firm faith
existed in the absurd notions that there were people who possessed the
power of witchcraft, enabling them, among other things, to deprive a man
of his virility. It was asserted and maintained that Essex had been
subjected to this influence, and was therefore incompetent to occupy the
position of a married man. The divorce was secured, and Rochester and the
countess experienced no farther obstacle to the gratification of their
desires.

Rochester had previously consulted Overbury on the difficulties of his
position, and the latter strongly advised him not to marry the countess.
These facts coming to the ears of Lady Frances, she induced Rochester to
have Overbury poisoned. On the discovery of the murder, Rochester and his
wife were brought to trial and convicted, but the mistaken clemency of the
king interposed between them and the doom they so richly merited. They
passed the remainder of their days in obscurity, but as bitter enemies,
and although they resided in the same house for many years, no word or
message was ever exchanged between them.

CHAPTER XXIV.

GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY FROM THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE PRESENT DAY.

Puritans.--Results of Asceticism.--Excesses of the Restoration.--
General Licentiousness.--Art.--Literature.--The Stage.--Nell Gwynne.--
Nationality in Vice.--Sabbath at Court.--James II.--Literature of the
seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries.--Lord Chesterfield.--House of
Hanover.--Royal Princes.--George III.--George IV.--Influence of French
Literature.--Marriage Laws.--Increase of Population.

On gaining the ascendant, the Puritans endeavored to reform the general
corruption of society by cutting to the root of the disorders that
afflicted it. Instead, however, of applying the knife judiciously, they
excised the sound as well as the unhealthy parts. Their measures went to
the extreme of killing all the affections and impulses natural to the
human breast, in order to repress the excesses arising from too free an
abandonment to them. Some fanatics, for instance, gravely suggested that,
in order to put an end to fornication and adultery, all intercourse should
be prohibited between the sexes.

In our days it is found that innocent amusements are the best safeguard
against criminal indulgence, but the Puritans thought otherwise, and
looked upon joyous exhilaration of any kind as almost sinful. They
enforced their gloomy doctrines with a tyranny as unbending as their
tenets themselves were harsh and unnatural. Theatrical entertainments,
dancing, etc., were sternly placed under ban, and Puritanism presented
merely a heavy and murky atmosphere, with scarcely a social star to
enliven its gloomy aspect.

When the Restoration removed the oppressive weight of fanaticism from the
public spirit, it rebounded as far above a healthy pitch as it had been
formerly depressed below it. An immediate revolution took place in the
manners and habits of the people. The theatres, which had been closed by
the Puritans, were at once reopened, and the populace abandoned themselves
to pleasurable excesses with an eagerness proportionate to the restraint
which had been imposed on them. This license would, in time, have been
checked by reflection, had not the impulse been supplied from the quarter
where a repressive influence should have been exercised. The Merry Monarch
and his court led the race in this national carnival, and the examples
which they set only served to stimulate the public appetite for
debauchery. Indeed, the court of Charles was little better than a public
brothel, and the wit with which its orgies were embellished only served to
increase the dangers arising from its conspicuous position, and its power
over men's minds as the centre from which all rank and consideration
flowed. The conduct of the courtiers was strictly modeled on that of their
royal master, and their social accomplishments only imperfectly varnished
over the gross features of a coarse sensuality. Women were flattered and
caressed, but not respected, and the homage paid them was such as no
decent woman in our time would consent to receive.

The most faithful portraiture of the manners of this epoch is to be found
in its dramatic literature. The staple incidents of the pieces represented
at the theatres consisted of love intrigues, seductions, and rapes. The
fop of the play never elicited such hearty applause as when he recounted
his exploits in the ruin of female virtue among the citizens' wives.

The theatre not only fostered lewdness by depicting it in glowing and
attractive colors, but its actors spread abroad the corruption which it
was their business to delineate. Their personal character corresponded, in
too many instances, with the parts which they performed, and they
re-enacted in private the debaucheries which they presented on the stage.

The theatre itself became a central rendezvous for immoral characters, and
the place where assignations were most conveniently fixed. Lively wenches,
under the pretense of selling oranges to the spectators, frequented the
pit, and took their places in the front row, with their backs to the
stage. It was well understood that they were as ready to sell favors as
fruit, and, in fact, that they had come from the neighboring brothels for
that express purpose.

Deep drinking was another characteristic feature of the times, and
bacchanalian orgies were freely indulged in by all classes, from the king
to the beggar, differing little in the extremes to which they were pushed.
Conversation, even in what was called the best society, was disfigured by
the grossest obscenity and blasphemy, and _bon ton_ consisted in the
extravagance to which this vicious conduct was extended.

Even the peasantry endeavored to imitate the costumes and carriage of the
courtiers, and country women were to be seen in flaunting dresses cut so
as to expose as much as possible of the person.

Up to this period no female had ever appeared upon the English stage;
where women were introduced, their parts had been filled by boys. Neither
was it customary for a monarch to show himself at a public representation
of a play; but, when they were enacted for his amusement, the performance
took place in some apartment of the royal palace. In Charles's reign,
women for the first time appeared on the stage, and performed the parts
allotted to the heroines of the drama.

The king and queen became regular frequenters of the theatre, and
encouraged by their presence the _double entendre_ and broad indecencies
of the pieces in vogue. We may remark, parenthetically, that unmarried
actresses usually adopted the title Mistress before their names, the word
Miss, as then applied, signifying that she who bore it was a concubine. In
modern days it is the habit to reverse this practice, as the marriage
state is considered to divest the actress of half her attractions.

There were but two theatres in London at this period: the King's Theatre,
where the celebrated Nell Gwynne and Mrs. Rebecca Marshall were the chief
actresses, and the Duke's, where another company performed. One day the
reigning favorites at the King's Theatre had a violent quarrel, and Mrs.
Marshall called Nell "Lord Buckhurst's mistress." Nell contented herself
with rejoining that she was but one man's mistress, though brought up in a
brothel, while Mrs. Marshall bore the same relation to three or four,
notwithstanding she was the daughter of a Presbyterian. Their own accounts
of each other leave no doubt as to their morality.

The pieces represented in the London theatres in the time of Charles II.
were, as we have before stated, filled with indecent allusions, and their
interest with the public turned on the number and intensity of these
prurient passages. The ladies never attended the first representation of a
comedy except in masks; and when the dames of the court, with their
established reputations for gallantry, were apprehensive of being seen at
them, some idea may be formed of the licentious character of the pieces
most in favor.

But many of these plays are still in evidence to speak for themselves. It
will be seen that in the majority the plot is so framed as to admit the
greatest license in libidinous allusions. The distinguishing feature of
them is that the most immodest passages are put into the mouths of women,
and, indeed, we know that that actress was the most successful who took
the greatest liberties with the text, and most improved upon its lewdness
of expression.

As a specimen of the general character of these plays, we may name "All
Mistaken, or the Mad Couple," quite a favorite with the public in its day.
The hero is importuned by six clamorous unfortunates whose ruin he has
effected, and dunned in addition by the nurses of their illegitimate
offspring for wages owing to them. The delectable superstructure of
obscene dialogue which is raised on this foundation may be better imagined
than described.

The usual hour at which the theatres opened their doors was four in the
afternoon, and after the close of the performances the audience generally
repaired to some garden or other place of public amusement. Here scenes
were enacted which proved a fit sequel to those witnessed on the stage.

The orange-girls had a superior known as "Orange Moll," who occupied a
position somewhat analogous to that of the modern brothel-keeper. She
attended the girls to the theatre, and superintended and directed their
operations there. During the _entreactes_ lewd conversations were carried
on between the orange-girls and the gallants, which were interspersed with
obscene jokes, and highly relished by the audience. The custom of
interpellating the gay women who frequented the theatre was continued to a
period comparatively recent. Every one has heard the story of Peg Plunket
and the Duke of Rutland, in the days when the gods of the Dublin theatre
were esteemed the most discriminating, though boisterous and rollicking
audience of the three kingdoms.

Charles selected several of his mistresses from the stage, for which he
had a passionate fondness. Miss Davis literally sang and danced her way
into his affections. Her conquest of the king was consummated by the
manner in which she sang the popular ballad "My lodging is on the cold
ground." Charles thought she was deserving of warmer quarters, and raised
her to his own bed. He established her in a splendid residence, and
lavished on her the most extravagant gifts.

The queen at first resented the open and undisguised infidelities of the
king, and publicly manifested her sense of them on one occasion by
quitting the theatre when Miss Davis made her appearance on the stage;
but, finding it impossible to reclaim him from his vicious propensities,
she abandoned all hopes of restricting his libertinism, or even of keeping
him within the bounds of conventional decency.

The Countess of Castlemaine (afterward created Duchess of Cleveland) was
of a more jealous temperament than the queen, and took a more
characteristic revenge on Charles for his frailties. She took another
lover, and went to reside at his house, very much to the comfort of her
royal patron, who had a kingly dislike of trouble.

After quarreling with Lord Buckhurst, Nell Gwynne returned to the stage,
but had not long resumed her profession when it was rumored that she had
made a conquest of the king. These reports were apparently contradicted by
her continued appearance at the theatre, and the progress she made in her
art, which could only be the result of careful study. A tragedy by Dryden
was advertised, the principal character to be performed by Nell; but,
before the night of its first representation arrived, it was found
necessary to postpone the performance, owing to Nell's not being in a
condition to appear. From this time her connection with Charles no longer
remained a secret.

Nell, like her predecessors, was not long suffered to maintain uncontested
her supremacy over the king's affections. When the Duchesse d'Orleans, the
sister of Charles, paid a visit to the English court in 1670, she had in
her train a handsome maid, who was admired for her simple and childish
style of beauty. Whether instigated by the courtiers who accompanied her
mistress, whose visit was a political one, or prompted by her own
sagacity, she made her acquiescence in the king's desires conditional upon
his executing the shameful treaty which gave France such important
advantages, and rendered Charles a mere tributary to the French king. This
girl, Louise de Querouaille, became the rival of Nell Gwynne, and had a
child by Charles, who was created Duke of Richmond.

So scandalously public had the relations of Charles with the loose women
who surrounded him become, and so flagrant and unblushing was the conduct
of the latter, that the queen could no longer reside in the palace of
Whitehall, and accordingly removed to Somerset House in the Strand. This
feeling of indignation on the part of her majesty soon extended to the
virtuously disposed part of the public. Efforts were made to apply a
remedy to the disorder which threatened to corrupt the whole framework of
English society. In Parliament it was proposed to levy a tax on the
play-houses, which had become undisguised nests of prostitution. The
debate which ensued elicited a witticism which led to serious consequences
to the gentleman who uttered it. On Sir John Birkenhead's remarking that
"the players were the king's servants and part of his pleasures," Sir John
Coventry was imprudent enough to inquire "whether the king's pleasures lay
among the men that acted or the women." For this offense to Charles he was
waylaid by some of the courtiers, who slit his nose, and otherwise
maltreated him.

It is impossible, however, to deny that this very license of manners
rendered the king popular with a certain class of his subjects. The only
exception taken by them to his conduct was the selection of a foreigner as
one of his mistresses, and even this would have passed without comment but
for the political consequences of the connection. It was generally
understood among the people that Mademoiselle de Querouaille, or Mrs.
Carwell, as she was commonly called, was an agent used for the purpose of
securing the ascendency of French interests. This brought upon her the
hostility of the populace, who availed themselves of every opportunity of
manifesting their dislike to her.

Nell Gwynne was an English woman, a Protestant, and the idol of the town.
She was known by the title of the Protestant mistress, while Mrs. Carwell
went by that of the king's Popish concubine. Nell was one day insulted in
her carriage at Oxford, and came very near being mobbed by the populace in
mistake for Mrs. Carwell. With her usual wit and presence of mind, she put
her head out of the window, and quieted the rioters by telling them that
she was "the Protestant w--e."

As the literature of the times reflected the general licentiousness of
manners, it was not to be expected that the arts would escape their
demoralizing influence. Most of the paintings then executed were
characterized by the same freedom of expression which was used on the
stage. There is an old print extant of the Duchess of Portsmouth,
reclining on a bank of violets, wearing no other covering than a lace
robe; and in another Nell Gwynne is represented in the same semi-nude
condition. It is said that this dress had belonged to the duchess, and had
been much admired by the king, but that, with her usual love of mischief,
Nell had purloined it, greatly to the amusement of her royal lover, and
very much to the chagrin and mortification of the duchess.

The king had his own peculiar way of celebrating the Sabbath. On that day
he usually collected his mistresses around him, and amused himself by
toying with them and humoring their caprices. We have a picture by a
contemporaneous writer of one of his Sunday evenings at Whitehall, where
the court resided. It was shortly before his death. Charles sat in the
centre of a group of these women, indulging in the most frivolous
amusements, and apparently in high humor. At a little distance stood a
page singing love-songs for the delectation of the king's mistresses,
while round a gambling-table were seated a number of his courtiers,
playing for stakes which sometimes ran as high as ten thousand dollars of
our money.[295] The orgies of the night were kept up until daylight broke
in upon the revelers. At eight o'clock the same morning the king was
seized with a fit of apoplexy, and died within a week.

James II., though of a grave and stern character, was scarcely less
amorous in his temperament than Charles. They differed, however, in their
tastes. Charles required beauty in his mistresses; and Nell Gwynne and
some of his other concubines were not only beautiful in person but
possessed of intellectual graces which gilded their gross sensuality.
James cared but little for personal attractions, and lavished his favors
on coarse-featured and coarse-minded women. His wife was below him in
rank, and he did not stoop to her for her beauty, for she was plain, if
not downright ugly in her features. He soon transferred his affections to
a still plainer mistress, Arabella Churchill. His strongest attachment
was, however, that which he entertained for Catharine Sedley, who
possessed a powerful influence over him. She was the daughter of Sir
Charles Sedley, and seems to have inherited from him the strong passions
and reckless disregard of public opinion by which he was distinguished.
Sedley's writings were more licentious than those of any of his
contemporaries. His literary talents were not of a high order, but he
possessed fair conversational abilities, which made his society
attractive. The extreme dissoluteness of his life and disregard of all
decency provoked censure even in that age of loose morals. On one
occasion, after a drunken revel with some of his profligate companions, he
presented himself on the balcony of a tavern near Covent Garden in a state
of complete nudity, and commenced a harangue so full of lewdness and
obscenity that the crowd pelted him with stones and other missiles, and
compelled him to withdraw into the house. A daughter inheriting these
propensities, and brought up under the influence of this example, could
not fail to become conspicuous for similar traits of character. Her person
possessed none of the attributes which render women attractive. A lank,
spare figure, a hollow cheek, sallow face, and an eye of glaring
brightness comprised the sum total of her charms.

Charles, whose taste was more cultivated, remarked that his confessor must
have recommended Catharine to his brother as a penance for his sins. She
herself had the discrimination not to be insensible to the truth of this
remark, and was even in the habit of boasting of her own plain looks. Her
taste for finery was as great as if she possessed attractions worth
setting off by its aid. James, when he formed this connection, had
advanced to middle age, and it is difficult to account for the influence
which she contrived to exercise over him. On his accession to the throne
he promised the queen to abandon her, but his good resolutions soon gave
way. Whenever the absence of his wife afforded the opportunity, Chiffinch
might be seen conducting Catharine through the private passage leading to
his chamber. Notwithstanding all the affected austerity of his manners,
James was, in reality, but little better than his volatile brother.

At no period in the history of England, as we have just shown, had the
licentiousness of the court been greater than it was during the reigns of
Charles II. and James II.; only to be exceeded, perhaps, by the fearful
abyss of debauchery and atheism which a few years later was beheld in the
courts of Louis XV. and the Regent of France. The vigor and intellect of
the early part of the reign of Louis XIV., the magnificence of his tastes,
and the glory of his enterprises, stand out in powerful contrast to the
doings of the imbecile, corrupt, and utterly profligate and debased court
of England. The influence of this most pernicious example it is somewhat
difficult to arrive at. The great body of the people, especially in the
country, in those times of difficult communication, were probably but
little affected by the extravagance of the restored Cavaliers, added to
which there was a powerful leaven of religious feeling working through the
country, which did not for some time settle down into the apathy that
called for a new manifestation of Puritan feeling in the establishment of
Wesleyan Methodism. In the upper classes of society, however, the
core-rottenness of the courts of Charles and James was yet felt,
throughout the reigns of the succeeding sovereigns, even down to the time
of George III. The writings of contemporary authors, especially of the
comic dramatists, "the abstract and brief chronicles of the times," are a
fair type of the public morals and intelligence in all ages. At this epoch
we have from these sources overwhelming evidence of the reaction which had
taken place.

After the removal of the compulsory restraint of Puritan control, the
nation seemed at once to have lost its reason: modesty and decency were
badges of Puritan Republicanism, and therefore unsuited to loyal men, who
showed their attachment to the monarchy by their abandonment of decorum
and violation of every moral virtue. The productions of the favorite
authors teem with coarse images, unequivocal allusions, and gross facts.
Wit degenerated into blasphemy, liveliness into obscenity, metaphors into
lasciviousness. The scenes that took place in the court, and which
constituted its daily amusements, were disgusting to the last degree. The
mere commerce of the sexes, and the libertinism of the period in that
respect, were the smallest vices, and might almost be considered merely
follies, but the venality and corruption were open and shameless. The
courtiers cast aside the last rag of patriotic propriety, and avarice,
cruelty, lust, and perjury filled the measure of wickedness. On one
occasion, it is said, an infant was prematurely born in one of the rooms
of the palace, and Charles, with many jocular remarks, had the body
conveyed to his own closet for dissection by his own hand! An incident of
such brutality, which might be frequently paralleled by others equally bad
in degree, though different in fact, shows the hideous destitution of all
decency with which the court must have been cursed. The pages of
Rochester, Etherege, Buckingham, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Fletcher, in the
close of the seventeenth, and Prior, Gay, Swift, and scores of inferior
writers in the commencement of the eighteenth century, all exhibit this
state of affairs, while the noble Muse even of a Dryden could stoop to
earn base applause by lending her powers to the decoration of vice, and
voluntarily quitting her native regions to wallow in the mire.

The vices of this period must have left an ineradicable taint behind them,
when, after the full tide of iniquity had swept on, and purer waters were
succeeding, we find Lord Chesterfield, a British statesman of
distinguished ability and high position, thus advising his own son: "Let
the great book of the world be your principal study. _Nocturna versate
manu versate diurna_, which may be rendered thus: Turn over men by day and
women by night: I mean only the best editions."

While, as we have already observed, there was probably a wholesome
religious element in a portion of the population, which operated as an
antiseptic against the rottenness of the court, it is impossible but that
the capital must have been imbued with the reckless iniquity, outrageous
dissoluteness, and general immorality of the higher classes. The poets,
playwrights, essayists, and biographers of the age all bear traces of the
effects of bad example in high places on public manners. A critic of those
days says, "The accomplished gentleman of the English stage is a person
that is familiar with other men's wives and indifferent to his own, and
the fine lady is generally a composition of sprightliness and falsehood."
A thorough disrespect for female virtue, or rather the admiration of
libertinism, tainted the life's blood of the capital. And when, passing
over the coarse wit of Prior, or the perverted genius of Dryden, we come
to the sober and moderate writings of essayists and satirists, we find
material which gives us some little insight into the lower London life of
the period, and that which has more immediate interest for us in this
inquiry.

In the delightful and ever youthful pages of the Spectator, there are some
incidents of great pathos touching the state of those unfortunates whose
condition was then, as now, one of the disgraces of civilization. One
paper contains a singularly apposite remark. "I was told," says the writer
(a woman of the town), "by a Roman Catholic gentleman last week, who I
hope is absolved for what then passed between us, that in countries where
Popery prevails, besides the advantages of licensed stews, there are
larger endowments given for the _Incurabili_, I think he called them. This
manner of treating poor sinners has, we think, great humanity in it; and
as you, Mr. Spectator, are a person who pretends to carry your reflections
upon all subjects which occur to you, I beg therefore of you to lay before
the world the condition of us poor vagrants, who are really in a way of
labor instead of idleness."

At another time the Spectator himself meets "a slim young girl of about
seventeen, who, with a pert air, asked me if I was for a pint of wine. I
could observe as exact features as ever I had seen; the whole person, in a
word, of a woman exquisitely beautiful. She affected to allure me with a
forced wantonness in her look and air, but I saw it checked with hunger
and cold. Her eyes were wan and eager; her dress thin and tawdry; her mien
genteel and childish. This strange figure gave me much anguish of heart,
and, to avoid being seen with her, I went away, but could not avoid
giving her a crown. The poor thing sighed, courtesied, and with a
blessing, expressed with the utmost vehemence, turned from me. This
creature is what they call _newly come upon the town_."

The arts of the procuresses; their experiments on inexperienced country
girls; their attendance at coach-offices and public places to hunt for and
entrap the unwary; the regular customers they have for new wares; the
mode, first of offering them to private sale, and, when the first gloss is
worn off, casting them on the public market, are all as true of 1858 as of
the day for which it was written. In one case, the Spectator, being at a
coach-office, overhears a lady inquiring of a young girl her parentage and
character, and especially if she has been properly brought up, and has
been taught her Catechism. Desirous of seeing a lady who had so proper an
idea of her duties to servants, he peeps through and sees the face of a
well-known bawd, thus decoying a young girl just arrived in London. One
amusing cheat in the business of these go-betweens is complained of by a
lady correspondent: for a consideration, they profess to introduce some
ambitious foreigner or country gentleman to the favors of ladies of high
degree, ruling toasts, leading belles, etc. Some lady, Wilhelmina Amelia
Skeggs, is foisted upon the deluded customer, who must, of course, be
ignorant of the person of his inamorata, and he walks off boasting, in
great self-gratulation, of his good fortune, to the great injury of an
irreproachable woman's fame.[296]

It was reserved for the reign of George III. to give a favorable turn to
court morals and to make virtue respectable. The Georges I. and II. had
exercised but a negative influence on their subjects. They were merely
viewed as political necessities, and held in little or no personal esteem.
Their uncouth manners, foreign mistresses, and decidedly heavy _liaisons_
had no charm for either eye or fancy. With George III. and his queen,
virtue in courts became in some degree fashionable; the slough of
libertinism in which Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans had plunged
themselves seemed in France to have created some reaction. Louis XVI. in
Paris, and George III. in London, presented the rare spectacle to their
respective subjects of two well-conducted men, whose domestic life and
character were unimpeachable. But as the sons of George III., especially
the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, attained their majority, they
were surrounded by bands of flatterers and parasites, who stimulated and
encouraged the natural proneness of youth to pleasure and dissipation. The
libertinism and excesses of the Stuarts again became _bon-ton_, devoid, it
is true, of political debasement and national dishonor; checked also by
parental disapprobation, and by the influence of public opinion. This,
though very weak, was not quite powerless; and, though lenient to the
errors of youth, it drew an unfavorable comparison between the reckless
extravagance and dissolute tastes of the princes, and the moderate and
personally estimable conduct of the king and queen.[297]

The masses of the English people were distinguished for plain good sense,
and attachment to the cause of religion and morality; and although
drinking, gambling, boxing, and racing were, in honor of the royal
princes, fashionable amusements, and their attainment coveted and emulated
by many of the rising generation, still the general sentiment of the
nation at this period was condemnatory of these vices. Those inclined to
charitable views of human nature found excuses in the temptations of
youth, a fine person, a commanding position, and, lastly, in the infamous
counsels of those who found political capital in the encouragement of
these excesses, thereby promoting a division between the heir to the
throne and his sovereign parent. Others there were who beheld in George
IV., whether as prince or monarch, a modern Tiberius, a man of
ungovernable lusts; a ruthless libertine and a debased sensualist, without
any redeeming qualities. As a fact, apart from causes and political
prejudices, George IV. was undoubtedly a debauchee and a man of dissolute
habits;[298] but he was a man of liberal education, of cultivated taste,
of distinguished appearance, and elegant manners. He and the Count
D'Artois, brother of Louis XVI., were considered the most finished
gentlemen in Europe, so far as mannerism went. These externals glossed
over, and even lent a charm to, the vices of his youth; and the mysterious
orgies of Carlton House were associated in the public mind with the
brilliant wit of Sheridan, the manly grace of Wyndham (that _beau ideal_
of an English gentleman), the vast talent of Fox, and the enchanting grace
of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the bright particular star amid a
galaxy of minor luminaries. The respectability belonged to the court
party; the genius and fascination were ranged on the side of the Prince of
Wales.

It is difficult, even at this brief lapse of time, and when so many
eye-witnesses are yet surviving, to speak with any degree of confidence of
the state of general public morals in England as affected by the French
Revolution, and the violent Tory and Whig contests of the period. The
literature which preceded and accompanied the French Revolution went the
whole length of undermining and unsettling every established institution,
both of politics and religion, without building up an effective substitute
in place of the structure destroyed. The doctrines of moral obligation and
the balance of general convenience, which, according to the Volney,
Voltaire, and Rousseau school, were to supersede the effete and worn-out
dogmas of the Gospel, were little known and less liked in England. At the
outset of the French movements, the cause had the sympathy of the English
Liberals; but afterward, when the social and political excesses of the
time disgusted even its moderate British supporters, and when the
deep-rooted and apparently innate antagonism of the two nations was
revived by the war, the hatred and contempt of the English people for
French manners, French literature, French men, French every thing, knew no
bounds. Thus, while the leaven of Parisian philosophy was fermenting in
the breasts of all Continental Europe, it is our opinion that its
influence in England was purely of a reactionary character; and as under
the last Stuarts patriotism and libertinism went hand in hand, so, in the
end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, an
Englishman's love of his own country and his hatred of France were
associated with a detestation of the heresies of French philosophers and
patriarchs.

Of the effect produced on the morals of the people by the loose manner in
which, previous to 1753, the marriage ceremony was performed, we have the
evidence brought forward in the debates on Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Bill.
Anterior to that time, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve years of age
might marry against the will of their parents or guardians, without any
possibility of dissolving such marriage. The law, indeed, required the
publication of banns, but custom and the dispensing power had rendered
them nugatory. A dispensation could be purchased for a couple of crowns,
and the marriage could take place in a closet or a tavern, before two
friends who acted as witnesses. But dispensations were not always
necessary. There were privileged places, such as May Fair and the Fleet,
where the marriage ceremony could be performed at a moment's notice, and
without any inconvenient questions being asked.

Gretna Green, on the borders of Scotland, was long a famous place for
runaway matches. It has been questioned how far the Scotch law of marriage
was conducive to morality; but, judging from its effects upon the people
themselves, it can scarcely be considered an ally of vice. This law, which
has only been repealed within a few years, treated marriage as a civil
contract, valid if contracted before witnesses, and required no ceremony
or preparatory notice. That unions so formed were binding, admits of no
possible dispute: the question has been tried in the British courts of law
on every conceivable ground, and their legality has been always affirmed,
but in the case of marriages at May Fair or the Fleet the same certainty
did not exist. Gretna Green is the first village after passing the
dividing line between England and Scotland, and owes its fame to its
locality. It has doubtless been the scene of many heartless adventures,
for which the actual law of the land must be held accountable.

The marriage act which came into operation in 1754, had for its object the
prevention of clandestine marriages in England, but did not interfere with
the law of Scotland. It sought to effect this reform by making it
necessary to the validity of a marriage without license, that it should
take place after the proclamation of banns on three Sundays in the parish
church, before a person in orders, between single persons consenting, of
sound mind, and of the age of twenty-one years, or of the age of fourteen
in males and twelve in females, with the consent of parents and guardians,
or without their consent in cases of widowhood. The new marriage act of
1837 allows marriage, after notice to the superintendent registrars in
every district, either in the public register offices in the presence of
the superintendent registrar and the registrar of marriages, or in duly
registered places of worship.

We have no statement as to the number of marriages previous to the year
1753. All we know is, that from 1651 to 1751 the population only increased
sixteen per cent., the increase being only one million and fourteen
thousand in one hundred years. Since the act of 1753 came into operation,
the registers of marriages have been preserved in England, and show an
increase of marriages from 50,972 in the year 1756, to 63,310 in 1764.
"The rage of marrying is very prevalent," writes Lord Chesterfield in the
latter year; and again in 1767, "In short, the matrimonial phrensy seems
to rage at present, and is epidemical." After many fluctuations, the
marriages rose to seventy, eighty, ninety, and one hundred thousand
annually, and in 1851 to one hundred and fifty-four thousand two hundred
and six. Fourteen millions were added to the population, an increase of
187 per cent., or at the rate of one per cent. annually.[299]

CHAPTER XXV.

GREAT BRITAIN.--PROSTITUTION AT THE PRESENT TIME.

Influence of the Wealthy Classes.--Devices of Procuresses.--Scene at a
Railway Station.--Organization for entrapping Women.--Seduction of
Children.--Continental Traffic.--Brothel-keepers.--"Fancy Men" and
"Spooneys."--Number of Brothels in London.--Causes of Prostitution.--
Sexual Desire.--Seduction.--Over-crowded Dwellings.--Parental
Example.--Poverty and Destitution.--Public Amusements.--Ill-assorted
Marriages.--Love of Dress.--Juvenile Prostitution.--Factories.--
Obscene Publications.--Census of 1851.--Education and Crime.--Number
of Prostitutes.--Female Population of London.--Working Classes.--
Domestic Servants.--Needlewomen.--Ages of Prostitutes.--Average
Life.--Condition of Women in London.--Charitable Institutions.--Mrs.
Fry's benevolent Labors.

The corruption of court morals alone, and without circumstances of
national weight and moment, has seldom, we take it, affected the bulk of
the population. It is nevertheless undeniable that a lax morality, and, _à
fortiori_, a system of absolute profligacy among the wealthy classes of
society, will contribute in a significant degree toward the increase of
prostitution in metropolitan cities. It is in the service of her wealthy
customers and patrons that the professional procuress is chiefly employed,
and, stimulated by high gains, she plies her vile calling, and exerts all
her hellish ingenuity to discover new sources of amusement and
gratification for them.

In Fletcher's "Humorous Lieutenant," written in 1690, a court bawd is
introduced reading her minute-book, and calling over the register of the
females at her command. "Chloe, well--Chloe should fetch three hundred and
fifty crowns; fifteen; good figure; daughter of a country gentleman; her
virtue will bring me that sum, and then a riding-horse for her father out
of it; well. The merchant's wife, she don't want money. I must find a
spark of quality for her." The representation of such character is out of
vogue in these days on the English stage; but, while the proprieties are
observed, the omission is but a veiling of the subject. The reality
exists, though unseen.

In the London _Times_ of July, 1855, an incident is thus related by a
correspondent: "I was standing on a railway platform at ----, with a
friend waiting for a train, when two ladies came into the station. I was
acquainted with one of them, the younger, well. She told me she was going
to London, having been fortunate enough to get a liberal engagement as
governess in the family of the lady under whose charge she then was, and
who had even taken the trouble to come into the country to see her and her
friends, to ascertain that _she was likely in all respects to suit_. The
train coming in sight, the fares were paid, the elder lady paying both. I
saw them into the carriage, and the door being closed, I bowed to them and
rejoined my friend, who happened to be a London man about town. 'Well, I
will say,' said he, with a laugh, 'you country gentlemen are pretty
independent of public opinion. You are not ashamed of your little
transactions being known!' 'What do you mean?' I asked. 'Why, I mean your
talking to that girl and her duenna on an open platform.' 'Why, that is
Miss ----, an intimate friend of ours.' 'Well, then, I can tell you,' said
the Londoner to me, coolly, 'her friend is Madam ----, one of the most
noted procuresses in London, and she has got hold of a new victim, if she
is a victim, and no mistake.' I saw there was not a minute to lose; I
rushed to the guard of the train, and got him to wait a moment. I then
hurried to the carriage-door where the ladies were. 'Miss ----, you must
get out; that person is an unfit companion for you. Madam ----, we know
who you are.' That was one victim rescued, but how many are lost?"

In another case, the practices of a scoundrel named Phinn were made the
subject of a public warning by the Lord Mayor of London from his judicial
chair. This fellow's plan was to advertise from abroad for ladies to go to
Cologne, or other places on the Rhine, to become governesses in his
family, which was traveling, and whose governess had unexpectedly left
them, or been taken ill, or was otherwise got rid of. The candidates were
to pay their own passage to the place of rendezvous, when the appointments
of the situation were to commence. In some cases in which the practices of
this rascal had failed of their full effect, he had succeeded in
defrauding poor women of their funds, and they had found the utmost
difficulty in making their way home again.

While it is impossible to have any precognizance of the persons and
circumstances among which these wretches find their prey, some cases are
peculiarly within the scope of their operations. Young females who have
lost their natural protectors, and are brought into contact with the world
under their own guidance, are easily imposed upon by the pretended
friendship of these persons, and being under a pretense of employment
inveigled into their houses, are there kept until their fall is
accomplished by persuasion or force. It is said that women even attend
regularly at churches and Sunday-schools for the purpose of decoying
female children. They first accost them, and interest them, without making
any direct advances. The next time they proceed a little farther, and soon
invite them to accompany them a little distance, when they lead them to a
brothel. They have been known to take the children away in the presence of
the teacher, who, seeing them act as acquaintances, had no suspicion of
the real nature of their associations.[300]

The London Society for the Protection of Young Females have recorded
instances of children of eleven years of age being entrapped by
procuresses into houses of prostitution. Those who are thus decoyed are
not permitted to escape, nor to go into the streets for two or three
months. By that time they are supposed to be incapable of retracing their
steps, or to have become reconciled to their mode of life, and are
permitted to go or remain. Occasionally they are turned adrift to seek new
lodgings, their places being supplied by fresh arrivals. Some of these
children find their way home again, but the majority of them are of
course irretrievably lost, and continue in the course into which they have
been thus indoctrinated.

The procuresses have agents in different parts of London, whose business
it is to discover young persons, servant-girls and others, who are
dissatisfied with their earnings and condition in life, and who may be
considered suitable subjects. The number of servants out of place, in
London alone, is enormous--many thousands in number; and as "service is no
inheritance," such a body constitutes a very favorable field of
operations. The intermediate agents in these cases are small shop-keepers,
laundresses, charwomen, and such others as from their avocations have the
opportunity of becoming acquainted with young women in service. Common
lodging-house-keepers too, residing in the suburbs of London, contribute
their quota of assistance. Young women coming fresh from the country, and
sleeping in such places for a night, receive recommendations to
procuresses and brothel-keepers as servants. Intelligence-offices for
hiring servants, which in London are called "Servants' Bazars," and are
not under any license, are visited by these people in search of new faces.

In some cases procuresses are found to act on behalf of particular
individuals only. In one case, such a woman kept a small shop, to which
she invited servant-girls in the neighborhood after a little acquaintance.
By her assistance, aided by liberal entertainment with wines and spirits,
her employers (two men of property) were enabled to corrupt eight
servant-girls in a short space of time.

A constant trade in prostitution is carried on between London and Hamburg,
London and Paris, and London and the country. Three or four years ago a
trial took place at the Central Criminal Court (London) of a man and woman
who were engaged in the importation of females for purposes of
prostitution. The prisoners were convicted. The details of the trial show
that a regular organization existed. In some cases, Parisian prostitutes
were hired in Paris for the London market by the ordinary agents in such
contracts; in other cases, the parties in both capitals decoyed young
women into their service on pretense of reputable engagements, and shipped
them over to their consignees. Of course, every care is taken in these
matters to keep the transaction confidential; for, although the English
laws are practically most defective, still, in cases exciting any degree
of notoriety, and in which the offense can be satisfactorily established
by legal proof, prosecutions do take place.

We can not close this branch of our subject better than by once again
quoting from the Spectator, and giving a genuine letter, which, although
written a century and a half ago, is just such a one as might, for a
similar purpose, be penned at the present day. It as accurately describes
the mode in which "articles of trade" in the procuress line are disposed
of now as then.

"MY LORD,--I having a great esteem for your honor, and a better
opinion of you than of any of the quality, makes me acquaint you of an
affair that I hope will oblige you to know. I have a niece that came
to town about a fortnight ago. Her parents being lately dead, she came
to me, expecting to have found me in so good a condition as to set her
up in a milliner's shop. Her father gave fourscore pounds with her for
five years. Her time is out, and she is not sixteen: as pretty a
gentlewoman as ever you saw; a little woman, which I know your
lordship likes; well-shaped, and as fair a complexion for red and
white as ever I saw. I doubt not but your lordship will be of the same
opinion. She designs to go down about a month hence except I can
provide for her, which I can not at present. Her father was one with
whom all he had died with him, so there is four children left
destitute; so, if your lordship thinks fit to make an appointment,
where I shall wait on you with my niece, by a line or two, I stay for
your answer, for I have no place fitted up, since I left my house, fit
to entertain your honor. I told her she should go with me to see a
gentleman, a very good friend of mine; so I desire you to take no
notice of my letter by reason she is ignorant of the ways of the town.
My lord, I desire, if you meet us, to come alone, for, upon my word
and honor, you are the first that I ever mentioned her to."

Next to procuresses in this gradation of iniquity are the brothel-keepers,
who, although often procuresses, are not necessarily so. Shakspeare, who
included all human existence in the sphere of his observation, says of
them,

"A bawd! a wicked bawd!
The evil that thou causest to be done,
That is thy means to live: do thou but think
What 'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back
From such a filthy vice; say to thyself,
From their abominable and beastly touches
I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.
Canst thou believe thy living is a life?
So stinkingly depending."

Many of these persons have been prostitutes themselves, and when past
service in the one branch of business have naturally fallen into the
other. Others, without having been such, adopt the trade from inclination
or circumstances. The condition of these people and the interior of their
houses are as various as the people themselves. At the west end of London
there is a considerable degree of style; in the lower parts of the town
they are sordid and filthy habitations, fit only for deeds of darkness.
They are confined to private streets, alleys, and lanes out of the great
thoroughfares. The law is usually put in operation in England against the
brothel-keepers as the representatives of the whole class. As they get the
chief profits of the trade, so they run all the legal risks. The
indictments against them, however, are comparatively few. There is no
public prosecutor in England, as with us. The police administration of the
metropolis, perhaps the best organized, the most efficient and cheapest
department of the public service, does not include the prevention of
brothels within its duties, which are confined to the preservation of life
and property. The prosecution of brothel-keepers and abolition of their
establishments are usually undertaken by the parish authorities when the
places are so conducted as to become a nuisance to the neighborhood; and
police officers merely interfere to prevent the assemblage of prostitutes
in the public streets, or the solicitation of passengers by them.
Virtually this provision is little better than a dead letter, and the
women evade it by walking when an officer is in sight, and thus deprive
him of the only proof which would enable him to make an arrest.[301]

Some of the girls who pay exorbitant board also stipulate to give their
mistresses one half of their cash receipts, which are frequently very
large in the case of attractive women, amounting sometimes to one or two
hundred dollars a week. The mistress is treasurer, and the prostitutes
rarely succeed in receiving back what ostensibly belongs to them. The very
prosecution before mentioned originated in a French girl's being cheated
by the brothel-keeper. The clothing is furnished by the mistress, and for
this she charges prices which absorb the entire earnings of the girls.
She even contrives to furnish them with such a number of showy and useless
garments that she keeps them always in her debt, and so has a lien on each
to prevent her leaving as long as she is a profitable member of the
establishment. Some girls who have been seduced have, when entering on a
life of prostitution, extensive and valuable wardrobes. The mistress runs
them into debts of her own contracting, and if they become dissatisfied
with their treatment and desire to leave, they are held for the debt. By
the common law of England, all debts incurred for an immoral purpose are
void, but this law is of little value to those who are ignorant of its
existence; besides which, the brothel-keepers have possession of the
booty, and thus effectually drive the debtor to an adjustment of the
matters in dispute.

Such of the brothel-keepers as have no lawful husbands form intimacies
with some man whom they support. In slang dialect, there is a class of men
called "spooneys," who support the women, or furnish them with funds when
necessary. They set them up in business, become responsible for their
debts, and assist them in all their difficulties. The "fancy men" are
those who do nothing for them, but live at their expense. The lower class
of brothel-keepers have no "spooneys," but they invariably have "fancy
men," who act as bullies, and settle by physical force any disputes that
may arise between the inmates and their visitors. These men spend the day
in taverns, and the night in the particular brothels to which they are
attached, and are frequently felons of the deepest dye.

Some of the brothel-keepers are married women, and even mothers of
families. The husbands are lazy, worthless wretches, addicted to gambling
and drinking, and brutally indifferent to the sources from which their
luxuries are supplied. In some cases the wealthier individuals have been
known to send their children to good schools away from home, and to have
kept them in ignorance of their own wretched vocation. Thus sin entails
its own punishment.

The number of brothels in London has been variously estimated. The whole
number of houses at the last census was three hundred thousand and upward.
Among them it was calculated, and probably correctly, that there were five
thousand brothels, including houses of assignation. The rents of these
establishments vary as much as the houses and situations (from fifteen
hundred down to one hundred dollars a year). In good neighborhoods we
should be slow to believe that landlords had any previous knowledge of the
purposes to which their houses are to be applied. Independent of moral
objection, such a house deteriorates the character of the property.
Indeed, the clauses in leases of the great London properties are very
strict, and include all objectionable trades as causes of forfeiture.

The owners of the houses are of all classes. The Almonry of Westminster,
once the abode of Caxton, which within these six or eight years has been
pulled down, was one of the vilest aggregations of vice and crime in
existence. This was the property of the dean and chapter of Westminster
Abbey. The common law of England, as already mentioned in the matter of
dress, prohibits the recovery of the rents of houses let for immoral
purposes. Many of the brothel-keepers themselves hire houses, furnish
them, and sublet them. It has been made a matter of reproach that
landlords should, even indirectly, derive income from such sources. But
poverty and vice are closely allied; where poverty exists, vice will come.
It is impossible for a landlord to exclude any class of tenants in a
particular neighborhood suited to them, and those who know aught about the
improvement and ventilation of large cities, and the breaking up of bad
neighborhoods, are well aware that they are accompanied with a fearful
amount of extra misery to the very poor.

In a subsequent portion of this work we have endeavored to analyze the
causes of prostitution as it exists in the city of New York. It may be
reasonably supposed that the same reasons would be applicable to the
kindred people of Great Britain. We give the following, mainly deduced
from English writers, as indicating the sentiments of the best-informed in
that kingdom as to the sources of so deep-rooted an evil, which must be
sought in a variety of circumstances, national as well as personal.

A professional man, Mr. Tait, to whose pages we have turned for
information as to prostitution in Great Britain, classifies the causes as
natural and accidental. The natural he subdivides into licentiousness of
disposition, irritability of temper, pride and love of dress, dishonesty
and love of property, and indolence. The accidental include seduction,
ill-assorted marriages, low wages, want of employment, intemperance,
poverty, defective education, bad example of parents, obscene
publications, and a number of minor causes. Without assenting to the
classification, we will accept the enumeration.

The operation of sexual desire on the female sex is a mooted question
among English writers on prostitution. Whether it is latent, and never
powerful enough to provoke evil courses until it is itself stimulated and
roused into energy by external circumstances, or whether it be an active
principle impelling the ill-regulated female mind to sacrifice
self-respect and reputation in the gratification of dominant impulses, has
been frequently discussed. Many consider that its influence on the
inducement of prostitution is no less unsatisfactory of solution than the
physiological problem, alleging that those who have followed the bent of
their natural appetites would undoubtedly prefer to ascribe their lapse to
other circumstances. This subject is treated more fully elsewhere, and it
is needless to repeat here the views there expressed.

That sexual desire, _once aroused_, does exercise a potent influence on
the female organization, can not be questioned. Self-abuse, which is a
perverted indulgence of the natural instinct, is well known to English
physicians as being practiced among young women to a great extent, though
in a far less degree than among young men. Its frightful influences upon
the latter have been the subject of the liveliest anxiety to those who
have made the care of youth their profession, and this source of trouble
is shared to some degree by female teachers. Such subjects seem by common
consent to be banished from rational investigation by the majority of
people, as if shutting one's eyes to the fact would prove its
non-existence. This false delicacy is more injurious than is commonly
supposed; for the unchecked indulgence in such habits is not only
destructive of health, but in the highest degree inimical to the moral
feeling, and directly subversive of all self-respect, leaving but one step
to complete the final descent.

SEDUCTION.--The effect of undue familiarity, and too unrestrained an
intercourse between the sexes, can not be exaggerated as paving the way
for the last lapse from virtue. It is precisely these familiarities which,
in ill-regulated minds, excite the first impulses of desire; and even
where such a result does not immediately flow from too free an
intercourse, it breaks down that modesty and reserve which so much enhance
the beauty of woman, and constitute her best safeguard. The inclined plane
by which the female who permits the first freedom glides unchecked to
final ruin, though gradual, is very difficult to retrace. The unrestricted
intercourse permitted, or rather encouraged between the sexes at places
of public amusement much facilitates the opportunities of seduction.
Prostitutes frequently, and we believe with truth, allege seduction as the
first step toward their abandoned course of life, and the allegation
itself should induce a sympathy for the misfortune of their present
existence. Although in some cases the story can not be implicitly
believed, at the same time there is no doubt that a heartless seduction is
but too frequent a circumstance in such cases, and contributes its sad
quota of heavy account to prostitution.

It is a general opinion that cases of (so called) seduction in England
occur between employers and female servants, and that of these are vast
numbers. By seduction in such circumstances is meant the inducement to do
wrong by promises or other suasives, in opposition to the commonly
received idea, which makes the fall the result of strong personal
attachment. In a work like this we must notice the largest definitions,
and can not consistently limit ourselves to the inducement customarily
brought forward in law proceedings, namely, "a promise of marriage." In
this sense, illegitimate children may be said to be the consequence of
seduction. Certainly not all of them, however, because many persons,
voluntarily and with their eyes open, enter upon cohabitation
arrangements; but doubtless many are. Once seduced, of course the female
becomes herself the seducer of the inexperienced.

The policy of English law, of late years, has been to compel the woman to
protect herself--in the main, a wise policy. But the balance of human
justice is very unevenly maintained. The male, the real delinquent, incurs
no legal punishment, and but little social reprobation. Actions for
seduction are very unpopular, and those brought bear but an infinitesimal
proportion to the occurrence of the crime. The _onus_ of proof in bastardy
affiliations of course rests upon the woman. Of late years the alterations
in the law have thrown great difficulties in her way by what is called the
necessity of corroborative evidence, namely, some kind of admission,
direct or indirect, or some overt act which will furnish oral or
documentary testimony other than the woman's unsupported statement. This
may be strictly expedient, but it renders the man almost irresponsible if
he only play his part with knavish prudence. Lastly, popular feeling is
against charges of rape: acquittal is very frequent, and the usual
rebuttal is to impeach the character of the prosecutrix. The opinion of
one of England's greatest judges has passed into a proverb: "No charge so
easy to make, none so difficult to disprove." Queen Elizabeth's mode of
proving her disbelief of rape is also expressive of public opinion.

From the combination of these circumstances, it would seem that seduction
must, almost as a matter of course, lead to prostitution, inasmuch as, in
ordinary English parlance, the mother of a bastard and a prostitute are
almost synonymous.

OVERCROWDED DWELLINGS.--The natural impulses of animal instinct in both
sexes seem to be implicated in the effect of crowded sleeping apartments,
as met with in the habitations of the poor both in town and country. In
the latter we have the show, and sometimes the reality, of family life and
virtuous poverty. In the towns we find abodes of poverty sometimes honest,
sometimes in closest propinquity or intimacy with vice, and there too we
have the dwelling-places of the lowest depravity and vagabondism.

Those who have not given their attention to the condition of the poor, and
the relation which their lives hold to the ordinary habits of decency and
morality, have much difficulty in comprehending, or even believing,
statements which embody the plainest every-day truths. It is hard to
realize things as they are, if the mind has been full of ideal pictures of
things as they should be. The Dives of society has been often reproached
with his ignorance of Lazarus. The sin lies exactly in that ignorance. As
Carlyle finely says, "The duty of Christian society is to find its work,
and to do it." Negative virtue is of no practical use to the community.
But yet the ignorance is natural enough, and no easier of removal than
other ignorance. It has been generally attributed to the wealthy and upper
classes of society, but it exists just the same, differing only a little
in degree, in the middle class and moderately rich members of the English
social system.

The misery and inconvenience which the poor suffer from the straitness of
their domestic arrangements are beyond belief. Grown-up girls and boys
sleep in the same bed; brothers and sisters, to say nothing of less
intimate relations, are in the closest contiguity; and even strangers, who
are admitted into the little home to help in eking out the rent, are
placed on the same family footing. This momentous question to the moral
well-being of the poor has excited very lively interest in England, and
has called into active operation several philanthropic associations,
which have in view the employment of capital in improving and cheapening
the dwellings of the working classes.[302]

In London this system of close lodging was carried to a fearful pitch. In
some places from five to thirteen persons slept in a single bed, while in
the country the evil was nearly as bad, although, from the slight
restraint imposed by family ties, the actual evil is positively less;
though the moral contamination is of nearly the same extent, and paves the
way for other relations out of doors. The facts which justify these
conclusions are to be found in a variety of shapes--parliamentary reports,
statistical tables, appeals from clergymen, addresses from philanthropic
associations, etc., etc.[303]

The Honorable and Reverend S. O. Osborne, a clergyman well known for his
philanthropic exertions in behalf of the poor, says of country life in
England:

"From infancy to puberty the laborer's children sleep in the same room
with his wife and himself; and whatever attempts at decency may be
made, and I have seen many ingenious and most praiseworthy attempts,
still there is the fact of the old and the young, married and
unmarried, of both sexes, all herded together in one and the same
sleeping apartment. * * * * I do not choose to put on paper the
disgusting scenes that I have known to occur from the promiscuous
crowding of the sexes together. _Seeing, however, to what the mind of
the young female is exposed from her very childhood, I have long
ceased to wonder at the otherwise seeming precocious licentiousness of
conversation which may be heard in every field where many of the young
are at work together._"

Mr. A. Austin, Assistant Poor-Law Commissioner, says:

"The sleeping of boys and girls, young men and young women, in beds
almost touching one another, must have the effect of breaking down the
great barriers between the sexes. The accommodation for sleeping is
such as necessarily to create early and illicit familiarity between
the sexes."

Without entering into disgusting details, the pain of perusing which could
add nothing to the value of the statements, the conclusion is indisputable
that much of prostitution, if not of prostitution for hire, certainly of
prostitution from corrupt and profligate motives, is engendered by the
vicious habits induced by habitual proximity of the sexes in early life.
The prostitutes themselves frequently assign these habits as the
commencement of their career of vice, and some even admit the breach of
the closest natural ties during early youth, by reason of the too great
facilities thus offered.[304] The great importance of this want of decency
and propriety in family life can not be overrated. The contagious nature
of vice is proverbial; and it is almost impossible to imagine the power
attained by ill-conditioned children, and the fatal readiness with which
their sinful words and practices are propagated.

The cheap lodging-houses are a pendant to the close-packed dwellings of
the poor, although they do not produce the same early pernicious results
as indecency and immorality in family life. The latter prepare the way to
the scenes of the common lodging-house, in which the lowest depth of vice
is speedily reached. Here prostitution is habitual--a regular institution
of the place. The smallest imaginable quantities of food can be purchased;
adults, youths, and children of both sexes are received, and herd
promiscuously together; the prices of beds are of the lowest (from three
to six cents); no questions are asked, and the place is free to all. A
new-comer is soon initiated, or rather forced into all the mysteries of
iniquity. Obscenity and blasphemy are the staple conversation of the
inmates; every indecency is openly performed; the girls recite aloud
their experiences of life; ten or a dozen sleep in one bed, many in a
state of nudity. Indeed, the details of these places are horrible beyond
description. Unmitigated vice and lustful orgies reign, unchecked by
precept or example, and the point of rivalry is as to who shall excel in
filth and abomination.

EXAMPLE is the next immediate cause in what may be considered the natural
series. There are a few prostitutes who have children. That these latter
should follow the same course is quite in the common course of events,
although considerable anxiety is occasionally evinced by such women to
have their children brought up to better courses. Such redemption is all
but impossible. In ordinary life, however, the mind of youth is often
perverted by direct evil example in the elders; and, as we have already
remarked, the corruption of the human affections in their
fountain-head--family life--where they ought to be sweetest and purest, is
more fatally demoralizing, and more certain to insure eventual ruin than
almost any other. Fathers and mothers are both wanting often enough in
their duty, although it is a matter of universal faith that the influence
and example of the father are of less importance than that of the mother.
A bad man may have virtuous children, a bad woman hardly ever. There are
cases where the mother and daughter sleep in the same bed, each with a
male partner. In the city of Edinburgh there are two mothers, prostitutes,
each with four daughters, prostitutes; five prostitute mothers each with
three prostitute daughters, ten such with two daughters each, and
twenty-four such with one daughter each, all following the practices of
the mothers.[305]

Such influences brought to bear on the young are irresistible. This may
perhaps account for the number of sisters who carry on prostitution. The
effect of mere sisterly example would be sufficient to account for the
circumstance, but the parental becomes almost a compulsion, inasmuch as
the parent (in such circumstances, the mother) will not only connive at,
but be the main cause of her child's ruin for her own direct profit and
advantage. This, indeed, seems more accordant with our ideas of the
natural tendencies of prostitutes and procuresses, than that such persons
should be excessively anxious for their children's purity and moral
welfare.

POVERTY is an integral part of nearly all the conditions of life which we
have to consider as incentives to prostitution. _In some instances, more,
perhaps, than may be generally credited, poverty is a direct and proximate
cause of this vice._ In other words, "_women previously and otherwise
virtuous do prostitute their bodies for bread_." In most of the cases
enumerated except that purely natural, but rare one, innate sexual desire,
poverty is a remote cause. From the number of the human race who are under
its griping, chilling pressure, poverty may be set down as a fruitful
source of prostitution.

The connection of political circumstances with the phases of public morals
is more intimate than the consideration of the superficial differences of
the two matters would at first sight imply. But an attentive comparison of
the state of public prosperity with the state of public crime will show
that crime is somewhat dependent on food: the man with a well-filled
stomach is no foe to order. Prostitution, as a means of supplying the
cravings of hunger, is part of the same connection. It is true that in
England there are poor-laws and work-houses, from and in which every
destitute person, without reference to character, has a right to food and
shelter. In the first place, however, the work-houses are objects of
unmitigated aversion to the poorer classes. Various rules, in themselves
hard, but rendered necessary by consideration for the rate-payers as well
as for the beneficiaries, such as separation of husband and wife while
receiving relief, separation of child and parent, etc., make the
work-house system odious to the worthy and honest poor; while the strict
rules, and the restraint and discipline enforced within the walls, make it
still more odious to those who place their happiness in license and
irregularity; added to this, in populous and poor districts, the claims
upon the work-house in seasons of distress are too numerous for its
capabilities. It is an awful truth that, notwithstanding the enormous
revenues, nearly fifty millions of dollars per annum, collected for poor
relief, and the immense establishments instituted throughout the country
for the support and shelter of the distressed, sometimes the number of
applicants is so great that their demands can not be met. Possibly, if
these unfortunates could be distributed throughout the kingdom, so that
the poverty of one spot could be balanced by the comparative prosperity of
another, the fearful starvation in the midst of plenty, which is
occasionally witnessed, need not occur. But in the mean while, and until
the time when all the schemes and devices of modern improvement and
advancement shall be finally perfected, and universal happiness attained,
there is a mass of inconceivable wretchedness to be dealt with. In
"Household Words" for November, 1855, Mr. Dickens gives a harrowing
picture of London distress, of which he was himself an eye-witness.

It was a dark, rainy evening, and close against the wall of Whitechapel
Work-house lay five bundles of rags. Mr. Dickens and his friend looked at
them, and attempted to rouse them in vain. They knocked at the door, were
admitted, saw the master of the work-house, and asked him if he knew there
were five human beings--females--lying on the ground outside, cold and
hungry. He did--at first he was annoyed--such applications were
frequent--how could he meet them?--the house was full--the casual ward was
full--what could he do more? When he found that Mr. Dickens's aim was
inquiry, not fault-finding, he was softened. The case was certainly
shocking: how was it to be met? Mr. Dickens said he had heard outside that
these wretched beings had been there two nights already. It was very
possible. He could not deny or affirm it. There were often more in the
same plight--sometimes twenty or thirty. He (the master) was obliged to
give preference to women with children. The place was full. Unable to do
more, Mr. Dickens left. On getting outside, he roused one of these poor
wretches. She looked up, but said nothing. He asked her if she was hungry;
she merely looked an affirmative. Would she know where to get something to
eat? she again assented in the same way. "Then take this, and for God's
sake go and get something." She took it, made no sign of thanks--"gathered
herself up and slunk away--wilted into darkness, silent and heedless of
all things."

To what will not such misery as this compel suffering human nature? In
times of commercial depression the police of London note an increase of
street prostitution. It is said in the cities of England that the
permanent prostitution of each place has a numerical relation to the means
of occupation. In Edinburgh there are but few chances of employing female
labor. Glasgow, Dundee, and Paisley are the seats of manufactures, and
employ female labor extensively. According to Tait, the prostitution of
Edinburgh far exceeds its proportion of prostitution to population as
compared with the manufacturing towns.[306]

It seems unnecessary to multiply instances of poverty and indigence,
inasmuch as the fact is most miserably indisputable: shirt-making at three
cents, pantaloon-making at five or six cents--unceasing labor of fourteen
hours a day bringing in only sixty or eighty cents a week, and competition
even to obtain this. As the London _Times_ once said, "The needle is the
normal employment of every English woman; what, then, must be the
condition of those tens of thousands who have nothing but that to depend
upon?" Of late years, too, a still farther competition has been introduced
in that ingenious invention of our country, the sewing machine.

In order to show the relation between unpaid and excessive labor and
prostitution, we will instance a few cases.

One young woman said she made moleskin pantaloons (a very strong, stiff
fabric) at the rate of fifteen cents per pair. She could manage twelve
pairs per week when there was full employment; sometimes she could not get
work. She worked from six in the morning until ten at night. With full
work she could make two dollars a week, out of which she had to expend
thirty-eight cents for thread and candle. On an average, in consequence of
short work, she could not make more than seventy-five cents a week. Her
father was dead, and she had to support her mother, who was sixty years of
age. This girl endured her mode of existence for three years, till at
length she agreed to live with a young man. When she made this statement
she was within three months of her confinement. She felt the disgrace of
her condition, to relieve her from which she said she prayed for death,
and would not have gone wrong if she could have helped it.[307]

Such a case as this scarcely comes within the term prostitution, but she
stated that many girls at the shop advised prostitution as a resource, and
that others should do as they did, as by that means they had procured
plenty to eat and clothes to wear. She gave it as her opinion that none of
the thousands of girls who work at the same business earn a livelihood by
their needle, but that all must and do prostitute themselves _to eke out a
subsistence_.

Another woman, a case more directly in point, also said she could not earn
more than seventy-five cents. She was a widow, and had three children
when her husband died. Herself and her children had to live on these
seventy-five cents. She might have gone into the work-house, and been
there better supported than by her labor. Had she done so, the laws of the
work-house are inexorable, she would have been separated from her
children. Although one child died, she was now so reduced that she could
not procure food. She took to the streets for a living, and she declared
that hundreds of married and single women were doing the same thing for
the same reasons.

A widow who had buried all her children could not support herself. From
sheer inability to do so she took to prostitution.

A remarkably fine-looking young woman, whose character for sobriety,
honesty, and industry was vouched by a number of witnesses as
unimpeachable, had been compelled to work at fine shirts, by which she
could not earn more, on an average, than thirty-five cents a week. She had
a child, and, being unwilling to go to the work-house, she was driven by
indigence to the streets. Struck with remorse and shame, and for the sake
of her child determined to abandon prostitution, she fasted whole days,
sleeping in winter-time in sheds. Once her child's legs froze to her side,
and necessity again compelled her to take to her former course. Her father
had been an Independent preacher.

These circumstances, and innumerable others, will establish incontestably
the intimate relation which poverty bears to prostitution. A consideration
of such circumstances as the foregoing, and the every-day observation of
hosts of others of a similar character which will come within the
cognizance of any one who searches into human motives, must incline all
but the most outrageously virtuous to judge more tenderly of the failings
and errors of their fellow-creatures.

All young females engaged in sewing are liable to the same distress, and
the same resource against it is, of course, open to all. The hard labor
and long hours are the least part of the evil, although in that light even
there would be ground for commiseration.[308] The real grievance is that
the most patient and industrious can not, by any hours of labor, earn a
sufficiency to support themselves. It is true that the work-house is the
legal refuge of the poor; but the tender mercies of the work-house have
passed into a proverb. The policy of the poor-laws as administered is to
deter the needy from applying for relief except in very extreme cases.
Hence many rules are made, and much formality is interposed, which render
the legal provisions so irksome and unbearable that many fly to the
nearest means of satisfying their wants rather than demand their legal
rights.

DOMESTIC SERVANTS are, in respect of their removal from absolute want
while in service, more happily situated than those who are thus dependent
upon the needle. But they are open to influences of another kind--we mean
seduction by masters and male members of the household. Where this evil
begins is an exceedingly difficult question to determine. When corrupted,
they become themselves, by the very opportunities they possess, ready and
dangerous instruments of corruption, and contribute to disseminate the
poisons of immorality and of bodily disease. We have already incidentally
mentioned that this class is at times open to a great deal of poverty and
distress, namely, when out of service, and at such times they are
peculiarly the mark for the lures of persons who make seduction their
business and profitable occupation.

The domestic servants and the sewing-women are the principal adult
laborers of Great Britain, except the factory girls. In 1851 there were,

Female domestic servants 905,165
Dress-makers 270,000
Seamstresses 72,940
Stay-makers 12,969

and of these one third were under twenty years of age.

PLACES OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT in England are few when compared with those of
the Continent, and their influence must be proportionately less. On the
Continent dancing saloons are a prominent feature; in England this
character of entertainment is almost unknown. In London there are a few
places of this sort, such, for example, as Cremorne Gardens. Mr. Tait lays
some stress on the evil effects of dancing-houses in Edinburgh. We should
be inclined to think the cases of misconduct traceable to these places
actually few in number, though not unworthy of notice. The single females
who frequent dancing-rooms, theatres, and other similar places in England,
without friends or family escort, have very little virtue to risk. The
country fairs are far more injurious; they are indiscriminately attended
by all ages and sexes, and their effects upon the female agricultural
population are often very pernicious. Greenwich Fair, a three days' scene
of rollicking and junketing, was held at Easter and Whitsuntide, in the
outskirts of London, but is now abolished. It had its uses a century or
two ago, but recently had been attended by all the idlers of London, of
both sexes, and was justly dreaded by the friends of youth. It is
proverbial that more young women were debauched at Greenwich Fair
(allowing for its duration) than at any other place in England.

ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES are decidedly a cause of prostitution. Certainly
breach of the marriage vow is one thing, prostitution for hire another. In
estimating the number of prostitutes in Edinburgh at eight hundred, Mr.
Tait adds two hundred to them under the head of married women, which he
considers accrue from ill-assorted marriages. That the marriage was
ill-assorted is plainly shown by its result, and that want of congeniality
and temperament is the cause of prostitution to the extent thus named we
have no ground to question. He speaks of such women selling their favors
generally to one lover only, occasionally to any one who will pay;
although the latter forms what is commonly known as prostitution, no other
construction can be put upon the former.

LOVE OF DRESS is another incident which many writers, and Mr. Tait among
them, have introduced into the direct causes of prostitution. We should
consider it doubtful if any woman ever positively sold her virtue for a
new gown or a knot of ribbons. Of course, after the Rubicon is crossed,
all subsequent steps are easy, and may be taken from any motive. The love
of admiration, which, under regulation, is sometimes a commendable
instinct, when uncontrolled, becomes a snare. The love of dress is a
modification of this sentiment, and may help to work out the effect when
other causes have overthrown the balance of the mind.

JUVENILE PROSTITUTION.--We have now arrived, in the consideration of the
causes of prostitution in England, at decidedly the most painful of all
the phenomena connected with this condition of human life, namely, the
immense extent of juvenile depravity. We have already sketched the evils
of insufficient house accommodation and its noxious effects upon the
morals of the rising generation. In this connection, also, bad example is
particularly prominent; perhaps, indeed, with respect to the young, evil
communications are the greatest dangers.

The work-house was formerly one great hot-bed of vice, and the greatest
license and irregularity prevailed in every department. That children born
or brought up in such a place should grow up debased was perfectly in the
expected course of things. Now, however, under the new Poor-Laws
Commission, the scene is stripped of its more revolting accessories. The
sexes do not mingle, children do not associate with adults: some modicum
of education is given. The sweetest and holiest of all ties, that of
family, is yet wanting, and self-respect is totally deficient. In the
absence of these protective influences, the wonder is, not that so many
children should turn out ill, but that so many girls should turn out well.
Formerly, also, there was a system of compulsory pauper apprenticeship,
and the interests of the parish apprentice out of doors were very little
looked after. This, again, has been altered, both in town and country, and
the improvement is marked.

Even with all this, it is recorded in the London _Times_ (June, 1848) that
a correspondent, visiting one of the metropolitan work-houses, was struck
by the happy and healthy appearance of the female children, and inquired
of the master of the work-house what became of all of them. He was
informed that they were sent out, at the age of fourteen, as servants or
in other capacities, and that _nine tenths_ of them, after coming backward
and forward from their places to the work-house, eventually got corrupted
and took to the streets.

FACTORIES are made accountable by many writers for much juvenile
immorality and prostitution. Factories in England are, as most of our
readers are aware, institutions materially differing in some respects from
those of our own country. In no feature is there so wide a dissimilarity
as in the character of the work-people. The factory children of England
are the offspring of the poorest of the community, whose only heritage is
pauperism, with wages at no time too good, and often at starvation point.
The miserable earnings of the factory operatives are still farther reduced
by constant strikes and contests with their employers, in which it is a
foregone conclusion that the workmen must yield. Macaulay tells us that,
two centuries ago, the employment of children in factories, and the
dependence of the parent's bread upon the children's earnings, was a
notorious fact, much condemned by philanthropists. The introduction of
machinery and the value of child-labor gradually aggravated all the
horrors of the factory system, the enormity of which called down the
indignation of the non-manufacturing community, and compelled the
protective interference of Parliament. The Ten Hours' Bill, the Factory
Childrens' Education regulations, appointment by government of factory
commissioners and inspectors, have all contributed to ameliorate the hard
lot of the factory child. The employment of very young children in
factories is still to be regretted, or rather its necessity, for probably
it is better they should be employed in a not very laborious occupation
than left to roam the streets.

The direct influence of factory work on juvenile prostitution is insisted
on by many writers; by others, some reservations have been introduced,
such as, The young associate only during hours of recreation. In business
hours they are generally employed in different parts of the building. They
have a certain amount of education. Their parents are generally, or very
often, employed in the same establishment. Assume that these children were
not in the factory, where would they be, and what could they do? Are evil
influences rife only in the factory? The overcrowding at home; the
frequent drunkenness and debauchery of their parents and associates; the
endless indigence; the frequent visits to the work-houses, are all
circumstances which have been considered and argued in the case. But of
the fact of juvenile prostitution and depravity in factory populations
none can doubt; of its being exclusively or chiefly attributable to
factory life, others are not certain.

That children who labor in factories, and thereby contribute to the family
earnings and their own support, could do better in the present condition
of English society, is doubtful. Mill-owners are required to devote a
portion of their time to education. Sunday-schools are established;
personal attention is paid by leading mill-owners to the improvement of
the poor; many build good cottages (for which, by the way, they receive a
good interest in the way of rent); many inspect the schools; some build
school-houses and pay the teachers. The good example of benevolent
mill-owners in a measure compels others, whose moral perceptions are less
keen, to follow them.

We would not be supposed to argue that English cotton factories are types
of the Millennium, any more than are similar institutions on this side of
the Atlantic. In fact, we have a very decided opinion on the matter, but
common honesty requires that the opinion of all who have investigated the
subject should be fairly recorded. In submitting the various arguments
adduced in favor of factory labor and its bearing on immorality, we
present merely subjects for consideration.

DISEASE IN CHILDREN.--A fact of importance to public health is the disease
acquired by children. In the first address issued by the London Society
for the Protection of young Females, it is stated that in three of the
London hospitals during the preceding eight years there had been no less
than two thousand seven hundred cases of venereal disease in children
between eleven and sixteen years of age.

Dr. Ryan, on the same subject, speaking from his professional experience
as medical officer of several charities, mentions the shock he felt on
seeing numerous cases of venereal disease in children.

Mr. Miller, of Glasgow, testifies to the same fact.

The very imperfect data which exist on this important branch of our
subject will not enable one to form any sound opinion on the spread of
disease from these juvenile sources. It is, however, reasonable to
conclude, from the few facts, and from the very facilities afforded at
their age for intercommunication between children, that the spread of
disease from direct contamination, and the deterioration of health and
constitution from unknown excesses, must be very great.

OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS.--Of these there are vast numbers, and the extent of
juvenile contamination from this source must be very great. The Society
for the Suppression of Vice, in London, reports having seized, at
different periods, thousands of obscene books, copper-plates, and prints,
all of which they caused to be destroyed. Within a period of three years
they procured the destruction of

Blasphemous and impure books 279
Obscene publications 1,162
Obscene songs (on sheets) 1,495
Obscene prints 10,493

and even this was but an item in the calculation.

The police of London take but little interest in this matter. The
above-mentioned society is the principal agent in the repression of this
infamous species of depravity. There are certain places in London in which
the trade still lives and flourishes, notwithstanding the attacks made
upon it. Holywell Street, in the Strand, and the vicinity of Leicester
Square, are places of disgraceful notoriety in this respect. The secret
is, that wherever there is a public demand, no repressive laws will ever
prevent trade. The attempt at repression but makes it more profitable.

To the corruption of the youthful mind and the preparatives for
prostitution these publications must contribute. It is matter of question
what number of prostitutes have become such directly from this cause. The
results of visitorial inspection do not show among London prostitutes, any
more than elsewhere, a taste for books and prints of an obscene tendency.
Their taste in literature is that which would prevail among persons of low
intellectual calibre. Startling tales, romances with a plentiful spice of
horrors, thrilling love-stories, highly wrought and exaggerated
narratives, are their taste. In the practice of prostitution, the use of
indecent or prurient prints is chiefly for the adornment of visitors'
rooms in brothels.

EDUCATION.--In the relations between education and crime are found no
distinctive marks whereby prostitution may be separated from any other
development of vice or immorality. It is to be presumed that the same
general laws which apply to the unregulated manifestation of the passions
apply to those with which prostitution is chiefly implicated.

In the present generation it is generally assumed that crime is the
offspring of ignorance, therefore Education! is the cry. Education has
become a party watchword in England. The necessity of education, the
quality and the quantity, with all the minor propositions that branch off
from the main question, are, and have been for years, the subject of the
hottest polemics. But recent results, evolved from statistical inquiries,
would seem to call up the previous question as to the value of education
at all. The present work is not the place in which to discuss the fact, or
to point out a remedy, or indicate the deficiencies of a system which can
suffer such a question to arise. We give the facts. From the Parliamentary
reports of 1846-1848, it appears that the number of educated criminals in
England was at that time more than twice, and in Scotland more than three
and a half that of the uneducated:

+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Years. | England. | Scotland. |
|--------|------------------------|-----------------------|
| | Educated.| Uneducated.| Educated.| Uneducated.|
|--------|-----------|------------|----------|------------|
| 1846 | 16,963 | 7698 | 3155 | 903 |
| 1847 | 19,307 | 9050 | 3562 | 1048 |
| 1848 | 20,176 | 9671 | 3985 | 911 |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

In calculating a percentage on certain criminal returns during the
undermentioned years, the results were:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |1839.|1840.|1841.|1842.|1843.|1844.|1845.|1846.|
|--------------------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
|Uneducated |33·53|33·32|33·21|32·35|31·00|29·77|30·61|30·66|
|Imperfectly educated|53·48|55·57|56·67|58·32|57·60|59·28|58·34|59·51|
|Well educated |10·07| 8·29| 7·40| 6·77| 8·02| 8·12| 8·38| 7·71|
|Superior education | 0·32| 0·37| 0·45| 0·22| 0·47| 0·42| 0·37| 0·34|
|Unascertained | 2·60| 2·45| 2·27| 2·34| 2·91| 2·41| 2·30| 1·78|
| |-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· |100· |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

This table, which on its face conclusively establishes an increase in
criminals imperfectly educated, and a decrease both in those who could
read and write well, and those who could not read or write at all, may be,
and has been made, the subject of much pseudo-philosophical remark, as
proving the injury of education. In the first place, it only shows the
effects of partial education, if it shows any thing. But the misfortune of
statistical results is that they are relied on too implicitly, with a
narrow-minded subservience to figures and facts, whereas they require to
be accompanied with explanatory circumstances, which may either enhance
their value up to the point of mathematical demonstration, or may so pare
them away as to render them perfectly worthless. In the consideration of
the above figures, all that would seem to appear is that there was an
increase of education keeping pace with the increase of population, and
that in the statistics of crime the increase of imperfectly educated
people would be as perceptible as elsewhere. Mere reading and writing,
unaccompanied by moral elevation, will not reform mankind. Alone, they
will not prevent a hungry man from satisfying his hunger. The words of
Cæsar apply to criminals equally as to conspirators:

"Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o'nights:
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look."

Pursuing this question, and turning to the population tables of 1851, the
period of the last census, we find that Middlesex was the most generally
educated county, taking the signature of the marriage register as the test
of education. Eighty-two per cent. signed the marriage register, yet in
the list of criminality Middlesex stood third of all the counties of
England. Gloucester, which was first in crime, was far from being the most
ignorant. There sixty-five per cent. signed the register. The general
average of the whole population by the same list is forty per cent. Here
again is a qualifying circumstance. London is included in Middlesex, with
its vast seething mass of human misery and corruption to swell the record
of crime, while its general population is, of course, about the most
intelligent of the British empire, so that in the same spot is found at
once the greatest intelligence and the greatest misery. We are not aware
of such qualifying circumstances in Gloucestershire.

Dr. Ryan, writing on this point, refers to the Metropolitan Police Report
for 1837, by which it appears that of prostitutes arrested in that year
there

Could not read or write 1773
" read and write imperfectly 1237
" " " " well 89
Had received a good education 4
Total 3103

This is a tolerably fair criterion; for although, as before said, the
police only interfere with peace-breakers, and all these came under the
technical term of "drunk and disorderly," still we believe the state of
prostitution in London to be such that an average proportion of all
classes of courtesans pass through the hands of the police during the
year.

Mr. Tait, speaking of Edinburgh, confirms the view put forward as to
educational influences. A large proportion of the Edinburgh prostitutes
(eighty-seven per cent.) read and write. The Scottish peasantry are
perhaps the best-educated in Europe, and those girls who come to Edinburgh
from the country are no exception to the rule. The uneducated, Mr. Tait
thinks, are city girls.

As to the religious denomination of prostitutes, for that a prostitute may
have a religion we may say, in the kindly spirit of Corporal Trim, but
doubtingly, "A negro has a soul, your honor." In Edinburgh they include
all sects except Independents, Baptists, and Quakers. There may be those
who smile at the idea of a prostitute having any belief. How many of us
are there whose actions are accordant with our religious professions? Of
London we have no data on this point.

ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS seem, by common consent of most writers, to be classed
with details of prostitution. In France, it is said by those who profess
intimate local knowledge, there is almost a prejudice against marriage,
although it can be performed as a legal ceremony. We think Bayle St. John
states this fact. In the poorer districts of London, the east end, for
example, it is notorious that numbers live in a state of concubinage.
Again: in the country, and away from the dense population of towns, a
woman of immoral habits may often be found who has had two or three
illegitimate children by different men with whom she has cohabited. Such a
woman would most probably have been a prostitute in a town; as it is, she
is no better; still, she is not a prostitute for hire. But to proceed to
details.

The number of illegitimate births in every thousand births in the various
counties is as follows:

Cumberland 108
Norfolk 105
Hereford 100
Salop 99
Nottingham 91
Cheshire 89
Westmoreland 87
Suffolk 81
Derby 81
Berks 79
Leicester 79
North Wales 78
South Wales 72
York 71
Stafford 69
Sussex 68
Cambridge 66
Lincoln 64
Middlesex 40

Cumberland is a pastoral and mountainous county, with a thinly-settled
population. Norfolk is an agricultural and grazing county, broken up into
large farms. Neither county has many large towns. Stafford is a
manufacturing county, with a long list of thickly-populated small towns,
in which as great indigence and misery can be found as in any part of
England. Middlesex contains London. Here, then, we see at once that
illegitimacy and prostitution are not the same thing. Where there are no
prostitutes there are bastards, but the women in the country are mostly
employed; they are obliged to work in the fields, rough country labor, or
in some domestic manufacture such as button-making, stocking-making, etc.

An apparent paradox may be here mentioned, although not intimately
affecting these investigations. The preponderance of bastards is
accompanied by a preponderance of early marriages. This has been accounted
for by the theory that both are dependent on sexual instincts precociously
or excessively stimulated, which seek marriage when practicable, or
illicit intercourse where not.[309]

Illegitimacy is somewhat regulated by the disproportionate number of the
sexes. In an excess of females there are few bastards; in an excess of
males there are many. Upon this fact, unattended by qualifying
circumstances, might be based an argument as to the innate sexual
instinct in females. It might have been expected the relations would be
somewhat different, namely, an increase of prostitution with an excess of
men, but an increase of bastards with an excess of women.

The number of rapes in England seems to be governed by the excess of men
over women. Where the number of illegitimate children exceeds the average,
rape is less frequent.

The cases of abuse of children between the ages of ten and twelve are
three in every ten million of the whole population. There is some
difficulty in this matter, arising from a legal technicality on the
subject of age. In any case, neither of the last items of criminality is
of any value, inasmuch as they include only those cases judicially
investigated and proved to conviction. Many are guilty, yet acquitted; and
many more are never charged with the offense. Shame prevents parties
prosecuting; or, in the case of children, the fact does not transpire, or
else it is compromised.

Keeping a brothel is, as we have said, an offense at common law. We have a
computation of the number of offenses of this kind based upon every ten
million of the population. In Middlesex it was two hundred and ninety-six,
in Lancashire one hundred and eighty-three. Both counties include the most
populous towns in England. Lancashire contains Manchester and Liverpool.
This fact also is of little value, owing to the peculiar administration of
the law on the subject. Remote or indirect injuries to the public safety
are not noticed in England. The police may be well aware of crime
meditated and planned, and of the haunts of crime, but the theory of
public justice is cure, not prevention.

Concealment of birth is an offense which, as it emanates from undue sexual
intercourse, is generally associated with prostitution. In Hereford and
other counties, the proportion of illegitimate births is eighty-eight out
of every thousand born, and there were twenty-two concealments to every
thousand bastards.

In four counties the illegitimate births were fifty-eight in a thousand,
and the concealments thirteen in a thousand illegitimates.

In fifteen counties there were fifty-three illegitimates in every thousand
births, and twenty-seven concealments to every thousand illegitimates.

With the largest proportion of illegitimates there are the fewest
concealments; namely, with seventy-nine illegitimates out of a thousand
births, there were only twelve concealments to a thousand illegitimates.

It is absolutely impossible to ascertain the number of prostitutes in
London with any degree of certainty, and even a satisfactory approximation
is exceedingly difficult; nevertheless, it is most important to attain as
nearly as possible to the actual facts, because without this knowledge no
adequate idea can be formed of the vast seed-bed of disease and corruption
in constant action in a great capital city, shedding forth and
disseminating its pernicious growth on every side, through channels
unknown and unsuspected.

Mr. Colquhoun, a magistrate of the British metropolis toward the close of
the last century (1796), made an arbitrary enumeration, fixing the number
of prostitutes in London at fifty thousand. Drs. Ryan, Campbell, Mr.
Talbot, and others, carry their estimate in 1840 to eighty thousand!

Mr. Mayne (now Sir Richard Mayne), chief commissioner of the Metropolitan
Police in 1840, made an estimate of the number of regular London
prostitutes, which he considers were then eight thousand and upward. The
seemingly irreconcilable discrepancy of these numbers is no doubt to be
found in the loose terminology of the one party, and the technicality of
the other. The term "prostitute" would seem to be best applied to those
unhappy females who make prostitution their sole calling, and may
therefore be styled "regular" prostitutes, while the larger estimate
includes all shades, both "regular" and "occasional" or "irregular," by
which is understood those females with whom prostitution is auxiliary to
some reputable calling.

We can not find that any reliable or detailed returns have been made on
this branch of public life by the London police, although they must
possess peculiar and exclusive powers of preparing them. As long back as
1837 the following rough calculation was made.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | 1st | 2d | 3d | |
| |Class.|Class.|Class.|Total.|
|----------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|
|Well-dressed prostitutes in brothels | 813 | 62 | 20 | 895 |
|Well-dressed prostitutes walking the | | | | |
| streets | 1460 | 79 | 73 | 1612 |
|Prostitutes infesting low neighborhoods | 3533 | 147 | 184 | 3864 |
| |------|------|------|------|
| | 5806 | 288 | 277 | 6371 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

On this return Mr. Mayne very probably based his estimate of 1840.[310]

Mr. Talbot, the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Young
Females, made the subject one of special inquiry, both personally and with
the aid of the local police of the different cities; and although his
details are very meagre, he professes to have satisfied himself of the
general accuracy of the following figures, showing the regular prostitutes
in various cities.

Edinburgh 800
Glasgow 1800
Liverpool 2900
Leeds 700
Manchester 700

All parties are, however, agreed in representing that it is impracticable
to form any thing like a correct estimate of "the number of female
servants, milliners, and women in the upper and middle classes of society
who might properly be classed with prostitutes, or of the women who
frequent theatres, barracks, ships, prisons, etc."

In 1851, the police of Dublin published in their statistical returns the
number of prostitutes in that city, which is the only public or official
paper on the point having any appearance of system or accuracy. It is as
follows:

1848 Brothels 385 Prostitutes 1343
1849 " 330 " 1344
1850 " 272 " 1215
1851 " 297 " 1170

This table shows a steady decrease in the number of these women. We are
uninformed as to any local causes for this, nor do we know whether it has
been balanced by an increase of "sly" or occasional prostitution.

From the preceding figures a calculation has been made of the regular
prostitutes relatively to the population in the several towns. It appears
to have been based on the number of inhabitants at the date of the various
estimates. That of Dublin is according to the census of 1851, the
remainder according to that of 1841.

PROPORTION OF PROSTITUTES TO POPULATION.

+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| | | Proportion to Population. |
| | |----------------------------------------|
| | Number of | | | To total |
| |Prostitutes.| To Males. | To Females. | Population. |
|----------|------------|------------|-------------|-------------|
|Liverpool | 2900 | 1 to 43 | 1 to 45 | 1 to 88 |
|Manchester| 700 | 1 to 156 | 1 to 169 | 1 to 325 |
|Leeds | 700 | 1 to 70 | 1 to 75 | 1 to 145 |
|Edinburgh | 800 | 1 to 106 | 1 to 130 | 1 to 236 |
|Glasgow | 1800 | 1 to 87 | 1 to 97 | 1 to 184 |
|Dublin | 1170 | 1 to 101 | 1 to 119 | 1 to 220 |
|Cork[311] | 350 | 1 to 113 | 1 to 134 | 1 to 247 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

The mean of the above maybe taken as a fair representation of the general
state of the kingdom. The qualifying circumstances to which we have
already made allusion as peculiar to each city or district are, of course,
neutralized by the aggregate.

For example, Liverpool is a great sea-port town, and a large number of
regular prostitutes would be inevitable there. In Manchester, a large
manufacturing city, with an immense pauper and factory operative
population, the trade of prostitution would meet with less profitable
custom; accordingly, we find the proportion much smaller. Glasgow is both
manufacturing and commercial; there, again, the proportion is larger.
Dublin has but little commerce, but is a capital city, and has a court and
a large garrison. The combination of all these circumstances is found in
London, and a fair estimate would be obtained by adding all the preceding
proportions together, which would give a mean of about 1 in 232, and this
upon the population (2,362,000) is within a fraction of ten thousand.

We have seen that Mr. Mayne in 1840 stated his opinion to be that there
were about eight thousand regular prostitutes in London, qualifying that
statement by a profession of total ignorance as to the irregulars who did
not make prostitution their only means of living. Mr. Mayne had peculiar
sources of information open to him, and it is more than probable that his
opinion was well founded. From the above calculation, from the best
sources available to us on this very obscure question, we are satisfied to
assume ten thousand as at least a probable approximation to the number of
_regular_ prostitutes in London.

Mr. Mayne, in his statement on this subject, mentioned that there were
3335 brothels. Some authors have attempted to make a calculation of the
number of prostitutes on the basis of this number of houses; one has
assumed three, another ten. Dr. Wardlaw has fixed upon five women per
house, without, as it appears to us, any precise reason for preferring
that figure. These different opinions may be thus worked out:

5 women in each house would give 16,675 prostitutes.
4 " " " (as in Dublin) would give 13,340 "
3 " " " (as in Cork) " " 10,005 "

We have not been able to obtain Mr. Mayne's statement _ipsissimis verbis_,
and failing that we may be in error, but we should be inclined to think
that, in his official capacity as a magistrate, and in his personal
character as a lawyer, Mr. Mayne would be apt to assign the term "brothel"
indiscriminately to all houses trading in prostitution, whether houses of
assignation or houses in which prostitutes habitually reside. If our
reading of the word "brothels" in this sense be correct, it is clear that
any attempt to enumerate on the basis of the women attached to each house
would be fallacious. The expression used by the Dublin police is "houses
frequented or occupied," and its ambiguity shows that the authorities
there considered the word "brothel" in the sense given to it by English
jurists.

How does this number of ten thousand regular prostitutes bear on the
population?

In London there are, above twenty years of age,

Male. Female.
Bachelors 196,851
Spinsters 246,124
Husbands 398,624
Wives 406,266
Widowers 37,064
Widows 110,028
------- -------
Totals 632,545 762,418

Omitting fractions, the proportions would be,

On bachelors and widowers 1 in 23
" total male population 1 " 63
" " female " 1 " 76
" aggregate population above twenty years of age 1 " 139

This would establish ten thousand as the nucleus of the prostitution
system of London. Those females who come within the designation of
"irregular prostitutes" are in no respect less prejudicial to the
community than the "regulars." The difference is that they have some other
real or nominal occupation, which they follow according to circumstances.
An even moderately correct estimate of their number is little better than
guess-work, and we therefore think it expedient to put our readers in
possession of our own limited means of information, and take them on to a
conclusion. There are so many elements to be taken into the account, and
the data are so scanty, that we only consider ourselves justified in
intimating an opinion rather than announcing a satisfactory conclusion.

To show the extremes to which the doctrine of possibilities may lead in
this development of misery and vice, we will recur to the statement of
some of the London prostitute needle-women themselves. We quote from
Mayhew's letters to the Morning Chronicle:

"I now come to the second test that was adopted in order to verify my
conclusions. This was the convening of such a number of needle-women
and slop-workers as would enable me to arrive at a correct average as
to the earnings of the class. I was particularly anxious to do this,
not only with regard to the more respectable portions of the
operatives, but also with reference to those who, I had been given to
understand, resorted to prostitution in order to eke out their
subsistence. I consulted a friend, who is well acquainted with the
habits and feelings of slop-workers, as to the possibility of
gathering together a number of women who would be willing to state
that they had been forced to take to the streets on account of the low
prices for their work.[312] He told me he was afraid, from the shame
of their mode of life becoming known, it would be almost impossible to
collect together a number of females who would be ready to say as much
publicly. However, it was decided that at least the experiment should
be made, and that every thing should be done to assure the parties of
the strict privacy of the assemblage. It was arranged that this
gentleman and myself should be the only male persons visible on the
occasion, and that the place of meeting should be as dimly lighted as
possible, so they could scarcely see or be seen by one another or by
us. Cards of admission were issued privately, and, to my friend's
astonishment, as many as twenty-five came on the evening named to the
appointed place, intent upon making known the sorrows and sufferings
that had driven them to fly to the streets, in order to get the bread
which the wretched prices paid for their labor would not permit them
to obtain.

"Never in all history was such a sight seen or such tales heard.
There, in the dim haze of the large bare room in which they met, sat
women and girls, some with babies sucking at their breasts, others in
rags, and even those borrowed in order that they might come and tell
their misery to the world. I have witnessed many a scene of sorrow
lately; I have heard stories that have unmanned me; but never, till
last Wednesday, had I heard or seen any thing so solemn, so terrible
as this. If ever eloquence was listened to, it was in the outpourings
of these poor, lorn mothers' hearts for their base-born little ones,
as each told her woes and struggles, and published her shame amid the
convulsive sobs of others--nay, of all present. Behind a screen,
removed from sight, so as not to wound the modesty of the women, who
were nevertheless aware of their presence, sat two reporters from this
journal, to take down _verbatim_ the confessions and declarations of
those assembled, and to them I am indebted for the following report of
the statements made at the meeting."

Then follow a series of most heart-rending statements, all to the same
purport as those quoted in other parts of this work, and bearing all the
internal evidence of truth. The letter concludes with the following
sentence:

"They were unanimous in declaring that a large number of the
trade--probably one fourth of the whole, or one half of those who had
no husbands or parents to support them--resorted to the streets to eke
out a living. Accordingly, assuming the government returns to be
correct, and that there are upward of eleven thousand females under
twenty living by needle and slop work,[313] the numerical amount of
prostitution becomes awful to contemplate."

Thus, then, we have it in evidence that "probably" one fourth of all women
engaged in sewing occupations for a livelihood are compelled to have
occasional recourse to prostitution as their only and compulsory refuge
from starvation.

The number of women engaged in these sewing occupations is enormous.
According to the census of 1851, they constitute, indeed, the main support
of the female working population throughout Great Britain, exclusive of
domestic servants, laundresses, and persons employed in agricultural
pursuits, and in the cotton and linen factories. The figures for the three
kingdoms are as follows:

Hatters 3,500
Straw-hat-makers 20,500
Bonnet-makers 7,600
Cap-makers 4,700
Furriers 1,900
Tailors 17,600
Shawl-makers 3,200
Milliners 267,400
Seamstresses 72,900
Stay-makers 12,700
Stocking-makers 30,700
Glovers 25,300
Case-makers 31,400

In all Great Britain this class numbers 1,787,600
Of whom there are under twenty years of age 458,168

We have not the details of the occupations of London, but the proportion
which the population of the metropolis bears to that of Great Britain is
about one ninth. One ninth of the above aggregate would give for London
about 196,500 women engaged in the sewing trades, all of whom, it may be
assumed, are over fifteen. We omit from the consideration of female trades
those engaged in agricultural pursuits and factories, such occupations
having comparatively few representatives in the metropolitan districts,
although there are more of them than would be supposed. Laundresses are
also omitted, as a very large proportion of them in and about London are,
as is well known, married and middle-aged women. But another class to
which all writers assign a large amount of prostitution are domestic
servants, a body most numerously represented in London. There are in the
metropolis 165,100 domestic servants, the peculiarly unprotected character
of whom, as a class, may be inferred from the singular fact that to the
work-house, the hospital, and the Lunatic Asylum they supply an immense
number of inmates, exceeding that of any other class.

Thus, then, are shown two very large figures, amounting together to
361,000, as the stock from which prostitutes to any extent may be
procured. Some consideration, perhaps, of the ages of prostitutes, and of
other circumstances in the condition of the female population, may enable
us to appreciate the state of the case without being driven to the
necessity of looking on these enormous totals as incapable of reduction.

Nature would indicate the period between 15 and 45 as the age during which
the trade of prostitution must be carried on. Much has been said as to the
means used for decoying young children for purposes of prostitution. Of
the fact we are perfectly convinced, but should think it of little
numerical importance in the aggregate body. The influence of evil
communication on the young is of infinitely greater mischief, and the
extent of youthful depravity from this cause is very great among the
poorer classes, and would oblige us to date the commencing age of
prostitution back to twelve years.

As to the period of life at which the prostitute's career is terminated,
it is contended by some of the English writers that only an infinitesimal
proportion reach the age of forty-five in the exercise of their soul and
health destroying trade. Mr. Tait says, "In less than one year from the
commencement of their wicked career these females bear evident marks of
their approaching decay, and in the course of three years very few can be
recognized by their old acquaintance, if they are so fortunate as to
survive that period. These remarks apply more especially to those who are
above twenty years of age when they join the ranks of the victims." From
the average of Edinburgh, Mr. Tait goes on to assume that "not above one
in eleven survives twenty-five years of age; and taking together those who
persist in vice, and those who, after having abandoned it, die of diseases
which originated from the excesses they were addicted to during its
continuance, perhaps not less than a fifth or sixth of all who have
embraced this course of sin die annually." Dr. Ryan seems to adopt an
opinion that the average duration of life after commencing prostitution is
four years.[314] Captain Miller, of Glasgow, thinks that "the average age
at which women become abandoned is from fifteen to twenty, and the average
duration of women continuing this vice is about five years."

The ages of patients admitted into the Lock Hospital at Edinburgh were as
follows:

Under 15 years 42
From 15 years to 20 years 662
" 20 " " 25 " 199
" 25 " " 30 " 69
" 30 " " 35 " 16
" 35 " " 40 " 6
Over 40 years 6
----
Total 1000

These figures alone would go to make out the presumption that the ages of
prostitutes are between twelve and thirty, and that 861/1000 are between
fifteen and twenty-five. According to the above table, nine tenths of the
number at twenty have disappeared at thirty, and according to Captain
Miller's opinion that "cases of reform and abandonment of their life are
very rare," the conclusion would be that their career ends in death.[315]

The duration of prostitution being ascertained, we would find the number
of women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. In the whole female
population this is one fifth, but the very aged or the very youthful are
necessarily excluded from the classes of work-women and servants; of
servants, indeed, there are five and upward under twenty to three above
twenty years of age. This, therefore, would indicate very little reduction
of the numbers.

It is reasonable to suppose that some portion of the above are married
women having husbands living, and if so, it is not an unreasonable
supposition that their wives are not obliged to have recourse to
prostitution; in fact, the poor creatures themselves seem to imply that
immunity. The number of wives is about one third of the whole female
population; of these wives about one fourth are employed in trades apart
from those of their husbands. If we deduct only such a proportion from the
sewing-women, it makes something when we have to deal with such enormous
masses; we should strike off nearly 50,000, leaving only 150,000
sewing-women.

There is comfort, however, in the fact that, of these sewing-women, three
fourths are known to be over twenty years of age; and if we only assume
one half instead of three fourths, allowing the other fourth for the
difference between twenty and twenty-five years of age, it brings our
figure down to seventy-five thousand.

All these deductions are, we fear, in excess; and it must be recollected,
moreover, that the above large sums by no means include all the female
occupations of London,[316] but merely those classes which, either from
the temptation incident to their position, or from the imperative demands
of want and necessity, are, by competent authority, supposed to be
peculiarly obnoxious to the risk of prostitution. If to this large number
of women, which we can not assume at less than 273,000 between the ages of
twelve and twenty-five, be added all the other denizens of a great city
unexampled in its magnitude, embracing in itself all the peculiarities of
all other cities, at once a manufacturing, a commercial, a garrison, and a
capital city, and, finally, containing the largest population in the
world, one such item being nearly four hundred thousand single females
over twelve years of age, then, indeed, the mass of misery, wretchedness,
vice, and crime there accumulated appals the mind seeking to grapple with
it, and oppresses us with the apprehension that even eighty thousand, the
highest estimate which has been made, is, when understood to include all
contingencies, not an incredible figure.[317]

Englishmen pride themselves, and, it must be admitted, not without reason,
on their numerous and admirable public charities. In this particular
direction it would seem that public munificence has not been so liberally
displayed as in some others. "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons," does not, we fear,
apply to minds and hearts of earthly mould. People, in charitable as in
other institutions, like to see a return for their investment; and,
notwithstanding the immense field for benevolent labor in prostitution,
there is a general impression among both the public and officials that it
is an irretrievably barren waste, and that it is worse than profitless to
squander money and time upon it. The results which have been achieved
would, however, show that the exertions of philanthropy, although not
producing so much fruit as in some other quarters, have not been entirely
vain. In reference to these results, too, it must be borne in mind that
the discipline of the various institutions is severe, and even repellent,
a policy ill adapted to insure a large amount of success.

The Lock Hospital is the oldest institution in London for the benefit of
lost females, and is devoted entirely to the cure of venereal disease. It
was founded in the year 1747, and in a century had cured 45,448 cases.

The Magdalen Hospital of London was founded in 1758, and up to January,
1844, had received 6968 females. The results were as follows:

Reconciled to their friends, or placed in service or
other reputable employment 4752
Discharged at their own request 1182
" for improper conduct 720
Died 109
Sent to other institutions (being insane or afflicted
with incurable diseases) 107
Eloped 2
Remaining in the Hospital 96
----
Total 6968

A considerable number of the women, when discharged from the institution,
are under twenty years of age; and it is an invariable rule not to dismiss
any one (unless at her own desire, or for misconduct) without some means
being provided by which she may obtain a livelihood in an honest manner.

The Lock Asylum was founded in 1787, for the reception of penitent female
patients when discharged from the Lock Hospital; and up to March, 1837,
the number of women received was 984. The results were:

Reconciled to their friends 170
Placed in service or employment 281
Died 22
Remaining in Asylum 18
---
Total 491

Of the remaining number, many had been sent to their parishes; some had
eloped, and some had been expelled for improper conduct, but of several
even of these favorable accounts had been afterward received: some of them
were known to be married, and living creditably, and others were earning a
living honestly. We have been unable to obtain any account of the
operations of this institution since the year 1837.

The London Female Penitentiary was instituted in 1807. Of 6939 applicants,
2717 were admitted into the house. The results were:

Reconciled and restored to friends, placed
in service, or otherwise provided for 1543
Discharged from various causes 631
" at their own request 350
Emigrated 47
Sent to their parishes 23
Died 28
Remaining in Penitentiary 95
----
Total 2717

The Guardian Society was established in 1812, and from that period up to
1843 had admitted 1932 wretched outcasts to partake of the advantages it
offered. The results were:

Restored to their friends 533
Placed in service, or satisfactorily provided for 455
Discharged or withdrawn 843
Sent to their parishes 53
Died 17
Remaining in institution 31
----
Total 1932

Besides these institutions, others have been established with similar
objects, namely, The British Penitent Female Refuge, The Female Mission,
The South London Penitentiary, and one or two others. As compared with the
great number of unfortunate women in London, these institutions have
effected but a very small amount of good. During seventy-seven years,
ending 1835, ten thousand and five females were received within the walls
of four of the London asylums, of which number six thousand two hundred
and sixty-two (more than three fifths) were satisfactorily provided for,
and two thousand nine hundred and eighty were discharged for misconduct.
Taking the whole of the institutions in London up to that time, it may be
fairly estimated that fourteen or fifteen thousand prostitutes have had
the opportunity of returning to a virtuous life.

Those who, like the Pharisee, content themselves with thanking God that
they are not as other men, and even as these unfortunates, are a very
impracticable set to deal with, and if such there be who read these pages,
we pass them by, and pray for the better health of their souls. The gentle
spirits who, imitating a blessed example, think it not pollution to extend
their sympathy and saving help to publicans and harlots, may, in the
following lines, written by a prostitute and found in her death-bed, see
matter for meditation, and ground for the belief that all efforts in the
cause of the sinner will not be unsuccessful. They were headed

"VERSES FOR MY TOMB-STONE, IF EVER I SHOULD HAVE ONE.

"The wretched victim of a quick decay,
Relieved from life, on humble bed of clay,
The last and only refuge for my woes,
A love-lost, ruined female, I repose.
From the sad hour I listened to his charms,
And fell, half forced, in the deceiver's arms,
To that whose awful veil hides every fault,
Sheltering my sufferings in this welcome vault,
When pampered, starved, abandoned, or in drink,
_My thoughts were racked in striving not to think_
Nor could rejected conscience claim the power
To improve the respite of one serious hour.
I durst not look to what I was before;
My soul shrank back, and wished to be no more.
Of eye undaunted, and of touch impure,
Old ere of age, worn out when scarce mature;
Daily debased to stifle my disgust
Of forced enjoyment in affected lust;
Covered with guilt, infection, debt, and want,
My home a brothel, and the streets my haunt,
For seven long years of infamy I've pined,
And fondled, loathed, and preyed upon mankind,
Till, the full course of sin and vice gone through,
My shattered fabric failed at twenty-two."

The enormous extent of this evil, its deep-rooted causes, the difficulty
of combating it, either by religious arguments, legislative provisions, or
appeals to common sense and physical welfare, may well deter the
philanthropist from the attempt to purify this stable of Augeas; but
benevolence has accomplished tasks as arduous, and we can not conclude
this chapter better than by a short description of the discouragements
which attended the first efforts of Mrs. Fry in the reformation of the
prostitute felons in Newgate, and of the blessed results of her
indomitable perseverance and immovable faith.[318]

This admirable woman, on her first visit to Newgate, found the female side
of the jail in a condition which no language can describe: "Nearly three
hundred women, sent there for every gradation of crime, and some under
sentence of death, were crowded together in two small wards and two cells.
They all slept, as well as a crowd of children, on the floor, at times one
hundred and twenty in a ward, without even a mat for bedding. Many of them
were nearly naked. They were all drunk, and her ears were offended by the
most terrible imprecations." The authorities of the prison, of course,
advised her against going among them: _they were sure that nothing could
be effected_! She, however, determined to make the trial; she went alone
into what she felt was like a den of wild beasts. In vain the governor
reasoned with her: "She had put her hand to the plow and was not to be
turned back." In one short month, such was the effect of her merely _moral
agency_ and religious instruction, that she felt herself justified in
inviting the lord-mayor, the sheriffs, and several of the aldermen to
satisfy themselves, by personal investigation, of the result of the
exertions which she herself and some few lady members of the Society of
Friends, who had joined her in the good work, had effected.

Thus was conviction forced upon the obtuse intellects of corporate
authorities, and hence was dated the era of Prison Reform in England.

In our own country, where the means of diffusing intelligence are
unbounded, and whose reformatory system for criminals has already claimed
the attention of European statesmen and philanthropists, there can be no
insuperable barrier even in so difficult an undertaking as that to which
our labors are directed. Paraphrasing the opinion of one of the most
distinguished essayists of this century,[319] we venture to assert that
"it is impossible that social abuses should be suffered to exist in this
country and in this stage of society for many years after their mischief
and iniquity have been made manifest to the sense of the country at
large."

CHAPTER XXVI.

GREAT BRITAIN.--SYPHILITIC DISEASES.

First Recognition in England.--Regulations of Henry VI.--Lazar
Houses.--John of Gaddesden.--Queen Elizabeth's Surgeon.--Popular
Opinions.--Proclamation of James IV. of Scotland.--Middlesex and
London Hospitals.--Army.-Navy.--Merchant Service.--St. Bartholomew's
Hospital.--Estimated Extent of Syphilis.

The best English and French writers are of opinion that syphilis, as it
exists at present, has, in some shape or another, always existed among
mankind, although it was not known to science or history, in a distinct
manner, until the middle of the fifteenth century.

The period at which syphilis first made its appearance in England is
involved in obscurity, but we know that it began to attract attention
early in the fifteenth century. The first official recognition of it found
on record is a police regulation of the year 1430, during the reign of
Henry VI., excluding venereal patients from the London hospitals, and
requiring them to be strictly guarded at night. In the time of Henry VIII.
there were six lazar houses in London for the reception of venereal
patients, namely, at Knightsbridge, Hammersmith, Highgate, Kingsland, St.
George's Gate, and Mile-End. These localities were doubtless fixed upon as
being some distance from the city.

That the disease, however, must have been known long before the period
above specified is certain, from passages which are to be found in the
writings of the previous century. John of Gaddesden, who wrote in 1305,
and who was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, thus speaks of the
possibility of contracting the disease from leprous women: "Ille qui
concubuit cum muliere cum qua coivit leprosas puncturas intra carnem et
corium sentil et aliquando calefactiones in toto corpore."[320] Mr. Wm.
Acton, upon whose pages as an English standard writer on this subject we
draw largely, is of opinion that leprosy, which was formerly so common in
Europe, consisted merely of what we now call secondary syphilis. Some of
the Jewish observances were no doubt dictated by a scientific appreciation
of the influences which predisposed the body to the effects of syphilitic
virus. The practice of circumcision seems instituted with a direct view
to the preservation of the chosen people from venereal contagion, to
which, in a hot climate, and with the extreme deficiency of means for
general cleanliness, they would be liable.

As to the type of the disease in former times, there seems no ground for
believing that it was more severe than at present, while its numerical
importance must have been much smaller. The following extract is from a
treatise by Queen Elizabeth's surgeon:

"If I be not deceived in my opinion, I suppose the disease itself was
never more rife in Naples, Italie, France, or Spain, than it is in
this day in the realme of England. I may speak boldly because I speak
truly; and yet I speake it with grief of minde, that in the Hospital
of St. Bartholomew, in London, there hath been cured of this disease
by me and three others, within five years, to the number of one
thousand and more. I speak nothing of St. Thomas's Hospital, and other
houses about the citie, wherein an infinite number are daily cured. It
happened very seldom in the Hospital of St. Bartholomew while I staid
there, among every twenty diseased that were taken into the said
house, which was most commonly on the Monday, ten of them were
infected with the _lues venerea_."[321]

It was supposed, in former ages, that syphilis was transmissible by
personal communication, touching the clothes, drinking out of the same
vessels, or even breathing the same air with infected persons, and
accordingly we find the lower orders of people driven out into the fields
to die, and physicians refusing to attend the sick for fear of infection.

Some writers, indeed, doubted this kind of contagious influence, and held
that it required intercourse, or at least contact. But nobles, and
especially the clergy, preferred to ascribe their maladies to misfortune
rather than to licentiousness, and sought to "put down" such innovating
doctrines. The consequence was that patients were shunned universally, and
left to die or get well without assistance. It is not to be wondered at,
therefore, that in numerous instances the disease should assume its most
inveterate aspect, and hence the notices found among many old writers as
to the supposed malignancy and incurability of what they were disposed to
consider a newly-imported malady. That the disease, in reality, differed
little from that which exists in our day, is proved by the fact that cases
of the once formidable Black Lion are occasionally to be met with in the
London hospitals.

Cardinal Wolsey, among other charges made against him by his enemies, was
accused of whispering to the king, Henry VIII., and thereby casting his
poisonous breath upon his royal grace, he (Wolsey) having at the time "the
foul contagious disease" upon him. The belief as to contagion by this
means is not entirely extinct, but is cherished by the laboring classes of
England, many of whom entertain great prejudices on the score of health
against drinking from the same vessel out of which an infected person has
partaken.

In 1497, James IV. of Scotland, in consequence of the frightful prevalence
of venereal disease in his kingdom, issued a proclamation banishing the
infected from Edinburgh. His majesty "charges straitly all manner of
persons being within the freedom of this burt, quilks are infectit, or has
been infectit, uncurit with this said contagious plague, callit the
grandgor devoyd, red and pass furt of this town, and compeir upon the
sandis of Leith at ten hours before none; and thair sall thai have and
find boatis reddie in the havin ordainit to them by the officers of this
burt, reddy furneist with victuals, to have them to the Inche (Inchkeith),
and thair to remain quhill God provyd for thair health." Those evading
this ordinance "salle be byrnt on the cheik with the marking irne, that
thai may be kennit in tym to cum."

A remnant of this barbarous system was retained in the regulations of
Middlesex Hospital, London, by which an admission fee of forty shillings
sterling (ten dollars) was directed to be paid by venereal patients. The
reason assigned for it was, that a hospital intended for the virtuous
might not be made subsidiary to purposes of vice. The regulation, however,
became a nullity, and was repealed, owing principally to the fact that the
work-house guardians were in the habit of paying the forty shillings and
sending in pauper patients, well knowing that the cost of cure in the
work-house would far exceed the admission fees.

In the London Hospital a similar regulation exists even now, but is openly
evaded, however, by the house surgeon describing the disease as a
cutaneous one.

The extent of this disease in Great Britain is matter of opinion alone.
There are no positive data whatever upon which to form any conclusion with
respect to the general population, while the hospital lists are very
imperfectly kept, and it is only in the army and navy returns that we can
find any real assistance.

BRITISH ARMY.

The army reports quoted extend over a period of seven years and a quarter,
and enter into the details of the various venereal affections of the
soldiers, amounting to the aggregate strength of 44,611 quartered in the
United Kingdom. The cases admitted into hospitals were:

Syphilis Primary 1415
" Consecutive 335
Ulcer Penis non Syphiliticum 2144
Bubo Simplex 844
Cachexia Syphilitica 44
Gonorrhoea 2449
Hernia Humoralis 714
Stricture Urethra 100
Phymosis and Paraphymosis 27
----
Total 8072

Ratio: 181 per 1000 men, or nearly one in five in the whole number.

These returns show that the venereal disease is of much more frequent
occurrence in the British than in the Belgian army.

BRITISH NAVY.

The navy reports extend over a period of seven years, and include 21,493
men, employed on home service; that is to say, on the coasts or in the
ports of Great Britain. Of this number, 2880 were attacked with venereal
disease. Ratio: one in seven.

BRITISH MERCHANT SERVICE.

The returns of the "Dreadnought," hospital ship for seamen of all nations,
extend over a period of five years, during which 13,081 patients, laboring
under surgical and medical diseases, were admitted. Out of these, 3703
came under treatment for venereal affections, showing a ratio of two in
seven.

As a mode of testing these returns, we turn to the analysis of the
surgical out-patients of Messrs. Lloyd and Wormald, assistant surgeons of
Saint Bartholomew's, the largest of the London hospitals. These
out-patients are attended gratuitously by the hospital officers:

+-----------------------------------------------------+
| | Venereal Cases. |
| Attended by |---------------------------------------|
| | Men. | Women and Children. | Total. |
|-------------|--------|---------------------|--------|
| Mr. Lloyd | 1009 | 245 | 1254 |
| Mr. Wormald | 986 | 273 | 1259 |
| |--------|---------------------|--------|
| Total | 1995 | 518 | 2513 |
+-----------------------------------------------------+

These cases were part of a total of 5327 general patients.

This last item alone would not enable one to form any idea of the number
of sufferers from this terrible scourge. There are in London nine great
hospitals, besides smaller ones, and dispensaries in every parish, or
division of a large parish, and other means of gratuitous medical
assistance. Suppose the smaller medical foundations put aside, and their
patients thrown into the aggregate of the great hospitals, we should have
22,617 venereal patients. Suppose the private practice of the London army
of medical men to yield only half as many more, we have 35,000 venereal
patients in London only. Without reckoning the Lock Hospital, parish
doctors, barracks, and all the other institutions, one would very readily
imagine that London alone furnished 50,000 venereal patients per annum.

Again, on the number of single men and widowers in London above twenty
years of age (upward of a quarter of a million), the venereal cases, if in
the same proportion as among soldiers and sailors, would in the same
period amount to 30,000 and upward.

There is, however, another way of conjecturing the amount of disease
introduced into the community by prostitution, which English writers have
adopted. The Medico-Chirurgical Review, a periodical of high standing,
speaking of the extent of venereal disease and its effects on the
population, says:

"There is every reason to believe that, to represent the public
prostitutes of England, Wales, and Scotland, fifty thousand is an
estimate too low. We presume there will be no objection made to the
assumption that, unless each of these fifty thousand prostitutes
submitted to at least one act of intercourse during every twenty-four
hours, she could not obtain means sufficient to support life. The
result of the evidence contained in the first report of the
Constabulary force of England was that about two per cent. of the
prostitutes of London were suffering under some form of venereal
disease. But yet we will descend even lower, and presume that of one
hundred healthy prostitutes, if each submits to one indiscriminate
sexual act in twenty-four hours, not more than one would become
infected with syphilis; an estimate which is, without doubt, far too
low, yet, if admitted to be correct, the necessary consequence will
be, that of the fifty thousand prostitutes, five hundred are diseased
within the aforesaid twenty-four hours.

"If we next admit that a fifth of these five hundred diseased women
are admitted to hospitals on the day on which disease appears, it
follows there are every day on the streets four hundred diseased
women. Let it be supposed that the power of these four hundred to
infect be limited to twelve days, and that of every six persons who,
at the rate of one each night, have connection with these women, five
become infected, it will follow that _there will be four thousand men
infected every night, and, consequently, one million four hundred and
sixty thousand in the year_. Farther, as there are every night four
hundred women diseased by these men, one hundred and eighty-two
thousand five hundred public prostitutes will be syphilized during the
year, and hence _one million, six hundred, and fifty-two thousand,
five hundred cases of syphilis in both sexes occur every twelve
months_. If, then, the entire population had intercourse with
prostitutes in an equal ratio, the gross population of Great Britain,
of all ages and sexes, would, during eighteen years, have been
affected with primary syphilis. Be it remembered, we do not assert
that more than a million and a half of persons are attacked every
year, but that that number of cases occur annually in England, Wales,
and Scotland, though the same individual may be attacked more than
once. Although it is evident that all the estimates used for these
calculations are (we know no other word that expresses it)
ridiculously low, yet we find that more than a million and a half
cases of syphilis occur every year, an amount which is probably not
half the actual number. How enormous, then, must be the number of
children born with secondary syphilis! how immense the mortality among
them! how vast an amount of public and private money expended in the
cure of this disease!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

MEXICO.

Spanish Conquest.--Treatment of Female Prisoners.--Mexican Manners in
1677.--Priesthood.--Modern Society.--Fashionable Life.--Indifference
of Husbands to their Wives.--General Immorality.--Offenses.--
Charitable Institutions.--The Cuna, or Foundling Hospital.

The social condition of Mexico is of importance, as it was formerly the
chief seat of Spanish domination in America, and its manners and
government gave the key to all the other colonies and viceroyalties which
owed allegiance to the crown of Spain. Whatever the state of the native
population may have been when Spanish leaders and their myrmidons burst
upon them, and broke up the kingdom of the Mexican emperors, they rapidly
succumbed beneath the lust, avarice, and cruelty which were ever the
distinctive features of Spanish warfare and conquest in every clime and
against every people. Of the enormities perpetrated by these soldiers, the
history of the Mexican conquest gives us innumerable instances; but one
solitary example, from Bernal de Diaz, will be enough. He tells us that
when they took women prisoners, they made a division of them at night for
the sake of greater peace and quietness, and that they branded them with
the marks of their owners. They were thus at liberty to choose the
handsomest of the Indian women, and reserve them for their own uses. What
these uses were can be easily supposed. The fate of less favored female
prisoners is left in doubt; they were turned over to their savage allies,
to be butchered in cold blood, or otherwise disposed of as most
convenient.

From Mexico the flood of Spanish cruelty and immorality spread itself like
a stream of lava over the whole of South America. The chivalry of the
soldiery soon degenerated, and the self-denial and lofty motives, darkened
though they were by bigotry and cruelty in some cases, which had
distinguished the priests, were lost. Inglorious ease and luxurious
indolence now superseded that love of adventure and unconquerable daring
which distinguished Cortez and Pizarro, and their comrades: no trace of
the old heroic character remained save the grinding oppression and
reckless selfishness which usually accompany ambition.

An illustration of the loose manners which prevailed in Mexico among the
clergy is to be found in the voyages of Thomas Page, a Dominican monk, who
visited Mexico with some of his order on their road to the western coast
of America and to Asia as missionaries.

From this work, published in 1677, we learn that the writer and his
companions visited the prior of Vera Cruz on their journey, and, after a
sumptuous dinner, adjourned, by invitation, to his cell. They found it
richly tapestried and adorned with feathers of the birds of Michoacou; the
walls were hung with various pictures of merit; rich rugs of silk covered
the tables; porcelain of China filled the cupboards and sideboards, and
there were vases and bowls containing preserved fruits and sweetmeats. "My
companions," says he, "were scandalized by such an exhibition. The holy
friar talked to us of his ancestry, of his good parts, of the influence he
had with the Father Provincial, of the love the principal ladies of the
place bore him, of his beautiful voice and skill in music. He took his
guitar and sang us a sonnet in praise of a certain lady." Afterward,
speaking of the Franciscans of Jalapa, Thomas Page says: "Their lives are
so free and immodest that it might be suspected with reason that they had
renounced only that which they could not obtain." After witnessing a
gambling scene in a convent, he concludes that "the cause of so many
Friars and Jesuits passing from Spain to regions so distant was
libertinage rather than love of preaching the Gospel."

The same writer subsequently passes from portraiture to more general
delineation, and thus depicts the body of the clergy: "It seems that all
wickedness is allowable, so that the churches and clergy flourish. Nay,
while the purse is open to lasciviousness, if it be also open to enrich
the temple walls and roof, it is better than any holy water.... In their
lifetime the Mexicans strive to excel one another in their gifts to the
cloisters of nuns and friars."

"Among the benefactors was one, Alonzo Cuellar, so rich that he was
reported to have a closet in his house laid with bars of gold instead
of bricks. This man built a nunnery for Franciscan nuns, which cost
him thirty thousand ducats, and left to it two thousand dollars
yearly. And yet his life was so scandalous that commonly in the night,
with two servants, he would go round the city visiting scandalous
persons, and at every house letting fall a bead and tying a knot, that
when he came home in the morning, he might number, by his beads, the
uncivil stations he had visited that night.

"Great alms and liberality toward religious houses are coupled with
great and scandalous wickedness. They wallow in the bed of riches and
wealth, and make their alms the coverlet to conceal their loose and
lascivious lives....

"I will not speak much of the lives of the friars and nuns of this
city, but only that they enjoy there more liberty than in Europe,
where they have too much, and that surely the scandals committed by
them do cry up to heaven for vengeance, judgment, and destruction.

"It is ordinary for the friars to visit their devoted nuns, and to
spend whole days with them, hearing their music and feeding on their
sweetmeats. For this purpose they have many chambers, which they call
loquatories, to talk in, with wooden bars between the nuns and them,
and in these chambers are tables for the friars to dine at, and while
they dine the nuns recreate them with their voices."

We need no addition to these deep shadows from the dark pencil of so
vigorous a limner as worthy Thomas Page, to delineate character nearly two
hundred years ago, but we can scarcely believe it equally applicable to
the present day. The reign of oppression in Mexico, it is to be hoped, is
approaching its end, and recent events have shown that the population is
alive to some of those truths which were long ago patent to all the world
except those most intimately concerned.

Of modern Mexican society, an accomplished female writer, who had the best
opportunities of judging, says:

"It is long before a stranger even suspects the state of morals in
this country, for, whatever be the private conduct of individuals,
the most perfect decorum prevails in outward behavior. But indolence
is the mother of vice. They rarely gossip to strangers about their
neighbors' faults. Habit has rendered them tolerably indifferent as to
the _liaisons_ subsisting among particular friends, and as long as a
woman attends church regularly, is a patroness of charitable
institutions, and gives no scandal by her outward behavior, she may do
pretty much as she pleases. As for flirtations in public, they are
unknown."[322]

The present amiability of the Mexican ladies is admitted on all hands, as
is the genial warmth of their manner. Some travelers, indeed, and among
them Mr. Waddy Thompson, are of opinion that this is attributed to them as
a fault, and that the reproach of unchastity is unjustly urged against
them, as there is no city in Europe where there is less immorality. The
constant presence of a duenna, and the house-porter, who is an
appurtenance of every household of respectability, are excellent checks on
immorality. But this would rather argue the necessity of a safeguard not
found in the female virtue of Mexico. Besides, these appendages of rank
have lost their real meaning, and the duenna may be converted into the
convenient cloak or abettor of an intrigue, the more safe as she is the
supposed protectress of the husband's honor. A native writer, in summing
up the character of his countrymen, says that "they are moderate in
eating, but their passion for liquor is carried to the greatest excess.
The affection which husbands bear their wives is certainly much less than
that borne by wives to their husbands, and _it is very common for the men
to love their neighbors' wives better than their own_."[323] This
one-sided censure presupposes, as a necessary consequence, that the
neighbors' wives must show some reciprocity.

The general immorality of the lower classes in Mexico would almost exclude
the expectation of a system of prostitution, as we usually understand the
term. Puebla, a manufacturing town near Mexico, is summarily described as
having a most devout female population, and a most abandoned one; but this
is matter of conduct rather than of calling. The enumeration of offenses
in the justice list of Mexico does not tell of one prostitute, although it
contains a large number of persons guilty of "incontinence." The exact
meaning of this offense, in its legal and technical sense, is not given
us, but we presume it relates to improper and disgusting practices. The
charge of "violation of public decency," although it may relate to mutual
familiarities, will probably include both indecency and immorality.

The following table gives the number of persons arrested in the city of
Mexico in 1851.

+------------------------------------------------------+
| Offenses. | Males. |Females.| Total.|
|----------------------------|--------|--------|-------|
|Drunkenness | 1256 | 1944 | 3200 |
|Affrays and wounds | 728 | 246 | 974 |
|Incontinence | 354 | 403 | 757 |
|Violations of public decency| 311 | 318 | 629 |
|Robbery | 384 | 120 | 504 |
|Suspicion of robbery | 180 | 84 | 264 |
|Carrying weapons | 209 | 85 | 294 |
|Picking pockets | 120 | 25 | 145 |
|False pretenses | 39 | 17 | 56 |
|Breaking prison | 36 | ... | 36 |
|Murder | 15 | 3 | 18 |
| |--------|--------|-------|
| Total | 3632 | 3245 | 6877 |
+------------------------------------------------------+

Among a population of inferior intellect, and with the excess of women
always to be found in tropical countries, the character of the priesthood
becomes of primary importance. On this particular, some writers are of
opinion that what was written in 1677 will apply with almost equal force
in the present day; a position certainly open to doubt.[324]

The lower orders of the priests and friars in Mexico are generally
uneducated and frequently licentious. The most revolting spectacles of
vice and immorality are exhibited by some of them. They are remarkable for
the _roue_ appearance they present, but they can not be considered types
of the class, for the higher orders and respectable members of the
priesthood are exempt from the imputation of such flagrant immorality.
Even these are not blameless members of the Church. Many of them have
nephews and nieces in their houses, or at least those who call them uncle,
but to whom scandal ascribes a closer relationship.

Among the charitable institutions in Mexico, perhaps the most important is
the _Cuna_, or Foundling Hospital. It is supported by private individuals,
and the members of the society consist of the first persons in the
capital, male and female. The men furnish the money; the women give their
time and attention. When a child has been about a month in the hospital,
it is sent with an Indian nurse to one of the adjacent villages; but if
sick or feeble, it remains in the institution, under the immediate
inspection of the society. These nurses are subject to a responsible
person, who lives in the village and answers for their good conduct. The
child is brought back to the hospital when weaned, and remains in its
charge for life. Few, however, are left to grow up in the asylum; they are
adopted by respectable persons, who bring them up either as servants or as
their own children. In this, as in other institutions of the same
character, the mothers of the children often get themselves hired as
nurses. There are usually five or six hundred children in this
asylum.[325]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA.

Low moral Condition.--San Salvador.--Guatemala.--Yucatan.--Costa
Rica.--Honduras.--The Caribs.--Depravity in Peru and Chili.--"Children
of the House."--Intrigue in Lima.--Infanticide.--Laxity of Morals in
Brazil and Paraguay.--Foundling Hospital at Rio Janeiro.

The whole peninsula of South America, and the states comprised in Central
America, are involved in the same social system with Mexico, derived as
they are by common origin from pure or mixed Spanish blood. The same
political circumstances and organization have always affected the various
territorial divisions, and whether we consider the semi-civilized nations
of ancient Peru and its dependencies, or the savage tribes in the valleys
of the Amazon and the La Plata, we find them, after the first irruption of
Spanish conquerors, victims of indiscriminate oppression, insatiable
avarice, and unsparing lust. South America was long considered a mere
treasure-field of the Spanish monarchy, to be worked without liability to
account by every adventurer who chose to encounter the hardships of
foreign travel, or the perils of residence in a tropical climate and amid
hostile savages.

The natives far outnumbered their masters, and the same ruthless system of
depression was extended to them as to Mexico. The consequence was, that
before the lapse of many generations from the Conquest, there were but two
classes throughout the vast Spanish territories--masters and slaves. The
natural and inevitable result of servile institutions could not long be
postponed. The descendants of the conquerors rapidly degenerated, and
imbecility and incapacity took the places of heroism and ability. The
original hardihood and daring, which had vanquished uncounted enemies, had
traversed unknown wilds, had defied every danger, were lost in
voluptuousness and self-indulgence. The posterity of those men who had
discovered a new world, and swayed the destinies of the old by a nod or
the stroke of a pen, were unable to protect themselves against the weak
ministers of a worn-out despotism, or against any unscrupulous demagogue
who could rally a band of roving Indians around him, and maraud the
peaceable and well-disposed. A state of political degradation reigned
supreme over the whole of South America, only to be paralleled by the
debasement of its social condition.

In Central America, including San Salvador, Guatemala, Yucatan, Costa
Rica, and Honduras, the condition of the women is very much the same as in
Mexico. The statements of travelers in those little-frequented regions are
very vague in reference to the subject of public morality, and give us no
reliable or detailed information on the specialities which would be of
service in this inquiry. In Yucatan, the ladies are said to be somewhat
more domesticated than their Mexican neighbors, and to interest themselves
in the management of their households and the education of their children;
but still the standard of morality is not very high, if measured by United
States habits and ideas.[326] In the neighboring republic of Guatemala,
the free manners prevalent in the country districts of the kindred
territories are usually met with;[327] but these would rather indicate low
ideas of decency than any actual immorality. Difference of climate and of
race would make many things tolerable, or even reputable, which our colder
skies and more rigid notions would totally exclude from the observances of
civilized society.

The Indian populations of South America have become so completely slaves
during long years of bondage that they have lost their prominent
characteristics,[328] and are but a reflex of their masters in the lowest
state of ignorance. The women may be generally described as of very loose
morals, yet kind and gentle unless roused by jealousy, in which case they
can use the knife as promptly as their male friends. It is said they make
very affectionate mothers.

There are a few tribes who have preserved some semblance of nationality.
The Caribs of Honduras are a hardy and athletic race. Polygamy is general
among them, three or four wives being a not uncommon number. The husband
is compelled to have a separate house and plantation for each, and, if he
make one a present, he must give the others something of equal value. He
must also divide his time among them, giving a week to each in succession.
When a Carib takes a wife, he fells a plantation and builds a house; the
wife then takes the management, and he becomes a gentleman. The women
attend their plantations with great care, and, in the course of twelve or
fifteen months, have every description of breadstuff under cultivation.
About Christmas they engage several creers, and freight them with produce
for Truxillo and Belize, hiring their husbands and others as sailors. It
is also the custom, when a woman can not do all the work required on her
plantation, for her to engage her husband as a laborer, and pay him two
dollars per week. Industry and forethought are peculiar traits of the
Carib women, consequently they easily surround themselves with necessaries
and comforts.

The data bearing on the proportion of the sexes in the aggregate
population, although too imperfect to be worth presenting, yet go to show
that, as in Mexico, there is a considerable preponderance of females.[329]
The disproportion in births is not so great as in deaths; for, while the
number of males and females born is nearly equal, more of the former than
the latter die annually. There are more old women than old men,
ascribable, no doubt, to the greater sobriety of the women, drunkenness
being a vice which, under the tropics, is rapid in its consequences. In
Nicaragua the women number two to one of the male population. The
Department of Cuscatlan in San Salvador has an excess of 1838 women over
men, and of 1709 boys over girls.

Peru and Chili, though neighboring countries, and both in the strip of
western coast between the Andes and the sea, present considerable
difference of condition. Chili is rapidly rising in political importance
by means of the internal energy of the people, and the development of
natural resources by native and foreign enterprise and capital.

It has been asserted by resident eye-witnesses that female virtue was at
so low an ebb in Chili within a few years, that in most families, even of
good standing, there were one or more children who were called "children
of the house," and whose parentage was distributed generally among the
ladies of the family. Nay, we have heard that the rites of hospitality
sometimes included civilities in respect to the females which are usually
considered as peculiar to certain Oriental nations. A rapid change for the
better is, however, taking place in these usages, and even the sea-port of
Valparaiso is described by Wilkes as being greatly improved from the
period of his first visit, when few sailors left it without having lost
both their money and health among its women.

Peru has made but little advance in its recent political changes. The
government is in a state of continual anarchy. A new mine of wealth has
been discovered in the guano deposits of the Chincha Islands, which has
attracted great numbers of foreign vessels to its shores. But the wealth
acquired from this source has done little for the people. Lima, the
capital, has long been remarkable for the levity and dissipation of its
inhabitants. The very dress of the ladies, which may have been originally
intended to insure seclusion and privacy, has become an emblem of
intrigue. It consists of a peculiar hood and petticoat, covering the
wearer entirely, who, when thus in domino, is styled _tapada_, and is, by
common usage, held to be secure from all impertinent interference or
insult. The same term is applied to a shawl worn over the head, so as to
cover the mouth and forehead. Under this concealment the wearer is known
only to the most intimate friends, and ladies thus attired frequent the
theatres. It is favorable to intrigue, and so perfect is the security that
any place of amusement may be visited with impunity, and, even if
suspected by the husband or relative, she is protected from discovery by
the respect attached to the custom.

Dr. Tschudi draws a very cheerless picture of the state and prospects of
Peru.[330] Its moral degradation is significantly typified in the decline
of its population, which has been continually diminishing since the
establishment of its independence. That noble land, which contained an
enormous population at the time of the Conquest, numbered in 1836 less
than 1,400,000 inhabitants; not so many as were formerly found in the
department of Cusco alone. The deaths in Lima vary annually from 2500 to
2800 out of a population of 53,000; in the ten months from January 1st to
October 31st, 1841, they were 2244, the births in that period being 1682,
of which 860 were illegitimate.

"Not less remarkable than the number of illegitimate children is that
of the new-born infants exposed and found dead (495). These afford the
most striking proofs of the immorality which prevails in Lima,
especially among the colored people. To them belong nearly two thirds
of the illegitimate births, and fully four fifths of the children cast
out to die. There is reason to suspect, though it can not be
positively proved, that no small portion of the latter suffer a
violent death by the hands of their mothers. When a dead child is
picked up before the church of San Lazaro, or in the street, it is
carried, without a word of inquiry, to the Pantheon; frequently it is
not even thought worth while to bury it. I have seen the vultures
dragging about the sweltering carcasses of infants, and devouring them
in populous streets. * * * * On comparing the lists of births and
deaths from 1826 to 1842, I satisfied myself that the annual excess of
the latter over the former averages 550.

"The women of Lima are far superior to the men, both corporeally and
intellectually, though their conduct in many respects is any thing but
exemplary. They cling with invincible tenacity to the use of their
national walking garb, the _saya y manto_, in which they take their
pleasure in the streets, making keen play with the one eye they leave
uncovered, and quite secure in that disguise from detection, even by
the most jealous scrutiny. The veil is inviolable; any man who should
attempt to pluck off a woman's _manto_ would be very severely handled
by the populace. The history of their lives comprises two phases: in
the full bloom of their fascinating beauty their time is divided
between doing naught and naughty doings; when their charms are on the
wane, they take to devotion and scandal. A young lady of Lima rises
late, dresses her hair with orange or jasmine flowers, and waits for
breakfast, after which she receives or pays visits. During the heat of
the day she swings in a hammock or reclines on a sofa, smoking a
cigar. After dinner she again pays visits, and finishes the evening
either in the theatre, or the Plaza, or on the bridge. Few ladies
occupy themselves with needlework or netting, though some of them
possess great skill in those arts.

"The pride which the fair Limeñas take in their dainty little feet
knows no bounds. Walking, sitting, or standing, swinging in the
hammock or lying on the sofa, they are ever watchful to let their
tiny feet be seen. Praise of their virtue, their intelligence, or
their beauty, sounds not half so sweetly in their ears as encomiums
bestowed on their pretty feet. They take the most scrupulous care of
them, and avoid every thing that might favor their enlargement. A
large foot (_pataza Inglesa_--an English foot, as they say) is an
abomination to them. I once heard a beautiful European lady deservedly
extolled by some fair dames of Lima, but they wound up their eulogy
with these words: "_Pero que pie! valgame Dio, sparece una lancha!_"
(but what a foot! Good heavens, it is like a great boat!) and yet the
foot in question would by no means have been thought large in Europe.

"The Limeñas possess, in an extraordinary degree, talents which
unhappily are seldom cultivated as they should be. They have great
penetration, sound judgment, and very correct views respecting the
most diversified affairs of life. Like the women of Seville, they are
remarkable for their quick and pointed repartees, and a Limeña is sure
never to come off second best in a war of words. They possess a rare
firmness of character, and a courage not generally given to their sex.
In these respects they are far superior to the dastardly, vacillating
men, and they have played as important a part as the latter (often one
much more so) in all the political troubles of their country.
Ambitious and aspiring, accustomed to conduct with ease the maziest
intrigues with a presence of mind that never fails them at critical
moments, passionate and bold, they mingle in the great game of
politics with momentous effect, and usually turn it to their own
advantage, seldom to that of the state."

Add to this picture that, though delicate, modest women are rare, actual
adultery is not often committed by the sex, but that concubinage is more
common, or rather, perhaps, more public than in Europe, the father being
usually very fond and careful of his natural children, and a fair view is
obtained of female character in Lima. The white Creoles are noted for
sensuality, and some of the dances in which they indulge are of
indescribable obscenity.[331]

The influx of foreign ships and seamen into Callao, the port of Lima, has
brought in its train the usual accompaniments, drunkenness and debauchery.
A few years ago it was almost in decay and ruin; now it swarms with
drinking-shops (_pulperias_) and prostitutes, and is probably as
profligate a place as any in the western hemisphere.

Passing to the Atlantic coast of South America, we find Robertson, the
author of "Letters from Paraguay," writing of female Spanish society at
the city of Santa Fe:

"I was particularly struck by the extremely free nature (to use the
very gentlest expression) of the conversation which was adopted with
the ladies, young and old. It was such as to make me, with my
unsophisticated English feelings, blush at every turn, although such
modesty, whenever it was observed, caused a hearty laugh."

The same author, speaking of female society in Rio, says:

"There is no society at Rio, for I can not call that society from
which females are excluded. Generally speaking, the husband of a
Brazilian wife is not so much her companion as her keeper. His house
is the abode of jealousy and distrust, for he can not always stretch
his confidence to the point of imagining fidelity in the wife of his
bosom, any more than he can rely on the virtuous forbearance of the
friend of his heart. His daughters are brought up in Moorish
seclusion, and his wife is delivered over to the keeping of a train of
sombre slaves and domestics."

It may be thought that some of these remarks are applicable to periods of
time and conditions of society now happily passed away. But the poison of
moral depravity, when once taken up, is not to be speedily eliminated from
the system of nations more than of individuals. A very recent traveler,
Mr. Stewart, testifies to the demoralization of female society in all
classes.[332]

With such uniform representations of the general immorality, and of the
low estimate in which female virtue is held in South America, it is not to
be expected that there are any special details on the subject of our
investigation. Prostitution is in some degree attendant upon a state of
public feeling in which the purity of wives and daughters is held in
respect--not viewed with jealousy, but with reverence. In South America,
even in the present time, females mix but little in society. Their
education is very limited, terminates early, and they are always under
some kind of guardianship or chaperonage in public. This does not elevate
the female character. Freedom and self-respect are the best protectives to
virtue and honor, and the seclusion of women from general society only
serves to invest them with the attraction of mystery to the libertine,
while it takes away from themselves the experience and self-reliance in
which they find a safeguard.

In South America generally, the character of the priesthood is
unfortunately open to reprobation. In Brazil, the priests are reputed to
be free livers. Nearly all of them have families, and when seen leaving
the dwellings of their wives, or of the females they visit, they speak of
them as their nieces or sisters. Some unequivocally admit the
relationship existing, and acknowledge their children.[333] The value of
the priestly character, in estimating the standard of morality among a
population is unquestionably great.

An enlightened native said to Mr. Ewbank, "The priesthood of this country
is superlatively corrupt. It is impossible for men to be worse, or to
imagine them worse. In the churches they appear respectable and devout,
but their secret crimes have made this city a Sodom. There are, of course,
honorable exceptions."[334]

Another, a man of unquestionable authority, said, "They are assuredly the
most licentious and profligate part of the community. The exceptions are
rare. Celibacy being one of their dogmas, you will find nearly the whole
with families."

At Rio Janeiro there is a Foundling Hospital, established in 1582, which
is a noble institution. The boys are provided for at Botofoga, and are in
due time apprenticed to trades. The girls reside in the city
establishment, and are taught to read, write, sew, etc. At each
anniversary, bachelors in want of wives attend at the festival, and if
they see girls to their liking, make themselves known. If a girl accepts
such a lover, he makes his application to the managers, who inquire into
his character, and, if satisfactory, the marriage takes place, and a small
dowry is given from the funds of the society. In the management of the
institution or the reception of infants, there is nothing peculiarly
worthy notice. But if those who are averse to such institutions contrast
the blessed results of saving these helpless infants from misery, and the
horror of beholding their dead bodies cast on dunghills, to be devoured as
carrion by obscene animals and birds of prey, as has been mentioned in the
notice of Lima, they would, on such grounds, even if there were no better
to be urged, suspend a hasty judgment on Foundling Hospitals.

CHAPTER XXIX.

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

Decrease of the Indian Race.--Treatment of Females.--Courtship.--
Stealing Wives.--Domestic Life among the Crow Indians.--"Pine Leaf."--
Female Prisoners.--Marriage.--Conjugal Relations.--Infidelity.--
Polygamy.--Divorce.--Female Morality.--Intrigue and Revenge.--Decency
of Outward Life.--Effects of Contact with White Men.--Traders.

The aboriginal inhabitants of the vast continent of America have been
variously described by different writers, one man lauding them as models
of chivalry and virtue, another decrying them as the personification of
meanness and vice. Hence it is only at a recent period, comparatively
speaking, that any reliable information has been obtainable on the
subject. In the limited space that can be given to a consideration of the
Indian and his social habits, we shall endeavor to reject both romance and
vituperation. We do not believe him so stoically virtuous as the former
class of writers depict, nor do we think that all of the race are so
deeply sunk in depravity as the latter represent.

In addition to the authorities quoted in the progress of the chapter, we
are under obligations to Mr. Horace St. John's article on Prostitution,
incorporated by Mr. Mayhew in his tracts on "London Labor and the London
Poor."

At the time of the settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth, it was estimated
that there were about two millions of Indians scattered over this
continent. They were then a brave and hardy people, who lived on the
produce of the chase, varying their locations as the facilities for
hunting required. When the last census of the United States was taken,
their numbers were about four hundred thousand, exclusive of fifteen
thousand in Canada and the British possessions. This decrease has been
ascribed to the occupation of their hunting-grounds by white men, and the
consequent extermination of the game upon which they depended for
subsistence; the free use of intoxicating liquors, and the introduction of
small-pox and other fatal diseases. These causes will, in all probability,
result in the entire extinction of the race. In the small number
mentioned are many half-breeds, children of white fathers and Indian
mothers.

It might naturally be supposed that in the several tribes composing this
people there would exist great diversity of manners, but these are found
only in minor particulars. The social institutions of the North American
Indians are so generally uniform as to render it possible to sketch the
whole at one view.

Their occupations are still confined to the chase and the war-path. To
perform a round of daily labor, even though it insured the most ample
provision for his wants, would be contrary alike to the inclination and
the supposed dignity of the Red Man, who will scarcely deign to follow any
pursuit which does not combine enterprise and excitement. Woman,
therefore, becomes the drudge and slave; upon her devolves the duty of
cultivating the ground, whenever any attempt is made to assist the
spontaneous efforts of Nature; she it is who must bear the load of game
which her husband has killed; must carry wood and water, build huts, and
make canoes. In fishing, and in reaping their scanty harvest, the man
will, at times, condescend to assist her, but otherwise all the labor
falls to her share. In those tribes visited by traders, her duties are
still heavier; she must join in the hunt, and afterward dress and prepare
the skins and furs which are to be bartered for whisky and other luxuries.
To this degraded condition the women seem perfectly reconciled, and
expertness at the assigned employment is a source of pride to them.

The treatment of the female sex is generally admitted to be a standard by
which man's moral qualities can be estimated. It may be doubted if this
rule would apply to the Indian tribes, for those who treat their females
most mildly are by no means the most virtuous, nor is their deference
attended by any increase of attachment, the general opinion of a wife's
value being the consideration of her capacity to be useful. Where they aid
in procuring food or luxuries for the tribe, they are held in more esteem;
while in places where the chief burden of providing rests upon the men,
they are treated with severity.[335]

Even when oppressed with these laborious occupations, the women have as
much native vanity in respect to decoration as the sex in any part of the
world; and an accurate observer remarks that, "Judging from the time a
squaw often occupies in arranging her hair, or disposing her scanty dress,
or painting her round cheeks with glaring circles of vermilion, it is
evident that personal ornament occupies as much of her thoughts as among
fashionable women in civilized society."[336]

Courtship and marriage are differently arranged among various tribes. The
predominant custom is for a man to procure a wife by purchase from her
father, thus acquiring a property over which he has absolute control, and
which he can barter away or dispose of in any manner he pleases. The
example of Powhatan, who was chief ruler over thirty tribes in Virginia at
the time of the English colonization, is a case in point. It is said that
he always had a multitude of wives about him, and when he wearied of any
would distribute them as presents among his principal warriors. In most
cases the woman is not consulted at all, the whole transaction being a
mercantile one; in others an infant female is betrothed by her father (for
a consideration) to some man who requires a wife, either for himself or
for his son. The girl remains with her parents until the age of puberty,
when the contract is completed, at which time the father often makes a
present to the husband equal in value to the price originally paid for his
daughter.[337]

Another mode of obtaining a wife is to steal a girl from some neighboring
tribe. Captain Clarke, who crossed the Rocky Mountains in the years
1804-1806, as one of the leaders of an expedition ordered by the executive
of the United States, records instances of this kind. He says, "One of the
Ahnahaways had stolen a Minnetaree girl. The whole nation immediately
espoused the quarrel, and one hundred and fifty of the warriors were
marching down to avenge the insult. The chief took possession of the girl,
and sent her by messengers to the hands of her countrymen in time to avert
the threatened calamity."[338] "A young Minnetaree had carried off the
daughter of a chief of the Mandans. The father went to the village and
found his daughter, whom he brought home, and at the same time took
possession of a horse belonging to the offender. This reprisal satisfied
his vengeance. The stealing of young women is one of the most common
offenses."[339]

A more peaceable kind of preliminary to matrimony is for a man desiring a
wife to offer a small present to the woman: if she accepts it and offers
him one in return, the match is complete; or he may tell her his wishes
without any introductory gift, and, if agreeable, she will reply
accordingly. Others will not venture to express their thoughts, but will
sit quietly by a girl's side, and, if she does not remove from her seat,
her assent is understood to be given.[340] Still another custom is for the
lover to enter the woman's tent at night, bearing a lighted torch. If she
allows it to burn, it is a sign that his attentions are not desired; but
if she extinguishes it, she thus intimates that he is accepted. It will
not require much knowledge of human nature to imagine the consequences of
these nocturnal visits.

A recently published work, "Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth,
New York, 1856," professes to give an accurate account of the domestic
life of the Crow Indians, among whom he lived for some years, and became a
chief of the tribe, who believed that he was one of themselves, and had
been stolen from them in infancy. It may be necessary to say that we only
quote him on points where corroborative evidence can be obtained from
other sources. His character for veracity is questionable, and among the
miners of California, where he is known, any extravagant tale is
proverbially called "one of Jem Beckwourth's lies." His first experience
of matrimony, showing that the woman's consent was not asked, but that the
arrangements were made by the parents, is thus stated: "While conversing
with my father, he suddenly demanded if I wanted a wife; I assented. 'Very
well,' said he, 'you shall have a pretty wife and a good one.' Away he
strode to the lodge of one of the greatest braves, and asked one of his
daughters of him to bestow upon his son. The consent of the parent was
readily given. He had three very pretty daughters, and the ensuing day
they were brought to my father's lodge, and I was requested to take my
choice. The eldest was named 'Still Water,' and I chose her. The
acceptance of my wife was the completion of the ceremony, and I was a
married man, as sacredly in their eyes as if the Holy Christian Church had
fastened the irrevocable knot upon us."[341]

Cases are also recorded by Indian travelers wherein a custom more
assimilating to civilized notions is adopted. A young man will court a
girl for a length of time, using all his endeavors to cultivate her
affections, and the woman, upon her part, will entertain an equal
tenderness for him. Again turning to the pages of Beckwourth, we find an
instance of this in the case of a woman who attracted his attention. It
must not be considered that he was a victim of the romantic affliction
called "first love," for he had some six or eight wives in the tribe at
the time. His description is as follows:

"In connection with my Indian experience, I conceive it to be my duty
to devote a few lines to one of the bravest women that ever lived,
namely, 'Pine Leaf'--in Indian, _Barcheeampe_. She possessed great
intellectual powers; her features were pleasing, and her form
symmetrical. She had lost a twin brother in an attack on the village,
and was left to avenge his death. She was at that time twelve years of
age, and solemnly vowed that she would never marry until she had
killed a hundred of the enemy with her own hand. Whenever a war-party
started, Pine Leaf was the first to volunteer to accompany them....
She had chosen my party to serve in.... I began to feel more than a
common attachment toward her. One day, while riding leisurely along, I
asked her to marry me, provided we both returned safe. She laughed and
said, 'Well, I will marry you.' 'When we return?' 'No, but when the
pine leaves turn yellow.' I reflected that it would soon be winter,
and regarded her promise as valid. A few days afterward it occurred to
me that pine leaves do not turn yellow, and I saw I had been practiced
upon. When I again spoke to her on the subject, I said, 'Pine Leaf,
you promised to marry me when the pine leaves turn yellow; it has
occurred to me that they never turn yellow. Am I to understand that
you never intend to marry me?' 'Yes, I will marry you,' she said, with
a coquettish smile. 'But when?' 'When you shall find a redheaded
Indian.' I saw I advanced nothing by importuning her, and I let the
matter rest."[342]

It would occupy too much space to recite all the details of a long
courtship, including scenes in war and chase, at the camp, or on
horse-stealing excursions; suffice it to say that the heroine accomplished
her vow, and seemed convinced of the sincerity of her lover. She concluded
the courtship thus:

"She then approached me, every eye being intently fixed upon her.
'Look at me,' she said. 'I know that your heart is crying for the
follies of the people; but let it cry no more. I am yours, after you
have so long been seeking me. I believe you love me. Our lodge shall
be a happy one, and, when you depart to the happy hunting-ground, I
will be already there to welcome you. This day I become your
wife.'"[343]

Women will sometimes voluntarily ask men to marry them, promising to be
faithful, good-tempered, and obedient. This request is seldom refused, as
the marriage tie is easily dissolved if the union proves unpleasant.
Tanner, who was taken prisoner by a war-party, and lived among various
tribes in the northwest for nearly thirty years, relates a case in point.
The woman's endeavors to secure him as her husband commenced with an
invitation to smoke with her. He acceded; but either his blood was not so
warm as that coursing through Indian veins, or from some other cause, it
was long before he consented to the proposed companionship, which a Red
Man would have accepted on the spot. The girl resolutely pursued him, and
at last, with the consent of her father, took possession of his hut while
he was absent. When he returned, "he could not put the young woman to
shame" by sending her back to her friends, and so they became man and
wife.[344]

Beckwourth also had some experience of this custom. "A little girl, who
had often asked me to marry her, came to me one day, and with every
importunity insisted on my accepting her as my wife. I said, 'When you are
older I will talk to you about it;' but she would not be put off. 'You are
a great brave,' she said; 'and, if I am your wife, you will paint my face
when you return from the war, and I shall be proud.' The little innocent
used such powerful appeals that I told her she might be my wife."[345] He
lived with her until he left the Indians, and her son is now (1855) chief
of the tribe.

The women taken prisoners in war are frequently married into the tribe
that captured them, but never to the captors, who stand in the relation of
brothers to them, and by whom they are protected from insult. A warrior
who has taken a female prisoner usually makes an exchange with another who
has had the same fortune, each being thus accommodated without infringing
upon custom. If a man has seized more than he can dispose of in that way,
he generally gives them to any man who will accept them.[346] In the same
manner, a woman whose husband has been killed in battle will ask a warrior
for a male prisoner, who accordingly becomes the successor of one whom he
has probably slain. In these cases the man is adopted as one of the tribe,
is kindly treated, and entitled to his share of all their advantages.[347]

The marriages are without ceremony of any kind; the parties agree to live
with each other as long as they can do so with mutual satisfaction, and
the man conducts his bride to his hut at once, or resides with her at her
father's cabin. It must not be supposed that the ordinary requirements of
a married life are systematically unheeded, for, as a general rule, the
squaws are faithful to their husbands, who, upon their part, rigidly exact
this fidelity, even if they do not practice it themselves.

The general description of the position of Indian women already given
applies equally to their state after marriage. They continue sometimes the
abject slaves, otherwise the patient servants of their husbands. While he
eats the food she has cooked, and probably caught herself, she must wait
in submissive silence. At all times she approaches him with the deference
due to a superior being. An Indian will never evince the slightest symptom
of tenderness toward his wife; this would be opposed to his idea of manly
dignity; but the eagerness with which he will revenge her wrongs proves
that his apparent apathy springs only from pride, or a fancied sense of
decorum.[348] When Catlin proposed to paint the portrait of the wife of a
Sioux chief, his offer was ridiculed, and it was considered marvelous that
he should honor a woman in the same manner he had honored the warriors, as
the former had never taken any scalps, never done any thing but make
fires, dress skins, and other servile employments.

To infer from these facts that there is no conjugal affection among this
people would be erroneous. Notwithstanding their assumed indifference,
instances are not rare of strong mutual attachment. To an Indian there is
nothing inconsistent with affection in his indolently walking through the
forest, while his wife follows him bearing the heavy wigwam poles, his
ideas never having been led to consider this as other than her natural
duty. Many pictures of domestic happiness are exhibited among the Indians,
and the Blackfeet, Sanee, and Blood tribes strongly desire that their
wives may live long and look young. Heckewelder relates a singular
instance of indulgence. In 1762 there was a scarcity of food among many
tribes, and during the prevalence of this famine a sick woman wished for a
mess of Indian corn. Her husband rode about a hundred miles to obtain it,
gave his horse in exchange for a hatful, and returned home on foot with
the coveted dainty.[349]

These "lords of creation" attempt to enforce their marital rights with
much severity, and, if their suspicions are excited against their wives,
become very indignant, and punish them by beating, biting off the nose,
dismissing them in disgrace, or even killing them. The wife of a Mandan
Indian ran away from him in consequence of a quarrel. By so doing she
forfeited her life, which custom would have justified the husband in
taking, and he would have murdered her but for the interposition of the
travelers, who "gave him a few presents, and persuaded him to take his
wife home; they went off together, but by no means in a state of much
apparent love." This trouble arose from jealousy.[350] In another case, a
Minnetaree had much abused his wife for the same reason, and she sought
refuge in the camp. Her husband followed and demanded her, and she
"returned with him, as we had no authority to separate those whom even
Indian rites had united."[351]

Since an Indian considers his wife as so much property, equally valuable
as his horse, and for the same reason--for the labor she can perform--we
can easily understand that polygamy is universally allowed, though it is
not generally practiced, being confined to great chiefs and medicine-men,
as the rank and file are often too poor to buy a second wife. Many follow
the custom for the mere purpose of amassing wealth, but others of the
stoic warriors delight in the harem from the same sensual motives as a
Turk or Hindu. Among the communities that Catlin had an opportunity of
visiting, it was no uncommon thing to find from six to fourteen wives in
the same lodge. He mentions an instance in which a young chief of the
Mandans took four wives in one day, paying a horse or two for each. These
brides were from twelve to fourteen years of age. An Indian marriage at
this age is far from uncommon, and, indeed, it appears from good testimony
that celibacy beyond the age of puberty is very rare. Some of the females
are mothers before they are twelve years old. It is not universal for the
wives to live all in one hut, some tribes requiring separate lodgings for
each. This custom is in force among the Crows, and Beckwourth relates
that, on returning from one of his excursions, he made a round of visits
to his wives, some of whom he had not seen for months.[352]

It is not uncommon for a man to marry his wife's sister, and, indeed, the
whole family of girls, on the supposition that his household will thus be
rendered more harmonious.[353] For the same reason, a Cherokee will marry
a mother and her daughter at one time, though he will not, upon any
account, take a wife from his own kindred. Among the Oregon tribes it is
strictly required that each wife should be purchased from a different
family.

So well established among Indians is the custom of polygamy, that
civilization meets the greatest difficulty in opposing it, and, if ever
abolished, it will overthrow their whole social system, and, in changing
their national character, tend to their speedy extinction. Sir George
Simpson relates an amusing anecdote of an Indian who came into the settled
districts of British North America, learned to read and write, and adopted
the principle of monogamy. Returning to his tribe, he endeavored to
persuade them to the same course. Long and earnest were the debates on the
question, and the _finale_ was, instead of converting them, they
reconverted him. He took a great number of wives, foreswore books, and
never again appeared in the character of a social reformer. Another chief
offered to renounce polygamy, he having five wives, and a large fortune in
horses and cattle. Falling in love with the daughter of a gentleman in the
service of the Hudson's Bay Company, he dismissed his harem, and presented
himself, with great parade and confidence, to make his matrimonial
proposal to the lady's family. To his extreme disgust and mortification,
they rejected the honor of his distinguished alliance. He revenged himself
by refilling his hut with women as quickly as possible.

If the obligation of marriage is easily contracted, divorce is effected
with as little trouble. It is not often that a separation takes place, for
it is held dishonorable to forsake a wife for a trifling cause,
particularly if she has borne children. When it does occur, the offspring
are usually permitted to decide which of the parents they will accompany,
although usage gives the mother the right to take charge of them. In some
instances the form of divorce is simply for the husband to bid his wife
go; in others he will not take the trouble to give her notice of his
discontent, but will quietly put his gun on his shoulder and move off
himself.[354] There are a few instances of this being done for very slight
reasons; but, in addition to the restraint of custom just mentioned, the
actual value of the wife is a subject of consideration. Where a separation
does take place, the man will often endeavor to renew the connection. A
missionary mentions a woman who contracted a new marriage after her
husband left her. He returned and claimed her. The dispute was referred to
a chief, and he, either wanting a precedent or distrusting his judicial
capacity, could think of no better expedient than placing the woman at an
equal distance from each claimant, and then ordering the men to run,
promising that the one who first reached her should retain possession of
the prize.[355] In some tribes divorce renders it impossible for the woman
to marry again, but in others she can make a new alliance as soon as free
from the old one.

It is difficult to form any opinion as to the morality of females among a
people where marriages are contracted and dissolved so easily. We may
safely say that they have very little idea of chastity as a positive
virtue, notwithstanding their general, although not invariable fidelity
when married, which may probably be induced more by fear of consequences
than sense of duty. Of prostitution for a price, as known in civilized
communities, we find no trace in the Indian nations while in a normal
condition; but if we assume Webster's definition, "the act of offering the
body to an indiscriminate intercourse with men," it can scarcely be
claimed that they are free. The predominant motive seems to be an
inordinate sexual appetite, which must be gratified, if not in legitimate
marriage, then by illicit intercourse. We are told that in most large
assemblies of Indians there are to be seen voluptuous looking females,
whose passions urge them to this; and Carver, in his "Travels in North
America," says that among the Manedowessis it was a custom, when a young
woman could not get a husband, for her to assemble all the leading
warriors of the tribe at a feast, and, when their hunger was appeased, to
retire behind a screen, and submit to the embraces of each in succession.
This gained her great applause, and always insured her a husband. Though
the custom is now almost obsolete, the principle still exists, and
prostitution is regarded by many as the shortest road to marriage.

The birth of a bastard child entails little shame upon a girl, and that
such children are not more frequent is due less to their chastity than to
the means they employ to procure abortion. One of the reasons advanced for
their early marriages is that the impetuosity of the girls would render it
difficult to obtain a virtuous wife if the union was delayed. The
confessions upon starting for war, or what is called the "war-path
secret," would also favor the opinion that abstract virtue is at a low
ebb. At these times every warrior is required to relate to his companions
each act of illicit intercourse he has committed since the last excursion,
naming his partner, and enumerating the facts attending the frailty. This
obligation is enforced by the most rigid oaths known to Indian
customs.[356]

This immorality is not confined to the single women, for the squaws are,
at times, as ready to take part in an intrigue as any in civilized
nations. Beckwourth, whose experience of Indian manners seems to have
embraced every conceivable phase of life, relates his adventures in this
way:

"A brave named 'Big Rain' was elected chief of the village. He possessed a
most beautiful squaw, who was the admiration of the young men, and all
were plotting to win her from her lord. I determined to steal her, be the
consequences what they might." Having enticed the husband to a
smoking-party, he says, "I went to Big Rain's lodge, dressed and painted
in the extreme of fashion, and saw the lady reclining upon her couch. She
started up, saying, 'Who is here?' 'Hush! it is I.' 'What do you want
here?' 'I have come to see you because I love you.' 'Don't you know that I
am the chief's wife?' 'Yes, I know it, but he does not love you as I do. I
can paint your face and bring you fine horses, but as long as you are the
wife of Big Rain he will never paint your face. With you by my side I
could bring home many scalps. Then we could often dance, and our hearts
would be merry.' * * * * 'Go, now,' she pleaded, 'for if my husband should
return I fear he would kill you. Go, for your own sake and for mine.' 'No,
I will not go till you give me a pledge that you will be mine.' She
hesitated for a moment, and then slipped a ring from her finger and placed
it on mine. All I had to do now was to watch for a favorable chance to
take her away. * * * * The appointed time had arrived, and on going to the
place of assignation, I found the lady true to her word--in fact, she was
there first. We joined the party, and were absent about a week. We
succeeded in capturing (stealing?) one hundred and seventeen horses, and
arrived safe with them in the camp. Meanwhile Big Rain discovered the loss
of his wife. When we rode in, he took no part in the rejoicing, but
ordered his wife and me to be surrounded, and, with half a dozen of his
sisters, all armed with scourges, administered a most unmerciful whipping.
I received it with Indian fortitude. If I had resisted, they would have
been justified in killing me; also, if they had drawn one drop of blood, I
should have been justified in taking their lives."

Without wishing to delay the progress of the narrative, we can not resist
the impulse to express admiration of the Indian punishment for a seducer
of married women. Could the same unromantic penalty be duly and zealously
inflicted for similar transgressions, in places of more pretensions, some
of the scandals of civilized life would be curtailed. To resume:

"I sent word to the wife of Big Rain that I should go out again the next
night, and should expect her company. She returned a favorable answer, and
was faithful to her promise. On my return I received another such flogging
as the first. Two nights afterward I started on a third expedition, my new
wife accompanying me, and received a third sound thrashing from her
husband. Finally, he grew furious; but my soldiers said to him, 'You have
whipped him three times, and shall whip him no more; we will buy your
claim.' He acceded to the offer, and consented to resign all interest and
title in Mrs. Big Rain for the consideration of one war-horse, ten guns,
ten chief's coats of scarlet cloth, ten pairs of new leggins, and the same
number of moccasins."[357] This was not a bad remuneration for a faithless
woman.

In another case an intrigue resulted tragically. One of the wives of a
Minnetaree chief eloped with a man who had formerly been her lover. He
deserted her in a short time. She returned to her father's hut, whither
her husband traced her. He walked deliberately into the hut, smoked
quietly for a time, and then took her by the hair, led her to the door,
and killed her with a single blow of his tomahawk.[358] The caprice or
generosity of the same chief gave a very different conclusion to a similar
incident which occurred some time afterward. Another of his wives eloped
with a young man who was not able to support her as she wished, and both
returned to the village. She presented herself before her husband and
asked his pardon. He sent for the man, inquired if they still loved each
other, and on their acknowledgment gave up his wife to her lover, made
them a present of three horses, and restored them both to his favor.[359]

With the exception of some national customs, the outward life of the
Indian is generally decent. A temporary interval of wild license,
corresponding to the Saturnalia of the ancients, and called the festival
of dreams, is common among the Canadian tribes. This carnival lasts
fifteen days, and, laying aside all their usual gravity, they then commit
every imaginable extravagance.[360] Our authority does not say whether
immorality forms a portion of this relaxation, but from the custom of
other bands it is not improbable. Lewis and Clarke mention several
instances in which they were present at dancing and similar festivals,
and witnessed exhibitions of the most foul and revolting indecency.

Mr. Catlin records his opinion that the Old World has very little of
superior morality or virtue to hold as an example to the North American
Indians, and we are not inclined to enter into any long comparison of the
races. The manners of each have been described; and while it would be
unjust to expect the untutored son of the forest to display as much
delicacy as his more cultivated fellow-men, it would be equally ungenerous
to assert that the white female population, as an aggregate, are governed
by the impulses which apparently sway the Indian woman.

But whatever doubts there may exist as to the immorality of the Indian
women in their natural state, all are entirely removed as soon as they
come in contact with the white race. Those in the provinces of Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada have rapidly learned the worst of vices.
They are drunken, sensual, and depraved. The venereal disease commits
frightful ravages among them; in fact, most of their sickness arises from
excess of one kind or another. Maclean, in his "Twenty-five years' Service
in Hudson's Bay," says that the men employed by the company are reconciled
to their hard employment and poor remuneration by the immorality of the
women, of whom numbers are prostitutes, selling themselves for the
smallest remuneration. On the Northwest Coast chastity is scarcely even a
name. The sea tribes are the most licentious, and at some places, where
ships touch for supplies, hundreds of women come down to the beach, and by
indecent exposures of their persons endeavor to obtain permission to come
on board. Sir George Simpson received a visit from a chief who wanted to
negotiate the loan of Lady Simpson, and offered his squaw in temporary
exchange.

Many of the traders on the Upper Missouri, from motives of policy, connect
themselves with women of the tribes. The most beautiful girls aspire to
this station, which elevates them above their ordinary servile
occupations. These engagements are not marriages in our sense of the word;
a price is paid for the girl, and she is transferred at once to the
trader's house. With equal facility he can annul the contract, for which
her father is not sorry, as he is thus enabled to sell her over again. The
tariff of prices will range from two horses to a handful of awls: such is
the remuneration for which an Indian chief will prostitute his daughter.
It must be added that occasionally the couple live permanently together
as man and wife, the possibility of their doing so being always supposed
in the first instance.

CHAPTER XXX.

BARBAROUS NATIONS.[361]

Africa.--Australasia.--West Indies.--Java.--Sumatra.--Borneo.

The relations of the sexes among uneducated races are modified by every
circumstance of their position, but the natural ascendency of the strong
over the weak is universally displayed, and wherever woman is allowed a
social rank approaching that of man, it will be found that a degree of
civilization has been attained. Many branches of the human family have
advanced, more or less, beyond the utterly savage state, the love of
ornament and the practice of exchange having raised them one step in the
scale, while they vary as much in the characteristics of their barbarism
as civilized nations do in their refinement. Waiving generalities, a
better idea of their respective customs will be obtained by noticing the
position of females among the different nations.

AFRICA.

Some of the most wild and savage tribes of the human family are to be
found in the immense peninsula of Africa. Observation has proved that a
medium state of refinement is accompanied with the least immorality, and
that it is among the merest savages and the most highly-polished
communities that the greatest profligacy exists. In order to present the
subject clearly, we will make a geographical arrangement, and, commencing
from the south, pass over the continent, till we reach the valley of the
Lower Nile.

The Hottentots are a dissolute, profligate race, and have borne that
character from the earliest period. It was remarked by Van Riebeck in
1655, and confirmed by Colonel Napier in 1840, the latter describing them
as "proverbially unchaste." Indecency and lewdness are their
characteristics; and even now, though accustomed to clothing, it is not
uncommon for them to strip themselves, and dance in a lascivious manner at
their festivals. The females prostitute themselves readily to strangers,
some from inclination, others for money or a gift of finery; but we have
no means of estimating the numbers of this disreputable class. A few of
superior order are scattered among these degraded creatures, and
intelligent and well-conducted women have attracted the notice of
travelers.

The pastoral Kaffirs are more moral, though more ferocious than the
Hottentots, being more addicted to arms, and less to debauch. They
practice polygamy, buying their wives for so many head of cattle. The
girls undergo a probation before marriage, during which they are kept in
seclusion. As the tribe wander from place to place, they carry their women
with them, and upon them all the domestic labor falls, even the chief's
wives assisting in grinding corn and similar work. Divorce is easy on very
slight grounds. We occasionally hear of women committing fornication, but
no professed class of prostitutes has been described. Marriage is not held
as a sacred tie, but adultery by a wife is severely punished. Natural
affections appear extremely weak among the Kaffirs, and mothers have but
little attachment to their children, the sickly and feeble being sometimes
abandoned to avoid the trouble of rearing them. Mrs. Ward knew of a woman
who buried alive a sickly daughter. The little creature was but
imperfectly interred; it burst from the grave and ran home. A second time
it was subjected to the same torture, and again escaped. A third attempt
was made with a similar result, when its mother received it, and it
ultimately recovered. Such instances of inhumanity are not rare. Husbands
frequently drag their sick wives into a thicket, and leave them to die. It
is important to mention that, where these people have embraced
Christianity, their manners have totally changed; polygamy has been
renounced, and they manifest an inclination to conform to the morals
taught them.

Between the tropics the people are notorious for licentiousness. Morality
is a strange idea to them, nor is a man restrained by any social law from
intercourse with as many females as he pleases. The result is, that women
are regarded strictly as marketable commodities, and the commonest
feelings of humanity are unknown. On the Gold Coast husbands openly
prostitute their wives for money. In other places an adulterer pays a fine
to the husband, and many urge their wives to commit the crime for the sake
of the penalty. When Laird visited the Niger in 1832, he found the
condition of the females upon its borders most humiliating. Polygamy was
universal, and wives were reduced to slavery in their own houses. In
short, the race may be described as the most idle, ignorant, and
profligate in Africa. The king possessed one hundred and forty wives, one
of whom was under thirteen years of age, and all had been purchased for a
few muskets or a piece of cloth. Half a dozen of the fattest were known as
his favorites, and one of them was said to weigh over three hundred and
fifty pounds. The mother of this prince lived in his palace, and amused
the court with obscene dances. Adultery by any inmate of the harem was
punished with death. When a man died, one at least of his wives was
expected to attend him; she was bound and thrown into the river. In
another place the woman was buried alive; and in the kingdom of Fundal,
when a chief died leaving fifteen wives, the king selected the ugliest to
be hanged over the grave, and transferred the remaining fourteen to his
own quarters.

The native of Western Africa looks upon his wife as a source of pleasure
and gain, reckoning her as property to the amount she can earn. With a
strange inconsistency, some of these barbarians profess a sentiment of
attachment. The King of Atta told Lander that he loved him as he loved his
wife. As he was a polygamist, it is to be assumed the traveler thought it
a divided affection. Marriage is held as one of the common occurrences of
life. When a man is old enough, he takes a wife, and goes on adding to his
property until he probably owns a hundred, if he has means enough to buy
them. Even under this system many women can not obtain stated husbands, as
some men will not take permanent wives; but it is safe to assert that no
single man lives without female intercourse, and no single woman remains
chaste. A wife suspected of adultery is forced to drink a poisonous
decoction, but she sometimes bribes the priest to render it harmless.
Widows who have lived on bad terms with their husbands have to undergo the
same ordeal. An illicit connection with the king's wife results in death
to both parties, but for the wife of a chief the gift of a slave is an
expiation. The price of a handsome wife is from eighteen to thirty-six
dollars; a plain-looking one is worth about seven dollars. As a man's
inclination varies, he often sells one wife, and buys another with the
proceeds of the transaction.

In the kingdom of Dahomey, once the centre of the slave-trade, a most
profligate population is found, and the traveler entering its sea-port is
immediately struck with the immodesty of the women. Throughout the country
the same characteristic is observable; they are profligates from the
highest to the lowest. The king is superior in brutality and filthiness
(traits which seem hereditary to the throne of Dahomey) to any of his
subjects. He has thousands of wives, his chiefs have hundreds, his
subjects tens. The royal favorites are too sacred for the gaze of common
people, who must turn aside or hide their faces if any of them are
passing. Strangers are excluded from the harem, but the privileged
nobility attend the king's feasts, at which his wives take a leading part
in drinking rum and conducting the debauch. When the king desires to
confer honor on any favorite, he chooses a wife for him, and presents her
publicly. She hands her husband a cup of rum, which is a sign of union.

The King of Dahomey supports an army of several thousand amazons, who
dress in male attire, do not marry, and are supposed not to have
intercourse with men. These troops were long considered invincible, but a
few years ago they encountered a defeat on one of their marauding
expeditions, and a thousand or more were killed on the field.

As the king and his wealthy subjects have so many wives, poor people are
obliged to content themselves with the company of prostitutes, who are a
licensed and taxed class in Dahomey. There appears to be a band of these
in every village, but their profits are often insufficient for support,
and they resort to industrial occupation, hiring themselves to carry heavy
burdens, etc. One traveler saw two hundred and fifty collected in a troop,
and another was assailed by a crowd of women who offered to "be his wives"
for a drop of rum. Many of the poorest class stroll about naked, and a
gratuity, however small, will purchase their favors.

The dirty, lazy, dull people of the Fantee Coast have the same moral
aspect as the subjects of Dahomey. Parents sell their children, husbands
sell their wives, women sell themselves, for a trifling sum. One woman was
so anxious to make a bargain of this kind that she took possession of a
traveler's bed, and force was necessary to expel her. Marriage is a mere
purchase, a wife costing about sixteen dollars. Women are unsalable when
more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Any man committing adultery is
forced to buy his paramour at her cost price.

Along the coast of Benin similar customs prevail. Public dancers act as
prostitutes, and offer themselves at a small price. Every woman considers
it an honor to be the king's companion, even for one night.

In Ashantee, where also polygamy prevails, adultery is common, especially
among the king's wives, who are hewn to pieces if discovered. The people
are profligate beyond any thing which can be conceived. A practice of
unusual depravity prevails among the Kroomen, a son who inherits his
father's property taking his wives also, and thus his own mother becomes
his slave.

The Edeeyahs of Fernando Po offer a strong contrast to the above, treating
their women with consideration, and assigning them far less than the usual
amount of work. Polygamy is allowed. The first wife taken by a man must be
betrothed to him at least two years before marriage, and during that time
he is in a state of servitude like that of Jacob for Rachel, the girl
being kept in seclusion. When she appears as a married woman, all the
virgins of the tribe salute and dance round her. This custom is only
observed with the first wife, the others being concubines who are governed
by her. Adultery is severely punished: for the first offense both parties
lose one hand; for the second, the man and his relatives are heavily fined
and chastised, the woman loses the other hand, and is driven from the
settlement into the woods--an exile more terrible than mutilation.

It would be but a needless repetition to pass in review all the various
groups of African states. We have seen that in the west profligacy is a
universal feature, and it is scarcely less so in the east. In Zulu, for
example, the king has a seraglio of fifteen hundred women. The manners of
the communities in the Sahara are imperfectly known, but appear to be
above those in other parts of Africa, though many customs prevail which
shock our ideas of decency. A chief offered Richardson his two daughters
as wives. Immorality is usually a secret crime, and their general customs
with regard to sexual intercourse are outwardly decent. Still the
condition of the female sex is degraded, for they are regarded as
materials of a man's household, and ministers to his sensuality.

Abyssinia presents various characteristics of manners. In Tajura men live
with their wives for a short time, and then sell them. Parents are known
to hire their daughters out as prostitutes. One chief offered his daughter
as a temporary or permanent companion to a traveler, and a woman presented
herself as a candidate for a similar appointment, saying, by way of
recommendation, that she had already lived with five men. One strong
evidence of the immorality of Tajura is the fact that syphilis affects
nearly the whole population, man and woman, sultan and beggar, priests
and their wives inclusive.

In Shoa the king has one wife and five hundred concubines, the latter
scattered in various parts of his dominions. He makes a present to the
parents of any girl he may desire, and is usually well paid in return for
the honor. The governors of provinces and cities follow his example. There
are two kinds of marriage in Shoa: one a mere arrangement to cohabit, the
other a holy ceremony. The former is almost invariably used, the man and
woman declaring before witnesses that they mean to live together. Divorces
are as easily obtained, only mutual consent being necessary. A wife is
valued according to the amount of her property, and the owner of a hut, a
field, and a bedstead is sure to get a husband. When they quarrel and
part, a division of property takes place. Concubines are procured as well
from the Christians as from Mohammedans and pagans, but the latter are
forced to declare themselves converted, for Shoa is professedly a
Christian kingdom. A favorite concubine holds the same position as a
married woman, and no distinction is made between legitimate and
illegitimate children. The court overflows with licentiousness, numerous
adulteries take place, and the example is followed by the people, among
whom a chaste married couple is rare. The sacerdotal class of Shoa is
notoriously drunken and profligate; in a word, the morals of the country
are of the lowest description. In the Mohammedan states of the
neighborhood the condition of the female sex is also degraded, and if
there is less general prostitution, it is because every woman is the slave
of some man's lust, and is closely watched by him.

In the provinces of Kordofan, south of the Nubian mountains, the sentiment
of love is not altogether unknown, and men fight duels with whips of
hippopotamus hide on account of a disputed mistress. The wife is, however,
a virtual slave, and is still more degraded if she prove barren, the
husband then solacing himself with a concubine, who is raised to the rank
of a wife if she bear a child. The general demeanor of the girls of
Kordofan is modest, and their lives are chaste, while the married women
are addicted to intrigue, especially if neglected by their husbands. In
some parts of the country men consider it an honor for their wives to have
intercourse with strangers, and often assist the woman to this end. There
is a class of pretty dancers who are usually prostitutes, and are
celebrated for their successes in the latter vocation. Marriage is
arranged without the woman's consent; the man bargains for her, pays the
price, and takes her home. A feast and dance sometimes celebrate the
event. When a wife is ill treated she demands a divorce, and returns home,
taking her female children with her. Trifles often produce these
separations, an insufficient allowance of pomatum to grease her skin being
a valid complaint. These remarks apply to the fixed population; the
wandering tribes of Kordofan are a moral, modest race, naked, but not
indecent.

A chief of the Berbers offered a late traveler his choice of two daughters
for a temporary companion, both being already married. Many women there
are ready to prostitute themselves for a present. A virgin may be
purchased, either as a wife or a concubine, for a horse. A young Berber,
who was asked why he did not marry, pointed to a colt and said, "When that
is a horse I shall marry."

The condition of women in Khartum, on the upper borders of the Nile, as
described in Ferdinand Werne's account of his voyage to discover the
sources of the White Stream, is so degraded that it may be said with truth
the female monkeys of the neighboring woods occupy a far nobler and more
natural position. Farther up the river the morals are purer. The Keks are
described as leading a blameless life. Marriageable girls and children are
kept in seclusion, and during a considerable part of the year the women
live in villages apart from the men, who possess only temporary huts, the
substantial habitations of their wives being accessible to them during the
rainy season. A man dare not approach the "harem village" at any other
time, but some of the women occasionally creep into their husbands' huts.
Polygamy is allowed, but is too costly for any but the chiefs.

Among some of the tribes on the banks of the White Nile, women sell their
children, if they can do so with profit. The maidens appear naked, but
married women wear an apron. All experience shame at appearing unclothed
before travelers. Beyond the Mountains of the Moon Werne found a people
whom he describes as chaste and decent, where unmarried men and women were
kept separate.

Our information is so limited that any inquiry into the morals of Africa
must be incomplete, but enough has been stated to give a fair idea of the
average morality. Statistics are of course impossible, but from a
description in general terms we can not hesitate to form an opinion.

AUSTRALASIA.

In this division of the earth's surface are generally included the great
island of Australia, Papua or New Guinea, and some adjacent islands,
comprising New Caledonia and Van Diemen's Land. Politically and
geographically the islands of New Zealand are also in this division, but
there is some question as to the propriety of this distribution for
ethnographical purposes. Opinions vary as to the state of the New
Zealanders. There is much similarity between them and the inhabitants of
some of the Polynesian Islands, while there are equally strong points of
resemblance between them and the Australian aborigines. The New Zealander,
when discovered by Cook, was far superior to the Australian in
intelligence and in the arts of life. He inhabited a decent hut, could
build a stockade fort, and lived upon cooked food. The Australian lived in
a hollow tree, could put together a temporary hut made of bark and brush,
and fed upon grubs, roots, and raw flesh. Among such a race as the
Australian blacks it is needless to say that the position occupied by
women was of the most degrading and brutal character.

The Australian savage does not even pay his future spouse the compliment
of wooing her. Might makes right in their case. The woman is often
betrothed by her parent or kinsman, and becomes her husband's property by
sale and bargain. If this has not been effected in the usual way, he
acquires his marital privileges by an inroad on the grounds of another
tribe, and then meeting a woman, he knocks her down with his _waddy_ (a
heavy club), and carries her to a place of security, where he makes
himself master of her person by force. This, indeed, is so usual a course
of procedure, that it has given rise to a belief that the Australian rival
bachelors compete for a wife by knocking her on the head, and whoever
fells her bears away the belle.

The habits of the native Australians are not so observable now as they
were at the commencement of the system of colonization. At first a
continual intercourse was kept up between them and the settlers. The
reciprocal injuries inflicted upon each other, in which the whites were
more to blame than the natives, brought about an exterminating warfare.
The black race has gradually wasted away from the settled, or rather
partially settled country, while the much-diminished interior tribes have
retreated, in South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria, far into the
wilderness, beyond ordinary communication with the white man.

In Van Diemen's Land the natives were almost extirpated by the constant
warfare carried on between them and the settlers, convict as well as free,
and the government was obliged to take the few survivors under its
protection, and to establish a place of refuge for them. They were
accordingly collected, and deported to an island in Bass Straits, under
the charge of a special commissioner. But, notwithstanding the increased
comforts of their condition, and their immunity from the murderous
hostility of their white foes, they have languished, and, instead of the
population increasing, it has gradually decreased, until, at the present
time, it is believed that the numbers are under one hundred. In Central
Australia, north of the Murray, the tribes are still comparatively
numerous, and in some cases warlike and hostile to settlers.

The married women among the aborigines are called "gins," and the single
girls "lubbras." The women follow their lords on their migrations and
excursions, carry the loads, and do all the work. They bear patiently and
submissively the blows and ill-usage to which they are subject. Polygamy
is practiced by the more powerful men of the tribes, who appropriate to
themselves such women as they choose, and cast them off at pleasure. Now
and then they sell or present a "gin" to a friend in want of such a
commodity. There is considerable disproportion between the sexes,
attributable partly to continual ill-usage, partly to the habit prevalent
among savage nations of destroying female infants.

At one time in the history of these colonies, the outlying stock-men and
shepherds occasionally endeavored to solace their loneliness with a
"lubbra" whom they had managed to decoy from her lawful owner, but the
half-breeds from such unions are very rare. The natives, notwithstanding
the low estimate they have of their women, are exceedingly jealous of them
as property, and keep them away as much as possible from the stations.

Chastity is at all times of little account among savages, always excepting
the old Celts and Teutons, who held continence in high esteem, and whose
women were objects of general respect. From the peculiar habits of the
Australian aborigines themselves, it can scarcely be said that
prostitution exists as an institution. The woman has no choice in the
matter. As between the "gins" and "lubbras" and the white settlers, there
is scarcely any chance for prostitution. A woman now and then visits the
towns or settlements, but always in company with her male friends. When
quite young, the girls are not more disagreeable than others of their
complexion. When more advanced in years they are absolutely repulsive, and
are rendered hideous by scars and other evidences of brutality. At all
times both sexes are loathsome in their persons, and are clad in filthy
blankets or sheep-skins, unless when they can pick up tattered remnants of
European clothing.

Among the New Zealanders the state of the women was a little better than
among the Australians. The amelioration was rather in degree than
principle. They were subject to the same control by parents and kinsmen.
They were disposed of in marriage as matter of right, and were often
betrothed from infancy, in which case they were _tapu_ or _taboo_ to other
persons than the young chief or warrior who had purchased the reversion.
Cruel punishments of the women for infidelity were general, and even for
minor offenses they were subject to very severe chastisement. In one case,
even recently, a New Zealand woman was suspended by the heels naked, and
in that position unmercifully whipped. Her sense of the outrage was so
keen that she committed suicide. Licentiousness among the women was
probably more rare formerly than now. Adultery was punished in both
parties by death, and the family of the male offender were often involved
in the punishment. Now, however, the constant visits of whalers and
seafaring men, the gradual settlement of whites in the islands, and, above
all, the profits and advantages derivable from illicit intercourse, cause
the women to be free of their persons. Parents and even husbands are
oftentimes the principal gainers by the transaction, and even negotiate
the profit to be made. The marriage ceremony, too, was formerly of so easy
a character that, whatever the New Zealand woman might have thought of it,
no settler, and especially no seaman, would feel himself bound by the tie,
and, although associations based on this weak bond were not wrong in the
woman, they paved the way for less excusable relations.

The influence of civilized institutions and the presence of a regular
clergy and missionaries is effecting some improvement in native morals,
and many lawful marriages have taken place between the whites and the
native women, the offspring of which--a fine race of half-breeds--may be
met with throughout the Australian colonies. The example of the
consideration in which the native women thus married are held, and the
rights and social position that they acquire, is not without influence on
others, and predisposes them to the same course. Among the tribes removed
from the coast and withdrawn from civilized control, the ancient customs
are still kept up in their integrity, and the chiefs and natives jealously
resist all encroachments on their independence. Among those chiefs, even,
who have been converted to a nominal Christianity, Rauperaha for instance,
heathen institutions of revenge for injury, polygamy, power of life and
death over their wives and followers are maintained, and the humanizing
lessons of the Gospel have made but little way toward an amendment of
their barbarous lives. In New Zealand it is asserted that the venereal
disease is very prevalent among the natives, and from their diet and
licentious habits is often fatal.

In colonial white society there are no particular incidents to
characterize prostitution. At all times during the continuance of
transportation, female immorality has been very prevalent. The general law
so often observed as attendant upon irregularity of the sexes has been
powerfully operative; besides, there have been local influences at work to
deteriorate female manners. The large importations of convict women, who
were always the most unruly and vicious of the felon population, and who
notoriously gave more trouble and vexation to the authorities than any one
else, was prejudicial to public virtue. Just, however, as, on account of
these faults, women of indifferent character were lightly esteemed, so did
the respectable females gain in public opinion, however poor their worldly
condition. There was not much regular prostitution, although incontinence
prevailed. There was a continual system of marriage going on among the
convicts. When a man chose to marry, he brushed himself up, put on a clean
shirt, and went to the nearest superintendent, to whom he intimated his
desire for matrimony. Permission was always given. The eligibles at the
station were forwarded for his inspection, and the selected one rarely
refused, inasmuch as her connubial bonds relieved her, during good
behavior, from the more galling bondage of the law. Some of these unions
turned out more satisfactorily than might have been expected from the
character of the parties, especially of the women.

South Australia and the gold colony of Victoria never were penal
settlements. The deficiency of respectable young women was very much felt
by the colonists, and the home government made many well-intentioned
efforts to supply the want. A large number of young women went out from
Great Britain, under the charge of matrons and medical officers, and, in
the majority of cases, their arrival was hailed with great satisfaction.
It was no unusual thing for a young man, a settler far away up the
country, to come down to the government depôts at Adelaide or Melbourne on
the arrival of a female emigrant ship, and then and there to pick out his
partner for life. Of course, the greater number were hired out to service
by the colonists, and, in the order of events, passed from service to
independence. Parental care and precaution were exercised by the
authorities over the young women thus sent abroad. They were not allowed
to hire into dram-shops or lodging-houses: the parties who hired them
required to be known: they had liberty to remain at the depôt for some
months if not suited, and for any length of time in case of sickness on
arrival; and afterward, during good conduct, the depôt was an asylum for
an indefinite length of time. Notwithstanding all these safeguards, there
was a constant supply of prostitution. The good intentions of the
emigration commissioners in London were too frequently neutralized by the
depraved character of officers of the vessels in which females were sent,
or by the interested conduct of the local authorities in England. A good
reputation was essential to the intending emigrant, but frequently masters
of work-houses and parish officers shipped off unworthy or troublesome
characters, who were better got rid of at any price.

During the gold mania, prostitution in Australia was rampant. The enormous
gains and flaunting extravagance were a great temptation to young women
who could not readily suit themselves with situations, and who disliked
the moderate restraints of the depôt. The persuasive arts of the procuress
and brothel-keeper were not wanting. It was a singular fact that at one
time all the public vehicles were owned by brothel-keepers. The profits of
these joint callings were perfectly fabulous. It was an every-day sight to
see a party of prostitutes in the most gaudy costumes parading the streets
in open carriages. Indeed, it was generally understood to be part of their
contract that they should have unlimited clothing, of the most garish
colors and style, and expensive material, and also Sunday rides in open
carriages. The police authorities did what they could to check this
shameful display, but they were powerless before the reckless extravagance
of the miners and the influx of women. It is believed that this excess has
now toned down, and miners having taken to buying land and to marriage,
order is once more resuming sway, and prostitution in the gold colonies,
though not at an end, is much shorn of its public show and display.

POLYNESIA.

The principal groups of the Polynesian Islands are the Society, Friendly,
Samoan, Sandwich, and Marquesas. These last have been rendered famous of
late years by Mr. Hermann Melville's Typee and Omoo.

The South Sea Islands were usually depicted in the most glowing colors by
early navigators. The lands were the fairest on earth's surface; the
climate was unsurpassed, combining the genial warmth of the tropics with
the fresh breezes of ocean; the soil spontaneously bringing forth in
luxuriant abundance the loveliest and most valuable vegetable productions;
and, finally, the inhabitants were fitted both in person and disposition
to tenant such an Eden.

It is easy to comprehend the frame of mind which led to these
descriptions. The seaman, after wandering over the pathless ocean, with
only the dark waste of waters in view, might well recognize a paradise in
the green hills and shady groves of the islands of the Pacific, and angels
in their dusky denizens. But these pictures were eminently fallacious: the
virtues of savage life disappear on close acquaintanceship. Implacable
ferocity among themselves; sanguinary and exterminating warfare;
cannibalism; unbounded licentiousness and its concomitants of unnatural
lust and lasciviousness; debasing and horrid idolatry; infanticide; the
most grinding tyranny of the strong over the weak, and of the man over the
woman, who is not permitted to live in the same dwelling, eat the same
food, cook at the same fire, or even use the same dish as her lord and
master: these enormities are the ordinary conditions of savage life. Some
local modifications may be found, but such were the main incidents in
Polynesian life and character.

It is true that in the first instance the natives received the whites with
all friendship, and evinced toward their visitors much hospitality and
gentleness of demeanor. This is to be attributed to the wonder and
reverence with which they regarded foreigners, looking on them as superior
beings of another sphere, and awestruck at their wonderful powers, at the
astonishing engines they wielded and managed, and at their unknown
attributes. But familiarity lessened respect; some ill-advised and
unjustifiable tyranny brought out the offensive points of savage
character, and theft, treachery, and murder were soon practiced as freely
against the whites as against each other whenever fear of consequences
did not restrain them. The murder of Captain Cook and the attack on La
Perouse were remarkable cases on account of the boldness of the savages,
and the public loss in the death of the great navigator, but they were not
isolated outrages. Many a small and feebly-manned vessel perished among
the islands, and, on repeated occasions, when landings were effected, the
mariners ran great risks from the uncertain despotism of the natives.

Whatever may have been their other qualities, either among themselves or
in their intercourse with foreigners, licentiousness was the universal
characteristic of the South Sea Islanders. It was not merely polygamy or
excess among a few of the more powerful members of the community, but the
ordinary habit among all classes. Chastity, whenever met with, was not a
customary part of woman's life, but only an incident dependent on
particular circumstances; in fact, an abnormal condition. It was
associated with either marriage or betrothal. A peculiar institution of
all these islanders was the _tapu_ or _taboo_, a semi-religious ceremony
performable either by priest or chief, whereby places, persons, or
property could be rendered unapproachable by other than the lawful owner.
The breach of this law has always been the greatest violation of propriety
and public feeling of which a native or foreigner could be guilty. When
young girls were betrothed at an early age, either to boys of
corresponding years or to older persons, such females were _tabooed_. This
insured chastity until they had reached a marriageable age. As this
betrothal system was almost exclusively confined to chiefs, it follows
that the obligation to chastity was very limited. The farther inference
would be, that chastity was associated rather with property in the female
than propriety in the woman.

Another institution of the South Sea Islanders was that of the _Areoi_.
These were a body of men and women banded together for certain purposes,
which had originally been of a religious character. They had probably been
once _Obi_ men, medicine-men, or wizards, as among the negroes and
Indians. The custom, so often observable among heathen nations, of
incorporating amusements and festivities into religious rites, had been
taken up by these Areoi, and in process of time they degenerated into mere
mimes or buffoons, and yet preserved to themselves by prescriptive right
all the immunities and privileges otherwise accorded to priests. They
traveled about from place to place, and sometimes from island to island.
Their observances yet retained a trace of their religious origin, inasmuch
as they commenced with a sacrifice to the gods, after which they
entertained the people with theatrical performances, in which obscene
songs and lascivious dances formed the chief features. They gave dialogues
and recitations, in which they freely satirized all classes, not excepting
the priests. They were every where gladly received, and had a right to
free quarters wherever they stopped. It is said the members were usually
the handsomest of both sexes, the women being the most profligate among
the inhabitants. Tradition maintained that these persons had been
originally incorporated by the gods, and that one of their rules was
perpetual celibacy, and that they should have no descendants. This, though
it might perhaps in the outset have been a prohibition intended for pure
purposes, has ended in the perversion of such an intention. In their
present condition, whether degenerate or not, the inhibition is not taken
to exclude them from sexual intercourse and enjoyment, but from its
natural consequences. Their lives were accordingly most abandoned, and
abortion and infanticide were invariably practiced. Nor were their
enormities confined to their own body: after their representations the
wildest excesses were perpetrated in all quarters. Resistance or
retaliation was impossible by the sufferer, on account of the fear these
wretches excited by the mysterious powers with which they were accredited,
and which were, in reality, the secret affiliations of all the bands.[362]

When performing, the Areoi painted their bodies black and their faces
scarlet; they wore dresses of bright-colored plants and flowers. They were
divided into several classes, named after some particular ornament; and,
taking into account the subordinate members of the troops and the
attendants who performed the menial offices, they must have been
exceedingly numerous. Places were specially built for their reception, and
for the greater convenience of their representations.[363]

Candidates for admission into their number were received by secret
ceremonies akin to the mysteries of paganism. Solemnities intended to awe
the vulgar were performed, and the idea of special reservation of the
blessings of a future elysium to these deceivers was promulgated and
believed.

The existence of such organized societies could not but be in the highest
degree subversive to all order and decency. Accordingly, when the
missionaries first arrived, they found the general depravity of morals the
greatest difficulty they had to encounter. Obscenity, libidinousness, and
incontinence were so ingrafted into the very nature of the people that
they seemed almost ineradicable. Accordingly, we find it narrated of an
intelligent convert that he expressed his conviction that "the people
ought to be induced to discontinue infanticide, human sacrifice, and demon
worship, but that preservation of female virtue and Christian marriage
would never be obtained."[364]

The Society Islands are said to have been formerly proverbial, even in
Polynesia, for the licentiousness which is still remarkably prevalent
among them. The missionary regulations have apparently mitigated the
evils, and they have succeeded in establishing laws on the subject, which
are not, however, binding upon strangers. The foreigners who come to these
islands, while denouncing the conduct of the inhabitants, are too often
the chief instigators to vice, and, finding themselves checked in their
misconduct, they vent their disappointment on the missionaries.

The foreign influences at work in these islands are of a two-fold nature;
one striving for the improvement of the natives, and the inculcation of
virtuous principles, and the encouragement or enforcement of virtuous
practices; the other including all the base and sordid passions and
motives of seamen and whalers bent on the reckless enjoyment of the
passing hour; of traders and adventurers eager in quest of gain; and among
the worst specimens of runaway seamen, and even convicts from the
Australian settlements. All these influences combine to check the
advancement of the natives.

The beauty of the women in these islands has been much exaggerated.
Commodore Wilkes says,[365] "I did not see among them a single woman whom
I could call handsome. They have, indeed, a certain sleepiness about the
eyes which may be fascinating to some, but I should rather ascribe the
celebrity which their charms have acquired among navigators to their
cheerfulness and gayety." Others, who visit them with equally cool
judgment, tell us that they were disappointed in their appearance, for
"there were few who could be called handsome; nevertheless, they had
eminent feminine graces, their manners being affable and engaging, their
step easy and graceful, their behavior free and unguarded, their temper
mild, gentle, and unaffected, slow to take offense, easily pacified,
seldom retaining resentment or revenge, whatever the provocation."[366]

There can be no doubt that their demeanor was winning and affable, and
their conduct sportive and playful. Their industry was not very great, the
few wants of the islanders being amply supplied by nature. The women
prepared the poe from the bread-fruit and the ava, and, till Europeans
introduced the hog, this was their usual diet, if we except the cannibal
feasts of the warriors, in which the women took no part. The female
occupations were weaving flowers and grasses into garlands and mats. Their
chief amusement was paddling the canoe or sporting in the surf, for all
the islanders took to the water, and the women were, perhaps, from the
greater buoyancy of their persons, better swimmers than the men. Before
the arrival of the missionaries, it was customary for the women to swim
out to a ship and swarm on board, where scenes of debauchery and indecency
commenced, lasting as long as the vessel lay in the harbor, and the
fascination of which worked so powerfully on the excited passions of the
seamen that desertions and mutiny were continually occurring.

The earliest intercourse of whites has never yet been beneficial to the
untutored savage, and, had these occurrences only taken place on board the
ships of foreigners, it might have been laid to the account of foreign
corruption. But this was not the case. The gains derivable from the white
men's visits might give profligacy a greater zest for both sexes of the
natives, for indiscriminate intercourse was a time-worn institution ere
yet the European came.

The South Sea Islanders are no exception to the general rule of keeping
their women in a subordinate and inferior condition. A chief is sometimes
_taboo_, and his women may not approach him; he may see them when he
pleases; at all times the woman is in bondage. Those of the chief live in
separate apartments from their master, and are not permitted to associate
with him on equal terms excepting when the female is of high blood. In
this case she is perfectly independent, can exercise the same powers as
her husband, and in some particulars can even throw off her allegiance to
him.

Polygamy was, and still is, practiced among the chiefs. Even where
missionary influences have been successful, the chiefs look upon the
abolition of polygamy as a most objectionable innovation. They look back
to their past liberty with regret, and can not understand why they are
restricted to one wife. Polygamy could, of course, only be practiced by
the powerful at the expense of the weak. Already, from various causes
operating among savages there was a preponderance of males over females,
rendered still more great by polygamy. This again depreciated female
virtue, justifying illicit intercourse to those who lived in forced
celibacy, and in its consequences came concealment and infanticide. To
such an extent was illicit intercourse carried, that some writers assert
that no girl ever reached the age of puberty a virgin. The nature of the
marriage bond is very uncertain. The husband could get rid of the wife at
pleasure. There seems to have been a slight distinction between marriage
and concubinage. Most of these social institutions are extended over all
the islands alike, with very few local differences. Infanticide, for
example, has been practiced in most of the islands, but not invariably so.
At Tutuila,[367] one of the Samoan group, it had never obtained.
Circumcision was common among most of the natives.

Among the Samoans the women are treated with consideration.[368] The men
do all the hard work, even to cooking, while the women perform only
in-door labor, attend to the children, and prepare the food for the fire.
In the Sandwich Islands there is no such chivalrous sentiment. At the
arrival of the missionaries there were no marriage institutions among
them. The only laws were such as to regulate somewhat their
licentiousness. There were traditions to show that at some past time,
before the discovery of the island, the marriage tie had been held in
respect by the natives, and that the marriage ceremony had been an
important one. At present, personal chastisement of the wife by her
husband is not infrequent, and it is spoken of by them as a matter of
course.

The relations of parents to children differed much at different periods.
The Samoans seem to have been the most observant of moral obligations and
natural ties. Among them it was the usage of the mothers to suckle the
children for several years, and to bring them up with great care and
attention, so much so that a crippled child was sometimes discreditable as
evincing a degree of culpable carelessness in the mother.

The Society and Sandwich Islanders, whose lives were habitually dissolute,
shunned all trouble which interfered with their freedom of intercourse,
and children were considered especially burdensome. Infanticide prevailed
to a frightful extent among them, and, as if the ordinary dissoluteness of
the people had not been ample inducement to this most flagitious crime,
the tyranny of the rulers invented a poll-tax, in whose operation children
over ten were included. The poorer inhabitants of these blissful regions,
who already felt the rod of oppression too severely, found in this an
additional motive to child-murder. But in its operation it was even more
cruel than infanticide, for many children who had been suffered to live
were put to death as they approached the period when they would be liable
to taxation. The murder was consummated sometimes by the parents, at times
mercifully, and at times horribly. There were a class of persons who
practiced child-murder professionally.

In the Samoan group the girls are often early betrothed, without reference
to years, the girl being taboo until of marriageable age. During the
intervening period the bridegroom accumulates property. The marriage
festival is held with all circumstances of uproar and debauchery, and the
guests stay as long as there is any thing to eat. The consummation of the
marriage and the virginity of the bride are published by the proofs
required in the Jewish law.

When a man in this group wishes to take a wife, he must ask the chief's
consent. This obtained, he presents to the girl of his choice a basket of
bread-fruit, by accepting which she accepts the donor. The husband then
pays the parents a sum of money for her, according to her rank and
estimation; sometimes the courtship is to the family, without consulting
the girl, who is expected to conform to her parents' will in the matter.

A Samoan may repudiate his wife and marry again on certain conditions, but
the woman may not leave her husband without his consent.

Adultery among the Samoans was formerly punished by death, and the
marriage vow is strictly observed by them. It is considered highly
discreditable for a young woman to form a connection with a native before
marriage, although temporary intercourse with a foreigner is not
considered objectionable. It may be that such a distinction is in
compliment to the conceded superiority of the white; but the explanation
of a chief would rather put the question on convenience than morality,
for he objected to native young men as always hanging about the premises,
and attaching themselves to the young woman, whereas the foreigner gave
his presents and sailed away when the period of his stay was ended,
leaving the object of his choice free again.

The Marquesas Islands have a singular institution, similar to one
prevalent among the ancient Lacedæmonians. A woman has more than one
husband. This has been called polyandrism, but it does not seem precisely
such. A wife of a young warrior unknown to fame is honored by the advances
of a more distinguished individual, by whom children may be begotten. The
superior chief takes the wife and her lawful husband under his protection
and into his hut.

The population of some of the districts in the Sandwich Islands is rapidly
decreasing. By a register kept in Hawaii, it appears there are three
deaths to one birth. This disproportion is attributed to low habit of
body, the consequence of venereal disease. Syphilis was introduced into
these islands by Cook's expedition, and the whole of the natives in some
districts are now said to be reduced to a morbid, sickly state, many of
the women being incapable of child-bearing, and but few of the children
attaining maturity.

There are other concurrent causes to contribute toward this decay, among
which the difference of food, and the introduction of clothing, and
consequent diminution of ablution among a people who spent half their
lives in the water, are not unimportant; but the district of Hanapepe,
where the decrease was most rapid, was that in which the virus was first
introduced, and here it is still most virulent in its action and effects.

Whatever the causes, the same effect is in powerful operation, though not
to the same depopulating extent, in other places. At Waialua, in 1832, the
population was 2640; in 1835 it had fallen to 2415. There had been no war
nor epidemic. It was the ordinary condition of the people. Sterility and
abortion are considered the most potent causes. Abortion is very common,
and there are cases in which women have had six or seven, and sometimes
ten in as many years, and no children.[369]

Personal and mutual abuse had been much practiced in early life among the
settlers, and is a cause of sterility.

Previous to 1840, infanticide was, as we have shown, common. But here, as
elsewhere, the marriage regulations which have been enforced by the
missionaries and adopted by the converted natives are already operating in
a reactionary manner against the decrease of population, and infanticide
is almost unknown. The poll-tax for children over ten years of age has
been repealed, and in its stead premiums are given for rearing large
families of legitimate children.

It is admitted by all that licentiousness prevails extensively among the
people even at present, but to a far less degree than formerly, when
promiscuous intercourse was universal. Men were living with several wives,
and _vice versa_. All improvement in this respect is to be ascribed to the
labors of Christian missionaries. To them the Sandwich Islanders owe their
moral code, and the enactment of laws respecting marriage, as well as
their political institutions.

The observance of outward morality and decency of behavior has, as we have
mentioned, been made compulsory in those islands in which the missionaries
have permanently fixed themselves, and acquired sufficient power to make
their regulations respected. They have interdicted public gatherings for
the purpose of amusement, and even suppressed private games and
diversions. This has been objected to as an interference with innocent
recreation and pastime, and as encouraging formalism.

But the missionaries had no choice in the matter. Paganism was deeply
rooted in the daily life and habits of the people. In all religious
festivals, feasting, dancing, and diversion formed so prominent a part,
that the only method of eradicating the attachment of the people to their
heathen practices was to abolish the usages which made the worship
attractive. The dances are always immodest, often lascivious and grossly
indecent. They consist of little more than contortions and twistings of
the limbs and body, and of throwing themselves into postures which, as
they are mostly performed by females, are highly conducive to immorality.

Even among the Samoans, the dances, as performed by the women, are of the
same libidinous character with the others, though the dances of the men
are not indecorous.

The diseases generally prevalent are skin affections. From the delightful
climate and simple diet of the people, these are not of a very severe
character. The islanders have been no gainers in this respect by their
intercourse with Europeans. The venereal disease has been introduced,
and, from the deficiency of medical treatment, makes great ravages.
Secondary syphilis is sometimes severe. At Tutuila, one of the Samoan
group, it is said that venereal disease is entirely unknown, while in the
other islands of the group it is very rare.

Political circumstances; the introduction of new elements into Polynesian
life; the daily increasing intercourse between the islanders and
foreigners, all contribute to make the alterations in the social aspects
of the South Sea Islands very rapid, so that every year may work new
changes. Some recent writers affect to doubt the benefits of missionary
labors among the islanders, who, as they say, have been thereby diverted
from their innocent and simple habits of life; in place of which, it is
alleged, a harsh and hypocritical austerity has been adopted; the purity
of their morals and the vigor of their constitutions have been sapped and
destroyed by the contact with Europeans and Americans, and the whole
result of foreign intercourse has been unmixed evil. We reject these
conclusions, as savoring too strongly of party prejudice and class
antipathies. The tendency of the Gospel always is to purify and elevate
savage tribes. The missionaries have, perhaps, overestimated and
overstated the extent of benefit accomplished by them, and the gayety and
cheerfulness, so pleasing in appearance to the casual visitor, yet so
deceptive in reality, may have been diminished. But the purity of savage
life is a delusion, and something has been achieved if only an outward
conformity to the laws and dictates of Christianity has been produced.

WEST INDIES.

A very slight notice of the West Indies will suffice, for of the savage
races scarcely a vestige remains; of the negro population a general view
is all that is required, and the civilized colonists retain so much of the
impress of the countries whence they came as to require no special
remarks. When Columbus first visited these beautiful islands, he found
them inhabited by two classes of men--the savage Caribs, who delighted in
war and preyed upon the weaker tribes; and the simple communities, whose
pacific habits made them victims of their violent neighbors. The people
were alike distinct in the treatment of women. The peaceful islanders
admitted females to a participation in all the delights of their rural
life, allowing them to mingle in the dance, to inherit power, and to share
all their pleasures. Among the cannibal Caribs a different fashion
prevailed. The handsomest of their war-prisoners were retained as slaves,
the rest were drowned. The lot of these exiles, as of the Carib women
themselves, was hard enough. The nation was low and barbarous, and its
women were treated accordingly, the men regarding them as an inferior
race, whose degradation was only natural. A wife was her husband's slave,
and all the drudgery of life fell upon her. She approached him with abject
humility, and, if she ever complained of ill-usage, it was at the risk of
her life; her children, however, were loved and watched with tender care.

The original inhabitants of the West Indian islands have disappeared, and
are succeeded by a mixture of races, of whom the negroes claim our
attention now. Among the blacks of Antigua, as an example, immorality is
characteristic. Infanticide is frequently practiced, even since the
Emancipation Bill was passed. The reason for this is clear. Under slavery,
negroes could not contract a legal marriage; they therefore cohabited, and
the union lasted as long as their affection or appetite existed. No
disgrace attached to a woman who had borne children to several men. Now an
idea of female virtue has been awakened, and they seek to escape the
consequences of an illicit amour by destroying its offspring, upon the
principle that where no tangible evidence of a crime exists, no crime has
been committed.

During slavery, concubinage was general; and although many masters offered
rewards to such as lived faithfully with one partner, the vice was all but
universal, and a permanent engagement between a man and woman was seldom
formed. Two females frequently lived with one man, one being considered
his wife, and the other his mistress. When the negroes were emancipated in
1834, many were anxious to be legally married, and others put away the
partners of their compulsory servitude and took new companions. Bigamy was
not uncommon then, nor is it rare now, many devices being adopted to elude
the stringent laws on this matter. Concubinage is less general than
formerly, but the marriage covenant is by no means respected, nor is
chastity much esteemed.

In St. Lucia sexual intercourse was unrestrained and almost promiscuous,
and the negroes of the island are, even to this day, averse to matrimony
and inclined to concubinage. In either relation they are equally
faithless, the only redeeming feature being love of their children.

The same low state of morals is observable in Santa Cruz, but in Jamaica
the negroes are mostly married and faithful to their engagements. Formerly
the intercourse of the sexes was loose, profligate, and lewd. When the
missionaries attempted to reform this, any who submitted to their
teachings were ridiculed by the demoralized of their comrades. It must be
admitted that Europeans have not shown any good example to the negroes,
but, on the contrary, have encouraged their vices.

JAVA.

A curious system of manners now prevails in Java. Hindoos have been
succeeded by Mohammedans, and they, in turn, have given place to Dutch,
each having impressed some characteristic on the people. As elsewhere, the
condition of the female sex will indicate the general character. The
institution of marriage is universally known, if not practiced or
respected, and the lot of women may be considered fortunate. They are not
ill-used in any manner, and the seclusion imposed upon the more opulent is
rather a withdrawal from the indiscriminate gaze of the people than that
lonely secrecy exacted by jealousy in some parts of the East. The
condition of the sex in Java is an exception to the habits of Asiatics.
They associate with the men in all the pleasures and offices of life, eat
with them, and live on terms of mutual equality. They are sometimes
permitted to ascend the throne, and, in short, nowhere throughout the
island are they treated with coarseness, violence, or neglect. They are
willing and industrious, and are admitted to many honorable employments.
Men sometimes act tyrannically in their households, but this only shows
the fault of an individual, not of a class.

Polygamy and concubinage are practiced by the nobility without reference
to public opinion, but are not generally adopted, being regarded as
vicious luxuries. The first wife is always mistress of the household; the
others are her servants, who may minister to her husband's pleasures, but
do not share his rank or wealth. No man will give his daughter as second
or third wife, unless to some one far superior in rank to himself; and a
woman considers it dishonorable, not, in the abstract, to prostitute
herself, but to form a connection with any man of humbler birth than
herself.

But, though polygamy and concubinage are seldom known in Java, their
absence must not be considered as implying superior morality. On the
contrary, it is the most immoral country in Asia. A woman who would not
condescend to be the second wife of a chief would not scruple to commit
adultery with him. In general terms, both sexes are profligate and
depraved, although the islanders boast the chastity of their women as a
distinguishing ornament, because a married woman would shriek if a
stranger attempted to kiss her before her attendants.

Divorce can be procured in Java with the utmost freedom, and is a
privilege in which the women indulge themselves to a wanton degree. If a
wife pays her husband a sum of money, he must leave her. He is not legally
bound to accept her offer, but public opinion considers it disreputable to
live with a woman who has thus signified her wishes for a separation, and
he yields to general sentiment what is not exacted by law. The husband is
often changed three or four times before the woman is thirty years old,
and some boast the exercise of this privilege twelve times. As the means
of subsistence abound, and are procured as easily by women as by men, the
former are independent of the latter, and find no difficulty in living
without husbands. Unfortunately for the theories of some female reformers
of the present day, who imagine that such independence foreshadows the
millennium of woman's rights, it must be admitted that, where the
experiment has been tried, the sex are proverbially dissolute.

Among the wealthier classes the utmost immorality prevails, and in the
great towns the population is debauched to the last degree. Intrigues with
married women continually occur, and are prosecuted almost before the face
of the husbands, who are often so tame and servile that they dare not
assert their conjugal rights. Travelers have noticed flagrant instances of
the looseness of Japanese manners, but one case will suffice. One of the
princes, who had seduced a married woman, and was in the habit of visiting
her at times when her husband, an officer in the public guard, was on
duty, was surprised in her company on one occasion, the chief having
returned home earlier than was expected. He knew the rank of his visitor,
and discreetly coughed, so that the prince had time to escape. He then
went to the chamber and flogged his wife. She complained to the prince,
who was particularly desirous, at that time, to conciliate his subjects.
He sent for the husband, made him many rich presents, and allowed him to
select the handsomest woman in the royal household in place of the frail
one who had betrayed him. The husband accepted the peace-offerings,
allowed his wife to return home with him, and all the parties were
satisfied.

In Java women are usually married very young, as their chastity is in
danger as soon as they reach maturity. At eighteen or twenty a girl is
considered to be getting old, and scarcely any are unmarried after
twenty-two. Yet age does not exclude a woman from the probabilities of
matrimony, for widows often procure husbands at fifty. The preliminary
arrangements are made by the parents, as scandal would not allow the young
people to take any part in a transaction in which they are looked upon, as
the natives express it, as mere puppets. The father of the youth, having
made a suitable choice, proposes to the parents of the girl. If they are
willing, the betrothal is ratified by some trifling present, and visits
are made, that the intended nuptials may be publicly known. Subsequently
the price of the lady is arranged, varying according to the rank and
circumstances of the family. Sometimes this is plainly called the
"purchase-money," and sometimes by a more delicate term, the "deposit." It
is considered as a settlement for the bride. The only religious feature in
the marriage ceremony is an exchange of vows in the mosque. This is
followed by many observances of etiquette and parade. Finally, the married
couple eat from the same vessel, to testify their common fortune, or the
bride washes her husband's feet in token of subjection.

The Javanese support a large class of women as public dancers. The
inhabitants are passionately fond of this amusement, but no respectable
woman will join in it, and all its female partisans are prostitutes; in
fact, the words _dancer_ and _prostitute_ are synonymous in their
language. A chief of high rank is not ashamed to be seen with one of these
women, who figure at most large entertainments, and frequently amass
enough money to induce some petty chief to marry them. So strong, however,
is their ruling passion, they soon ascertain that domesticity is not their
sphere, and become tired of their husbands, whom they divorce without
ceremony, and coolly return to their public life. The dress in which they
perform is very immodest, but they seldom descend to such obscene and
degrading postures as may be witnessed in other Eastern countries.

European example has not done much for Java. The Dutch merchant has
usually a native female called his housekeeper. In every city public
prostitutes abound, while about the roads in the vicinity may be found
others ready for hire. Their disguise as dancers is thought to conceal
their profligacy.

SUMATRA.

The population of this island is divided into several tribes, slightly
differing in their manners. The Rejangs, who may be supposed to represent
its original inhabitants, are rude barbarians, scrupulously attentive to
the show, but wanting the spirit of delicacy. They drape their women from
head to foot, dread lest a virgin should expose any part of her person,
and yet modesty is not a characteristic of the people in towns and
villages. Those in rural districts who are not so rigid as to costume are
more distinguished by decency.

The customs of Sumatra are of a peculiar character, great importance being
attached to required formulas; and the ritual is more essential than the
principle. It is curious to examine the intricate details of a Sumatran
marriage contract, which appears to be so little understood even by the
people themselves that, we are informed, one of these documents is
sufficient to originate an almost endless litigation.

There are several modes of forming a marriage contract. The first is when
one man agrees to pay another a certain sum in exchange for his daughter.
A portion of the amount, say about five dollars, is generally held back,
to keep the transaction open, and allow the girl's parents a chance to
complain if she is ill used. If the husband wound her, he is liable to a
fine, and in many ways his authority is controlled. But if he insists on
paying the balance of the purchase-money, her parents must accept it, and
then their right of interference ceases. If a father desires to get rid of
a girl suffering from any infirmity, he sells her without this
reservation, and she has fewer privileges in consequence.

In other cases marriage is an affair of barter, one virgin being given for
another. A man having a son and a daughter will give the latter in
exchange for a wife for the former; or a brother will dispose of his
sister in the same way. Sometimes a girl evades these customs by eloping
with a lover of her own choice. If the fugitives are overtaken on the
road, they can be separated; but if they have taken refuge in any house,
and the man declares his willingness to obey existing rules, his wife is
secured to him. The Jewish custom of a man marrying his brother's widow is
in force among the Sumatrans, and if there be no brother, she must be
taken by the nearest male relative, the father excepted, who is made
responsible for any balance of her purchase-money which may be due.

Adultery is not frequently committed under this system, but when it is,
the husband chastises his wife himself, or else forgives the offense. If
he desire to divorce her, he may claim back the purchase-money, less
twenty-five dollars, which is allowed her parents for depreciation in the
woman's value. If a man who has taken a wife is unable to pay the whole
price, her friends may sue for a divorce, but then they must return all
they have received from him. The ceremony of divorce consists in cutting a
ratan in two in presence of the parties and their witnesses.

Another kind of marriage is when a girl's father selects some man whom he
adopts into his family, receiving a premium of about twenty dollars. The
father-in-law's family thus acquire a property in the young husband; they
are answerable for his debts, claim all he earns, and have the privilege
of turning him out of doors when they are tired of him.

The Malays of Sumalda have generally adopted a third kind of marriage,
which they call _the free_. In this the families approach each other on an
equal level. A small sum, about twelve dollars, is paid to the girl's
parents, and an agreement is made that all property shall be common
between husband and wife, and if a divorce takes place it shall be fairly
divided. The actual ceremony of marriage is simple: a feast is given, the
couple join their hands, and some one pronounces them man and wife.

Where the female is an article of sale, little of what we call courtship
can be expected. It is opposed to the manners of the country, which impose
strict separation of the sexes in youth; and, besides, when a man pays the
price of his wife, he considers he is entitled to possession, without any
question as to her predilections. But traces of courtship may be met with.
On the very few occasions when young people are allowed to meet, such as
public festivals, a degree of respect is shown to women contrasting very
favorably with the observances of more civilized communities, and mutual
attachments sometimes spring from these associations. The festivals are
enlivened by dances and songs. The former have been described as
licentious, but an English traveler says he has often seen more immodest
displays in a ball-room in his native country. The songs are extempore,
and love is the constant theme.

Polygamy is permitted, but only a few chiefs have more than one wife. To
be a second one is considered far below the dignity of a respectable
woman, and a man would demand a divorce for his daughter if her husband
was about to take an additional companion.

Marsden, the traveler already mentioned, says that in the country parts of
Sumatra chastity is general; but the merit is lost when he adds that
interest causes the parents to be watchful of their daughters, because the
selling price of a virgin is far above that of a woman who has been
defiled. If a case of seduction occurs, the seducer can be forced to marry
the girl and pay her original price, or else give her parents the sum
which they would lose by her error.

Regular prostitution is rare. In the bazars of the towns some women of
this class may be found, and in the sea-ports profligacy abounds, troops
of professional courtesans parading the streets. No one would estimate the
morality of a country from the spectacles exhibited in maritime cities. As
a general rule, the Sumatran is content to marry, and is faithful to his
wife. This may proceed from temperament rather than morality, as their
ideas on the latter are not very rigid. This is shown by their opinion of
incest, which they regard as an infraction of conventional law, sometimes
punishing it by a fine, and at other times confirming the marriage, unless
it occurs within the first degree of relationship.

BORNEO.

Notwithstanding the attention which has been drawn to the island of Borneo
within the last few years, it is yet but little known to the general
reader. The investigations of Sir James Brooke and others have enabled us
to discern many of its social features. Most of the inhabitants of Borneo
are in a state of barbarism. Some wander naked in the forest, and subsist
on the spontaneous productions of the earth; others cultivate the soil,
dwell in villages, and trade with their neighbors. The river communities
are more advanced than those who live inland, and the inhabitants of
sea-ports are more educated and more profligate than any. These have been
farther debased by the abominable system of piracy, which, until recently,
was their occupation.

Among the Sea Dyaks, or dwellers on the coast, there is no social law to
govern sexual intercourse before marriage, nor is the authority of parents
recognized in the matter. The Dyak girl selects a husband for herself,
and, while she remains single, incurs no disgrace by cohabiting with as
many as she pleases. After marriage she is subject to more stringent
rules, for, as a man is allowed only one wife, he requires her to be
faithful, or in default punishes her with a severe whipping. If he is
incontinent he incurs a similar penalty. Cases of adultery are not
frequent, though they sometimes occur in time of war.

The ceremony of marriage is as simple as possible. The consent of the
woman is first obtained, then the bride and bridegroom meet and give a
feast, which completes the contract.

If a girl becomes pregnant, the father of the child must marry her, and
this is a common way of securing a husband. A man and woman live together
for a time, and separate if there is no prospect of a family. During this
probation constancy is not considered indispensable. The fear of not
becoming the father of a family, a misfortune greatly dreaded by the
Dyaks, favors the loose intercourse of unmarried people. In some tribes
the duties of hospitality require that if a chief is traveling he shall be
furnished with a _pro tempore_ female companion at every place where he
sleeps.

Among the Dyaks dwelling on the hills morality is of a higher standard.
Single men are obliged to sleep in a separate building, and the girls are
not allowed to approach them. Marriage is contracted at a very early age,
and adultery is almost unknown. Polygamy is not allowed, but some of the
chiefs indulge in a concubine, for which they are generally blamed. There
are certain degrees of consanguinity within which marriage is unlawful.
One man shocked public feeling by marrying his granddaughter, and the
people affirm that ruin and darkness have covered the face of the sun ever
since that act of incest. As they marry constantly within their own tribe,
the whole commonwealth is in time united by ties of blood, and to this is
ascribed the insanity common among them, a conclusion warranted to some
extent by the imbecile state of well-known royal families condemned to
perpetual intermarriages.

It is said that many prostitutes may be found among the people of the
South, but this rests on doubtful testimony, and in the Dyak language
there is no word to express the vice.

The Sibnouan females are neither concealed from strangers nor shy before
them. They will bathe naked in the presence of men. The unmarried people
sleep promiscuously in a common room, but married couples have separate
apartments. The labor of the household is allotted to females, who grind
rice, carry burdens, fetch water, catch fish, and till the ground. They
are not so degraded as in other barbarous nations. They eat with the men,
and take part in their festivals as well as their labor.

Among the Mohammedan Malays there is more civilization and more
corruption. They are polygamists, indulge in concubinage, encourage
prostitutes, and ill use their wives. An English physician lately received
a message from the wife of a chief appointing a secret meeting. He was
punctual to the assignation, and met the lady, who asked him for a close
of arsenic to poison her husband, as he ill-treated her. Report says that
the Englishman was disappointed in the nature of the interview, but firmly
refused to grant her request.

The rich Malays allow their wives to keep female slaves, and the jealousy
of the mistress renders their situation any thing but pleasant. They
sometimes serve as concubines, in which case the law renders them free,
but many refuse to avail themselves of this advantage.

We have no definite account of prostitutes in sea-port towns, but they
appear to be of several classes: those who cohabit temporarily with the
Malays, those who prostitute themselves indiscriminately to all comers,
and those who are supported by sailors and profligate Chinese, who
invariably create such a class wherever they settle. It is certain that
women of this class exist in considerable numbers in Borneo.

CHAPTER XXXI.

SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS.

Persia.--Afghanistan.--Kashmir.--India.--Ceylon.--Ultra-Gangetic
Nations.--Celebes.--China.--Japan.--Tartar Races.--Circassia.--
Turkey.--Northern Africa.--Siberia.--Esquimaux.--Iceland.--Greenland.

PERSIA.

Women occupy an inferior position in Persia, where they are literally the
property of men. The lower classes consider them valuable for their labor,
the rich regard them as instruments of pleasure. While Persian poetry and
romance are devoted to the praise of female charms, the realities of
every-day life prove that the sex is held in slight esteem. The wives of
the Shah vegetate within the walls of a luxurious prison; and if one is
ever permitted to breathe the air outside, she is paraded in solemn
procession, guarded by a troup of eunuchs armed with loaded muskets, in
order to drive off any curious wayfarer who might be tempted to gaze on
the charms of a royal mistress. Nor is this isolation peculiar to them; it
pervades all the upper classes, and brothers are not allowed to see their
sisters after a certain age.

This jealousy is not decreased by the polygamy which is common in the
country. The religious laws limit a Persian to four wives, but allow him
to keep as many concubines as he can afford; and, in pursuance of this
privilege, the harem of the palace is said to contain at times more than a
thousand women, who need a stringent discipline to keep them in order.
They are arranged with a strict regard to precedence. The chief favorite
lives in splendor, her attire is covered with costly jewels, and she has
the privilege of sitting in the royal presence. Her inferiors are subject
to much rigor, and the eunuchs preserve decorum by administering personal
chastisement with the heel of a slipper on the face of a refractory woman.
They seem insensible to any degradation. Many of them lead a pleasant,
idle life, lounging for hours in the warm bath, and emerging with
enervated frames to deck their pretty persons in order to render
themselves attractive to the Shah. They court his favor as much as they
fear his frown, and with good reason. The former can raise them to the
summit of their ambition; the latter can condemn them to be fastened in a
sack and thrown from a lofty tower.

Common usage permits a Persian to take a woman in three different ways: he
may marry, purchase, or hire her. In the first case, betrothal sometimes
takes place in infancy, but it must be subsequently confirmed by the
parties. In this they seldom fail; for if a girl shows any repugnance to
ratify her father's contract, he whips her until she consents, and she
requires little of this kind of argument to induce compliance. The nuptial
ceremony must be witnessed by two persons, one of whom is a legal officer
to attest the contract. This is delivered to the bride, and by her
carefully preserved, as it proves her title to provision in the event of
widowhood or divorce. Though a man has the right to put away his wife when
he pleases, the attendant expense and scandal render it a rare proceeding.
Mohammedan jealousy farther protects the woman, as no one will willingly
allow a female with whom he has lived to fall into the hands of another.
In addition to this, interest restrains a husband from using his
privileges in a direct manner, as when he takes the initiative he must
pay back the dowry he received with his wife. If she applies for divorce,
he is free from this obligation. The advantage being thus on the man's
side, a species of tyranny is frequently practiced until the woman is
forced to open the suit, when he gets rid of her, but retains her
property.

A Persian may purchase as many female slaves as he desires. These acquire
no advantage of position by being his concubines; he may sell or otherwise
dispose of them at any moment he thinks proper.

The custom of hiring wives still prevails in Persia, though strict
Mohammedans abhor and condemn the practice, which was prohibited by Omar,
the successor of Mohammed. In operation, it is an agreement made by a man
and woman to cohabit a specified time for an agreed sum of money. The
children springing from this union must be supported by the father. If the
man terminate the connection prematurely, he must still pay the whole
stipulated amount, and the woman is restrained from accepting any other
protector until a sufficient time has elapsed to prove whether she is
pregnant by the former. Although these contracts are ranked as marriages,
few readers will be inclined to think them any thing but systematic
prostitution.

Formerly there were numerous open and avowed prostitutes in Persia, among
whom the dancing girls were conspicuous for the beauty of their persons
and the melody of their voices. They had considerable sway until the time
of Futteh Ali Khan, who crowded his palace with concubines, and from among
them issued edicts to suppress immorality, prohibiting the dancing girls
from approaching the court, and exiling them to the distant provinces.
Social life was most depraved under the Sefi dynasty. Public brothels were
very numerous, and largely contributed to the national revenue, no less
than thirty thousand prostitutes paying an annual tax in Ispahan alone.
The governors of provinces allowed similar privileges for money, and there
was scarcely a town which had not one licensed brothel at least, whose
inmates (also licensed and taxed) were known as _Cahbeha_, or the
worthless. As soon as the shops were closed these houses were opened, and
the women repaired to particular localities, where they sat in rows,
closely veiled. With each company was an old harridan, whose business was
to show the faces of her troop to any man desiring a companion, and to
receive his payment when the selection was made. Under the reigning
family this system has been checked; no licenses are now given, and
prostitution has retired to secrecy. But the vice has in no way decreased,
and public brothels abound in all the cities of Persia.

AFGHANISTAN.

Marriage in Afghanistan is a commercial transaction, the women being sold
for prices varying according to circumstances. This system is carried to
such an extent that if a widow marries, the friends of her first husband
can recover from his successor the amount originally paid for her. The
necessity of purchasing a wife renders many of the poorer classes unable
to marry until well advanced in years, in opposition to the custom of
their wealthy neighbors, among whom bridegrooms of fifteen and brides of
twelve years old are common.

The prior intercourse of the sexes is regulated by various circumstances.
In crowded towns men have little opportunity of associating with women,
and there professional match-makers exist. Their functions are, in the
first place, to see and report upon any girl whom a man may wish to marry;
then to ascertain if her family would agree to the match, and, finally, to
make arrangements for a public proposal. This is made by the suitor's
father, in company with a number of male friends, to the father of the
girl, while a similar deputation of females waits upon the mother.
Presents are made, the selling price determined, and the couple are
betrothed. Soon after, the parties sign a mutual contract; stipulation is
made for provision for the woman if divorced; a festival is given; the
bridegroom pays for his wife, and she is delivered at the dwelling of her
future master. Similar formalities take place in the country, but, as the
social intercourse is less restricted there, marriages frequently spring
from attachment, and the negotiations are mere matters of etiquette.

A romantic lover may obtain his mistress without the consent of her
parents by tearing away her veil, cutting off a lock of her hair, or
throwing a large white cloth over her, and declaring her his affianced
bride. These proceedings do not release him from the obligation to pay for
her, which is only evaded by an elopement, a serious step, considered by
the girl's family as equivalent to murder, and revenged accordingly,
unless the couple secure shelter and protection from some neighboring
tribe. Sometimes a man never sees his bride until the marriage is
completed. In certain districts where this rule nominally exists it is
practically violated, secret interviews between the bride and bridegroom
being tolerated, and called "the sport of the betrothed." The young man
steals after dark to the house of his charmer, affecting to conceal his
presence from the men, and is introduced by the mother to her daughter's
room, where the couple are left till the morning undisturbed. The ordinary
result of this is the anticipation of nuptial privileges, and cases have
been known where the bride has borne several children before she has been
formally delivered to her husband.

Polygamy is allowed, but is too expensive to be practiced by the majority
of the people, although some rich men maintain a large number of
concubines in addition to the four legal wives.

The social condition of females is low in Afghanistan. Among the more
barbarous tribes they labor in the fields. With the poor all the drudgery
of the house falls upon them, while the rich keep them secluded in the
harems. The law allows a man the privilege of beating his wife, but custom
is more chivalrous than the code, and considers such an act disgraceful.

Of avowed prostitutes in this region we know but little beyond the bare
fact that such a class exists, and that their profligacy is materially
aided by the ignorance and insipidity of the wives and concubines, when
contrasted with the knowledge of the world and comparatively polished
manners exhibited by courtesans, whose society is frequently sought as a
relief from the monotony of home.

KASHMIR.

Unoppressed by any rigid code of etiquette, and naturally addicted to
pleasure, the people of Kashmir find much of their enjoyment in female
society, and from the earliest times have been noted for their love of
singers and dancers. In former days the capital city was the scene of
constant revels, in which morality was but a secondary consideration, and
now the inhabitants relieve the continual struggle against misfortune and
despotism by indulging in gross vices, and drown the sense of hopeless
poverty in the gratification of animal passions. The women of this
delightful valley have long been celebrated for their beauty, and are
still called the flower of the Oriental race. The face is of a dark
complexion, richly flushed with pink; the eyes large, almond-shaped, and
overflowing with a peculiar liquid brilliance; the features regular,
harmonious, and fine; the limbs and bodies are models of grace. But all
writers agree that art does nothing to aid nature, and it is not unusual
to see eyes unsurpassed for brightness and expression flashing from a very
dirty face. Among the poorer classes filth and degradation render many
women actually repulsive, notwithstanding their resplendent beauty.

Travelers always remark the dancing girls who have acquired so much renown
in Kashmir. The village of Changus was at one time celebrated for a colony
of these women, who excelled all others in the valley; but now its famous
beauties have disappeared, and live only in the traditions of the place.
The dancing girls may be divided into several classes. Among the higher
may be found those who are virtuous and modest, probably to about the same
extent as among actresses, opera singers, and ballet girls in civilized
communities. Others frequent entertainments at the houses of rich men, or
public festivals, and estimate their favors at a very high price, while
the remainder are avowed harlots, prostituting themselves indiscriminately
to any who desire their company. Many of these are devoted to the service
of some god, whose temple is enriched from the gains of their calling.

The Watul, or Gipsy tribe of Kashmir is remarkable for many lovely women,
who are taught to please the taste of the voluptuary. They sing licentious
songs in an amorous tone, dance in a lascivious measure, dress in a
peculiarly fascinating manner, and seduce by the very expression of their
countenances. When they join a company of dancing girls, they are
uniformly successful in their vocation, and have been known to amass large
sums of money. Now that the valley is in its decadence, their charms find
a more profitable market in other places. The bands of dancing girls are
usually accompanied by sundry hideous duennas, whose conspicuous ugliness
forms a striking contrast to their charge.

The Nach girls are under the surveillance of the government, which
licenses their prostitution. They are actual slaves, and can not sing or
dance without permission from their overseer, to whom they must resign a
large portion of their earnings.

In addition to these, who may be styled poetical courtesans, there exists
a swarm of prostitutes frequenting low houses in the cities or boats on
the lake; but of them we have no distinct account. It is certain that they
are largely visited by the more immoral of the population, and an accurate
idea of their _status_ may be formed from a knowledge of the fact that
the traveler Moorcraft, who gave gratuitous medical advice to the poor of
Serinaghur, had at one time nearly seven thousand patients on his lists, a
very large number of whom were suffering from loathsome diseases induced
by the grossest and most persevering profligacy. In short, there can be
but little doubt that the manners of the inhabitants of this interesting
and beautiful valley are corrupt to the last degree.

INDIA.

India exhibits, in its different communities, many aspects of social life,
but it may be said, in general terms, that the state of woman is degraded,
as she is absolutely dependent upon man, and can do nothing of her own
will. She must approach her lord with reverence; is bound to him so long
as he desires it, whatever his conduct may be; and if she rebel, is liable
to be chastised with a rope or a cane in a cruel manner. Debarred the
advantages of education, not allowed to eat with their husbands or to mix
in society, women are yet not treated as abject slaves; and from the few
revelations of the zenana which have been made, it may be inferred that
its inmates receive considerable deference and attention.

Polygamy is permitted in India, but not encouraged by the religious law,
and only sanctioned in certain cases, such as barrenness, inconstancy, or
some similar cause, and then the wife's consent must be obtained before a
second and subordinate wife can be added to the household.

Marriage is viewed as a religious duty by the Hindoos, only a few being
exempt from the obligation. It is forbidden to purchase a wife for money;
but the girls have little choice as to their destiny, being usually
betrothed while young. A father has the right to dispose of his daughter
until three years after the age of puberty, when she may choose a husband
for herself: not many remain single till that time, as celibacy would be
accounted disgraceful, and few men would marry a maiden so old. In Bengal,
betrothal takes place with many rites and much ostentation. The girl-bride
is taken to her future husband's house, and remains there a short time,
when she returns to her parents until mature. The anxiety to dispose of a
daughter as young as possible arises from the fact that her birth is
regarded as inauspicious, and even as a domestic calamity, from which her
parents are glad to escape. Hence the character of the bridegroom is a
secondary consideration, and marriage often results unhappily. In fact,
little else can be expected where the parties are absolutely strangers to
each other until the union is effected. The uneducated wife, without a
gleam of knowledge, amuses herself by a thousand trivial devices, such as
adorning her person, curling her hair, or listening to the gossip of her
slaves. It is, nevertheless, generally admitted that the majority of
Hindoo women are faithful to their marital vows. The severe laws against
unchastity are framed more for preserving _caste_ than morals, and
severely punish any woman detected in an intrigue with a man of different
grade to herself.

Divorce may be easily effected by the husband, but the wife has no
corresponding power. A man who calls his wife "mother," renounces her by
that act. A barren wife may be superseded in the eighth year: she who
bears only daughters, or whose children die in the birth, in the eleventh
year; and one of an unkind disposition may be divorced without any delay.

The customs that prevail in different provinces respecting wives and their
treatment may be described in a few words. In Arracan, when a man wants
money, he pawns his wife for a certain sum, or else sells her altogether.
In the southern parts of the peninsula polygamy is largely practiced. The
Shaynagas of Canara are not allowed to take a second wife unless the first
be childless. The Corannas, the Panchalura, and other tribes, permitted
polygamy and the purchase of wives. Among the Woddas every man had as many
wives as he pleased; all worked for him, and a lazy one was divorced _sans
ceremonie_. The Carruburru took no notice of an act of adultery if the
wife was a hard-working woman; otherwise she might live with any man who
chose to keep her. In Rajpootana woman holds a higher position, and
exercises considerable influence on the actions and tastes of men, for a
Rajpoot consults his wife on every important occasion. The estimation in
which they are held is indicated by a national proverb, which says, "When
wives are honored the gods are pleased; when they are dishonored the gods
are offended." This district exhibits the Hindoo women in the most
favorable circumstances, and even here they hold but a subordinate place,
as must always be the case where polygamy is tolerated. It is scarcely
necessary to review all the local peculiarities of so extended a people:
enough has been said to show the social condition of married women. It
remains to give some account of prostitution.

Some of the dancing women and musicians of Southern India were attached to
every temple; a portion were reserved by the sensual Brahmins for their
exclusive pleasures, and the rest hired themselves out indiscriminately.
Each troop was under a chief, who regulated their performances and prices.
In the temple of Tulava, near Mangalore, a curious custom existed. Any
woman could dedicate herself to prostitution by eating some of the rice
which had been offered to the idol, and was allowed her choice to live
within or without its precincts. In the former case, she received a daily
allowance of food, and her prostitution was limited to the priests; in the
latter, her amours were unrestricted, but a stipulated portion of her
profits must be given to the temple. In Sindh every town has a troop of
dancing girls, many of whom are very handsome. Before the British conquest
the vice was largely encouraged; numbers of the women acquired
considerable fortunes, and their political influence was potent in the
_durbars_ of the debauched Amirs. An evident reform has taken place of
late years.

The lascivious scenes of the southern country are not enacted, at least to
the same extent, in Hindostan proper, where the interest of the English
government has been directed against immorality. Toward the close of the
last century an official report was made on the morals of British India.
It was bad enough: much laxity prevailed in private life; receptacles for
women of bad character abounded; prostitutes had a place in society, made
an important figure at great entertainments, and were admitted to the
zenanas to exhibit their voluptuous dances. Contrasted with former years,
a great improvement is now perceptible, and the profligacy of large cities
scarcely exceeds the vices of European communities. Thus Benares, with a
population of 180,000, had 1764 prostitutes; and Decca, with nearly 67,000
inhabitants, had 770 prostitutes.

Apart from governmental influences, it can scarcely be denied that
Europeans have contributed to the advance of vice by taking temporary
companions. These _liaisons_ were scarcely considered improper. The custom
was to purchase girls from their mothers. Many of them were faithful and
attached to their protectors, but their extravagance and propensity for
gambling made them very costly adjuncts.

The religious ceremonies originated by the Brahmins were often but scenes
of the wildest debauchery, rivaling the ancient Egyptian festival of
Bubastis, and no good would result from an extended description of dances
performed by nude or semi-nude women, of the desecration of wives by a
licentious priesthood, or of the disgusting polygamy of the Brahmins.
Suffice it to say that such customs existed, but are now yielding to more
refined observances.

The general profligacy of the country has introduced syphilis in most
parts of Hindostan. Some assert that it was carried there after the
discovery of America, but neither history nor tradition warrants this
opinion. It may be noticed that it is not called by any Sanscrit word, but
is known by a Persian appellation.

Our notice of India would be incomplete without an allusion to the
_suttee_, or burning of widows, and to infanticide. The Shastres are full
of recommendations to perform the first of these shocking observances, and
promise ineffable bliss to the voluntary victim. It was carried to such an
extent that fifteen thousand women are reported to have perished in one
year in Bengal. This is doubtless an exaggeration, although the number was
confessedly very large. Among the horrible details of the practice we find
that betrothed children of eight or ten years old, and women of
eighty-five, have alike been thrown into the burning pile. Fearful scenes
have been witnessed on these occasions. A miserable wretch has twice
escaped from the fire and clung to the feet of a traveler, vainly
imploring him to save her; and then, naked, and with the flesh already
burned from parts of her body, has been bound and thrown into the flames
by the frantic relatives. Let British rule in India be what it may, no
man, no "Aborigines Protection Society," can regret its spread, in
conjunction with the services rendered to our common humanity by the
abolition of the _suttee_.

Infanticide formerly prevailed to a great extent, but is now almost
extirpated from British India. The crime was sanctioned by custom, but not
by religion or tradition. Its victims were chiefly females, and their
murder was in consequence of the difficulty of marrying them within the
required bounds of _caste_, or of the ruinous expenses which fashion
required should be incurred at the wedding ceremonies, rather than from
any other cause. It appears to have been the custom among the ancient
dwellers on the banks of the Indus for the father of a female child to
carry it to the market-place, and publicly demand if any one wanted a
wife. If the reply was in the affirmative, it was betrothed at once, and
carefully reared, but otherwise it was immediately killed. Wilkinson
asserted twenty-five years ago that twenty thousand children were annually
murdered in Malwa and Rajpootana, but by the system of rewarding parents
who reared their offspring, and the gradual introduction of salutary laws,
a mighty reform has been effected.

CEYLON.

Under the original institutions of the Singhalese, they never licensed
public prostitution, nor made brothels of the temples, as in India.
Whatever effect the Buddhist religion produced was in favor of virtue, but
the character of the people is naturally sensual; profligacy among men and
want of chastity among women are general characteristics, and even those
who profess Christianity and acknowledge the moral law of England are not
free from this stain.

In Ceylon, as, indeed, in most parts of Asia, marriage is contracted at an
early age. A man "attains his majority" at sixteen, and a girl as soon as
marriageable by nature is marriageable by law, at which time her parents
or relatives give a feast, inviting a number of single men. Soon after, a
man who may desire to marry her sends one of his friends to her parents to
mention, in apparently a casual manner, that a rumor of the intended
marriage of his friend and their daughter is in circulation. If this
announcement meets a favorable reception, the father of the bridegroom
calls, inquires the amount of the dowry, and carries the negotiation a few
steps farther. Mutual visits are then exchanged, preliminaries settled,
and an auspicious day fixed for the wedding, which takes place with much
ceremony. The stars are consulted in every step, and should the
bridegroom's horoscope differ from the bride's, his younger brother may
act as his proxy at the ceremony. The whole Buddhaical ritual is a tedious
succession of formalities, entails enormous expenses, and can not be
followed by the poor. To those of low caste it is positively forbidden,
even if they are rich enough to meet the outlay, and with these marriage
is limited to a simple agreement between the parents of the young couple.

Among the Kandians polyandrism prevails to a great extent, a matron of
high _caste_ being sometimes the wife of eight brothers. The people
justify this custom upon several grounds: among the rich, because it
prevents litigation, saves property from minute subdivision, and
concentrates family influence; with the poor, because it reduces expenses,
and frequently where one brother could not alone maintain a wife and
family, the association of several can command the means. This plurality
of husbands is not necessarily confined to brothers, for a man may, with
his wife's consent, introduce a stranger, who is called an "associated
husband," and is entitled to all marital rights. This practice does not
extend beyond the province of Kandy, although it was formerly prevalent
throughout the maritime districts of the island.

Another Kandian peculiarity was a kind of marriage called "Bema," in which
the husband lived at his wife's house. He received but little respect from
his relations, and could be ejected at once if unpopular. There is an
ancient proverb in reference to this dubious arrangement, which says that
a man married according to the Bema process should only take to his
bride's house a pair of sandals to protect his feet, a palm leaf to shield
his head, a staff to support him if sick, and a lantern in case he should
be expelled in the dark, so that he may be prepared to depart at any hour
of the day or night.

In Ceylon, women frequently seek for divorces for the most trivial causes,
and as separation can be attained by a mere return of the marriage gifts,
it often takes place. If a child is born within nine months from this
separation, the husband is required to support it for three years. If a
married woman commits adultery, and the husband is a witness, he may kill
her lover. When a man puts away his wife on account of an intrigue, he may
disinherit her and the whole of her offspring, even if the latter were
born before any crime had been committed by their mother. If he seeks a
divorce from caprice, he must relinquish all his wife's property, and
share with her whatever may have accumulated during their cohabitation.
The Singhalese do not always exercise their privileges, but are frequently
indulgent husbands, and forgive offenses which most people hold
unpardonable. In proof of this, a Kandian asked the British authorities to
compel the return of an unfaithful wife, pleading his love for her, and
promising to forget her frailty. English jurisdiction did not extend so
far as this, and the woman coolly turned her back upon her husband and
accompanied her paramour, whom she soon after deserted for a third
partner. Many instances of this kind have induced the native poets to
produce a number of satirical effusions upon woman's inconstancy, and a
traveler translates the following specimen:

"'I've seen the adumbra-tree in flower, white plumage on the crow,
And fishes' footsteps on the deep have traced through ebb and flow;'
If man it is who thus asserts, his words you may believe,
But all that woman says, distrust; she speaks but to deceive."

To understand the first clause, it will be necessary to remember that the
adumbra is a kind of fig-tree, and the natives assert that no mortal has
ever seen it in bloom.

Infanticide was at one time common in Ceylon, and all female children,
except the first-born, were liable to be sacrificed, especially if born
under a malignant planet; but latterly the British government have
denounced the crime as murder, and punished it accordingly. This has had
the effect of gradually abolishing it, and the population has increased in
consequence.

The social condition of the Singhalese women is not so degraded as in
other parts of the East, but their moral character does not correspond.
Profligacy is prevalent. Open and acknowledged prostitution is rare,
excepting in the sea-port towns, and of its extent there we have no
reliable particulars. Under the Kandian dynasty a common harlot had her
hair and ears cut off, and was publicly whipped in a state of nudity.

ULTRA GANGETIC NATIONS.

In this division we include the immense tract lying between Hindostan and
China. Although these countries present some variety of customs and
degrees of progress, yet, generally speaking, their manners are uniform.
In all, the condition of women is extremely low. They are held in
contempt, are taught to abase themselves in their own minds, and employ
their license by degrading themselves still farther. The effect of Asiatic
despotism is plainly visible: every man is the king's serf, and the
support of the community devolves upon the women, who, in Cochin China
especially, plow, sow, reap, fell trees, build, and perform all the other
offices civilization assigns to the stronger sex.

The marriage contract is a mere bargain. A man buys his wife, and may
extend his purchases as far as he pleases, the first bought being usually
the chief. A simple agreement before witnesses seals the union, which can
be dissolved with equal facility, the only requisite in Cochin China being
to break a chopstick or porcupine quill in presence of a third person. A
man has also the privilege of selling his inferior wives.

The unmarried women are almost universally unchaste, and do not incur
infamy or lose the chance of marriage by prostituting themselves. Custom
allows a father to yield his daughter to any visitor he may wish to honor,
or to hire her for a stipulated price to any one desirous of her company,
and she has no power to resist the arrangement, although she can not be
married against her will.

A wife is considered sacred, more as the property of her husband than from
respect to her chastity. The theory of the law is, that a man's harem can
not be invaded, even by the king himself; but Asiatic absolutism was never
famed for its adherence to law when personal interest was in the other
scale, and there is but little exception in this case.

Adultery is punished in Siam by fine, and in Cochin China by death. In
Burmah executions of females are very rare, but they are disciplined with
the aid of the bamboo, husbands sometimes flogging their wives in the open
streets.

Although professed prostitutes exist in large numbers throughout the
region, still there are not so many as might be expected, because no
single woman is required to be chaste. Little is known of their habits,
peculiarities, or position, except that in Siam they are incapacitated
from giving evidence before a justice. This restriction does not seem to
arise from a consideration of their immorality, but from local prejudices,
and the disability under which they labor is also extended to braziers and
blacksmiths.

CELEBES.

Leaving the Asiatic Continent for a short time, we will now examine the
condition of the inhabitants of Celebes. This island is noticed here
rather than with Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, which are included in the list
of barbarous nations, because it enjoys a considerable degree of
civilization, and in its political and social state is far in advance of
other countries of the Indian Archipelago. The idea of freedom is
recognized in its public system, and its institutions have assumed a
republican form.

Women are not excluded from their share in public business; and though
their influence is usually indirect, their counsel is sought by the men on
all important occasions. In Wajo, they are not only elected to the throne,
or, rather, the presidential chair, but also often fill the great offices
of state. Four out of the six councilors are frequently females.

Their domestic condition, to some extent, corresponds with their
political privileges. The wife has the uncontrolled management of her
household, eating with her husband, and mingling freely with the other sex
on public or festival occasions. The women ride about, transact business,
and even visit foreigners as they please, and their chastity is better
guarded by the sense of honor and the pride of virtue, than by the
jealousy of husbands or the surveillance of parents.

This is the bright side of the picture. For the reverse, we find the
barbarian practice of polygamy, which is universally permitted, under
certain restrictions. The most important of these is that two wives seldom
inhabit the same house; each has usually a separate dwelling. The men can
easily procure a divorce, and, if the wish to separate is mutual, nothing
remains but to do so as quickly as possible. If the woman alone desires to
be released from the matrimonial bond, she must produce a reasonable
ground of complaint. Concubinage is rarely practiced, although some man
may take a woman of inferior rank as a companion until he can marry a girl
whose birth equals his own.

The morals of both men and women are superior to those of any other race
in eastern or western Asia. Prostitution is all but unknown. The dancing
girls are generally admitted to be of easy virtue, but even they preserve
decorum in their manners, and dress with great decency, although their
public performances are of a lascivious nature.

CHINA.

In the immense empire of China a general uniformity of manners is
observable, for its civilization has been cast in a mould fashioned by
despotism, and the iron discipline of its government forces all to yield.
There is great reason to believe that prostitution forms no exception to
the rule. We know that a remarkable system exists, that frail women abound
in the Celestial Empire, and form a distinct class. We know something of
the manner in which they live, and how or by whom they are encouraged, but
no traveler has as yet given any lucid account of the vice and its
connections, and our comparatively meagre knowledge is drawn from a
multiplicity of sources.

The general condition of the female sex in China is inferior to the male,
and the precepts and examples of Confucius have taught the people that the
former were created for the convenience of the latter. Feminine virtue is
severely guarded by the law; not for the sake of virtue, but for the
well-being of the state and the interest of the men. But national
morality, inculcated by codes, essays, and poems, is, in fact, a dead
letter, for the Chinese rank among the most immoral people on the earth.
The inferiority of women is recognized in their politics, which embrace
the spirit of the Salic law. The throne can be occupied only by a man, and
an illegitimate son is more respected than a legitimate daughter.

The paternal government of China has not failed to legislate on the
subject of marriage. In this contract the inclinations of the parties
themselves are practically ignored; parental authority is supreme, and it
is not unusual for weddings to take place between persons who have never
seen each other before the union. Matchmaking is followed as a profession
by some old women, who are remunerated when they succeed. When two
families commence a negotiation of this kind, all particulars are required
to be fully explained on both sides, so that no deceit can be practiced.
The engagement is then drawn, and the amount of presents agreed on. This
contract is irrevocable. If the friends of the girl desire to break off
the match, the one who had authority to dispose of her receives fifty
strokes of the bamboo, and the marriage proceeds. If the bridegroom, or
the friend who controls him is dissatisfied, he receives the same
punishment, and must fulfill his engagement. If either of the parties is
incontinent after betrothal, the crime is punished as adultery. If any
deceit has been practiced, and either person has falsely represented the
party about to be married, the offender is severely punished, and the
marriage is void, even if completed. In spite of all precautions, such
instances sometimes occur. It must be noticed that, though betrothal binds
a woman positively to her future husband, yet he can not force her from
her friends before the stipulated time has expired, nor can they retain
her beyond the assigned day.

Polygamy is allowed under certain restrictions. The first wife is usually
chosen from a family equal in station to that of the husband, and acquires
all the rights and privileges which belong to a chief wife in any Asiatic
country. The man may then take as many more women as he can afford to
keep, but these are inferior in rank to the first married, although the
children have a contingent claim to the inheritance. This position, if it
brings no positive honor, brings little shame. It is sanctioned by usage,
but was originally condemned by strict moralists, who designated the
arrangement by a word compounded of _crime_ and _woman_. It is a position
which only a poor or humble woman will consent to occupy. A national
proverb says, "It is more honorable to be the wife of a poor man than the
concubine of an emperor." The social rule which makes all subsequent wives
subordinate to the one first married may probably have had some effect in
forming this opinion.

The Chinese system is rigid as to the degrees of consanguinity between
which marriage may be contracted. In ancient times the reverse of this
seems to have been the rule, and tradition says that much immorality was
the result. The law now prohibits all unions between persons of the same
family name, and is attended with some inconvenience, because the number
of proper names is small. If such a marriage is contracted, it is declared
void, and the parties are punished by blows and a fine. If the couple are
previously related by marriage within four degrees, the union is declared
incestuous, and the offenders are punished with the bamboo, or, in extreme
cases, by strangling or decapitation.

Not only are the degrees of relationship definitely specified, but the
union of classes is under restriction. An officer of government must not
marry into a family under his jurisdiction, or, if he does, is subject to
a heavy punishment; the same being accorded to the girl's relations if
they have voluntarily aided him, but they are exempt if their submission
was the result of his authority. To marry a woman absconding from justice
is prohibited. To forcibly wed a freeman's daughter subjects the offender
to strangulation. An officer of government, or any hereditary functionary,
who marries a woman of a disreputable class, receives sixty strokes of the
bamboo, and the same _modicum_ awaits any priest who marries at all, he
being also expelled from his order. Slaves and free persons are forbidden
to intermarry. Those who connive at an illegal union are considered
criminals, and punished accordingly.

According to Chinese law, any one of seven specified causes are allowed to
justify divorce, namely, barrenness, lasciviousness, disregard of the
husband's parents, talkativeness (!), thievish propensities, an envious,
suspicious temper, or inveterate infirmity. Against these the woman has
three pleas, any one of which, if substantiated, will annul the husband's
application. They are, that she has mourned three years for her husband's
family; that the family has become rich, having been poor at the time of
marriage; or, that she has no father or mother living to receive her.
These are useless when she has committed adultery, in which case her
husband is positively forbidden to retain her, but under other
circumstances they present a check to his caprice. In cases of adultery, a
man may kill both his wife and her paramour if he detect them and execute
his vengeance forthwith, but he must not put her to death for any other
crime. In the same connection may be mentioned a law denouncing severe
penalties on any man who lends his wife or daughter. This is not an
obsolete enactment against an unknown offense, for instances do sometimes
occur of poor men selling their wives as concubines to their richer
neighbors, while others prostitute them for gain.

From this view of the social condition of women and the laws of marriage,
it is necessary to pass to a subject which has given China an unenviable
notoriety, namely, the custom of infanticide. Two causes appear to have
encouraged this practice: the poverty of the lower classes, and the
severity of the laws respecting illicit sexual intercourse. The former is
the principal cause. When the parents are so indigent as to have no hope
of maintaining their children, the daughters are murdered, for a son can
earn his living in a few years, and assist his parents in addition. Among
this class the birth of a female is viewed as a calamity. Several methods
are adopted to destroy the child. It may be drowned in warm water, its
throat may be pinched, a wet cloth may be pressed over its mouth, it may
be choked with rice, or it may be buried alive.

When Mr. Smith, a missionary, was in the suburbs of Canton in 1844, he
made many inquiries as to the extent of infanticide. A native assured him
that, within a circle of ten miles' radius, the children killed each year
_would not exceed five hundred_. In Fokien province the crime was more
general, and at a place called Kea King Chow there were computed to be
from five to six hundred cases every month. A foundling hospital at Canton
was named as preventing much of the crime, but it seems to have received
only five hundred infants yearly; but a very small proportion of the
births. The Chinese generally confess that infanticide is practiced
throughout the empire, and is regarded as an innocent and proper expedient
for lightening the pressure of poverty. It is not wholly confined to the
poor; the rich resort to it to conceal their amours. The laws punish
illicit intercourse with from seventy to one hundred strokes of the
bamboo. If a child is born, its support devolves upon the father; but in
cases where the connection has been concealed, this evidence is usually
destroyed.

Prostitution prevails to a prodigious extent. "Seduction and adultery,"
says Williams, in his Survey of the Chinese Empire, "are comparatively
infrequent, but brothels and their inmates are found every where, on land
and water. One danger attending young girls walking alone is that they
will be stolen for incarceration in these gates of hell." This allusion
may be explained by the fact that in 1832 there were from eight to ten
thousand prostitutes in and near Canton, of whom the greater portion had
been stolen while children, and regularly trained for this life. Many
kidnappers gained a living by stealing young girls and selling them to the
brothels, and in times of want parents have been known to lead their
daughters through the streets and offer them for sale. A recent visitor to
Canton describes the sale of children as an every-day affair, which is
looked upon as a simple mercantile transaction. Some are disposed of for
concubines, but others are deliberately bartered to be brought up as
prostitutes, and are transferred at once to the brothels.

Of Chinese houses of prostitution we have no particular description, but
one singular feature is the brothel junks, which are moored in conspicuous
stations on the Pearl River, and are distinguished by their superior
decorations. Many of them are called "Flower Boats," and form whole
avenues in the floating suburbs of Canton. The women lead a life of
reckless extravagance, plunging into all the excitements which are offered
by their mode of life to release themselves from _ennui_ or reflection.
Diseases are very prevalent among them, and visitors suffer severely for
their temporary pleasures. They are usually congregated in troops, under
the government of a man who is answerable for their conduct, or for any
violation of public peace or decency. The last can scarcely be considered
an offense, for the Chinese make a display of their visits to brothels.
Persons pass to and from the Flower Boats without any attempt at
concealment, and rich men sometimes make up a party, send to one of the
junks, retain as many women as they wish, and collectively pass the time
in debauch and licentiousness.

This is not the only form prostitution assumes in China. Women of the
poorer classes, whose friends are not able to provide for them, are lodged
in prison under the care of female warders, and these employ their
prisoners in prostitution for their benefit. An incident which occurred at
Shenshee a few years since reveals another phase. A young widow resided
there with her mother-in-law, both being supported by the prostitution of
the former. Her charms failed, she was deserted by her visitors, and
starvation seemed inevitable. The old woman would not recognize her
daughter's inability to support her, and flogged her. The prostitute, in
attempting self-defense, killed her mother. She was convicted of the
crime, but, as the victim had acted illegally in endeavoring to force her
to prostitution, the sentence of the court, which had ordered her to be
hewn to pieces, was commuted into decapitation.

As before remarked, it is much to be regretted that we have not more
reliable information of the vice, which is acknowledged to be all but
universal in China.[370]

JAPAN.

The recent connection established by American enterprise with the
semi-fabulous empire of Japan (the Zipangi of Columbus) makes the
institutions of that country more than usually interesting. From the
earliest accounts of the Dutch and Jesuit writers to the present time, we
know that the Japanese, like the Chinese, have attained a high degree of
civilization, and among both, the vices which, in the present experience
of mankind, seem the accompaniments of that improvement, have been
developed in a remarkable degree.

Among savage tribes female honor is held in very little esteem; the woman
is merely property. As we advance in the scale of intelligence they take
higher grade, and virtue and modesty are more cherished. Our information
concerning Japan is, even yet, comparatively limited, but no circumstance
of its ordinary life seems more clear than that female virtue among the
higher classes is much valued, and that, at the same time, there is an
enormous extent of public prostitution, in which men of all ranks indulge.

The Jesuit Charleroix, Koempfer, Adams, and some Dutch writers, have given
accounts of Japan from the sixteenth century to the present time. Like
most Oriental nations, the manners and habits of the Japanese have
undergone so little change, that the practices of a century ago are the
fashions of to-day. The most recent traveler (for those who composed
Commodore Perry's expedition can hardly be said to come under that
denomination) is Captain Golownin, and he had opportunities for close
observation not equaled since the times of the early writers. He was
commander of the Russian sloop-of-war Diana, and visited the Japanese
empire in 1811. Having paid a visit of ceremony ashore, he was induced, by
the duplicity of the Japanese, who are adepts in all the political arts
of lying and hypocrisy, to trust himself in their hands a second time
without arms or escort. The Japanese had an old grudge to settle with the
Russians on account of injuries done them by certain individuals of that
nation, and took the opportunity of rendering a _quid pro quo_ by
entrapping the unlucky Golownin, who was thus made prisoner. He was
treated at first with much indignity and severity; afterward with more
indulgence, but did not regain his liberty for upward of two years.

The Japanese can marry only one wife, but have as many concubines as they
please. The precise value of the distinction is not readily appreciated,
as the concubine does not lose caste by her position. There are great
facilities of divorce, and without cause shown; but a gentleman who
exercises this privilege loses his character as a husband, and can only
procure another wife or additional concubines by paying a large price to
his father-in-law. Adultery is punished with death, either by law or at
the hands of the husband. Japanese husbands are represented as jealous,
and as keeping their wives and women in strict seclusion. This strictness
is relaxed in the cases of the middle and poorer classes, the necessities
of the household removing those artificial obligations imposed on the
higher ranks by pride or fashion. But even the women of the humbler ranks
do not converse with, or even speak to strangers, unless in the presence
of their husbands.

An anecdote is told in Adams's narrative which somewhat resembles that of
Lucretia in Roman history, and which would imply great self-respect among
the high caste of Japanese ladies. A nobleman made dishonorable advances
toward a lady of rank during her husband's absence on a journey, and,
notwithstanding a repulse from her, seized an opportunity to gratify his
passion by violence. On the husband's return the wife treated him with
reserve, and declined any explanation of her singular conduct, which,
however, she promised to afford at a banquet to be given the following
day. Accordingly, during the feast, at which the author of the outrage was
present, when the guests had satisfied their appetites, the lady made her
appearance. She told her husband and his friends what had happened,
denounced herself as unworthy to live, received the caresses of her
husband and relations, by whom, however, she refused to be comforted, and
then leaped from the parapet of the house, and so killed herself.
Meanwhile the criminal had escaped; but when the horror-stricken guests
rushed out to pick up the devoted wife, they found the nobleman weltering
in his own blood at her side. He had ripped himself up, the ordinary way
of committing suicide in Japan.

The Japanese brothels are of great splendor, and very numerously
frequented, containing thirty, forty, fifty, or even a larger number of
women. Every place of public entertainment or refreshment maintains
prostitutes as a part of the establishment. On stopping at a tavern, it is
customary for the courtesans of the house to come out, painted and
bedizened, and set forth the claims of their house to the traveler's
patronage, exhibiting themselves as one of the items of the bill of fare.
No village, however insignificant, is without one or more houses of ill
fame, and there are villages on much-frequented roads, in popular
districts, the whole of whose female inhabitants are prostitutes. Two in
particular, Agasaki and Goy, are thus described by Koempfer. The females
are designated _Keise_, which literally signifies a castle turned upside
down. It is uncertain whether the government licenses these places, or
merely tolerates them. The former is the more probable, when it is
considered that in their mythology they have a goddess analogous to the
Corinthian Venus, in whose worship prostitution is a recognized part of
the ceremony. Attached to the temple of this impure deity are a large
number of priestesses, six hundred or upward, who all prostitute
themselves to the worshipers. Notwithstanding this large force, there are
constant offers to recruit the ranks by young girls.

The extent of this vice, which is universal throughout the empire, would
cause it to be taken as a regular institution of Japan. Nothing is done
_sub rosa_. Courtesans form part of a pleasure party; parents sell their
children to brothel-keepers, or apprentice them for a time to such places,
and at the expiration of their term they resume (it is said, but this is
doubtful) their places in society without any stain on their reputations.
Husbands make bargains for the transfer of their wives' charms, which is a
legitimate charge over and above the gratuity to be accorded to the lady.
Koempfer, in describing the prostitute quarter of Nagasaki, says it
consists of very handsome houses. The poor people sell their prettiest
daughters to the brothel-keepers, who bring the girls up with various
accomplishments. The price of these women is regulated by law, and many of
the prostitutes are enabled to abandon their calling, for their good
education and agreeable manners procure them husbands, and in their
married condition they are fully as good as others.

In his lifetime the brothel-keeper is said by some writers to rank with
the skinner or tanner, an opprobrious calling, while others say he ranks
with merchants, and his company is not deemed objectionable. This latter
statement, if true, may be owing to the circumstance that he holds a
government license. In Japan, as in China, the crown is the fountain of
all distinction, and every government official has peculiar privileges and
a distinct position in the social scale. After his death, however, the
brothel-keeper is held in great disesteem. The sanctity of the
burial-place, to which particular reverence attaches, would be polluted by
his unholy presence, and his odious remains are denied the rite of
sepulture, and are dragged in the clothes in which he died to a dunghill,
there to be devoured by wild beasts and birds of prey.

Prostitution as a public institution is said to have been introduced into
Japan by a certain warlike emperor or usurper, who, leading his troops
from one place to another in the empire, feared lest, from want of home
comforts and domestic ties, they might become disgusted and abandon his
service. Accordingly, as a substitute for lawful enjoyments, he had
stations for bands of prostitutes at various points, to the nearest of
which he led his fatigued soldiers after his engagements.

Another statement as to the origin of this system is that, on one occasion
during a revolution, the spiritual emperor having fled, attended by his
foster-mother and a numerous band of female attendants, temporary nuns,
the emperor and his foster-mother drowned themselves in fear of capture by
the enemies; whereupon the attendant nuns, cut off from all other
resource, adopted libertinism as a means of livelihood, and this gave the
first public example and sanction to a reprobate state of life.

There are in Japan various religious institutions of a character similar
to convents and monasteries. The vow of celibacy and chastity is one of
the requisites of this state, yet, notwithstanding this vow, the monks are
described as living very intemperately, seducing both women and girls, and
committing other shameful enormities.[371]

Among the mendicant religious orders to which both sexes belong, the nuns
are numerous. They are described as being very fine-looking women. They
are generally the children of indigent parents, and good looks are
essential to success in their calling, between which and prostitution
there seems no difference save in name. Indeed, many of these mendicant
nuns go direct from the brothel to their new employment, which, combining
various qualifications, is probably more lucrative.

We have been unable to find any information as to the nature or extent of
venereal diseases, if any, in Japan. Of infanticide also we have no
account.

Commodore Perry, in the Narrative of his Expedition, confirms the facts
above stated so far as his opportunities for observation extended.
Difficulties were at first thrown in the way of his seeing the Japanese
women, and when he walked about the interpreters preceded him, and, under
a show of doing him honor, ordered all the women into their houses.
Afterward, on the commodore's remonstrance, the women were allowed to make
their appearance, and their manners and looks were not by any means
unpleasing. When the officers of the expedition were entertained, they
sometimes waited on the party with tea, coffee, and other refreshments.
Their manners were mild, their countenances were soft and pleasing, the
only objectionable point about them being the abominable habit of
blackening their teeth with a highly corrosive pigment partly composed of
iron filings and a fermented liquor called saki, which affected the gums
very offensively, and caused an appearance and odor decidedly unpleasing
to the tastes of Western travelers.

The women of the working classes were engaged in hard field and out-door
labor, but not to a greater extent than in densely populated countries in
most parts of the world. Commodore Perry assumes that licentiousness must
be prevalent in large cities, but he bears his testimony to the good
conduct of the women whom the people of the expedition met while on
shore.[372]

The opportunities of information and particular inquiry were, however, not
very great, owing to the more important political objects of the visit,
and the not very protracted stay of the squadron in Japan.

Not content with the excess of incontinence in which the Japanese as a
nation indulge, they largely practice unnatural vices, and the youth of
the province of Kioto, which is the peculiar appanage of the spiritual
emperor, are celebrated on account of their beauty, and command a high
price in this horrid traffic.

TARTAR RACES.

Central Asia is but little known and seldom visited. Among the most
remarkable of its people are the Kirghiz Kazaks, who form a nation of
shepherds. They dwell in huts, or temporary habitations of wicker-work
covered with fleeces, and are a robust, hardy race, addicted to sensual
enjoyments. Their manners as to the treatment of the female sex are
coarse, but it is curious to remark that, while the men are indolent and
licentious, the women are fond of exertion, for which their only
recompense is to be treated as slaves.

The Kirghiz, when rich enough, eagerly avail themselves of the privilege
of polygamy; indeed, this part of the Mohammedan creed is the one they
have embraced with most ardor, yet few possess sufficient wealth to marry
more than one wife. The price paid for a woman will range from five or six
sheep among the poorer classes, to two hundred, five hundred, or even a
thousand horses among the rich, to which are added different household
effects, and occasionally a few male or female slaves. A considerable
share of these payments is absorbed by the Mohammedan moolahs, who find a
profitable source of revenue in marrying these people. They consecrate the
union as soon as projected, and immediately the amount of the _kalym_, or
price, has been arranged between the parties, the moolah solemnly asks the
parents of the bride and bridegroom, "Do you consent to the union of the
children?" repeating the question three times to each, and then reading
prayers for the happiness of the couple to be married. No marriage is
complete till the whole of the stipulated amount is paid, but neither
party can honorably retract after the first installment has been offered
and accepted. From that time the bridegroom has leave to visit his bride,
if he engages not to take away her chastity. In cases where this liberty
leads to an anticipation of the final ceremony, the unpaid portion of the
_kalym_ is not allowed to protract the union, which is hastened as much as
possible. If a man find his wife to have been incontinent before he
married her, he may return her to her parents, and demand the restitution
of her price, or the substitution of one of her sisters. If he actually
detects her in the commission of adultery, he may kill her, otherwise the
adulterer is fined, and the wife may be divorced or chastised.

The morals of the Kirghiz are good. Chastity in the woman is highly
prized, and the sensuality of the men is served by prostitutes, who live
in each camp, either in companies or in separate tents. Numbers of these
women appear wherever the Russians have encampments, and virulent disease
among them has tended rapidly to thin the people. The prostitutes are
composed of two classes--widows and divorced women, who have no other
means of subsistence, and linger out a miserable life in dirt, rags, and
contempt; and a few who addict themselves to prostitution from mere
licentiousness.

CIRCASSIA.

The race known as Abassians, considered the aborigines of the Caucasus,
were described by Strabo as a predatory people--pirates at sea, and
robbers on land. These characteristics they preserve to the present day,
but otherwise they are a virtuous nation, strange to the worst vices of
civilized life, and humble in their desires. Their religion permits
polygamy, but as wives are costly, they are usually contented with one,
who is the companion rather than the menial of her husband. The women are
industrious, are allowed full liberty, and are free in their social
intercourse, the veil being worn only to screen their complexions, and not
for seclusion.

Their laws against immorality are stringent. An act of illicit intercourse
is punished by fine or banishment. A dishonest wife is returned to her
parents, and by them sold as a slave, as is also a wanton girl.
Illegitimate children can not claim any relationship, and if sold as
slaves or assassinated, no one is expected to redeem them in the one case,
or avenge them in the other. When a man desires to divorce his wife, he
must give his reasons before a council of elders, and if they are not
satisfied, he must pay her parents a stated amount to recompense them for
the burden thus thrown upon them. Should the woman marry again within two
years, this sum is returned.

Among the Circassians themselves women are not secluded. A man will often
introduce his wife and daughters to a traveler, and unmarried women are
frequently seen at public assemblies. They observe one singular custom: a
husband never appears abroad with his wife, and scarcely ever sees her
during the day. This is in accordance with ancient habits, and is a
prolongation of the marriage etiquette, which requires a man, after he has
removed his bride's corset of leather, worn by all virgins, for some time
to refrain from openly living with her.

Throughout the Caucasus a high state of morality is found. Open
prostitution is unknown, and any girl leading a notoriously immoral life
would be compelled to fly beyond the bounds of the territory, if she
escaped being sold as a slave or put to death by her indignant friends.
There is a general opinion that Circassians will sell their daughters to
any Turk or Persian who wishes to buy them, but this is not the fact. They
are particularly careful as to the position of any one who wishes to
intermarry with them. Great precautions are taken to insure the happiness
of the girls, and long-continued negotiations frequently lead to no
result. The majority of females sold as Circassians are either children
stolen from the neighboring Cossacks, or slaves procured from those
Circassian traders who own allegiance to Russia.

TURKEY.

Proud, sensual, and depraved in his tastes, the Turk is too indolent to
acquire even the means of gratifying his most powerful cravings.
Satisfying his pride with the memory of former glories, his lust looks
forward to the enjoyment of a paradise crowded with beautiful ministers of
pleasure, and he passes his time in an atmosphere of Epicurean
speculation, lounging on cushions and sipping coffee with a dreamy
indifference to all external objects. Even the poor indulge in this
idleness. They measure the amount of labor necessary to keep them from
positive want, and spend the rest of their time waiting the sensual heaven
promised by their prophet. In such a lethargy the most violent passions
are fostered, and when these become excited the Turk can not be surpassed
in brutal fury. All his fancies are gross; moral power is an
incomprehensible idea, and he can conceive no authority not enforced by
whip or sword.

The Turkish character thus exhibited corresponds with their estimate of
the female sex. The person alone is loved; intellect in a Turkish woman is
rarely developed and never prized. She finds her chief employment in
decorating her person, her sole enjoyment in lounging on a pile of
cushions, and admiring the elegance of her costume. Turkey is literally
the empire of the senses.

Polygamy is now growing into disrepute there. Recent laws have conferred
many privileges upon women in matters of property, and their comparative
independence has rendered them averse to a position in which they only
acquire secondary rank. Men who marry wives of equal rank to themselves
frequently engage in their marriage contracts not to form a second
alliance, and this stipulation is very seldom violated.

The customs of the country do not permit a man to see his wife before
marriage. She may gratify her curiosity by a stealthy glance at him, but
this privilege is seldom used. In consequence of the separation of the
sexes, a race of professional match-makers has arisen, as in China, who
realize considerable profits from their calling. Children of three or four
years old are sometimes betrothed, marriage taking place about fourteen.
When a wedding is contemplated, each family deputes an agent to arrange
preliminaries, the terms of the contract are embodied in a legal document,
and the woman is then called "a wife by writing." This is concluded some
days before the actual wedding, but the interval is occupied with
rejoicings and hospitality, on which the bridegroom generally expends a
year's income. The union is a mere civil contract blessed by religious
rites. All concubines are slaves, even in the harem of the sultan, since
no free Turkish woman can occupy that position.

The morals of Turkish women are generally described as very loose. Their
veils favor an intrigue, the most jealous husband passing his wife in the
street without knowing her. The places of assignation are usually the
Jews' shops, where they meet their lovers, but preserve their _incognito_
even to them. Lady Mary Wortley Montague imagined "the number of faithful
wives to be very small in a country where they have nothing to fear from a
lover's indiscretion."

The dancing girls of Turkey are prostitutes by profession. Their
performances are much enjoyed by all classes, and they dance as
lasciviously in the harem, where they are often invited to amuse the wives
and concubines, as before a party of convivialists in the kiosks. Their
costume is exceedingly rich, both in color and material. During the day
they resort to coffee-houses, where they attach themselves to companions
whom they entertain with songs, tales, or caresses until night, when their
orgies are transferred to houses belonging to their chiefs. Many of these
habitations are furnished with every possible luxury.

Another form of prostitution is temporary marriage. For instance, a man on
a journey will arrive in a strange city, where he desires to remain some
time. He immediately bargains for a female companion, a regular agreement
is drawn up, and he supports her and remunerates her friends while he
remains. When he is tired of her, or wishes to leave the place, she
returns to her friends, and patiently waits for another engagement of the
same kind.

NORTHERN AFRICA.

A very brief notice only is required of the semi-barbarous states of
Northern Africa, particularly as an account of Algeria under the French
has already been given. The mass of the population are Moors, and
therefore our remarks will mainly apply to them. Like the Turks, they are
proud, ignorant, sensual, and depraved, and their treatment of women
exactly accords with this character. They regard the female sex but as
material instruments of man's gratification; and this idea is become so
generally received, that the sole education of a girl is such as will
render her acceptable to some gross sensualist. Intellect and sentiment
are not the possessions which will recommend her: _to be attractive, she
must be fat_. A girl of such bulk as to be a good load for a camel is
considered a perfect beauty, and, accordingly, the mother does not train
her daughter in seductive arts, but feeds her into a seductive appearance,
as pigeons are fed in some parts of Italy. She is made to swallow every
day a certain number of balls of paste saturated with oil, and the rod
overcomes any reluctance she may have to the diet.

The Moors are extremely jealous of their enormous wives. Some have been
known to kill their women before proceeding on a journey; others have
forbidden them to name an animal of the masculine gender. They are
entirely shut up within the walls of the harem, where they pass their time
perfuming and decorating their persons, to attract the favor of their
lords.

The general marriage laws of Mohammedan countries prevail in the Barbary
States. Four wives and as many concubines as he pleases are the limits
within which a man is confined, but few men marry more than one woman.

An extensive system of prostitution prevails in all the cities. The low
drinking-shops are crowded with women. The public dancers, who all belong
to the sisterhood, exist in large numbers, and are very much encouraged.
Their society is a favorite recreation with Moors of all classes. A man
entertaining a party of friends will send for a company of dancers to
amuse them. There, amid the fumes of tobacco, and sometimes of liquor (for
the precepts of the Koran are disregarded on such occasions), the women
practice the most degrading obscenities, and the orgies become such as no
pen can describe. These prostitutes are of various classes, from the low,
vulgar wretches who exist in misery, filth, and disease, to the wealthy
courtesans who live in luxury and splendor.

A late traveler was introduced by a friend to a "Moorish lady." He was
ushered into a spacious apartment hung with rich-colored silks. Reclining
on a splendid divan, with every appliance of wealth around her, was a
woman of extreme loveliness. Elegant in her manners and address, she
seemed a model of feminine grace, nor did the visitor discover until after
he had left her that he had been conversing with a Moorish prostitute.

SIBERIA.

The state of manners to which the population of these snowy tracts has
arrived is very low. They are rude, ignorant, and gross. The condition and
character of the female sex correspond with that of the male. In the
perpetual migration of tribes they bear the heaviest burdens, and in their
habitations the man regards his wife as a mere domestic slave, to whom it
is unnecessary even to speak a kind word. There are some exceptions to
this rule, especially toward the centre of the district, removed from
Russia on the one hand and the sea on the other, where more equality of
the sexes is observable.

A wife is generally obtained by purchase, and if a man is not rich enough
to pay the sum demanded by the parents of a girl for the privilege of
marrying her, he hires himself to them for a term ranging from three to
ten years, according to an agreement, and his services in that time are
considered equivalent to the value of his bride. These contracts are
faithfully observed, the woman is invariably given up at the specified
time, and the man released from his servile condition, and admitted to all
the dignities and rights of a son-in-law. Where the bridegroom is in a
condition to pay for his bride, the preliminary negotiations are managed
by his friends and her parents; they are very quietly arranged, but the
spirit of bargaining is strong on both sides. The stipulated amount must
be paid before the marriage is completed; and if a man steals away his
bride before he has paid the full cost, the father watches an opportunity
and recaptures her, retaining her in pledge until the balance is
forthcoming.

The marriage ceremonies vary in different tribes. With some there is no
feast or form of any kind; with others every marriage must take place in a
newly-built hut, where no impure things can have been. The most detailed
account of marriage ceremonies we can find is among the Tschuwasses. They
offer a sacrifice of bread and honey to the sun on the betrothal, that he
may look down with favor on the union. When the wedding-day arrives, the
bride hides herself behind a screen while the guests are assembling. When
the party is complete, she walks three times round the room, followed by a
train of virgins bearing bread and honey. Then the bridegroom enters,
removes her veil, kisses her, and they exchange rings. She is now saluted
as the "betrothed girl," and is again led behind the screen, whence she
emerges wearing a matron's cap. The concluding rite is for her to pull off
her new husband's boots, thus promising obedience to him. In this tribe
the husband can divorce his wife by merely taking her cap from her head.

Polygamy is practiced by many, though some prefer to take one wife for
another as often as inclination prompts them, rather than take charge of
several at the same time.

Jealousy is little known among any of the races of Siberia. Modesty is not
a female characteristic, nor is chastity very highly prized. If a wife
commit adultery, the husband usually exacts a fine from the paramour for
invading his rights "without permission." Their barbarous manners would
not induce us to expect any refined modesty. A traveler was introduced to
the family of a rich man, the head of a tribe, and upon entering his
low-roofed but spacious habitation, found himself in company with five or
six women, wives and daughters, all entirely naked, who appeared
excessively diverted at being discovered in such a state. The dancing
women are as lewd as can possibly be conceived; indeed, obscene postures
are the principal features of their entertainments.

A licentious intercourse between unmarried persons is almost universal.
With some, religious dissensions are extremely bitter; but profligacy is
more powerful, and a woman who would rigidly refuse to eat or drink with a
man of some other creed, will prostitute herself to him from sheer lust.
Abandoned women reside in all the towns in large numbers, and are scarcely
reprobated by other classes. The education of a Siberian girl appears to
be simply telling her that marriage is her destiny, and that her husband
will require her to be faithful. With this view she forms acquaintances,
is seduced by one and yields to another, until her profligacy becomes so
notorious that no one will purchase her as a wife, and she follows, as a
means of living, the habits she had resorted to for the indulgence of her
vicious appetite. It is said that many prostitutes become so from this
cause.

ESQUIMAUX.

The Esquimaux require but a very short notice. As a race, they are dirty,
poor, and immoral. Dishonesty is a prominent characteristic, especially
manifested toward any strangers coming within their reach. The lamented
Kane, in his "Arctic Explorations," mentions the trouble to which he was
exposed in guarding his stores from their pilfering propensities; but,
after he had administered one or two lessons of chastisement, they
abandoned this habit, and became of great assistance to him. He says,
"There is a frankness and cordiality in their way of receiving their
guests, whatever may be the infirmities of their notions of honesty;"[373]
and when he parted from them on his perilous journey south, he remarks,
"When trouble came to us and them, and we bent ourselves to their habits;
when we looked to them to procure us fresh meat, and they found at our
brig shelter during their wild bear-hunts, never were friends more true.
Although numberless articles of inestimable value to them have been
scattered upon the ice unwatched, they have not stolen a nail."[374]

The Esquimaux women are not absolute slaves; their duties are almost
entirely domestic, and during the winter especially their life is one of
ease and pleasure, so far as their notions can comprehend such advantages.
Crowded inside a low hut, two or three families together, they spend their
time in eating and sleeping alternately, both sexes being perfectly naked,
except a small apron worn by the women as a badge of their sex. This
nudity arises from the excessive heat of their cabins, which are rendered
impervious to the cold outside. Dr. Kane mentions one occasion on which he
was a visitor when the thermometer outside stood at 60° below zero, and
inside the temperature mounted to 90°, and says, "Bursting into a profuse
perspiration, I stripped like the rest, and thus, an honored guest, and in
the place of honor, I fell asleep."[375]

Respecting the morality of the men or the virtue of the women little is
known. Parry says that husbands frequently offer their wives to strangers
for a very small sum, and also that it is not uncommon for a change of
wives to be made for a short time. He adds that in no country is
prostitution carried to a greater extent, the departure of the men on an
expedition being a signal to their wives to abandon all restraint. Lust
rules paramount, and the children are taught to watch outside the hut,
lest the husband should return unexpectedly, and find his habitation
occupied by a stranger. Their marriage contract is a mere social
arrangement, easily dissolved, but this is rarely done, the general custom
being for a man to chastise his wife when she displeases him. The usual
form of matrimonial discipline consists in forcing her to lead the
reindeer while he rides at ease in the sledge. Their laws permit any man
to have two wives, and a regal perquisite of the great chief was the
privilege of having as many as he could support.[376] These brides were
not uncommonly carried off from their parents by force, the ceremonial
rite following at the convenience of the parties. Such attempts are
sometimes resisted. An aspirant for the favors of the daughter of a chief
succeeded in conveying her to his sledge, but the father pursued with such
alacrity that the adventurous lover had to abandon the fair one, and made
his escape with some difficulty, leaving the equipage as spoils to the
victor.[377]

Dr. Kane is of opinion that the services of the Lutheran and Moravian
missionaries have produced a beneficial influence on the morals of the
people. What may be called their normal religious notions extended only to
the recognition of supernatural agencies, and to certain usages by which
these could be conciliated. Murder, incest, burial of the living, and
infanticide, were not considered crimes, and these have aided exposure and
disease (the small-pox has made fearful ravages among them) to thin their
numbers, and impress them with the idea that they are so rapidly dying out
as to be able to mark their progress toward extinction within one
generation.[378] This is more applicable to the northern tribes, removed
from the effects of civilization, among whom murder and infanticide still
exist, though not to so great an extent as formerly, while in the southern
latitudes, where it was formerly unsafe for vessels to touch upon the
coast, hospitality is now the universal characteristic; and truth,
self-reliance, and manly honest bearing have been inculcated with
considerable success, though not enough to render their notions of
property accordant with those of civilized nations.[379]

ICELAND.

This country is inhabited by a serious, humble, and quiet people. Isolated
from the rest of the world, they remain to this day in an almost primitive
condition, and nine centuries have produced little change in their
manners, language, or costume. The condition of the sexes is somewhat
equal; the men divide their labors with the women, but do not oppress
them. Both are alike filthy and coarse in their habits. Their hospitality
assumes some singular forms. Women salute a stranger with a cordial
embrace, but their dirty habits generally render him anxious to escape
from their arms as quickly as possible. A missionary was upon one occasion
especially scandalized. He was visiting at the house of a rich man, who
treated him liberally, and upon retiring to his room at night was followed
by his host's eldest daughter, who insisted upon helping him to undress
and prepare for bed, declaring that it was the invariable custom of the
country.

Few absolute laws regulate the intercourse of the sexes. Christianity has
abolished polygamy, and public opinion holds a strong check upon illicit
intercourse. With the exception of their sea-ports, the people may be
called a moral race. The proportion of illegitimate to legitimate children
is about one in every seven.

Lord Kames relates an anecdote which would stamp the Icelanders of one
hundred and fifty years ago as any thing but moral. He says that in 1707 a
contagious distemper had cut off nearly all the people, and, in order to
repopulate the country, the King of Denmark issued a proclamation
authorizing every single woman to bear six illegitimate children without
losing her reputation. Report says the girls were so zealous in this
patriotic work that it soon became necessary to abrogate the law.

GREENLAND.

The population of Greenland is partly composed of European colonists and
partly of Esquimaux. They are a vain and indolent people, whose virtues
consist in the negation of active vice. Their women occupy an inferior
position. Marriage is essentially a contract for mutual convenience,
dissolved when it ceases to be agreeable. It is considered etiquette for a
girl, when any man demands her in marriage, to fly to the hills and hide
herself, in order to be dragged home with a great show of violence by her
suitor. If courted by a man she dislikes, she cuts off her hair, which is
a sign of great horror, and usually rids her of her lover.

The Greenlanders consider themselves the only civilized people in the
world, and consequently pride themselves on decorum. They do not allow
marriages within three degrees of affinity, and consider it disreputable
for persons who have been educated in the same house to marry, even if no
relationship exists between them. Prostitution prevails to a considerable
extent, widows and divorced women almost invariably adopting it as a means
of living. There are numerous habitations in the large communities which
can only be considered as brothels, but the life of an abandoned woman is
generally reprobated, and those following it incur the most undisguised
odium of the people at large.

CHAPTER XXXII.

NEW YORK.--STATISTICS.

Schedule of Questions.--Age.--Juvenile Depravity.--Premature Old
Age.--Gradual Descent.--Average Duration of a Prostitute's Life.--
Nativity.--Proportion of Prostitutes from various States.--New York.--
Effects of Immigration.--Foreigners.--Proportion to Population.--
Proportion to Emigration.--Dangers of Ports of Departure, Emigrant
Ships, and Boarding-houses.--Length of Residence in the United
States.--Prostitution a Burden to Tax-payers.--Length of Residence in
New York State.--Length of Residence in New York City.--Inducements to
emigrate.--Labor and Remuneration in Europe.--Assistance to emigrate;
its Amount, and from whom.--Education.--Neglect of Facilities in New
York.--Social Condition.--Single Women.--Widows.--Early and
Injudicious Marriages.--Husbands.--Children.--Illegitimate Children.--
Mortality of Children.--Infanticide.--Influences to which Children are
exposed.

It is to be hoped the reader has already perused the introduction to this
volume, containing a description of the _modus operandi_ adopted to obtain
the necessary information from the prostitutes of New York City. The
following schedule of questions was prepared for this purpose, and the
ensuing pages present in tabular form the answers received thereto.

"How old will you be next birth-day?

"Were you born in America? and, if so, in what state?

"How long have you resided in New York City?

"If born abroad, in what country?

"How long have you resided in the United States?

"How long have you resided in the State of New York?

"What induced you to emigrate to the United States?

"Did you receive any assistance, and, if so, from whom, and to what
amount, to enable you to emigrate to the United States?

"Can you read and write?

"Are you single, married, or widowed?

"If married, is your husband living with you, or what caused the
separation?

"If widowed, how long has your husband been dead?

"Have you had any children?

"How many? -- Boys -- Girls

"Were these children born in wedlock?

"Are they living or dead?

"If living, are they with you now, or where are they?

"For what length of time have you been a prostitute?

"Have you had any disease incident to prostitution? If so, what?

"What was the cause of your becoming a prostitute?

"Is prostitution your only means of support?

"If not, what other means have you?

"What trade or calling did you follow before you became a prostitute?

"How long is it since you abandoned your trade as a means of living?

"What were your average weekly earnings at your trade?

"What business did your father follow?

"If your mother had any business independent of your father, what was
it?

"Did you assist either your mother or your father in their business?
If so, which of them?

"Is your father living? or how old were you when he died?

"Is your mother living? or how old were you when she died?

"Do you drink intoxicating liquors? If so, to what extent?

"Did your father drink intoxicating liquors? If so, to what extent?

"Did your mother drink intoxicating liquors? If so, to what extent?

"Were your parents "Protestants," "Catholics," or "non-professors?"

"Were you trained to any religion? If so, was it Protestant or
Catholic?

"Do you profess the same religion now?

"How long since you observed any of its requirements?"

In addition to this comprehensive series, space was left for any remarks
the examiner might wish, to make upon other points. The queries were
printed on a large sheet of paper, with sufficient blanks for the answers,
and the officer was desired, as soon as he had obtained all the
information required, to fold the sheet, and sign his name on a line left
for that purpose, with the date the inquiries were made, the locality of
the house in which the woman resided, and the police district in which it
was comprised. It is a matter of much regret that in the burning of the
Island Hospital, Blackwell's Island, on February 13th, 1858, all the
schedules were destroyed. They contained many facts which, from want of
space, are but slightly alluded to in the following pages, and would have
been of material service in any measures hereafter taken to mitigate the
sorrows or prevent the excesses of the abandoned women of New York.

Farther prelude is unnecessary. It only remains to give the answers as
received, with such deductions as may arise from them.

_Question._ HOW OLD WILL YOU BE NEXT BIRTH-DAY?

Age. Number.
15 years 2
16 " 17
17 " 62
18 " 143
19 " 258
20 " 268
21 " 206
22 " 176
23 " 153
24 " 96
25 " 97
26 " 75
27 " 53
28 " 58
29 " 49
30 " 44
31 " 18
32 " 16
33 " 29
34 " 15
35 " 19
36 " 23
37 " 11
38 " 9
39 " 7
40 " 25
41 " 7
42 " 6
43 " 6
44 " 3
45 " 6
46 " 2
47 " 2
48 " 5
49 " 3
50 " 4
51 " 1
52 " 3
53 " 3
55 " 5
57 " 3
58 " 2
59 " 2
60 " 2
62 " 1
63 " 1
66 " 2
71 " 1
77 " 1
----
Total 2000

The facts exhibited by this table are sufficiently palpable to render
remarks almost unnecessary, but the existence of juvenile degradation is
so clearly proven as to call for a few observations.

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty years are found about three eighths
of the whole number embraced in this return. Between the ages of
twenty-one and twenty-five years nearly three eighths more of the whole
number are included, giving in the first ten years of the table three
quarters of the aggregate prostitution, while the next period of five
years, or from twenty-six to thirty, contains one eighth more. It is thus
upon record that seven out of every eight women who came under this
investigation had not yet reached thirty years of age. Beyond this
standard each year shows but a few, and of these veterans the majority are
those who are now keeping houses of ill fame.

Comparing this with the ages of residents in New York as given in the
Census Reports, it will appear that prostitutes under twenty years of age
are in excess about twenty-five per cent.; as this inquiry shows that _for
every four abandoned women between the ages of twenty and thirty there are
three between fifteen and twenty_, but the official classification proves
that for every four women in the state between twenty and thirty years
old, there are _only two_ between fifteen and twenty.

While juvenile degradation is an inseparable adjunct of prostitution,
premature old age is its invariable result. Take, for example, the career
of a female who enters a house of prostitution at sixteen years of age.
Her step is elastic, her eye bright, she is the "observed of all
observers." The _habitués_ of the place flock around her, gloat over her
ruin while they praise her beauty, and try to drag her down to their own
level of depravity while flattering her vanity. As the last spark of
inherent virtue flickers and dies in her bosom, and she becomes sensible
that she is indeed lost, that her anticipated happiness proves but
splendid misery, she also becomes conscious that the door of reformation
is practically closed against her. But this life of gay depravity can not
last; her mind becomes tainted with the moral miasma in which she lives;
her physical powers wane under the trials imposed upon them, and her
career in a fashionable house of prostitution comes to an end; she must
descend in the ladder of vice. Follow her from one step to another in her
downward career. To-day you may find her in our aristocratic promenades;
to-morrow she will be forced to walk in more secluded streets. To-night
you may see her glittering at one of the fashionable theatres; to-morrow
she will be found in some one of the infamous resorts which abound in the
lower part of the city. To-day she may associate with the wealthy of the
land; to-morrow none will be too low for her company. To-day she has
servants to do her bidding; to-morrow she may be buried in a pauper's
coffin and a nameless grave. This is no fancy sketch, but an outline of
the course of many women now living as prostitutes of the lowest class in
the city of New York.

Any one conversant with the subject knows that there is a well understood
gradation in this life, and as soon as a woman ceases to be attractive in
the higher walks, as soon as her youth and beauty fade, she must either
descend in the scale _or starve_. Nor will any deny that of those who
commence a life of shame in their youth under the most specious and
flattering delusions, the majority are found, in a short time, plunged
into the deepest misery and degradation.

Here is seen, at a glance, a reason for the large number of juvenile
prostitutes. Youth is a marketable commodity, and when its charms are
lost, they must be replaced. The following cases, from life, will
substantiate this view. For obvious reasons, the names are suppressed.

C. B. is a native of New York, and now resides in the Eighth Police
District of the city. She is twenty years old, and became a prostitute at
the age of _sixteen_, through the harshness and unkind treatment of a
stepmother, her own mother having died when she was an infant. Take
another case from the same neighborhood. L. B. was born in Vermont; her
father died while she was a child. At the age of _fifteen_ she was enticed
to the city, and became an inmate of a house of prostitution. She is
described as an intelligent, well-educated girl, of temperate habits. One
more instance from the same locality. F. W. is a native of New York City;
is the child of honest, hard-working parents; has received a medium
education; at _seventeen_ years old was seduced under a promise of
marriage, and deserted. She then embraced a life of prostitution,
influenced mainly by shame, and the idea that she had no other means of
subsistence.

These women are residing in that part of the city which contains the
majority of the first-class houses of prostitution; they have not yet
descended in the scale. The ensuing selection, taken from the Fourth
Police District, the antipodes of the former locality, will forcibly
exhibit the operation of this gradual deterioration.

E. S. was seduced in Rochester, N. Y., at the age of _sixteen_. She
accompanied her seducer to this city, and for a season lived here in
luxury. She was finally deserted, and now drags out a wretched existence
in Water Street. E. C., residing in the same neighborhood, is now nineteen
years of age. She was married when but a child, and, five years since, or
when she was only _fourteen_ years old, was driven on the town through the
brutal conduct of her husband. Passing through the various gradations of
the scale, she has now become a confirmed drunkard; has endured much
physical suffering; and, lost to all sense of shame, will doubtless
continue in her wretched career till death puts an end to her misery.

To continue this chain of evidence, the following cases have been selected
from the registers of the Penitentiary Hospital (now remodeled, and called
the Island Hospital), Blackwell's Island. S. A., of New Jersey, was
admitted as a patient when only _fifteen_ years of age, suffering from
disease caused by leading a depraved life, and within six months was
received and treated therein no less than four times. A. B., born in
Scotland, was admitted and treated for venereal disease at _fourteen_
years of age. L. A. D., born in England, was admitted at _sixteen_ years
of age, two years since, with similar disease, and, with only short
intervals, has been an inmate of the hospital continuously from that time.
M. H. was admitted at _seventeen_ years of age, and endured a long and
painful illness. M. J. D., after following a course of depravity for a
year, was admitted at _eighteen_ years of age, lingered in agony for
twenty-five days, and then died, solely from the effects of a life of
prostitution.

It is not necessary to pursue this subject farther, as sufficient facts
have been adduced to support the assertion that youth is the grand
desideratum in the inmates of houses of ill fame. Young women have been
traced from the proudest resorts to the lowest haunts, and have been shown
as suffering pain and sickness in a public institution, or dying there in
torture. But no attempt has been made to calculate the misery produced in
the respective families they had abandoned. The excruciating parental
agony caused by the departure of a daughter from the paths of virtue seems
more a matter for private contemplation by each reader than for any
delineation here. We have witnessed the meetings of parents with their
lost children; have stood beside the bed where a frail, suffering woman
was yielding her last breath, and have shuddered at the awful mental agony
overpowering her physical suffering. No doubt can exist that, were it
possible to introduce the reader of these pages to such scenes, or even
could they be adequately described in all their accumulated horrors, the
cordial co-operation of all the friends of virtue and humanity would be
secured in furtherance of any plan which would check this mighty torrent
of vice and woe.

From the fact that youth is the grand desideratum, it is evident that a
constant succession of young people will be driven into this arena, either
by force or treachery. _The average duration of life among these women
does not exceed four years from the beginning of their career!_ There are,
as in all cases, exceptions to this rule, but it is a tolerably well
established fact that one fourth of the total number of abandoned women in
this city die every year. Thus, by estimating the prostitutes in New York
at six thousand (and this is not an exaggerated calculation, as will be
proved hereafter), the appalling number of one thousand five hundred
erring women are hurried to their last, long homes each year of our
existence. Neglected and contemned while living, they pass from this world
unnoticed and unwept. But their deaths leave vacancies which must be
supplied: the inexorable demands of vice and dissipation must be
gratified, and who can tell what innocent and happy family circle may next
have to mourn the ruin and disgrace of one of its members? In a subsequent
portion of this work it will be necessary to notice the means employed for
ensnaring the innocent and unsuspecting, and to show that this is a danger
which threatens all classes of the community.

_Question._ WERE YOU BORN IN AMERICA? IF SO, IN WHAT STATE?

State. Number.
Alabama 1
Carolina, North 2
" South 4
Columbia, District of 1
Connecticut 42
Delaware 1
Georgia 1
Illinois 1
Kentucky 2
Louisiana 4
Maine 24
Maryland 15
Massachusetts 71
Missouri 1
New Hampshire 7
New Jersey 69
New York 394
Ohio 8
Pennsylvania 77
Rhode Island 18
Vermont 10
Virginia 9
---
Total born in United States 762

The number of prostitutes in New York who were born within the limits of
the United States slightly exceeds three eighths of the aggregate from
whom replies to these queries were obtained. They are natives of
twenty-one states and one district, and may be subdivided in geographical
order as follows:

1. The Eastern District, containing Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, contributes one hundred and
seventy-two women to the prostitutes of New York City.

2. The Middle States, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, District of
Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, contribute five hundred and
sixty-six women.

3. The Southern States, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
and Louisiana, contribute twelve women.

4. The Western States, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky, contribute
also twelve women.

On what hypothesis can these proportions be explained? Maine, on the
extreme northeast, with a rocky, surge-beaten coast fronting on the wild
Atlantic, with a harsh, cold climate, sends twenty-four women from her
population of 580,000, while Virginia, with 1,421,000 inhabitants,
contributes but nine! This difference in favor of the southern state can
not be explained on the ground of distance, for the boundaries of each
state are nearly equidistant from New York; nor can it be sustained by the
idea that Maine has more sea-coast, as the maritime coast of the southern
state is at least equal to that of the northern one, and the ordinary
tendencies to immorality in sea-port towns would be equally felt in each.
The case is still farther involved by the fact that in all southern cities
the majority of prostitutes are from the north; and it is a well-known
circumstance, that at certain periods large numbers of courtesans from New
York, Boston, and other cities emigrate southward. Were the generally
received opinion of the effects of a warm climate upon female organization
to be adopted in this connection, not only would there be no necessity for
this exodus, but the number of prostitutes received from Virginia should
largely exceed those from Maine. This fact is sufficient to confirm the
idea already expressed, that fraud or force is used to entrap these
females. The natives of a bleak northern state are far more likely to be
deceived by the artful misrepresentations of emissaries from New York than
the denizens of the southern portion of our Union. The former lead a life
of comparative hardship, the latter one of comparative ease. In Maine,
over six thousand women, or one in every forty-six of the female
population, are immured for six days in every week in a crowded factory;
in Virginia, over three thousand women, or one in every one hundred and
thirty-four of the female population, are similarly employed.[380] This
mode of life will form a matter for subsequent consideration, so far as
its tendencies to immorality are concerned.

Again: Place in contrast Rhode Island with eighteen women living by
prostitution in New York, and a population of only 140,000, and Maryland
with fifteen prostitutes in New York, and a population of 418,000, and a
more palpable difference in favor of the southern state is apparent. The
former sends one prostitute out of every eight thousand of her
inhabitants; the latter, one out of every twenty-eight thousand.

Calculating on the basis of the respective populations, Vermont and New
Hampshire have nearly the same proportion as Maine; Massachusetts exceeds
the average; and Connecticut (_par excellence_, "the land of steady
habits") has a still larger excess. New Jersey has the largest proportion
of any state in the union, and Pennsylvania shows about the average of
Maine. The Southern and Western States have but few representatives. New
York, the home state, will be noticed in due course. The preceding facts
will supply materials for reflection, in conjunction with the question,
"On what hypothesis can these proportions be explained?"

The self-evident answer to this query would seem to be that the excess
from the Eastern and Middle States arises from the employment of a much
larger proportion of females in manufacturing and sedentary occupations. A
young woman of ardent temperament can not but feel the hardship of this
position in life as compared with her more favored sisters in other
states, and when such an idea has once obtained possession of her mind, it
forms a subject for constant thought. Thus, when already predisposed in
favor of any change, she falls into the hands of the tempter a pliant
victim. Beyond the hardship attendant on her daily labor, the associations
which are formed in factories or workshops where both sexes are employed
very frequently result disastrously for the female. Notwithstanding all
the care which may be taken on the part of employers--and it is a subject
for national pride that American manufacturers are doing far more to
elevate the moral character of their employés than the same class of men
in other lands--it is morally impossible that these intimacies can be
entirely suppressed, nor can their ruinous effects be prevented. Study the
moral statistics of any of the manufacturing towns in Great Britain or on
the Continent of Europe, and the same results are presented, but in a more
alarming degree, because there the supervision is not only weak in itself,
but is frequently intrusted to improper persons, whose interest is often
in direct opposition to their duty.

A few words in respect to the State of New York. The number of prostitutes
in proportion to the population far exceeds the ratio from any other state
_except New Jersey_. Beyond the effect of manufactures, which operate here
to a corresponding extent as in other states, the immense maritime
business of New York City, and the constant flood of immigrants and
strangers passing through it, must be taken into consideration. This
constantly fills some localities with sailors, men proverbial for having
"in every port a wife," and many of whom are notorious frequenters of
houses of prostitution. This circumstance proves that this infernal
traffic is governed by the same rules which regulate commercial
transactions, namely, that the supply is in proportion to the demand. If,
by any miracle, all the seamen and strangers visiting New York could be
transformed into moral men, at least from one half to two thirds of the
houses of ill fame would be absolutely bankrupt.

The constant flood of immigration leaves a mass of _debris_ behind it,
consisting, in the first place, of men idle and vicious in their own
lands, who transfer their vices to the country of their adoption, and for
a time after arrival here devote what means they possess to the pursuit of
debauchery, and materially help to swell the torrent of immorality.
Another class of immigrants are women, many of whom are sent here by
charitable (?) associations or public bodies in foreign lands, as the most
economical way to get rid of them. Many of these females become mothers
almost as soon as they land on these shores; in fact, the probability of
such an event sometimes hastens their departure. They exist here in the
most squalid misery in some tenement house or hovel. Their children
receive none of the advantages of education; for, as soon as they can beg,
they are compelled to aid in the struggle for bread, and the most frequent
result is that the boys are arrested for some petty theft, and the girls
become prostitutes, thus contributing to meet the demand caused by the
classes already mentioned.

But, in addition to these foreign children born by accident in our state,
the proportion of prostitutes from New York is increased by the facility
offered for transit from the interior to the city. Doubtless there are
many courtesans from the eastern and southern districts who find their way
to some of the large cities in their own part of the country, and so, on
the same principle, when a woman in this state has fallen into vicious
habits her natural resort is to this metropolis. In addition to the more
extended market it offers for her charms, its advantages as a great
central rendezvous for the nation must not be overlooked. Here a
prostitute can live until her attractions wane, and hence she can easily
reach any southern or other point where abandoned women are in demand.
Despite of the large number of prostitutes ascertained to have been born
within the bounds of New York State, it can not be conceded that we are
any less moral than our neighbors in other parts of the confederation.

It is a matter for the most serious consideration, to be followed by sound
and judicious action, either legislative or personal, that so large a
number of American girls fall victims to this fell destroyer in a land
where a good education is within the reach of every one; where industry,
if properly applied in the right channels, will afford a comfortable
maintenance for all; where the natural resources are sufficient to support
nearly half the inhabitants of the world.

_Question._ WERE YOU BORN ABROAD? IF SO, IN WHAT COUNTRY?

Countries. Numbers.
Austria 2
Belgium 1
British North America 63
Denmark 1
England 104
France 13
Germany 249
Ireland 706
Italy 1
Poland 3
Prussia 6
Saxony 2
Scotland 52
Switzerland 17
Wales 1
West Indies 4
At Sea 13
----
Total born abroad 1238

It has been frequently remarked, and as generally believed, in the absence
of any satisfactory information on the subject, that a very large majority
of the prostitutes in New York are of foreign birth; but the facts already
developed, with the few remarks which will be made upon the above table of
nativities, go far toward falsifying that opinion. The enumeration shows
that five eighths only were born abroad, the dominions of Great Britain
furnishing the largest proportion. The ratio in which the several parts of
that kingdom supply the New World with courtesans may be stated in round
numbers as follows: Ireland contributes one prostitute to every four
thousand of her population; British North America, one prostitute to every
seven thousand of population; Scotland, one prostitute to every sixteen
thousand of population; England and Wales, one prostitute to every fifty
thousand of population. Of course, this will be understood as referring to
all prostitutes now living in this city, assuming the average nativities
of all to be fairly represented in the replies obtained from a portion.

But these numbers, being based upon the population of the several
countries, give but a very imperfect idea of the extent of vice among that
portion of their people who have settled in America, and a more
satisfactory comparison can be drawn from the records of emigration. Upon
an examination of the arrivals in each year from the time the existing
Board of Commissioners of Emigration was organized to the end of 1857 (a
period of ten years), it is found that the numbers average two hundred and
thirty thousand per annum, which gives a proportion of one prostitute to
every two hundred and fifty emigrants. This is based upon the theory that
one fourth of the abandoned women die or are otherwise removed from the
city every year. To repeat this fact in plainer words: of every two
hundred and fifty emigrants--men, women, and children, who land at our
docks, at least one woman eventually becomes known as a prostitute.

This demoralization may be accounted for in several ways. There is
frequently a protracted interval between the time when families arrive at
the intended port of departure and the day on which they sail; and during
this space they are exposed to all the malign influences invariably
existing in large sea-port towns, which must impart vicious ideas to young
people who have recently left some secluded part of the country. Take
Liverpool, for instance, the port whence the largest number of emigrants
come to us, and which contains one prostitute for every eighty-eight
inhabitants, and the wonder will be, not that so many are contaminated,
but that so many escape. When the dangers of the town are surmounted,
another source of immorality is found in the steerage passage across the
Atlantic. This occupies from one to three months, during which time the
females are necessarily in constant communication with the other sex, and
frequently exposed to scenes of indelicacy too glaring to be described
here; and this in addition to the constant machinations of the abandoned
and unprincipled men who are to be found, in greater or less numbers, in
every ship's complement of crew and passengers. Under such circumstances,
the germ implanted in the sea-port town often develops into its legitimate
fruit. But when the ship has reached her haven, and the perils of the sea
are passed, there are dangers to be encountered on land. The present
arrangements for disembarking emigrants at Castle Garden have removed many
of the most objectionable features formerly incident to their entry into
the land of their adoption, yet there are many still remaining. If a
family desire to travel to the interior of the country, they can do so at
once; but should they remain in the city, they are exposed to the tender
mercies of the emigrant boarding-house keepers, generally themselves
natives of the "old country," who, having been swindled on their arrival,
are both competent and willing to practice the same impositions on others.
It must not be concluded that all who follow the business are worthy of
this sweeping condemnation; many of them are undoubtedly honest, yet it
can not be denied that others do pursue this nefarious course; and when
they have drained all the resources of their customers, they turn them
adrift to beg, or starve, or sin for a subsistence.

To one or the other of these causes many girls owe their ruin. Indeed,
there can be no reasonable doubt that a majority of the prostitutes of
foreign birth are more or less influenced thereby. In addition to these,
there are other snares constantly set for strangers, to which we shall
hereafter allude.

It is scarcely within the province of this section to notice measures
calculated to remove the evils named. With the first, the American people
have no possible means of interfering. With regard to the second, many
difficulties must be encountered and overcome. The Commissioners of
Emigration have taken steps to avert some of the evils, and, in
consequence of their application to the present Congress, a bill has been
introduced making it a penal offense for any officer or sailor on emigrant
ships to have carnal intercourse with any passenger, whether with or
without her consent.

The third evil named is a local question peculiarly and entirely under our
own control, and, at the risk of anticipating the subject, it may be
suggested that the most effectual way of obviating it would be the
organization of a plan offering inducements and facilities for young women
to leave the city, thus removing them from its baneful influences to a
part of the country where their own labor would give them the means of a
comfortable subsistence and a virtuous life. It is but poor policy to
retain in New York numbers of persons who can by no possibility procure
employment in an already overcrowded field of labor, and who must
eventually consent to earn a precarious living by the sacrifice of virtue.
It matters not through what agency their ruin is effected, whether by the
oppression of a boarding-house keeper, the intrigues of an
intelligence-office, or the wiles of abandoned ones of their own sex. The
degradation is an indisputable fact, and the expenses to every citizen
from the extra cost of police supervision, courts of justice, hospitals,
and penitentiaries, would probably be enough to remove many from the city
who are debauched for the want of opportunity to leave. It would be far
better to try the system of prevention in the first instance, and this
would probably be successful in many cases; whereas any reformatory plan
is almost useless where the Rubicon has been passed.

_Question._ HOW LONG HAVE YOU RESIDED IN THE UNITED STATES?

Length of Residence. Numbers.
Under 2 months 9
" 3 " 11
" 6 " 21
" 1 year 75
" 2 years 159
" 3 " 99
" 4 " 83
" 5 " 106
" 10 " 352
10 years and upward 292
From Birth 762
Unascertained 31
----
Total 2000

In intimate connection with the subject of the nativities of prostitutes
now in New York are the answers to the above inquiry. Deducting the number
of native-born women, it will be found that five hundred and sixty-three,
or more than forty-five per cent. of the foreigners, have resided in the
United States less than five years; and of this number, one hundred and
fifteen, or nearly twenty-one per cent., have resided here less than one
year. These averages support, to some extent, the opinion already
advanced, that a large proportion of the prostitutes in New York City were
either seduced previous to leaving their port of departure, or on their
passage, or very soon after their arrival here, when they commenced
forthwith a practice which forces them eventually to become a burden upon
the tax-paying community. In a majority of cases, this must be the result
of their career; the successive fall from one gradation of their wretched
life to a lower finally landing them in the prisons or hospitals of a city
toward whose expenses neither their pecuniary ability nor their labor have
ever contributed a farthing. Their support thus falls upon the working
population, an argument of dollars and cents which will not be without its
influence in a consideration of the numerous evils of prostitution.

The remaining fifty-five per cent., having been in the United States more
than five years, are by law entitled to receive any assistance which their
necessities may demand from local funds, but of this number there are some
who have doubtless been chargeable to public institutions before they had
completed the required term of residence, as there are unquestionably many
who, in order to procure relief, make false representations as to the time
of their arrival. Reasoning from well-ascertained facts, there can be
little exaggeration in the estimate that from eighty to one hundred
thousand dollars per annum is the amount which the citizens of New York
contribute to the support of foreigners who have been less than five years
in the United States. Nor can this be prevented unless the claims of
suffering humanity are entirely ignored. Of course, the idea that a sick
or disabled man or woman is to be left to perish can not be entertained
for one moment. If they are in want or in pain, every dictate of our
common nature demands that they shall be relieved. But it may be suggested
to those interested in the question of local taxation to give their prompt
assistance to any practicable scheme which will diminish the amount of
vice, and consequently reduce the expenses resulting therefrom, such as a
carefully-devised plan for shielding emigrants from corrupting influences,
and forwarding the destitute to sections where labor may be obtained. Upon
the moral effects of such an arrangement it is unnecessary to remark, as
they are self-evident; of its successful working and eventual economy but
little doubt can be entertained.

_Question._ HOW LONG HAVE YOU RESIDED IN NEW YORK STATE?

Length of Residence. Numbers.
Under 2 months 35
" 3 " 20
" 6 " 43
" 1 year 132
" 2 years 186
" 3 " 152
" 4 " 110
" 5 " 127
" 10 " 374
10 years and upward 433
From Birth 353
Unascertained 35
----
Total 2000

_Question._ HOW LONG HAVE YOU RESIDED IN NEW YORK CITY?

Length of Residence. Numbers.
Under 2 months 46
" 3 " 30
" 6 " 56
" 1 year 140
" 2 years 236
" 3 " 189
" 4 " 128
" 5 " 135
" 10 " 388
10 years and upward 427
From Birth 185
Unascertained 40
----
Total 2000

These tables require no comment. The attention of the reader may merely be
called to the fact that three hundred and ninety-four women have been
already reported as born in the State of New York, of which number three
hundred and fifty-three have resided within its limits continuously from
the time of their birth, and that one hundred and eighty-five, or nearly
one half, were natives of New York City, and have resided therein from the
day they were born. This fact alone demonstrates that the influences of
metropolitan life are not very favorable to the advance of female
morality.

_Question._ WHAT INDUCED YOU TO EMIGRATE TO THE UNITED STATES?

Reasons. Numbers.
Came as stewardesses 2
Ran away from home 18
Ill usage of parents 34
Came with their seducers 39
Came to improve their condition 411
Sent out by parents or friends 81
Came with relatives or to
join relatives already in
the United States 619
No special cause assigned 34
----
Total of foreigners 1238

This table shows that a majority of the prostitutes of foreign birth were
induced to emigrate to the United States either by considerations of
policy--four hundred and eleven assigning as their reason a desire to
improve their condition in life--or from family connections, six hundred
and nineteen having arrived with relatives and friends, or with the
purpose of joining relatives and friends already in this country.

It will not be denied by any one familiar with the subject that one main
reason for emigration is always found in the comparative difficulty of
earning a livelihood in the place of the emigrant's nativity, and the
expectation of doing better in a strange land; a conclusion sustained by
the fact that a prosperous year in Europe serves to check the arrivals
here, and _vice versa_. With the difficult problem of labor and
remuneration in the Old World it would be out of place to interfere; but
it may be remarked that, badly as many branches of female employment are
paid for with us, they are still worse paid for in England. Reference to a
previous chapter, treating of the causes of prostitution in that country,
will at once establish this point, and the instances therein quoted of the
wages paid in London will remove all surprise that this country should be
a receptacle for underpaid operatives, or that the hope of realizing
better wages should be sufficiently powerful to sever all ties of
birth-place and home. But many of these impoverished women were actually
dependent upon friends for the payment of their passage-money, and
consequently arrived here almost literally penniless, with very slight
prospects of obtaining work, and frequently with but one alternative, and
the only one they had before coming here, which they must embrace or
starve.

Another class assign as a reason for expatriation the ill usage of
parents, in itself a prolific cause of prostitution under any
circumstances, but more especially when its effects have been to drive the
girl a distance of four thousand miles from home.

From an examination of these causes alone, it is apparent that, however
well qualified, physically and morally, to add their quota to the
prosperity of the United States, had their exertions been properly
directed, yet the circumstances under which these women emigrated were so
embarrassing as to render them easy victims to those whose special
business seems to be to ensnare the friendless and unfortunate.

This branch of inquiry may be continued by a reference to the following
table, giving a summary of answers to the

_Question._ DID YOU RECEIVE ANY ASSISTANCE, AND IF SO, TO WHAT AMOUNT, TO
ENABLE YOU TO EMIGRATE TO THE UNITED STATES?

Amount of Assistance. Numbers.
Paid their own expenses 262
Rec'd assistance, amount not specified 618
Rec'd assistance, $20 each, 89
" " 25 " 94
" " 30 " 43
" " 35 " 15
" " 40 " 24
" " 45 " 6
" " 50 " 28
" " 55 " 3
" " 60 " 12
" " 65 " 2
" " 70 " 2
" " 75 " 2
" " 100 " 12
" " 110 " 1
" " 120 " 3
" " 140 " 2
" " 150 " 3
" " 175 " 1
" " 180 " 2
" " 200 " 5
" " 220 " 1
" " 250 " 2
" " 300 " 4
" " 400 " 1
" " 600 " 1
--- ---
Totals 976 262
--- 976
----
Total of foreign-born prostitutes 1238

It appears that only two hundred and sixty-two, or about one fifth of the
total number, paid their own passage-money, the remainder having received
pecuniary assistance toward that object ranging from an unspecified
amount, which, in all probability, was not more than the positive expenses
of the voyage, to six hundred dollars. It will be observed that the
majority did not receive more than forty dollars each, eight hundred and
eighty-three of those assisted stating that such help did not exceed that
sum. This certainly was but a very inadequate amount to pay the expenses
of an outfit and a voyage across the Atlantic, and then to support a
person in a strange land until employment could be secured; particularly
if she was but one of a family each member of which had the same
imperative necessity for work as herself. These remarks may be thought
inconsistent with the statements published in 1856 of the amount of money
brought to this country by immigrants; but it may be suggested that,
although these reports gave a correct statement of the sum in the
possession of all the passengers by a certain vessel, they are altogether
silent as to the numbers who were destitute. They merely proved what has
been universally conceded within the last three or four years, namely,
that among the immigrants arriving are many with considerable cash means.
But it does not require much reflection to convince any one that when a
family bring available funds with them, they will leave New York as
quickly as possible in search of some locality where their money may be
advantageously employed. This is still more likely, as the fact of their
being possessed of capital proves them to have practiced habits of
industry and economy at home, which would scarcely abandon them when they
reached the New World. The aggregated facts as to property do not touch
isolated cases of poverty, the most dangerous to this community, because
individuals who are forced to remain in the city from want of means to
leave it not only swell its long list of paupers, but are in circumstances
which may materially influence them to become prostitutes, and have the
spur of necessity to urge them forward in this or any other course which
may offer a respite from starvation.

The following table corroborates this theory; it consists of replies to
the other part of the same

_Question._ DID YOU RECEIVE ANY ASSISTANCE, AND IF SO, FROM WHOM, TO
ENABLE YOU TO EMIGRATE TO THE UNITED STATES?

By whom assisted. Numbers.
Paid their own expenses 262
By relatives or friends 805
By money remitted by relatives or friends in the U. S. 100
Stole money from their friends 34
By seducers 28
By public authorities 9
---
Totals 976 262
--- 976
----
Total of foreign-born prostitutes 1238

As a general rule, the parties by whom assistance was rendered were not
likely to advance any amount beyond what was absolutely required. Even
this amount would perhaps be reduced before the termination of the
voyage, if it should prove a protracted one, and the provisions of the
passengers be exhausted, as there are on board every ship persons who are
willing to sell articles of food at prices ranging from three to six times
their value, and who are equally ready to supply demands for brandy or
tobacco also. On a review of the responses given to the three questions
which have been under consideration in this section, it appears that the
opinions expressed are legitimate deductions from the premises. They may
be thus recapitulated: The majority of those immigrants who subsequently
become prostitutes in New York were almost destitute in their own country;
they arrive here with little or no means of support; their poverty renders
them peculiarly liable to yield to temptation, if, indeed, many of them
have not previously fallen. Thus, if we do not receive them as prostitutes
when they reach our shores, we receive them in a condition immediately to
become such for the sake of subsistence.

_Question._ CAN YOU READ AND WRITE?

Degree of education. Numbers.
Can read and write well 714
Can read and write imperfectly 546
Can read only 219
Uneducated 521
----
Total 2000

Seven hundred and fourteen of the women who were examined in New York City
say that they can read and write _well_. This must not be regarded as
proof that they have received a superior, or even a medium education, but
is a phrase which may be interpreted to mean that they can read a page of
printed matter without much trouble, and can sign their names, although
truth compels the admission that their writing is very often a species of
penmanship extremely difficult to decipher. Beyond such acquirements as
these, very few, scarcely one in each five hundred, have progressed. Five
hundred and forty-six can read and write _imperfectly_, a grade of
education which may be defined as midway between the amount of knowledge
already described and a state of total ignorance; enough, in fact, to
relieve them from the suspicion of being altogether illiterate, which is
the sole advantage they can claim over the two hundred and nineteen who
can _read only_, or the five hundred and twenty-one who confess that they
_can neither read nor write_. As a whole, there is little doubt that the
prostitutes in New York believe, "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to
be wise." These remarks are made from observations upon this class during
a long hospital experience.

But, seriously, such a state of ignorance is most deplorable. To give an
idea of the facilities for acquiring education in the various countries
from which these prostitutes reach us, the following statement from the
United States Census for 1850[381] is submitted:

The ratio of persons receiving education is as follows:

United States, 1 to every 5 of total population.
Denmark, 1 " " 5 " " "
Sweden, 1 " " 6 " " "
Prussia, 1 " " 6 " " "
Norway, 1 " " 7 " " "
Great Britain, 1 " " 8 " " "
France, 1 " " 10 " " "
Austria, 1 " " 13 " " "
Holland, 1 " " 14 " " "
Ireland, 1 " " 14 " " "

The following is a fair average estimate of the acquirements of native and
foreign-born prostitutes:

Degree of Education. Natives. Foreigners.
Can read and write well 25 per cent. 10 per cent.
" " " " imperfectly 50 " " 50 " "
Uneducated 25 " " 40 " "
--- ---
100 100

The average of educational facilities in the United States is as one to
five; in European countries it is one to ten. In other words, every one in
this country has twice the opportunities for education compared with those
born in the Old World: opportunities which, in the cases of these women at
least, have not been improved to their full extent. Of those who claim to
be well educated, the United States show more than the average. In the
class imperfectly educated, foreigners show one half of their number, and
the superior advantages in this country only produce exactly the same
proportion. The proportion of those uneducated is not much more favorable
in natives than in foreigners. Some allowances must be made, however, in
this calculation, for the fact that many children of foreign birth arrive
here at an early age, and gain such education as they possess in American
institutions; but even this will but slightly affect the disproportion
alluded to. But no possible modification of the facts can be conceived
sufficient to excuse the negligence of the parents or friends of one
fourth of the native-born prostitutes in this city at the present day,
when education may be obtained literally "without money and without
price."

Sectarian bigotry must be held responsible for much of this offense. "If
our children can not be educated as we please, they shall not be educated
at all. If they must not read the books we wish, they shall never learn
the alphabet," is, in effect, if not in words, the language of thousands
in this country to-day. What are the results of this cruel policy? The
children go forth into the world: the boys, to earn a precarious living by
the sweat of their brow; the girls, condemned to the most servile work in
any family where their stupidity may find a shelter, until they meet with
some man of their own mental calibre, whom they marry, and forthwith bring
up their unfortunate children in the same manner in which they themselves
were reared. This is the brightest view of the future of ignorant
children; the darker shades are depicted in the annals of vice and
crime--may be seen daily in our prisons, hospitals, poor-houses, and
pauper burying-grounds.

The picture is not overdrawn; nor will the reply so common in this
generation, "These are the children of foreigners," serve to exonerate the
parents; for even if all the uneducated native women who have answered
these questions were born of foreign parentage, a fact which must be
proved before it is admitted, but which we are not inclined to concede,
yet they were born on our soil, where public schools were open to receive
them, and their intelligence would enhance the credit of the land in the
same proportion that their ignorance diminishes it. A love of their
adopted country, its institutions and its fame, is not too much to ask of
parents who derive their maintenance from its resources. It is a libel
upon the parental instinct (it can not be called feeling) to allow any
child in the United States to arrive at years of maturity without
acquiring a good plain, solid education. Fathers or mothers who pursue
such a course as this would consider themselves unjustly accused if told
they were training their daughters to become prostitutes, but such is the
fact. It is scarcely possible to imagine any thing so likely to lead a
woman from the paths of rectitude as ignorance, coupled with the
conviction that such ignorance is an insurmountable barrier to her
progress in life; it drives her to intoxication to drown her reflections,
and from intoxication to prostitution the transition is easy and almost
certain.

Here, then, are a number of young women thrown into society every year
without the least education; untrained for good, and only fit for evil.
Ignorant of their duties to themselves or to the world; with sensibilities
callous because they have never been cultivated; with faculties on a level
with the inferior animals from the same cause, they are expected to
succeed in life! It would be as consistent to take a man who had never
seen a steam-engine, and give him the control of a locomotive and a train
of cars without anticipating an accident, as it is to presume in this day
of knowledge that an uneducated man or woman can ever become a respectable
and useful member of society.

Could our liberal facilities for education be duly improved, much would be
done to prevent the vice of prostitution. No classical or extraordinary
tuition is required to accomplish this end; merely common sense rightly
cultivated, and conscience enlightened and developed, so as to appreciate
the difference between right and wrong, will do much to aid a woman to
pass unscathed through trials which constantly ruin the ignorant.

The question has sometimes arisen whether it should not be made compulsory
on parents to educate their children. The present is not the place to
discuss that subject, but the following statistics will show to what
extent the duty is neglected.

The United States Census for 1850 reports:

Population of New York City 515,547
Proportion of population between the ages
of five and fifteen years 101,006
Children attending school 76,685
Percentage of children attending school 75-9/10

The New York State Census for 1855 reports:

Population of New York City 629,904
Proportion of population between the
ages of five and fifteen years 116,627

No returns are made of the numbers attending schools, and these must be
sought from other sources. The report of the Board of Education for 1856
states the average daily attendance at the ward or public schools to be
44,598. The same document gives data from which the attendance at
religious, corporate, or other public schools can be calculated, but says
nothing of private schools. An approximate estimate of the latter can,
however, be made with the help of the United States Census. In 1850, the
proportions were about one private to every twelve public scholars, and
since that period there has probably been but little change in the ratio.

From these facts the subjoined may be assumed a reasonably correct
statement:

Average attendance at public schools 44,598
Allowance of twenty per cent. for absentees, whose names
are on the school registers, but who attend irregularly 8,920
Corporate schools receiving state assistance 7,517
" " without " " (estimated) 10,000
Private schools " 6,000
------
Total children attending school 77,035

This would give a school attendance of sixty-six per cent. of the
population between the ages of five and fifteen years, or ten per cent.
less than in 1850.

That the proportionate numbers receiving education are diminishing is
susceptible of proof from one fact. In 1856, the pupils in the public
schools were 347 more than in 1855. During the last fifteen years the
population of the city has increased more than twenty thousand per annum,
and of this increase about one fifth (or four thousand) are between the
ages of five and fifteen. It follows that in 1856 there were four thousand
additional children in New York as compared with 1855, but there were only
347 additional attendants at the public schools. Admitting that other
schools received the same increase of pupils--an admission more liberal
than facts would warrant--the education of seven hundred only would be
provided for, leaving three thousand three hundred destitute of
instruction.

In the course of the year 1856, the attention of the Board of Education
was directed to the large number of children not attending any school, and
upon the basis of a partial census of the city they were assumed to amount
to sixty thousand. This was conceded to be an over-estimate. The figures
given above would make the number 39,594, which may very likely be nearer
the truth; but even this may be in excess, and, to allow for all possible
contingencies, we will place it at thirty thousand. Even this is an
alarming statement: the suggestion that of all the children in our city
nearly twenty-seven per cent. are growing up in a state of perfect
ignorance, presents so many frightful considerations that the mind revolts
at the bare possibility. But the facts will not permit any other
construction. If this criminal neglect be continued, it must produce fatal
consequences to society, and the view of impending results would almost
sanction a compulsory education.[382]

_Question._ ARE YOU SINGLE, MARRIED, OR WIDOWED?

Condition. Numbers.
Single 1216
Married 490
Widowed 294
----
Total 2000

The civil condition of the prostitutes in New York City furnishes matter
of serious consideration in view of the slight restraints which the
ordinarily received rules of society place upon the passions, and the
utter inefficiency of such regulations to counteract the influences
tending to female degradation; influences, in fact, which they very
frequently augment rather than check. In the cases of many females now
under notice, marriage was invested not only with the sanctions of a civil
contract between the parties, as recognized by our state laws, but,
according to the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, was regarded as one
of the seven holy sacraments which it is deemed an act of sacrilege to
violate. Yet, in the face of these ordinances, the civil contract is
broken, the sacrament is profaned in one fourth of the total number of
cases, or four hundred and ninety out of two thousand which are now under
notice. It would be out of place to enter here on any disquisition
respecting the duties of the married state; regarded in its abuses as
provocative of prostitution it is noticed hereafter. Enjoined by the
precepts of Holy Writ, supported by the sentiment of the world, and
respected by all virtuous men, marriage is an institution which needs no
argument to enforce its claims to the most rigid observance.

That this sacred compact is too frequently violated by one or other of the
contracting parties is proved by almost daily experience either in courts
of law or by intercourse with the world. Conflicting testimony sometimes
renders it doubtful to whom the blame ought to be imputed, but there can
be no uncertainty whatever as to the opinions entertained by society at
large in such cases. If the husband has been guilty of a breach of his
conjugal duties, he reads the whole of the evidence, graphically reported,
with occasional embellishments, in the columns of the daily papers,
flatters himself that he is acquiring notoriety, is congratulated by
friends of his own predilections on his success, and in a short time is
fully reinstated in his former social position. On the contrary, if the
weight of evidence is against the wife, the whole artillery of the world's
scorn is leveled at her head. She is driven from society, crushed by the
proudly virtuous frowns of her own sex and the contemptuous sneers of the
other. Dishonored and despised, she is too often left with no means of
existence but indiscriminate prostitution, the temptation to such
degradation being aggravated by the consciousness of her previous
infidelity and its results. There is no possibility of salvation for her.
The moral world has resolved she shall not repent, and the least attempt
on her part to atone for an error over which she mourns with all the
intensity of her nature is sternly resisted by the virtuous indignation of
society, which erects an impassable barrier between herself and her hopes
of reformation.

Of the prostitutes in New York, one thousand two hundred and sixteen have
never been married. Their sin is the less because they have not to answer
for broken vows, nor have they any outraged confidence on which to brood,
but to endure only the sin and odium attached to their present condition.
Two hundred and ninety-five prostitutes are widowed. In their cases death
has put an end to the marital contract, and, thus left free to act for
themselves, they stand in nearly the same condition as single women.

An investigation of the nativities of these women shows that about one
third each of the single and married prostitutes are natives of the United
States, and of widows about one half were born in this country.

The question may arise as to the causes to be assigned for the depravity
of married women, and for the large proportion of widows in the ranks of
the abandoned. It would certainly appear that one of the principal, if not
_the_ principal cause which can be specified is the very early age at
which such marriages are contracted. Young people yield to the impulse of
a moment, acknowledge the charms of a person they meet in a ball-room or
public assembly, and are married with a very imperfect knowledge of each
other's character, with but little reflection on the probable result of
the alliance, and with but a slight appreciation of the obligations they
are contracting. It was a wise regulation, whether regarded physically or
morally, which fixed the earliest period of marriage in ancient Germany at
twenty-five years, and declared the union invalid if the parties had not
reached that time of life; nor would the morality of New York suffer if a
similar restriction was the rule instead of the exception here. The
annexed cases, selected at random from the replies received, are submitted
in support of this opinion.

E. C., now nineteen years of age, is a married woman, who has been
separated from her husband five years, and must therefore have been
married when less than fourteen years old. C. W., now twenty-one years of
age, has been a widow for five years, and was married at fifteen. A. S.
was married at sixteen, and E. R. at fifteen. C. C., now twenty-eight
years old, has been a widow more than twelve years. C. G., aged
twenty-four, has been a widow seven years. Both these women were under
sixteen when married. The list might be extended almost indefinitely.

The following inquiry, as a continuation of the same branch of the
subject, is embodied in this section.

_Question._ IF MARRIED, IS YOUR HUSBAND LIVING WITH YOU, OR WHAT CAUSED
THE SEPARATION?

Causes. Numbers.
Living together 71
Ill-usage of husbands 103
Desertion of " 60
" " " to live with other women 43
Intemperance 45
Husbands went to sea 39
" refused to support them 29
Infidelity 25
No cause assigned 75
--- ---
Totals 419 71
--- 419
---
Aggregate of married women 490

The most striking and painful fact in these answers is revealed in the
first line of the table, which contains an announcement so disgraceful to
humanity that, but for the positive evidence adduced by the figures, it
would be scarcely credited, namely, that of four hundred and ninety
married women now living as prostitutes, seventy-one (more than one
seventh) are cohabiting with their husbands. It can not be controverted
that such cohabitation necessarily implies a knowledge of the wife's
degradation, and a participation in the wages of her shame. Nor will any
argument, however plausible, succeed in removing from the public mind the
conviction that the man is far the more guilty party of the two, and he
can not escape the suspicion that he was the primary agent in leading his
wife to prostitution, or, in legal parlance, he was "an accessory before
the fact," While such a consideration will not exonerate the woman from
her offenses, it may be justly pleaded in extenuation; although it will
not prove her guiltless, it will sink him to the lowest depths of
disgrace.

The conduct of husbands is alleged in a majority of the cases as the cause
of separation; two hundred and thirty-five out of four hundred and
nineteen women give the following causes:

Husbands refused to support their wives 29
" deserted their wives 60
" " " " to live with other women 43
Ill-usage of husbands 103
---
Total 235

The cases wherein "intemperance," "infidelity," or "no cause assigned"
were replied, are vague, and may be construed to attach blame to either,
or both.

Sufficient has been proved to show that in many cases prostitution among
married women is the result of circumstances which must have exercised a
very powerful influence over them. The refusal of a husband to support his
wife, his desertion of her, or an act of adultery with another woman, are
each occurrences which must operate injuriously upon the mind of any
female, and, by the keen torture such outrages inflict on the
sensitiveness of her nature, must drive her into a course of dissipation.
Many women thus circumstanced have actually confessed that they made the
first false step while smarting from injuries inflicted by their natural
protectors, with the idea of being revenged upon their brutal or faithless
companions for their unkindness. Morality will argue, and very truly, that
this is no excuse for crime; but much allowance must be made for the
extreme nature of the provocation, and the fact that most of these women
are uneducated, and have not sufficient mental or moral illumination to
reason correctly upon the nature and consequences of their voluntary
debauchery, or even to curb the violence of their passions.

"Ill-usage of husbands," a crime particularly rife in England, and
apparently fast becoming naturalized here, also stands as a prominent
cause of vice, and is one which can not be too pointedly condemned. It
strikes at the root of the social fabric, and must invariably be denounced
both on account of its enormity as an offense, and of its almost
inevitable consequences to the woman, a sense of degradation, too often
followed by the sacrifice of rectitude as the only means to escape such
brutal tyranny. Without advocating capital punishment, it may be
allowable to suggest the query whether our city would not be benefited if
all such unmanly offenders against propriety were to be tried by a jury of
married women, and hanged without benefit of clergy.

The following table will conclude this section:

_Question._ IF WIDOWED, HOW LONG HAS YOUR HUSBAND BEEN DEAD?

Length of Time. Numbers.
Under 6 weeks 2
" 3 months 6
" 6 " 8
" 7 " 1
" 8 " 2
" 1 year 22
" 2 years 30
" 3 " 38
" 4 " 33
" 5 " 24
" 6 " 21
" 7 " 17
" 8 " 18
" 9 " 16
" 10 " 13
10 years and upward 32
Time not specified 11
---
Total 294

It will be perceived that nineteen prostitutes have been widows less than
one year, twenty-two for one year, thirty for two years, and so throughout
the scale. The table presents but little necessity for observation, the
principal conclusion to be drawn from it being that the majority of this
class are driven to a course of vice from the destitution ensuing on the
husband's death. It has been shown that a large number of them are very
young, and it can be scarcely necessary to repeat that any young woman in
a state of poverty will be surrounded with temptations she can with
difficulty resist. Much as this state of society may be deplored, its
existence can not be denied.

_Question._ HAVE YOU HAD ANY CHILDREN?

Condition of Replies. Total of
Women. Yes. No. Women.
Single 357 859 1216
Married 357 133 490
Widowed 233 61 294
---- --- ----
Totals 947 1053 2000

The women who reply to this question in the affirmative are

Single women 357, or 30 per cent.
Married " 357, " 73 "
Widows " 233, " 79 "

In continuation of this subject is the

_Question._ IF YOU HAVE HAD CHILDREN, HOW MANY?

Number of Number of
Women. Condition of Women. Children Born.
357 Single women 490
357 Married women 791
233 Widows 636
--- ----
947 Women were mothers of 1917

The replies give the total number of children borne by each class: thus
the single women have given birth to four hundred and ninety-one children,
the married women to seven hundred and ninety-one children, and the widows
to six hundred and thirty-six children. The following tables exhibit the
same facts in a more extended form, showing the number of children which
each woman has borne, and specifying the sex.

_Question._ IF YOU HAVE HAD CHILDREN, HOW MANY?

REPLIES OF SINGLE WOMEN.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Number| | Borne by each. | Totals. |
| of | |----------------------|---------------------------------|
|Women.| |Boys.|Girls.|Abortions|Boys.|Girls.|Abortions.|Aggregate|
|------|-------|-----|------|---------|-----|------|----------|---------|
| 1 |Mother | 8 | 2 | | 8 | 2 | | 10 |
| 2 |Mothers| 3 | 3 | | 6 | 6 | | 12 |
| 2 | " | 2 | 3 | | 4 | 6 | | 10 |
| 1 |Mother | 1 | 4 | | 1 | 4 | | 5 |
| 1 | " | 3 | 2 | | 3 | 2 | | 5 |
| 1 | " | 1 | 3 | | 1 | 3 | | 4 |
| 1 | " | 4 | | | 4 | | | 4 |
| 1 | " | 3 | 1 | | 3 | 1 | | 4 |
| 5 |Mothers| 2 | 1 | | 10 | 5 | | 15 |
| 6 | " | 1 | 2 | | 6 | 12 | | 18 |
| 3 | " | 3 | | | 9 | | | 9 |
| 2 | " | | 3 | | | 6 | | 6 |
| 33 | " | 1 | 1 | | 33 | 33 | | 66 |
| 4 | " | | 2 | | | 8 | | 8 |
| 17 | " | 2 | | | 34 | | | 34 |
| 150 | " | 1 | | | 150 | | | 150 |
| 99 | " | | 1 | | | 99 | | 99 |
| 27 | " | | | | | | 27 | 27 |
| 1 |Mother | | | 4 | | | 4 | 4 |
|------|-------|-----|------|---------|-----|------|----------|---------|
| 357 | | | | | 272 | 187 | 31 | 490 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

REPLIES OF MARRIED WOMEN.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Number| | Borne by each. | Totals. |
| of | |-----------------------|--------------------------------|
|Women.| |Boys.|Girls.|Abortions|Boys.|Girls.|Abortions.|Aggregate|
|------|-------|-----|------|---------|-----|------|----------|---------|
| 1 |Mother | 7 | 8 | | 7 | 8 | | 15 |
| 2 |Mothers| 7 | 7 | | 14 | 14 | | 28 |
| 1 |Mother | 7 | 6 | | 7 | 6 | | 13 |
| 1 | " | 8 | 4 | | 8 | 4 | | 12 |
| 1 | " | 6 | 6 | | 6 | 6 | | 12 |
| 1 | " | 4 | 6 | | 4 | 6 | | 10 |
| 1 | " | 5 | 4 | | 5 | 4 | | 9 |
| 2 |Mothers| 4 | 4 | | 8 | 8 | | 16 |
| 2 | " | 3 | 4 | | 6 | 8 | | 14 |
| 1 |Mother | 7 | | | 7 | | | 7 |
| 1 | " | 2 | 4 | | 2 | 4 | | 6 |
| 6 |Mothers| 4 | 2 | | 24 | 12 | | 36 |
| 3 |Mothers| 2 | 3 | | 6 | 9 | | 15 |
| 7 | " | 3 | 2 | | 21 | 14 | | 35 |
| 5 | " | 4 | 1 | | 20 | 5 | | 25 |
| 3 | " | 4 | | | 12 | | | 12 |
| 8 | " | 2 | 2 | | 16 | 16 | | 32 |
| 7 | " | 3 | 1 | | 21 | 7 | | 28 |
| 5 | " | | 3 | | | 15 | | 15 |
| 11 | " | 3 | | | 33 | | | 33 |
| 11 | " | 1 | 2 | | 11 | 22 | | 33 |
| 23 | " | 2 | 1 | | 46 | 23 | | 69 |
| 4 | " | 1 | 1 | | 4 | 4 | | 8 |
| 28 | " | | 2 | | | 56 | | 56 |
| 28 | " | 2 | | | 56 | | | 56 |
| 74 | " | | 1 | | | 74 | | 74 |
| 115 | " | 1 | | | 115 | | | 115 |
| 4 | " | | | 1 | | | 4 | 4 |
| 1 |Mother | | | 3 | | | 3 | 3 |
|------|-------|-----|------|---------|-----|------|----------|---------|
| 357 | | | | | 459 | 325 | 7 | 791 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

REPLIES OF WIDOWS.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Number| | Borne by each. | Totals. |
| of | |-----------------------|--------------------------------|
|Women.| |Boys.|Girls.|Abortions|Boys.|Girls.|Abortions.|Aggregate|
|------|-------|-----|------|---------|-----|------|----------|---------|
| 1 |Mother | 6 | 4 | | 6 | 4 | | 10 |
| 3 |Mothers| 5 | 4 | | 15 | 12 | | 27 |
| 2 | " | 6 | 3 | | 12 | 6 | | 18 |
| 1 |Mother | 6 | 2 | | 6 | 2 | | 8 |
| 6 |Mothers| 3 | 4 | | 18 | 24 | | 42 |
| 1 |Mother | 5 | 3 | | 5 | 3 | | 8 |
| 4 |Mothers| 3 | 3 | | 12 | 12 | | 24 |
| 1 |Mother | 5 | 1 | | 5 | 1 | | 6 |
| 1 | " | 2 | 4 | | 2 | 4 | | 6 |
| 1 | " | 4 | 2 | | 4 | 2 | | 6 |
| 9 |Mothers| 3 | 2 | | 27 | 18 | | 45 |
| 5 | " | 2 | 3 | | 10 | 15 | | 25 |
| 2 | " | 4 | 1 | | 8 | 2 | | 10 |
| 1 |Mother | 1 | 4 | | 1 | 4 | | 5 |
| 1 | " | 5 | | | 5 | | | 5 |
| 3 |Mothers| 4 | | | 12 | | | 12 |
| 9 | " | 2 | 2 | | 18 | 18 | | 36 |
| 4 | " | 1 | 3 | | 4 | 12 | | 16 |
| 1 |Mother | 3 | 1 | | 3 | 1 | | 4 |
| 4 |Mothers| | 3 | | | 12 | | 12 |
| 10 | " | 3 | | | 30 | | | 30 |
| 11 | " | 1 | 2 | | 11 | 22 | | 33 |
| 20 | " | 2 | | | 40 | | | 40 |
| 47 | " | 1 | 1 | | 47 | 47 | | 94 |
| 30 | " | | 1 | | | 30 | | 30 |
| 40 | " | 1 | | | 40 | | | 40 |
| 1 |Mother | | | 2 | | | 2 | 2 |
|------|-------|-----|------|---------|-----|------|----------|---------|
| 233 | | | | | 369 | 265 | 2 | 636 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Commencing with the offspring of single women, it will be seen that one
was the mother of ten children, eight boys and two girls. Two women gave
birth to six children each. Four gave birth to five children each. Three
gave birth to four children each. Sixteen gave birth to three children
each. Fifty-four gave birth to two children each. Two hundred and
forty-nine gave birth to one child each. Twenty-seven have suffered
abortion once, and one has suffered in the same manner four times. The
corresponding tables for married women and widows express similar facts in
the same form. It is not necessary to quote them, as the figures give all
the required information. The results may be recapitulated thus:

Boys. Girls. Abortions. Totals.
357 single women bore 272 187 31 490
357 married " " 459 325 7 791
233 widows bore 369 265 2 636
---- --- -- ----
947 1100 777 40 1917

Excess of male over female births, 223.
Ratio of excess upon the total number born, 11-6/10 per cent.

The next point claiming attention is the number of illegitimate children
resulting from prostitution, based upon answers to the

_Question._ WERE THESE CHILDREN BORN IN WEDLOCK?

Legitimate children of married women 469
" " " widows 358
Total legitimate 827
Illegitimate children of single women 490
" " " married " 322
" " " widows 279
---
Total illegitimate 1090
----
Aggregate 1917

The whole of the children borne by single women are, of course,
illegitimate. Of the children of married women over forty per cent., and
of the children of widows forty-four per cent. are illegitimate. Taking
the total number of children of the three classes, and calculating upon
this broad basis, it will appear that 1090 illegitimate children were
born, giving an average of fifty-seven per cent.; or, to speak in plain
terms, of every hundred children borne by women who are now prostitutes,
forty-three were born before the mothers (married women or widows) had
embraced this course of life, and the remaining fifty-seven were the fruit
of promiscuous intercourse, liable physically to inherit the diseases of
the mother, morally to endure the disgrace attached to their birth, and
very probably to be reared in the midst of blasphemy, obscenity, and vice,
to follow in the footsteps of their parents, and perpetuate the sin to
which they owe their origin.

The excessive mortality among this class of children is developed in the
following replies to the

_Question._ ARE THESE CHILDREN LIVING OR DEAD?

Living children of single women 133
" " " married " 334
" " " widows 265
---
Total living 732
Dead children of single women 357
" " " married " 457
" " " widows 371
---
Total dead 1185
----
Aggregate 1917

The ratio of mortality will be as follows:

Children of single women 73 per cent.
" " married " 58 " "
" " widows 59 " "
--
Average on the total number 62 " "

or more than six deaths for every ten children born. The average infantile
mortality of New York City for three years is,

Under 1 year of age 8499
From 1 " to 2 years 3259
" 2 " to 5 " 2578
------
Total 14,336[383]

The population between those ages in 1855 was 77,568.[384] This would give
a mortality of 18-1/2 per cent., or about 1-3/4 to every ten children
under five years of age. It is not exceeding the bounds of probability to
assume that the greater part of the children of prostitutes die before
they reach the age of five years, which will give a _pro rata_ mortality
among that class of nearly _four times the average ratio of New York
City_. This calculation must be taken in connection with the cases of
abortion produced by extraneous means, not admitted in the replies to the
interrogatories, and which will probably never be known. It is impossible
to doubt that these are far more frequent than recorded in the tables.

Under the heads of "Premature Births" and "Still-born" the following
numbers are reported.[385]

Years. Premature Births. Still-born. Total.
1854 435 1615 2050
1855 374 1564 1938
1856 387 1556 1943
---- ---- ----
1196 4735 5931

The births during the same period were:

1854 17,979
1855 14,145
1856 16,199

Total 48,323

This would show a proportion of 12-1/2 per cent., or one to every eight of
all the children born in New York City. It is not to be taken for granted
that all these are the result of improper conduct, although unquestionably
many are so. Applying the same ratio to the children of prostitutes, and
calculating the 1917 births in these tables as extending over a period of
five years, would give forty-eight cases each year; but multiplying the
average by four (the proportion of deaths from natural causes), we shall
find the appalling number of one hundred and ninety-two cases each
year--an array of infantile mortality presenting features which place it
almost on a level with the infanticide of some Eastern nations. Were it
possible to form any definite idea of the abortions actually procured, and
which are suspected, on reasonable grounds, to amount to a very
considerable number, the amount would be startling. The sacrifice of
infant life, attribute it to what cause you may, is one of the most
deplorable results of prostitution, and urgently demands active
interference.

The attention of the American Medical Association has been drawn to this
subject, and from a "Report on Infant Mortality in large Cities, by D.
Meredith Reese, M.D., LL.D., etc.," published in their Transactions, we
extract: "The causes of mortality among children of tender age are, in a
multitude of cases, to be found only by extending our inquiries to their
_intra-uterine_ life, and the physiological state of the parents, but
especially the sanitary condition of the mothers, their hygienic and moral
habits and circumstances.[386] * * * Celibacy should be required of all
syphilitic persons of either sex."[387] It will at once occur to the mind
of the reader that enforced celibacy would not affect the maternity of
prostitutes. They are liable to give birth to children, and, as their
physiological condition is such as to preclude the possibility of their
children being healthy, the only way to check infant mortality in this
class is to deal with the mothers, and adopt means, if not to prevent
their infection, at least to limit the ravages of disease as much as
possible. This point is discussed more fully in the chapter on Remedial
Measures. To men tainted with syphilis the same course of reasoning would
apply. If debarred from marriage, the sexual appetite would drive them to
commerce with prostitutes, and their illegitimate children swell the total
of mortality. The health of parents must be protected before we can hope
for healthy children.

Dr. Reese's very able pamphlet contains some remarks upon abortionism, and
its extent, thus: "The ghastly crime of abortionism has become a murderous
trade in many of our large cities, tolerated, connived at, and even
protected by corrupt civil authorities. These murderers--for such they
are--are well known to the police authorities: their names, residence, and
even their guilty customers are no secret. Would that it were only the
profligate, or even the unfortunate of their sex, whose guilty fear or
shame thus seeks to hide the evidence of illicit amours."[388] That
prostitution largely contributes to this crime can not be doubted, but to
what extent must remain unknown, from the secrecy which surrounds it. The
revolting cases which appear at intervals in the daily papers are but a
mere fraction of the total.

_Question._ ARE THESE CHILDREN LIVING WITH YOU, OR WHERE ARE THEY?

Numbers.
Children living with the mothers 73
" boarding at the expense of mothers 247
" " with mothers' relatives 140
" supporting themselves 129
" living with the fathers 59
" in public or charitable institutions 36
" adopted by families 20
" unascertained 28
--- --
Totals 659 73
--
73
---
Aggregate of children 732

This table shows the social influences to which the survivors of this
ill-fated band of children are exposed. There are seventy-three stated to
be living with their mothers, and, so far as they are concerned, no
reasonable person can entertain any hopes as to their future morality.
Born in the abodes of vice, their dwelling is in an atmosphere of squalid
misery or sordid guilt; they never have a glimpse of a better life; they
are marked from their cradles for a career of degradation; they can fall
no lower, for they stand already on the lowest level. Such as these are
denominated "dangerous classes" by the French authorities, and from their
ranks are obtained many of the inmates of prisons and brothels. The
children stated to be with their fathers, fifty-nine in number, it may be
concluded were born before the mother's fall from virtue, and are
decidedly the most fortunate of any coming under notice, while those
living with the parents or relatives of the mother, amounting to one
hundred and forty, or boarding at the mother's expense, of whom there are
two hundred and forty-seven, stand less chance of contamination than if
actually residing within the domains of vice. Those living in public or
charitable institutions exhibit one cause of taxation upon the general
body of the citizens, and show that, indirectly, every man in New York is
compelled to contribute toward the maintenance of vice or its offspring. A
visit to the public institutions on Blackwell's and Randall's Islands will
prove that this is but one item of the expenses which prostitution
inflicts upon the community.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

NEW YORK.--STATISTICS.

Continuance of Prostitution.--Average in Paris and New York.--Dangers
of Prostitution.--Disease.--Causes of Prostitution.--Inclination.--
Destitution.--Seduction.--Intemperance.--Ill-treatment.--Duties of
Parents, Husbands, and Relatives.--Influence of Prostitutes.--
Intelligence Offices.--Boarding-schools.--Obscene Literature.

_Question._ FOR WHAT LENGTH OF TIME HAVE YOU BEEN A PROSTITUTE?

Time. Numbers.
1 month 71
2 months 49
3 " 76
4 " 62
5 " 51
6 " 126
7 " 129
8 " 17
9 " 21
10 " 32
1 year 325
2 years 55
3 " 245
4 " 203
5 " 125
6 " 87
7 " 56
8 " 69
9 " 32
10 " 26
11 " 8
12 " 14
13 " 6
14 " 7
15 " 9
16 " 13
17 " 3
18 " 4
19 " 8
20 " 4
21 " 2
22 " 1
23 " 2
24 " 2
25 " 1
27 " 1
29 " 1
30 " 1
32 " 1
34 " 1
35 " 1
Unascertained 53
----
Total 2000

It has already been stated that the average duration of the life of a
prostitute does not exceed four years from the commencement of her career.
This is one year beyond the estimated duration as given by some English
writers, but very far below the average, as ascertained in Paris, in which
city, at the time M. Parent-Duchatelet instituted his elaborate system of
investigation, he found in the gross number of 3517 prostitutes, two
hundred and forty-two who had led that life for upward of fourteen years,
and six hundred and forty-one who had continued their course upward of ten
years. What a contrast to the table given above! In Paris, 6-2/3 per cent.
had survived the horrors of courtesan life for fourteen years; in New
York, only 2-3/4 per cent. have reached the same period. In Paris, 17-1/2
per cent. existed; in New York, 3-3/4 per cent. exist after ten years of
exposure; or, in other words, where seven exist in Paris, only three have
survived in New York, or where seventeen exist in Paris, only four survive
in New York. It can not be asserted that Paris is a more healthy city than
New York, and this difference must arise from the fact that, while
judicious arrangements are _enforced_ in the former, a similar policy has
not been recognized in the latter. If this relative mortality were the
only fact known on this matter, the economy of human life would be an
irresistible argument in favor of measures of supervision judiciously
conceived and promptly executed.

In the city of New York, six hundred and thirty-four women, more than
thirty-one per cent., have been on the town less than one year, and three
hundred and twenty-five, or more than seventeen per cent., for a space of
time ranging from one to two years. Here, then, is one half of the total
number, the experience of the remainder extending through various periods
up to thirty-five years. With reference to those who assign such an extent
of duration, it may be remarked, as was done in considering the question
of age, that they are, with scarcely a solitary exception, those who,
having been prostitutes in their younger days, are now engaged in
brothel-keeping, and are thus exempted from many dangers attending the
ordinary life of a harlot. If the same rule had been observed here in
their cases as was done in the inquiries at Paris, namely, to exclude them
from the list of prostitutes, the relative mortality given above would
have shown still more unfavorably for New York.

It may be asked, What peculiar dangers attend the life of a prostitute in
this city? There is a frightful physical malady to which all are liable,
and which will be alluded to under its proper head. There are other
dangers to which prostitutes, in a greater or less degree, are exposed. It
is not necessary to remind the reader that at intervals the public is
shocked by accounts in our daily papers of cowardly and outrageous
assaults upon these unfortunate women, perpetrated by ruffians of the
other sex. Sometimes it is an onslaught made by a party of men, for little
or no provocation, on a number of females; or it may be an attack of a
paramour on his victim. To this latter description of ill-treatment common
women are peculiarly liable; for, beyond their habits of promiscuous
intercourse, almost every one of them, particularly those in the middle or
lower classes, has attached herself to some indolent fellow who acts as
her protector ("bully" or "lover" is the common designation) when she
becomes involved in any difficulty with strangers, but who exercises an
arbitrary and brutal control over her at other times. In many cases,
singular as it may appear, an actual love is felt by the woman for "her
man." In others it is a mere arrangement for mutual convenience, the man
taking her part in all quarrels, and the woman providing funds to maintain
him in idleness. The intemperate habits of the prostitutes also tend
materially to shorten their lives.

In addition to physical dangers must be considered the mental anguish they
undergo, which inevitably preys upon the constitution. To this even the
most depraved of them are at times subject. In the earlier stages of their
career is an agonizing memory of the past; thoughts of home; regrets for
the position they have lost. As they proceed in their course they suffer
from an anticipation of the future; the grave, a nameless, pauper grave,
yawns before them; thoughts of the inevitable eternity intrude; and a past
of shame, a present of anguish, a future of dread, are the subjects of
thought indulged by many who would never be suspected by the gay world of
entertaining a serious reflection. It may be said, in the words of Byron,

"But in an instant o'er her soul
Winters of memory seem to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime."

The period for their nocturnal revelry returns, and, though with a
breaking heart, they must deck themselves with tawdry finery, and forcing
a smile upon their faces, resume a loathsome trade to earn their daily
food. With such torments, physical and mental, can long life be expected
as their lot? Can any human frame withstand these incessant attacks for a
lengthened period? It would not be at all surprising if the ratio of
mortality among prostitutes were greater than it is.

_Question._ HAVE YOU HAD ANY DISEASE INCIDENT TO PROSTITUTION? IF SO,
WHAT?

Disease. Attacks. Numbers.
Gonorrhoea 1 Attack 153
" 2 Attacks 53
" 3 " 44
Gonorrhoea and syphilis 36
Syphilis 1 Attack 395
" 2 Attacks 81
" 3 " 38
" 4 " 12
" 5 " 4
" 6 " 4
" 8 " 1
----
Total attacked 821

The nature and effects of venereal disease have been already so fully
specified in notices of the various systems adopted for its prevention,
given in the preceding pages of this work, that it would be a needless
repetition to dwell upon them here. It is sufficient, for the present
purpose, to call attention to the fact that more than two fifths of the
total number of prostitutes examined during the investigation CONFESS that
they have suffered from syphilis or gonorrhoea. The probability is that
the real number far exceeds this average; that, alarming as is the
confession, the actual facts are much worse. This opinion is based upon
the results of professional experience, and a knowledge of the difficulty
which exists in obtaining any voluntary reliable statement on the subject.

Even assuming that the answers obtained are correct, they indicate ample
cause for the perpetuation of the disease, and its introduction into
almost every branch of society. One half of the total number who confess
that they have suffered or are suffering from this disease, state that
they have been so afflicted once only. In other forms of sickness which
admit of a perfect cure this would be no cause for alarm, but in this
instance it is a mooted point among medical writers whether the syphilitic
taint can ever be eradicated from the system where it has been implanted,
and the arguments on each side are urged with great ability. Without
presuming to pass an opinion on the question, or expressing any doubt of
the correctness of those learned men who think it possible to remove the
taint from the body, it is policy to urge, in this case, the views of
their opponents that it can not be eradicated. Upon this ground every
citizen is competent to determine for himself the amount of public
mischief resulting daily from a mass of prostitutes, two out of every five
of whom are _confessedly_ diseased.

_Question._ WHAT WAS THE CAUSE OF YOUR BECOMING A PROSTITUTE?

Causes. Numbers.
Inclination 513
Destitution 525
Seduced and abandoned 258
Drink, and the desire to drink 181
Ill-treatment of parents, relatives, or husbands 164
As an easy life 124
Bad company 84
Persuaded by prostitutes 71
Too idle to work 29
Violated 27
Seduced on board emigrant ships 16
" in emigrant boarding houses 8
----
Total 2000

This question is probably the most important of the series, as the replies
lay open to a considerable extent those hidden springs of evil which have
hitherto been known only from their results. First in order stands the
reply "Inclination," which can only be understood as meaning a voluntary
resort to prostitution in order to gratify the sexual passions. Five
hundred and thirteen women, more than one fourth of the gross number, give
this as their reason. If their representations were borne out by facts, it
would make the task of grappling with the vice a most arduous one, and
afford very slight grounds to hope for any amelioration; but it is
imagined that the circumstances which induced the ruin of most of those
who gave the answer will prove that, if a positive inclination to vice was
the proximate cause of the fall, it was but the result of other and
controlling influences. In itself such an answer would imply an innate
depravity, a want of true womanly feeling, which is actually incredible.
The force of desire can neither be denied nor disputed, but still in the
bosoms of most females that force exists in a slumbering state until
aroused by some outside influences. No woman can understand its power
until some positive cause of excitement exists. What is sufficient to
awaken the dormant passion is a question that admits innumerable answers.
Acquaintance with the opposite sex, particularly if extended so far as to
become a reciprocal affection, will tend to this; so will the
companionship of females who have yielded to its power; and so will the
excitement of intoxication. But it must be repeated, and most decidedly,
that without these or some other equally stimulating cause, the full force
of sexual desire is seldom known to a virtuous woman. In the male sex
nature has provided a more susceptible organization than in females,
apparently with the beneficent design of repressing those evils which must
result from mutual appetite equally felt by both. In other words, man is
the _aggressive_ animal, so far as sexual desire is involved. Were it
otherwise, and the passions in both sexes equal, illegitimacy and
prostitution would be far more rife in our midst than at present.

Some few of the cases in which the reply "Inclination" was given are
herewith submitted, with the explanation which accompanied each return. C.
M.: while virtuous, this girl had visited dance-houses, where she became
acquainted with prostitutes, who persuaded her that they led an easy,
merry life; her inclination was the result of female persuasion. E. C.
left her husband, and became a prostitute willingly, in order to obtain
intoxicating liquors which had been refused her at home. E. R. was
deserted by her husband because she drank to excess, and became a
prostitute in order to obtain liquor. In this and the preceding case,
inclination was the result solely of intemperance. A. J. willingly
sacrificed her virtue to a man she loved. C. L.: her inclination was
swayed by the advice of women already on the town. J. J. continued this
course from inclination after having been seduced by her lover. S. C.:
this girl's inclination arose from a love of liquor. Enough has been
quoted to prove that, in many of the cases, what is called willing
prostitution is the sequel of some communication or circumstances which
undermine the principles of virtue and arouse the latent passions.

Destitution is assigned as a reason in five hundred and twenty-five cases.
In many of these it is unquestionably true that positive, actual want, the
apparent and dreaded approach of starvation, was the real cause of
degradation. The following instances of this imperative necessity will
appeal to the understanding and the heart more forcibly than any arguments
that could be used. As in all the selections already made, or that may be
made hereafter, these cases are taken indiscriminately from the replies
received, and might be indefinitely extended.

During the progress of this investigation in one of the lower wards of the
city, attention was drawn to a pale but interesting-looking girl, about
seventeen years of age, from whose replies the following narrative is
condensed, retaining her own words as nearly as possible.

"I have been leading this life from about the middle of last January
(1856). It was absolute want that drove me to it. My sister, who was about
three years older than I am, lived with me. She was deformed and a cripple
from a fall she had while a child, and could not do any hard work. She
could do a little sewing, and when we both were able to get work we could
just make a living. When the heavy snow-storm came our work stopped, and
we were in want of food and coals. One very cold morning, just after I had
been to the store, the landlord's agent called for some rent we owed, and
told us that, if we could not pay it, we should have to move. The agent
was a kind man, and gave us a little money to buy some coals. We did not
know what we were to do, and were both crying about it, when the woman who
keeps this house (where she was then living) came in and brought some
sewing for us to do that day. She said that she had been recommended to us
by a woman who lived in the same house, but I found out since that she had
watched me, and only said this for an excuse. When the work was done I
brought it home here. I had heard of such places before, but had never
been inside one. I was very cold, and she made me sit down by the fire,
and began to talk to me, saying how much better off I should be if I would
come and live with her. I told her I could not leave my sister, who was
the only relation I had, and could not help herself; but she said I should
be able to help my sister, and that she would find some light sewing for
her to do, so that she should not want. She talked a good deal more, and I
felt inclined to do as she wanted me, but then I thought how wicked it
would be, and at last I told her I would think about it. When I got home
and saw my sister so sick as she was, and wanting many little things that
we had no money to buy, and no friends to help us to, my heart almost
broke. However, I said nothing to her then. I laid awake all night
thinking, and in the morning I made up my mind to come here. I told her
what I was going to do, and she begged me not, but my mind was made up.
She said it would be sin, and I told her that I should have to answer for
that, and that I was forced to do it because there was no other way to
keep myself and help her, and I knew she could not work much for herself,
and I was sure she would not live a day if we were turned into the
streets. She tried all she could to persuade me not, but I was determined,
and so I came here. I hated the thoughts of such a life, and my only
reason for coming was that I might help her. I thought that, if I had been
alone, I would sooner have starved, but I could not bear to see her
suffering. She only lived a few weeks after I came here. I broke her
heart. I do not like the life. I would do almost any thing to get out of
it; but, now that I have _once done wrong_, I can not get any one to give
me work, and I must stop here unless I wish to be starved to death."

This plain and affecting narrative needs no comment. It reveals the
history of many an unfortunate woman in this city, and while it must
appeal to every sensitive heart, it argues most forcibly for some
intervention in such cases. The following statements of other women who
have suffered and fallen in a similar manner will show that the preceding
is not an isolated case. M. M., a widow with one child, earned $1 50 per
week as a tailoress. J. Y., a servant, was taken sick while in a
situation, spent all her money, and could get no employment when she
recovered. M. T. (quoting her own words) "had no work, no money, and no
home." S. F., a widow with three children, could earn two dollars weekly
at cap-making, but could not obtain steady employment even at those
prices. M. F. had been out of place for some time, and had no money. E. H.
earned from two to three dollars per week as tailoress, but had been out
of employment for some time. L. C. G.: the examining officer reports in
this case, "This girl (a tailoress) is a stranger, without any relations.
She received a dollar and a half a week, which would not maintain her." M.
C., a servant, was receiving five dollars a month. She sent all her
earnings to her mother, and soon after lost her situation, when she had no
means to support herself. M. S., also a servant, received _one dollar a
month wages_. A. B. landed in Baltimore from Germany, and was robbed of
all her money the very day she reached the shore. M. F., a shirt-maker,
earned one dollar a week. E. M. G.: the captain of police in the district
where this woman resides says, "This girl struggled hard with the world
before she became a prostitute, sleeping in station-houses at night, and
living on bread and water during the day." He adds: "In my experience of
three years, I have known _over fifty cases_ whose history would be
similar to hers, and who are now prostitutes."

These details give some insight into the under-current of city life. The
most prominent fact is that a large number of females, both operatives
and domestics, earn so small wages that a temporary cessation of their
business, or being a short time out of a situation, is sufficient to
reduce them to absolute distress. Provident habits are useless in their
cases; for, much as they may feel the necessity, _they have nothing to
save_, and the very day that they encounter a reverse sees them penniless.
The struggle a virtuous girl will wage against fate in such circumstances
may be conceived: it is a literal battle for life, and in the result life
is too often preserved only by the sacrifice of virtue.

"Seduced and abandoned." Two hundred and fifty-eight women make this
reply. These numbers give but a faint idea of the actual total that should
be recorded under the designation, as many who are included in other
classes should doubtless have been returned in this. It has already been
shown that under the answer "Inclination" are comprised the responses of
many who were the victims of seduction before such inclination existed,
and there can be no question that among those who assign "Drink, and the
desire to drink" as the cause of their becoming prostitutes, may be found
many whose first departure from the rules of sobriety was actuated by a
desire to drive from their memories all recollections of their seducers'
falsehoods. Of the number who were persuaded by women, themselves already
fallen, to become public courtesans, it is but reasonable to conclude that
many had previously yielded their honor to some lover under false
protestations of attachment and fidelity.

It is needless to resort to argument to prove that seduction is a vast
social wrong, involving in its consequences not only the entire loss of
female character, but also totally destroying the consciousness of
integrity on the part of the male sex. It matters not under what
circumstances the crime may be perpetrated, none can be found that will
exonerate the active offender from the imputation of fraud and treachery.
A woman's heart longs for a reciprocal affection, and, to insure this, she
will occasionally yield her honor to her lover's importunities, but only
when her attachment has become so concentrated upon its object as to
invest him with every attribute of perfection, to find in every word he
utters and every action he performs but some token of his devotion to her.
Love is then literally a passion, an idolatry, and its power is
universally acknowledged.

But this passion can not be the growth of an hour. Its developments are
gradual. From the first stage of mere acquaintance, it ripens
progressively under the influence of tender words and solemn vows,
frequently sincere, but often simulated, until the woman owns to herself
and admits to her lover that she regards him with affection. Such an
acknowledgment, virtually placing her future life in his custody, should
inspire him with the high resolve to protect her name and fame, to justify
the confidence she has reposed. But not unfrequently is it made the medium
for dishonorable exactions, and for a momentary gratification, valueless
to him except as a proof of her fervent adoration, and fatal in its
consequences to her, he tramples on the priceless jewel of her honor,
confidingly surrendered to this love and truth.

It should be remembered that, in order to accomplish this base end, he
must have resorted to base means; must either have professed a love he did
not feel, or have allowed his affection to cool as he approached its
consummation. Pure and sincere attachment would effectually prevent the
lover from performing any act which could possibly compromise the woman he
adores. None but an unmitigated ruffian can calmly and deliberately wrong
an unsuspecting female who has acknowledged a tender sentiment toward him,
thus placing herself so entirely in his power. The crime of seduction can
be viewed only as a mean and atrocious perjury, and strangely callous must
he be whose conscience in after life does not pursue him with scorpion
stings and fiery tortures.

But how account for the participation of the female in the crime? Simply
by viewing it as an idolatry of devotion which is willing to surrender all
to the demands of him she worships; to the intensity of her affections,
which absorbs all other considerations; to a perfect insanity of love,
excited and sustained by a supposed equal devotion to herself. As soon as
this conviction of a mutual love possesses her mind, as soon as her heart
responds to its magic touch, she lives in a new atmosphere; her
individuality is lost; her thoughts revert only to her lover. Devoted to
the promotion of his happiness, she thinks not of her own; and only when
it is too late does she awake from the spell that lures her to
destruction. In such a case as this, a woman does not merit the contempt
with which her conduct is visited. She has sinned from weakness, not from
vice; she has been made the victim of her own unbounded love, her heart's
richest and purest affections.

Moralists say that all human passions should be held in check by reason
and virtue, and none can deny the truthfulness of the assertion. But
while they apply the sentiment to the weaker party, who is the sufferer,
would it not be advisable to recommend the same restraining influences to
him who is the inflictor? No woman possessed of the smallest share of
decency or the slightest appreciation of virtue would voluntarily
surrender herself without some powerful motive, not pre-existent in
herself, but imparted by her destroyer. Well aware of the world's opinion,
she would not recklessly defy it, and precipitate herself into an abyss of
degradation and shame unless some overruling influence had urged her
forward. This motive and this influence, it is believed, may be uniformly
traced to her weak but truly feminine dependence upon another's vows.
Naturally unsuspicious herself, she can not believe that the being whom
she has almost deified can be aught but good, and noble, and trustworthy.
Sincere in her own professions, she believes there is equal sincerity in
his protestations. Willing to sacrifice all to him, she feels implicitly
assured that he will protect her from harm. Thus there can be little doubt
that, in most cases of seduction, female virtue is trustingly surrendered
to the specious arguments and false promises of dishonorable men.[389]

The every-day experiences of life are amply sufficient to justify this
opinion, for it is a fact that these specious arguments and false promises
are continually resorted to by many men for the express purposes of
seduction; and, nefarious as these cases confessedly are, still they form
common incidents in the lives of some who claim to be what the world calls
respectable! Men who, in the ordinary relations of life, would scruple to
defraud their neighbors of a dollar, do not hesitate to rob a confiding
woman of her chastity. They who, in a business point of view, would regard
obtaining goods under false pretenses as an act to be visited with all the
severity of the law, hesitate not to obtain by even viler fraud the
surrender of woman's virtue to their fiendish lust. Is there no
inconsistency in the social laws which condemn a swindler to the state
prison _for his offenses_, and condemn a woman to perpetual infamy _for
her wrongs_? Undoubtedly there are cases where the woman is the seducer,
but these are so rare as to be hardly worth mentioning.

Seduction is a social wrong. Its entire consequences are not comprised in
the injury inflicted on the woman, or the sense of perfidy oppressing the
conscience of the man. Beyond the fact that she is, in the ordinary
language of the day, ruined, the victim has endured an attack upon her
principles which must materially affect her future life. The world may not
know of her transgression, and, in consequence, public obloquy may not be
added to her burden; but she is too painfully conscious of her fall, and
every thought of her lacerated and bleeding heart is embittered with a
sense of man's wrong and outrage. Memory points to the many bright
passages in their acquaintance, and says, these shone but to ensnare you;
to the many tokens of endearment received from her betrayer, and says,
these were but so many arguments to effect your ruin; to the many vows he
breathed, and says, these were but perjury; to the many smiles with which
she was greeted, and says, these were but so many hypocritical devices.
She remembers the thrill of joy with which her heart so gayly bounded when
he first told her she was beloved, and she contrasts her ecstasy then
with her agonies now. She remembers, with detestation, the caresses he was
wont to bestow. But, above all, she remembers, and her blood boils with
indignation as the thought is forced upon her, that by these means he has
wrought her shame. She has learned in the school of sorrow that man's
promises of fidelity are valueless; and her future life, whether spent in
sorrow and repentance for the past, or in a wild, impetuous career of
subsequent vice, will be indelibly marked with the remembrance of his
treachery. It can not be a matter of surprise that, with this feeling of
injustice and insult burning at her heart, her career should be one in
which she becomes the aggressor, and man the victim; for it is a certain
fact that in this desire of revenge upon the sex for the falsehood of one
will be found a cause of the increase of prostitution.

The probabilities of a decrease in the crime of seduction are very slight,
so long as the present public sentiment prevails; while the seducer is
allowed to go unpunished, and the full measure of retribution is directed
against his victim; while the offender escapes, but the offended is
condemned. Unprincipled men, ready to take advantage of woman's trustful
nature, abound, and they pursue their diabolical course unmolested. Legal
enactments can scarcely ever reach them, although sometimes a poor man
without friends or money is indicted and convicted. The remedy must be
left to the world at large. When our domestic relations are such that a
man known to be guilty of this crime can obtain no admission into the
family circle; when the virtuous and respectable members of the community
agree that no such man shall be welcomed to their society; when worth and
honor assert their supremacy over wealth and boldness, there may be hopes
of a reformation, but not till then.

The following cases will exhibit some of the results of seduction: M. C.,
a native of Pennsylvania, seventeen years of age, was induced to run away
from home with her lover, who promised to marry her as soon as they
reached Philadelphia. Instead of keeping his word, he deserted her. She
was afraid to go home, and had no means of living except by prostitution,
which she practiced for eight months in Philadelphia, and then came to New
York to reside. Her father, a physician, died when she was about ten years
old, and her mother subsequently married a hotel-keeper, in whose house
the girl was reared, and to the associations of which she probably, to
some extent, owes her fall from virtue.

In one of the most aristocratic houses of prostitution in New York was
found the daughter of a merchant, a man of large property, residing in one
of the Southern states. She was a beautiful girl, had received a superior
education, spoke several languages fluently, and seemed keenly sensible of
her degradation. Two years before this time she had been on a visit to
some relations in Europe, and on her return voyage in one of her father's
vessels, she was seduced by the captain, and became pregnant. He solemnly
asserted that he would marry her as soon as they reached their port, but
the ship had no sooner arrived than he left her. The poor girl's parents
would not receive her back into their family, and she came to New York and
prostituted herself for support.

A. B., the child of respectable parents in Germany, was seduced in her
native place by a man to whom she was attached. He promised to marry her
if she would accompany him to the United States. She obtained the
permission and necessary funds from her parents, and two days after they
landed in New York her seducer deserted her, carrying off all the money
she had brought from home. H. P., a school-girl, sixteen years of age, was
seduced by a married man who now visits her occasionally. C. A. was
seduced in New Jersey, brought to New York, and deserted among strangers.
M. R. was seduced by her employer, a married man. A. W. was seduced while
at school in Troy, N. Y., and was ashamed to return to her parents. L. H.
followed a lover from England who had promised to marry her. When she
arrived in New York he seduced and diseased her, and then she discovered
that he was a married man. There is no necessity to multiply these cases.

"Drink and the desire to drink." We will alter an old saying, and render
it, "When a woman _drinks_ she is lost." It will be conceded that the
habit of intoxication in woman, if not an indication of the existence of
actual depravity or vice, is a sure precursor of it, for drunkenness and
debauchery are inseparable companions, one almost invariably following the
other. In some cases a woman living in service becomes a drunkard; she
forms acquaintances among the depraved of her own sex, and willingly joins
their ranks. Married women acquire the habit of drinking, and forsake
their husbands and families to gratify not so much their sexual appetite
as their passion for liquor. Young women are often persuaded to take one
or two glasses of liquor, and then their ruin may be soon expected.
Others are induced to drink spirits in which a narcotic has been infused
to render them insensible to their ruin. In short, it is scarcely possible
to enumerate the many temptations which can be employed when intoxicating
drinks are used as the agent.

"Ill-treatment of parents, husbands, or relatives" is a prolific cause of
prostitution, one hundred and sixty-four women assigning it as a reason
for their fall. In consideration of their important relations to society,
it may be well to inquire, What are the duties of parents, husbands, and
relatives?

In all countries where the obligations of the marriage contract are
recognized, one of its most stringent requirements is found in the
necessity to provide for the children of such union. This is acknowledged
as a moral duty on account of the relationship between parents and
children; it is recognized as a religious duty because specially enjoined
in Holy Writ, and it is regarded as a civil duty because the future
welfare of any community must depend upon the training of its future
citizens.

As to the moral duty, what arguments would be effectual to prove to a
hard-hearted parent the necessity of bestowing a kindly education upon his
child? Surely nature itself would supply all the necessary reasons. The
still, small voice of conscience will whisper to him, I have been the
instrument of bringing this child into the world, and I am therefore
responsible for its welfare. And even plain, old-fashioned common sense
(despised as it is since a certain philosophy has come into fashion) would
say, I am the father of a child, and it is my interest to do the best I
can for it.

The religious duties are abundantly enforced in the Scriptures. These,
while requiring in explicit terms the obedience of children to their
parents, and annexing to such commandment the only promise which the
Decalogue contains, are equally plain in specifying the duties of parents.
These points are acknowledged by all sects and parties; and commentators
or preachers, however much they may differ on questions of theology, or
articles of faith, or rules of Church government, are unanimous upon the
extent of parental obligation.

The civil duties are important for the reason already assigned. Children
will be our successors in this arena, as we have succeeded the patriot
fathers who achieved our independence, and made us the people that we are.
The principles enunciated by every shot fired during the Revolutionary
war have descended to us, but we are only trustees for their safe
transmission to the next generation, and we shall be recreant to our duty,
false to the memory of our ancestors, and traitors to our country, if we
allow our children to assume the responsibilities that will naturally
devolve upon them without due preparation for the sacred trust.

Having thus briefly alluded to the duties of parents, it remains to give
some information as to the manner in which such obligations are performed,
selected from the returns received in the progress of this investigation.

L. M., a very well educated girl: "I was seduced at eighteen years of age,
and _forced_ to leave home to hide my disgrace." Admitting that this girl
had been led into an error, the plain duty of her parents, in every point
of view, was to endeavor to reform her instead of driving her from home.
Human nature, in its most favorable condition, is fallible; all are liable
to error; but as all hope for forgiveness, so should they forgive. This is
the doctrine of the sublime prayer taught by our Savior to his apostles;
this is the duty of humanity. "The bruised reed He will not break," is a
Divine promise from which poor finite man might draw a valuable lesson.

E. B.: "My parents wanted me to marry an old man, and I refused. I had a
very unhappy home afterward." This case was directly in conflict with the
dictates of nature. She had formed an attachment for a man who would, in
all human probability, have made her a good husband, and caused her to
remain a virtuous member of society; but her parents wanted her to marry
an old man, and, in consequence of refusal, treated her with unkindness.
She has now, poor girl, to answer for her sin of incontinence, but who can
tell what other offenses would have been laid to her charge had she
married as desired by her parents? How many awful deeds recorded in the
annals of criminal jurisprudence have been produced by ill-assorted
marriages! How many outrages, how much bloodshed, owe their origin to such
a cause! Parents who, for their own selfish purposes, would drive a
daughter into a marriage repugnant to her feelings, deserve the severest
condemnation. So far from performing their duty in the matter, they are
acting in diametrical opposition to it.

C. B.: "My stepmother ill-used me." The stepmother in this case stands in
the place of the natural parent. In assuming the duties, she assumes all
the responsibilities of the relation, and is equally guilty as if this
girl were her own child. Women's feelings, in a normal state, are
generally kind, gentle, and forgiving; but when they are perverted, she
becomes more inveterate than man. So it was in this instance.

E. G.: "My mother ill-treated me and drove me from home. My father was
very kind, but he died when I was seven years old." A similar case to the
preceding in the perversion of feminine feelings, coupled with the
melancholy fact that the girl's father, who had always used her kindly,
died when she was a child. It would be natural to conclude that all the
affections of a widow would concentrate upon her children, but the reverse
of this is too frequently found to be true, and as soon as the husband to
whom her vows were pledged is laid in the grave, and the children are
deprived of his protecting hand, her love is alienated from them. A
mother's duties to her offspring are increased by her husband's death, but
she neglects them, and does violence to the maternal instinct.

M. B.: "I support my mother." It may possibly be objected that this case
does not come within the scope of this section, as showing no positive
neglect of parental duty, but, by implication, it is decidedly entitled to
a place in the catalogue. It is, unfortunately for the sake of morality,
but one of many similar instances which have been encountered, and some of
which will be noticed in due course. The self-evident conclusion is, that
if this mother had properly trained her daughter in early life, she would
not now have to endure the agony arising from the knowledge that every
morsel of food she eats, every article of clothing she wears, is purchased
with the proceeds of her child's shame. It is difficult to imagine any
position more disgusting than this--any circumstance more horrible than
that of a mother quietly depending for existence upon the prostitution of
a daughter, with the certainty that the inevitable result of such a
vicious course of life will drive the child of her affection to a
premature grave and a dreadful eternity.

J. C.: "My father accused me of being a prostitute when I was innocent. He
would give me no clothes to wear. My mother was a confirmed drunkard, and
used to be away from home most of the time." Here we have a combination of
horrors scarcely equaled in the field of romance. The unjust accusations
of the father, and his conduct in not supplying his child with the actual
necessaries of life, joined with the drunkenness of the mother, present
such an accumulation of cruelty and vice that it would have been a miracle
had the girl remained virtuous. It is to be presumed that no one will
claim for this couple the performance of any one of the duties enjoined by
their position.

S. S.: "I had no work, and went home. My father was a drunkard, and
ill-treated me and the rest of the family." Here is a specimen of a
father's cruelty. His daughter is out of employment, and has no home but
with her parents, and he, maddened with liquor, abuses her for flying to
her natural protectors. Where was she to expect aid and comfort but from
the authors of her being, and how was such expectation realized? She was
forced to resort to prostitution as a means of living.

C. R.: "My parents are rich. They would not let me live at home, because I
had been seduced." In this case there was no excuse for parental
unkindness. Blessed with an ample supply of this world's treasures, they
could calmly see their daughter exposed to want and penury. Living in the
enjoyment of opulence themselves, they could doom her to earn a miserable
subsistence by a life of shame. Satisfied with their own lot, and
complacently surveying the comforts which surrounded them, they condemned
her to a course of infamy in which no enjoyment could be found to cheer
her path; where every day must add fresh tortures to her lot, every hour
sink her yet lower in the social scale. Why? Because an indiscretion or a
crime--call it which you please--had made her a fitting object for their
kindness; because her own act had placed her in a position where she felt
her disgrace, and asked their sympathy and aid to retrace her steps. Can
there be a more pitiable object than a woman who has sacrificed her virtue
to the importunity, the entreaties, or the vows of her lover, when she
reflects upon her conduct? The delirium of love is past, but the
overwhelming sense of shame is left; she feels that a momentary act has
blasted her future life; she knows that the world will condemn her, and
the only resource she has is an appeal to her parents. If they kindly take
her by the hand, in all probability the evil will extend no farther, and
she may regain her position in life. If they refuse their sympathy, they
practically drive her to a course of vice, for there is no other road open
to her. Who, then, is responsible for her after-career but those who have
the power to preserve her from farther guilt and shame?

J. A.: "I am the eldest of a large family. My father is a drunkard, and
would not support his children. I have supported my parents, brothers, and
sisters for the last five years." This is an example of an outrageous
social crime which can not be contemplated without horror; the parents of
a family, with their remaining children, relying for subsistence upon the
aid furnished from the sinful earnings of the first-born! In this instance
the economy of nature is reversed. The filial affection which leads a
child to support her aged and infirm parents can be understood and
appreciated, but it is impossible to reprobate too severely the conduct of
a man whose own actions have reduced him to poverty, and who then
encourages his daughter to lead a life of prostitution that he may revel
on money produced by a course of debauchery which he was mainly
instrumental in producing.

A. B.: "My lover seduced and diseased me while I was working in a factory.
I went home, and my parents turned me out." Neither loss of character nor
physical suffering were sufficient punishment for this poor girl, only
eighteen years of age; nor could the probability of a future moral life
induce her parents to pardon the first offense. They had sent her to work
amid associations which were almost certain to cause her ruin. This, of
itself, is a sufficient ground for their condemnation, for they were in
comfortable circumstances, and could not plead poverty as an excuse; and
when this ruin was accomplished, they added to their former crime by
refusing a shelter to the sufferer.

These cases are taken from actual facts. The words included in inverted
commas are, as nearly as possible, those used by the women when being
questioned. As to the truth of the statements, we hesitate not to believe
them _all_ to be substantially correct. They are not a fiftieth part of
the instances in which similar disclosures have been made, but they are
sufficient for the purpose of argument, and to prove that the assertions
made in other places rest upon a solid foundation, and are not mere
fancies of the brain. It would certainly be much more to the credit of
society if their authenticity were not so indisputable.

The foregoing examples strongly suggest and justify a farther
consideration of the duties of parents. While these include the obligation
to furnish a child with food and clothing, they do not stop at that point.
It would be erroneous, indeed, for any father to imagine he had fulfilled
all the requirements of his position when he gave a child enough to eat
and to wear. He would attend to the wants of his cattle in the same way,
but there is something more to be done in the case of his children. He
must so treat them as to induce, on their part, a sentiment of gratitude.
Children are proverbially keen-sighted, and they seem to have a natural
faculty for logic, so far as they themselves are concerned. They can very
soon discriminate whether a parent is doing barely just as much as the
laws of the country and the voice of public opinion require, or whether he
is acting toward them with true paternal affection. In the former case
they become selfish, and practice all their little arts to obtain as many
advantages that the law allows them as possible, without entertaining any
feelings of respect or affection toward their parents, because they know
that such obligations can not be evaded without censure. In the latter
case their gratitude and affection forms a return for the kindness
bestowed. They immediately perceive that they are loved, and, as a natural
consequence, endeavor to manifest love in return, by acting in a manner
most pleasing to their parents. By simply encouraging this sentiment,
children can be moulded much as the father wishes, whereas, by destroying
it, he loses one of the most effective aids to his government. There are
so many different ways by which this affection for children can be
manifested, and they are all so simple and so certainly effective, that it
is scarcely possible to conceive how any man or woman of the most ordinary
intelligence can overlook them.

In addition to providing for the personal wants of his family, their
education claims a large portion of the parents' care. Not only the mere
tuition imparted in schools, but a careful training at home, as
preliminary to their conflict with the world, is required. It is the
instruction and advice given in the quiet of the domestic circle that
exercises the most powerful influence, most effectually shapes the destiny
of the future man or woman. No person is justified in delaying the
performance of this duty. So soon as a child can talk and walk, so soon is
this guidance necessary. It would be an interesting and important matter
of investigation to ascertain, if possible, the time of life at which
children become influenced by the temptations which surround them. The
result would show a much earlier age than is generally supposed. A boy,
when playing with his companions, overhears an improper expression from
one of them. His mind retains it, and it may prove the germ from which
habits of profanity subsequently spring. A girl may notice an improper
action, which will rest upon her memory, and produce sad fruit hereafter.
Thus the education of children for the ordinary duties of life can not be
commenced too soon. If delayed, the probabilities are that, when you
attempt to cultivate the soil in after years, you will find it already
choked with weeds, which require more time and trouble to eradicate than
would the inculcation of proper principles in early life. A lady remarked
upon one occasion, in presence of an eminent preacher, that she thought
children should not be trained to any religious exercises until they had
arrived at an age when they could fully understand such subjects. The
reply of the aged minister is appropriate to the present subject. He said,
"Madam, if you do not implant good doctrines in your children's minds
before that time, the devil will fill them with mischievous ones."

A somewhat prevalent error in the training of children must not be passed
unnoticed, namely, excessive rigidity. This practice is common in many
well-meaning but unthinking families professing Christianity. Every thing
is conducted with as much mathematical precision as if they were
demonstrating a problem in Euclid. Such a system is open to very grave
objections, from the numerous cases in which it has proved prejudicial to
the child's best interests. It acts precisely like the spring of a watch,
which you can retain in a fixed position by a mechanical contrivance, but
which resumes its elasticity and power the moment the pressure is removed.
Children's minds are elastic also; you can confine them within any circle
you please by the exercise of parental authority, but in a large
proportion of cases the end sought to be attained is surely defeated. Many
justly blame this cause for the mishaps of their future lives. It presents
virtue and religion in a repulsive aspect, picturing them only as
connected with asceticism, not recognizing the beauty and happiness which
are their chief attractions. Thus is engendered in the minds of children
an intuitive dislike for what they are taught to consider as a bondage. It
is not uncommon to hear men describe the way in which their youthful
Sabbaths were spent, and attribute to the irksome monotony of that day's
discipline their subsequent distaste for even a few hours' confinement in
church. This strictness, like ambition, "overleaps itself," and
extinguishes the spirit it is designed to foster. The proper way to
educate children for lives of usefulness, honor, and happiness, the most
effective plan to reach the desired end, is to cultivate their affections
and reason, instead of repressing the one and fettering the other by
stringent applications of arbitrary rule.

But no man or woman can educate children properly unless their precepts
are confirmed by example. Talk to your son as long as you please upon the
advantages of temperance, and then let him see you in a state of
intoxication the next day, and all your labor will be fruitless. Enlarge,
in the presence of your daughter, upon the value of integrity, and then
allow her to hear you utter a falsehood, and she will contrast the theory
and practice, and conclude that the former is worthless. Parents must
educate themselves before they can hope to instruct their children, and
must lead a life in conformity with the principles they teach, if they
expect any beneficial results from their endeavors.

Before leaving this part of the subject another matter may be mentioned,
namely, the necessity of winning the confidence of children. Their hearts
pine for sympathy. If they are in trouble, encourage them to reveal their
perplexities to you; sigh with them when they are sad, and rejoice with
them when they are happy. A girl who has been in the habit of imparting
all her childish sorrows to her mother, and has there found a heart which
would beat in unison with her own, will not withhold her confidence as she
grows in years. Remember that children, while a blessing to their parents,
are also a responsibility. You have the power to train them for good or
evil; you can win their trust, or inspire them with distrust; you can make
them useful members of society, or render them nuisances to the community;
to you their destiny is confided to a great extent, and from you will be
required an account of the stewardship.

The length to which these observations have been extended can be justified
by the importance of the subject, and the conviction that a more careful
fulfillment of parental duties would go very far toward diminishing
prostitution. Every man must admit it to be his duty to aid in effecting
this desirable consummation; and while it would be Utopian to imagine that
the vice can be eradicated by family influences, it is reasonable to
conclude that its extent may be materially curtailed.

Great as are the duties and responsibilities of a father, they are equaled
by those devolving upon a husband. He has to provide for the welfare of
his wife besides caring for the interests of his children. When he marries
he vows to remain faithful to the woman of his choice, to "love, honor,
and cherish her" so long as they both shall live. This is an implied oath,
if not audibly expressed in all circumstances, and any violation of it is
neither more nor less than perjury. Of course, the obligation is a mutual
one; the wife is bound by the same ties, and in as stringent a form as the
husband. It can not be said that every case of prostitution in a married
woman is the result of her husband's misconduct, but it is notorious that
many women are induced or compelled by such misconduct to abandon a life
of virtue. All married prostitutes can not be exonerated from the charge
of guilt, yet the facts which will be hereafter quoted prove that many
were driven to a life of shame by those who had solemnly sworn to protect
and cherish them.

The violation of any known duty is a positive crime against society, but
it becomes increased in magnitude when it involves more than one person in
the offense. It is then the cause of a second transgression, and sophistry
would vainly attempt to prove that the man who committed the first and
caused the commission of the second offense was not morally responsible
for both. Descending from generalities, it may be truly asserted that the
man whose conduct to his wife is such as to lead her to vicious practices
is guilty in both respects. Here are some few cases in point.

C. C.: "My husband deserted me and four children. I had no means to live."
In this case the husband violated the law of God in forcibly rending the
matrimonial bond, and violated the laws of his country by leaving his wife
and children as burdens on society. For the former of these offenses he
must answer at the bar of Infinite Justice; for the latter he is liable to
punishment in this world. "Then why not punish him?" asks some one. For
the very simple reason that he could not be found. In this day the law
does not assume the latitude claimed by the Spanish Inquisition, and
sentence a man to punishment without giving him an opportunity to plead
his cause. A woman in a state of destitution, with four hungry children
looking to her for bread, has neither time nor means to pursue a
delinquent husband. Her present necessities require her immediate
attention, and so he escapes the penalty the laws have awarded, and can
live (although it may be with an uneasy conscience) in some other place,
and probably repeat there the iniquities he has practiced here. The custom
of deserting wives and children would receive a severe check were it
possible in every instance to enforce the legal provisions respecting
abandonment.

J. S.: "My husband committed adultery. I caught him with another woman,
and then he left me." This individual's turpitude was enhanced by his
boldness. He seems to have recklessly defied all consequences, to have
been entirely callous to any sense of shame, and, when detected in his
adulterous intercourse, he adds desertion to his offense. He regarded not
the feelings of her whom in early life he had won to his side by vows of
affection; he outraged the laws of decency, and trampled upon the statutes
of his country. His wife's agony may be conceived, although words would be
faint to express it, and the mental sufferings she must have endured
before she abandoned herself to indiscriminate prostitution as a means of
living will not aggravate her offense.

A. G.: "My husband eloped with another woman. I support the child." Here
the husband was morally as guilty as in the previous case, but without the
disgusting bravado which characterized that. He had, however, another
claim which should have secured his fidelity, namely, an infant child; but
this tie was powerless to restrain him. Fascinated by the charms of
another, forgetting all the rights of his wife, all the obligations of
paternity, and all the requirements of morality, he basely abandoned those
dependent on him, and forced the wife, whose virtue he was bound to
protect, into a career of vice to support his child.

A. B.: "My husband accused me of infidelity, which was not true. I only
lived with him five months. I was pregnant by him, and after my child was
born I went on the town to support it." The first idea derived from this
statement would be that five months of matrimonial life had been
sufficient to change this husband from a devoted lover to a revengeful
tyrant, who would not scruple to resort to a groundless accusation to
effect his purpose. In this short space of time he conveniently forgot the
promises he had made, repudiated the bonds in which his own act had placed
him, and, to accomplish a separation from his wife, did not hesitate to
bear false witness against her, placing her in a position from which she
could extricate herself only by performing a logical impossibility,
namely, by proving a negative. Nor could the probable destiny of his
unborn child influence his determination. It mattered not to him whether
the infant first saw the light in a den of infamy, nor whether his
unkindness killed it before it was born, so that he could desert his wife.
Neither did it make any difference to him whether she starved to death or
maintained her existence by the most loathsome means. He was satiated with
possession, and neither the voice of nature nor the dictates of conscience
could arrest his purpose. The result was precisely what might have been
expected: she became a prostitute rather than starve and let her child
starve.

R. B.: "My husband brought me here (a house of ill fame). I did not know
what kind of a place it was. He lives with me, and I follow prostitution."
Another variety of unnatural conduct. The wife in this case was a very
good-looking young woman, not exceeding eighteen years of age; the husband
held a respectable and well-paid employment, and was in possession of
ample means to support her. By false representations he induced her,
within three months after marriage, to board in a fashionable house of
prostitution. She soon discovered its character, but eventually succumbed
to his orders, and became guilty. He resides with her, and is supported by
her. What language can be used adequately to denounce such a cold-blooded
piece of treachery on the part of a wretch claiming to be human?

L. W.: "I came to this city, from Illinois, with my husband. When we got
here he deserted me. I have two children dependent on me." This man
brought his wife from a distant state to a strange city, where she had no
friends nor relatives to advise and assist her, and there abandoned her,
with two helpless children, to the mercy of the world. Had he left her
where she had been living previously, it is possible she might have found
sufficient friends to assist her until she was able to support herself;
but with a refinement of cruelty he transferred her to a place where she
was unknown, and then effected his escape. The entire circumstances favor
the supposed existence of a determination to abandon her as soon as they
arrived in New York, where he could act thus with more safety than in her
native place.

C. H.: "I was married when I was seventeen years old, and have had three
children. The two boys are living now; the girl is dead. My oldest boy is
nearly five years old, and the other one is eighteen months. My husband is
a sailor. We lived very comfortably till my last child was born, and then
he began to drink very hard, and did not support me, and I have not seen
him or heard any thing about him for six months. After he left me I tried
to keep my children by washing or going out to day's work, but I could not
earn enough. I never could earn more than two or three dollars a week when
I had work, which was not always. My father and mother died when I was a
child. I had nobody to help me, and could not support my children, so I
came to this place. My boys are now living in the city, and I support
them with what I earn by prostitution. It was only to keep them that I
came here." These were the words used by an honest, sorrowful looking
woman encountered, in the course of this investigation, in the fourth
police district of the city. No reasonable doubt can be entertained of the
truth of the story; the manner in which she told it plainly indicated that
she was narrating facts. Some inquiries were made respecting her of the
keeper of the house, and he (for it was a man) stated that he knew her
story to be correct. He had at first employed her as a servant because he
wished to help her, but the wages he could pay were insufficient to
support her children, and she eventually prostituted herself because she
could earn more at this horrible calling, and was thus enabled to
discharge her maternal duty. But at what a sacrifice was this obtained! In
order to feed her helpless offspring she was forced to yield her honor; to
prevent them suffering from the pains of hunger, she voluntarily chose to
endure the pangs of a guilty conscience; to prolong their lives she
periled her own. And at the time when this alternative was forced upon
her, the husband was lavishing his money for intoxicating liquor. If she
sinned--and this fact can not be denied, however charity may view it--it
was the non-performance of his duty that urged, nay, positively forced her
to sin. She must endure the punishment of her offenses, but, after reading
her simple, heart-rending statement, let casuists decide what amount of
condemnation will rest upon the man whose desertion compelled her to
violate the law of chastity in order to support his children.

E. W.: "My husband had another wife when I married him. I left him when I
found this out. I was pregnant by him, and had no other way to live than
by prostitution." In point of law, this is not a married woman, the
existence of the former wife rendering the second union invalid; but this
is no excuse for the man's conduct; in fact, it materially aggravates his
guilt. In the first place, he deserts a woman whom he was legally bound to
support, leaving her to battle her way through life, to resist the
temptations which would be sure to assail her, careless whether she lived
or died, and heedless whether she retained her character or sank into
vice; and then, with the greatest _nonchalance_, goes through the ceremony
of marriage with another woman. It is easy to imagine the feelings of the
latter when she discovered the fraud which had been practiced to secure
her hand, and the indignation which caused her to leave him immediately,
notwithstanding her condition; nor will it require much stretch of fancy
to picture the mental suffering she endured, her agony during the hour of
nature's trial, before she consented to earn a precarious living as a
prostitute. Such cases are of frequent occurrence, and even the
probability of a criminal indictment is insufficient to deter some men. No
punishment could be too severe for such offenses, even considering them
without any reference to this particular instance, because they pervert
one of our most solemn contracts, and destroy all confidence in the
security of the marriage tie.

C. H.: "My husband was a drunkard, and beat me." How much of misery and
crime is contained in these few words! Either of the vices practiced by
this fellow is enough to make a woman wretched; the combination is
sufficient to drive her mad. She would doubtless sit and ponder during the
long and weary night hours when he was carousing with his drunken
companions, and would contrast her present wretched state with the
happiness of early days. Her thoughts would revert to the time he won her
love, to the day on which he brought her to his home a bride, and then she
would cast her eyes around the room, now robbed of almost every thing
portable to supply his insane appetite for liquor, and a heavy sigh would
burst from her heart. But still she would continue her sad reminiscences,
and think of the kindness he displayed then, and of his brutal ferocity
now--would remember his considerate tenderness and compare it with his
maniac fury. And then something would whisper to her, "Why do you endure
it?" and her woman's nature would be aroused, resistance would take the
place of submission, and she would leave her home and him who had
desecrated it, and immolate herself upon the altar of vice, a victim to
her husband's drunkenness and cruelty.

C. N.: "My husband left me because I was sickly and could not do hard
work." This woman's husband may be pictured as a lazy, worthless fellow;
probably one who married not to secure a helpmate and a partner, but to
obtain a slave. Her health would not allow her to perform as much drudgery
as he expected; the speculation did not turn out as well as he had
anticipated, and he left her destitute, to starve or sin, as she thought
fit.

P. T.: "My husband was intemperate, and turned out to be a thief. He was
sent to prison." Still another victim of a drunken husband, but he carried
his vicious habits to a point where the laws of his country would reach
him. Had he merely deserted his wife, nobody would have thought it his
business to arrest him, but he stole some person's property, and all the
enginery of the law was forthwith arrayed against him. In the one
instance, his conduct condemns his wife to shame in this world and perhaps
perdition in the next, and the good-tempered public looks quietly on and
says nothing. In the other case, he defrauds his neighbor of some dollars
and cents, and the indignant community demands his condign punishment!
What conclusion can be drawn from these facts? Honor, character, and life
are ruined, and the offender escapes: money is stolen, and he is punished!
Is money more valuable than the character and life of woman?

It requires no argument to prove that when the care of a child is assumed
by its relatives, the parental obligations also devolve upon them; nor can
there be any difference of opinion as to the duty of relations to assist,
to the utmost of their power, any children whom death or other
circumstances may have deprived of their natural protectors. Were not
these principles generally recognized, all large cities would be crowded
with destitute orphans. The beneficial results often arising from such
guardianships argue very strongly in their favor; but still the imperative
duty is frequently evaded, or acknowledged and made the opportunity for an
exhibition of tyranny which naturally tends to the encouragement of vice.
Take the following cases in illustration:

J. F.: "I support my aunt." In this case the duties of the aunt were not
merely evaded, but she adds to her neglect a positive approval of the
girl's abandoned life, by voluntarily receiving a portion of her earnings.
What species of education she bestowed upon her niece may be inferred from
its results. Such disclosures are almost too disgusting to be criticised.

S. B.: "My parents were dead. I came to this country with an uncle and
aunt, who ill-used me from the time I landed till I ran away." The death
of her parents should have been a passport to the affection of the
relatives to whose charge she was intrusted, but, instead of producing
such an effect, they brought her to a strange land, and practiced a
succession of cruelties, until she could endure them no longer. It is more
than probable that this was a plan intended to drive her from their home.
They neither acknowledged their duty to supply the places of the father
and mother she had lost, nor did they recognize the force of relationship,
which, at least, should have protected her from positive unkindness. Nor
did they possess any of those feelings of sympathy which every
well-disposed person must entertain toward an orphan. They could not have
been unaware of the probability of her falling into bad company and
vicious habits if she left their care, but no regard for her happiness or
character seems to have entered into their calculations, which may have
been somewhat in this form: She is an expense to us, so we will contrive
to drive her away; if she can make her living honestly, so much the
better; if she turns out a prostitute, that is her own concern. It was not
solely "_her own concern_," but it involved them also in its consequences,
through their agency in its accomplishment, and, morally speaking, they
are as liable for her ruin as if they had actually, and not indirectly,
caused it.

The following cases closely resemble each other, and are presented in
conjunction:

A. D.: "My parents were dead. I lived with my uncle, who treated me very
unkindly."

L. S.: "My parents died when I was young. I lived with an uncle and aunt,
who used me ill." The deprivation of each of these unfortunate women in
the death of their parents, a loss almost incalculable in its results,
placed them under the guardianship of those who alike neglected their
duties and rendered the trust a medium for unkindness to the orphans. It
seems surprising that the memory of a deceased brother or sister can not
secure even ordinary care for their children. It can not be expected that
the surviving relatives would exhibit the same amount of affection as
would have been shown by the parents, but disappointment must be
experienced if they make no pretensions to kindness. The dictates of
nature are violated when harshness takes the place of sympathy, and
destitution is considered a sufficient warrant for deliberate and
continuous ill-treatment. Such conduct renders a girl reckless and
misanthropic, and will drive her to seek, in unhallowed love, the
affection her guardians have refused.

L. M.: "I was taken by my sister-in-law to a house of prostitution, and
there violated." It is not often such a case of barbarity is found in
civilized life, nor indeed in less polished communities, as this forcible
violation of a young girl through the aid and connivance of her
sister-in-law. The mind recoils, with disgust, from the instances of rape
so frequently occurring, but this case is so peculiarly aggravated that it
can not be contemplated without a feeling of shame for the depravity of
human nature. In the one case, the brutal passions of a man are displayed
in a brutal manner; in the other, the same cause exists to a similar
extent, coupled with the blackest perfidy of a female relative. To such a
shameless violation of the laws of consanguinity, such an outrageous
conspiracy between a vile man and a monster of a woman, the sister must
have been induced to lend her aid by some means best known to herself. It
is quite impossible to imagine she possessed a single spark of virtue; on
the contrary, she must have sunk, long before this occurrence, to the
lowest depths of vice, or she never would have been an instrument in such
an infernal scheme. The consideration she received is, of course, known
only to the parties themselves, but it would give a farther insight to her
character if the reader could be informed of the estimate set by a
sister-in-law upon an orphan's virtue. The result of the outrage is, no
doubt, exactly what the criminals anticipated. The victim knew that her
character was ruined, that she had no alternative but prostitution, and,
while the guilty pair who literally forced her to sin can congratulate
each other on the success of their machinations, she must endure the
penalty in a life of crime and misery.

G. H.: "I was detected and exposed by my brother." This girl, who had
yielded to the entreaties of a man whom "she loved, not wisely, but too
well," may assign her subsequent career of vice to the conduct of her
brother. He must have been sadly deficient in all kindly feeling thus to
parade his sister's dishonor, and also possessed of a very limited
knowledge of human nature, or a large amount of malevolence. It can
scarcely be imagined that he acted from ignorance, as he must have been
certain that such an exposure would most probably induce his sister to
continue an intercourse which was publicly known, and therefore could not
augment her disgrace; nor can it be conceived that a malicious desire to
blast her character governed his conduct. But, whatever his motive, the
result was the same. She was forced to a life of prostitution, from which
she might have been rescued had kind and affectionate means been employed,
instead of the cruel and heedless course which was adopted.

C. W.: "My parents died when I was young. I was brought up by relatives
who went to California when I was sixteen years old, and left me
destitute. I had no trade." There is no allegation that this girl's
relatives used her unkindly during the time she lived with them, but they
deserted her, in a helpless condition, at the very time when she most
needed their guardianship. They could not have been ignorant of the many
temptations to which a young woman, without protectors or means of
livelihood, is exposed in New York, and yet they removed to a distance,
and left her to meet these trials alone. A girl whom they had reared from
infancy, and for whom they must have entertained considerable affection,
they tamely abandoned to an almost certain fate far worse than death. To
say the least, it was a most inconsiderate step, and has resulted very
disastrously.

E. R.: "My husband deserted me to live with another woman; my parents were
dead; I went to my brother's house, and he turned me out." Fraternal
unkindness farther exemplified! An orphan sister, deserted by her husband,
asked from her brother the shelter of his roof, and he drove her from the
house! Such conduct would have been barbarous if even a stranger had made
the appeal; in the present instance, it exhibits a cruelty which can not
be too severely reprobated.

C. B.: "My parents were dead. I was out of place. I had no relations but
an uncle, who would not give me any shelter unless I paid him for it. I
went on the town to get money to pay for my lodgings." This uncle's name
ought to be handed down to posterity as a synonym of hard-hearted
selfishness, and as indicating another manner in which money can be made.
His miserly propensities must have been very strongly developed when he
refused a shelter to his destitute niece unless she paid for it. It
certainly did not matter to him how or where she obtained the means, and
doubtless his equanimity was not disturbed when he ascertained that the
money she paid him was the price of her shame. The coin was as bright in
his hand, as useful to him to hoard or to spend, as if it had been her
honest earning. Probably he would have been excessively annoyed (it is the
characteristic of such men) if any plain-spoken person had told him that
he was the means of making this girl a prostitute; but can it be denied
that such was the fact, when he received some portion of the money earned
by his niece's prostitution before he would allow her to sleep in his
house?

L. S.: "My sister ill-treated me because I had no work." Here a sister
seems to have regarded money as the chief good. The applicant was out of
employment, in itself enough to enlist one's sympathies; she was in want,
which should have been an additional reason for kindness; and yet, for
these causes, a sister ill-treated her.

In thus endeavoring to show the several duties of parents, husbands, and
relatives to those dependent females who are liable to be exposed at any
moment to temptations leading from the path of virtue, cases have been
exhibited in which a departure from the universally recognized obligations
of these classes has added recruits to the ranks of prostitution. In these
remarks, the endeavor has been to advance nothing resting on a theory; to
advocate nothing unless supported by facts or acknowledged by common
sense; to exonerate no one from blame when circumstances demanded a
censure, and to condemn none in favor of whom there could be an existing
doubt.

The recorded extracts, giving an insight beyond the scene of public view,
exhibiting the secret machinery of the family circle, can not be
contemplated without a mingled feeling of sorrow and shame. Sorrow, that
so many females who might have been useful members of society have been
forced into the ranks of sin; and shame, that the instruments in these
proceedings were those who should have exerted every power to prevent such
a result.

Cases have now been presented to the reader where a sorrowing,
heart-broken girl has been denied the opportunity of repentance, and
driven from a father's home; where another has been expelled from the
family circle because she would not consent to an ill-assorted marriage;
where stepfathers and stepmothers have violated their duties, and despised
the obligations they had voluntarily assumed; where a mother's
ill-treatment has driven her daughter to ruin; where parents were living
and reveling upon the wages of their children's dishonor; where false
accusations and unkind treatment were resorted to, and, from their natural
effects, drove a girl from home and virtue; where drunkenness and
debauchery made home a hell upon earth; where parents in affluent
circumstances have driven a child from their home; where prostitution was
willingly embraced as an escape from parental tyranny.

Again: Instances have been cited where husbands have deserted their wives
and children; where the marital vow has been broken in the most glaring
manner, and the crime followed by deliberate abandonment; where the wife's
affections have been slighted, and her love relinquished for the purchased
caresses of another woman; where a charge of infidelity has been made
against a wife without cause; where a husband has deliberately brought his
wife to a house of prostitution, and is now leading an idle, worthless
life upon her earnings; where another husband brought his wife to a
strange city in order to desert her and her children; where the solemn
contract of marriage has been perverted; where a drunken husband has
raised his hand against the woman he had sworn to protect; where a wife's
sickness and incapacity for labor was made a reason for her husband's
desertion; where a man's insane thirst for intoxicating liquor has forced
a woman to prostitution for a maintenance; where the husband has been
committed to prison for theft.

Farther: Cases have been given where an aunt lives upon the proceeds of a
niece's prostitution; where uncles and aunts have systematically ill-used
their orphan relatives; where a sister-in-law procured and assisted at the
violation of a child; where a brother's unkindness forced his sister to
continue a life of shame; where relatives to whom an orphan child was
intrusted abandoned her when she most needed their care; where a brother
refused an asylum to a deserted and suffering sister; where an uncle
forced a girl to prostitute herself for money to pay him for her lodgings.

As already stated, these cases are all facts, collected in the course of
this investigation, and are believed to be substantially correct. With
such disclosures as these, can any one be surprised at the continued
spread of prostitution? The family circle is one of the sources whence it
emanates; so is the matrimonial bond; and so are the different branches of
consanguinity. When fathers, husbands, and relatives thus forget their
duties, and lend their influence to swell the tide of vice, it is no
matter of surprise that strangers should be found ready and eager to
contribute their share to the polluted current.

But the evil is not incurable, if public opinion can be enlisted on the
side of public morals, and parents are satisfied, by unmistakable
demonstrations, that the voice of an indignant people will be raised
against them if practices similar to those narrated continue to occur.
Husbands, too, must be convinced that any infraction of their marriage
vows will expose them to popular odium; and if they have contracted an
ill-assorted, hasty alliance, the responsibility must be borne by
themselves. The contracts they voluntarily made must be fulfilled.
Relatives also must be warned that the performance of their duties will be
rigidly required. There is no deficiency of legislation on this subject;
all that is wanted is determination to enforce existing laws; and when
this is done, some of the main causes of prostitution will be removed.

To resume the analysis of the table of replies: Seventy-one women were
persuaded by prostitutes to embrace a life of depravity. One of the most
common modes by which this end is accomplished is to inveigle a girl into
some house of prostitution as a servant, and this is frequently done
through the medium of an intelligence office.

Most of the inhabitants of New York are acquainted with the arrangements
and routine of business in those offices, but they may be described as a
matter of information to others. Imagine a large room, generally a
basement, in some leading thoroughfare. Upon entering from the street you
will observe two doors, marked respectively "ENTRANCE FOR EMPLOYERS" and
"ENTRANCE FOR SERVANTS." Passing through the first, you approach a desk,
where the proprietor or his clerk is seated with his register books before
him. You make known your wish to engage a servant, specifying her duties
and the wages you are willing to pay. This is registered with your name
and address, the fee is paid, and you are invited to walk into the other
department, and ascertain whether any of the throng who are waiting there
will suit your purpose. If successful in the search, it is merely
necessary to inform the book-keeper that you are suited, and to take your
servant home with you; but if you do not succeed, a woman will be sent to
the registered address, and the office-keeper will continue to send until
you are satisfied.

Servants who wish to obtain situations register their wants and pay a fee.
If there are no places likely to suit them on the list of employers, they
have permission to remain in the waiting-room until an applicant appears.
In these waiting-rooms may be found a crowd of expectants varying from
twenty to one hundred, according to the business transacted by the office.

In theory this arrangement is a very good one; in practice it is
frequently abused. A respectable housekeeper who wishes to engage a
servant will find but little trouble in doing so, and any person wishing
to make the office a medium for securing females for improper purposes
will seldom be disappointed. It is rarely that the proprietors notice the
arrangements made; they merely act as brokers, and make known the wants of
each party, and do not interfere with the character of either unless it is
so notoriously bad as to force them to notice it for their own sake. So
long as the employer and servant agree, the office-keeper is contented.

The following facts illustrate the manner in which young women are
sometimes entrapped. A respectably-dressed man went into an intelligence
office, and represented himself as a storekeeper residing some twenty
miles from New York. He wished to hire a girl as seamstress and
chambermaid, who must go home with him the same afternoon. Glancing around
the waiting-room, he soon saw one of sufficiently attractive appearance,
to whom he made the proposition. The wages he offered were liberal, the
work was described as light, and the woman made an arrangement to
accompany him forthwith. He told her that he had a little business to
transact before he could leave the city, but that she could wait for him
at his sister's until the cars were ready to start. She had but slight
knowledge of the temptations of New York, and went with him to a brothel,
the keeper of which he stated to be his sister. Here she remained for some
hours waiting his return. The "sister" expressed her surprise at his
absence, but concluded that his business had detained him, and, with
apparently a kindly feeling, told the girl that she would be welcome to
sleep there that night. Her suspicions were lulled by the seeming
respectability of the persons, and she remained. In the course of the
evening the character of the house became evident, and then the
proprietress offered to engage her as a servant, solemnly promising that
she should not be exposed to any insult. Almost a total stranger in the
city, and destitute of money, she consented. A very few days in such a
hot-bed of vice was sufficient to deaden her sense of right and wrong, and
within a fortnight she was enrolled as a prostitute.

Keepers of houses sometimes visit these offices themselves, but generally
some unknown agent is employed, or, at times, one of the prostitutes is
plainly dressed, and sent to register her name as wishing a situation, so
as to be able to obtain admission to the waiting-room. There she enters
into conversation with the other women, whom she uses all the art she
possesses to induce to visit her employer, and very frequently with the
same result as in the case just narrated.

There exists among many prostitutes a fiendish desire to reduce the
virtuous of their own sex to a similar degradation with themselves. Since
they can not elevate their own characters, they strive to debase those of
others. To accomplish this, they spare neither trouble nor
misrepresentation. One system in which they are commonly employed may be
noted, although the mode is similar to the case of the servant-girl just
given. A man had resolved to ruin a woman who placed implicit confidence
in his sincerity, and admitted that she loved him. He found that her
modesty and good sense were proof against his persuasive powers, and he
finally resorted to stratagem, and invited her to walk with him to visit
some relations. He took her to a brothel, introduced its keeper (who had
already been instructed in her part) as his aunt, and one or two of the
inmates represented her daughters. The deception was maintained for a
time; family matters were discussed, and refreshments introduced. A glass
of drugged wine was handed to the victim, and as soon as its effects were
visible the villainous deed was effected. Such machinations as this show
that not only are many of these prostitutes dangerous to society from
their open and avowed life of crime, but also from the influences they
exert to deceive the honest of their own sex.

Allusion has been already made to the numerous dangers which surround
young women during their passage to this country on crowded emigrant
ships, or after their arrival in the equally crowded emigrant
boarding-houses, and it is needless to repeat them in this section; but an
incomplete statement of the causes of prostitution would be presented if
the injurious effects of some of our fashionable boarding-schools were
suffered to pass without notice. Startling as such an assertion may
appear, it is no more strange than true. A system of education, the
prominent design of which is to impart a knowledge of the (so-called)
modern accomplishments to the almost total exclusion of moral training; to
make the pupils present the most dazzling appearance in society,
regardless of their real interests and duties, does, in some cases, lead
to unhappy results. Filial affection, or early training, or innate virtue,
enable many to overcome these temptations, but others succumb to them. One
case, in particular, it is desirable to record, although several of a
similar nature were met with.

A girl, eighteen years of age, born in Louisiana, of highly respectable
parents, was induced to elope from a boarding-school in the vicinity of
New Orleans with a man who accorded with her romantic ideal of a lover. No
marriage vows ever passed between them; she trusted him as the heroine of
a modern novel would have done, and he deceived her, as all modern rakes
deceive their victims. She lived with him for a considerable time. When he
deserted her, she was left almost destitute. She was afraid to return to
her parents, knowing that they were acquainted with the life she had been
leading, and she had no other means of support than open and avowed
prostitution. These features of her history should present a warning to
both parents and daughters of the dangers attending a superficial and
improper system of education.

Of course it must not be inferred that all schools are open to such
objections. In the numerous institutions of the kind scattered throughout
the land, the majority are worthy of every confidence. Instances like this
are probably exceptions to the rule, but still, what has been pernicious
in one case may be in another; and the education of young women, forming,
as it does, their character for life, should be conducted, as far as
possible, so as to secure their safety, honor, and usefulness. In a
subsequent chapter, this superficial education will be farther noticed.

One of the _real_ improvements of modern times is the introduction of
physiology as a branch of education in our schools. Yet it is to be
regretted that the knowledge communicated to youth upon a subject so
important is still extremely limited. Indeed, such is the present state of
public opinion, that any text-book or teacher that should impart thorough
instruction in regard to all the organs and functions of the human body,
would be considered entirely unfit for use or duty. Notwithstanding this,
the young of both sexes do become informed upon the subjects of marriage,
procreation, and maternity. And how? By force of natural curiosity and
injurious association. It is the imperative duty of parents to rightly
inform their children concerning the things which they must inevitably
know. In consequence of their neglect of this duty, both boys and girls
are left to find out all they can about the mysteries of their being from
ignorant servants or corrupt companions. Let fathers teach their sons, and
mothers their daughters, at the earliest practicable age, all that their
future well-being makes it necessary for them to know. The information
thus acquired will be invested with a sacredness and delicacy entirely
wanting when obtained from unreliable and pernicious sources.

Thus would many of the injurious influences incident to the present
secrecy upon such subjects be avoided. Of the evil habits and practices
common among youth, physicians are well cognizant, and many a parent has
had to mourn their sad results in the premature death or dethroned reason
of children who, with proper physical training, might have been their
pride and joy.

Next to the responsibility of parents in this matter is that of teachers,
who, with all judiciousness and delicacy, should supply the deficiencies
of ignorant or incapable parents in the physiological education of all
committed to their care.

And here a word in regard to the bad effects of, so called, classical
studies. Are they not oftentimes acquired at the risk of outraged delicacy
or undermined moral principles? Mythology, in particular, introduces our
youth to courtesans who are described as goddesses, and goddesses who are
but courtesans in disguise. Poetry and history as frequently have for
their themes the ecstasies of illicit love as the innocent joys of pure
affection. Shall these branches of study be totally ignored? By no means;
but let their harmless flowers and wholesome fruit alone be culled for
youthful minds, to the utter exclusion of all poisonous ones, however
beautiful.

This lack of information has resulted in another evil in the impetus it
has given to the sale of obscene books and prints. Recent legal
proceedings have checked this nefarious trade, but it still exists. Boys
and young men may be found loitering at all hours round hotels, steam-boat
docks, rail-road depôts, and other public places, ostensibly selling
newspapers or pamphlets, but secretly offering vile, lecherous
publications to those who are likely to be customers. They generally
select young and inexperienced persons for two reasons. In the first
place, these are the most probable purchasers, and will submit to the most
extortion; and, in the second, they can be more easily imposed upon. The
venders have a trick which they frequently perform, and which can scarcely
be regretted. In a small bound volume they insert about half a dozen
highly-colored obscene plates, which are cut to fit the size of the
printed page. Having fixed upon a victim, they cautiously draw his
attention to the pictures by rapidly turning over the leaves, but do not
allow him to take the book into his hands, although they give him a good
opportunity to note its binding. He never dreams that the plates are
loose, and feels sure that in buying the book he buys the pictures also.
When the price is agreed upon, the salesman hints that, as he is watched,
the customer had better turn his back for a moment while taking the money
from his pocket-book, and in this interval he slips the plates from
between the leaves and conceals them. The next moment the parties are
again face to face, the price is handed over, and the book he had seen
before is handed to the purchaser under a renewed caution, and is
carefully pocketed. The book-seller leaves, and at the first opportunity
the prize is covertly drawn forth to be examined more minutely, and the
unwary one finds that he has paid several dollars for some few printed
pages, without pictures, which would have been dear at as many cents.

Despite all precautions, there is every reason to believe that the
manufacture of these obscene books is largely carried on in this city. It
is needless to remind any resident of the large seizures made in New York
during the last two years, or to particularize the stock condemned. More
caution is observed now, and the post-office is made the vehicle for
distribution. Circulars are issued which describe the publications and
their prices, modes of transmitting money are indicated, and the
advertiser plainly says that he will not allow any personal interviews on
account of the dangers which surround the traffic. By using an indefinite
number of _aliases_, and often changing the address to which letters are
sent, he succeeds in eluding the vigilance of the police, and secures many
remittances.

Not less dangerous than the directly obscene publications is a class of
voluptuous novels which is rapidly circulating. Some are translations from
the French; but one man, now living in England, has written and published
more disgustingly minute works, under the guise of honest fiction, than
ever emanated from the Parisian presses. He writes in a strain eminently
calculated to excite the passions, but so carefully guarded as to avoid
absolute obscenity, and embellishes his works with wood-cuts which
approach lasciviousness as nearly as possible without being indictable. It
is to be regretted that publishers have been found, in this and other
cities, who are willing to use their imprints on the title-pages of his
trash, and sell works which can not but be productive of the worst
consequences. Those who have seen much of the cheap pamphlets, or
"yellow-covered" literature offered in New York, will have no difficulty
in recalling the name of the author alluded to, and those who are ignorant
of it would only be injured by its disclosure. There can be but one
opinion as to the share obscene and voluptuous books have in ruining the
character of the young, and they may justly be considered as causes,
indirect it may be, of prostitution.

Some of the sources of prostitution have been thus examined. To expose
them all would require a volume; but it is hoped that sufficient has been
developed to induce observation and inquiry, and prompt action in the
premises.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

NEW YORK.--STATISTICS.

Means of Support.--Occupation.--Treatment of Domestics.--
Needlewomen.--Weekly Earnings.--Female Labor in France.--
Competition.--Opportunity for Employment in the Country.--Effects of
Female Occupations.--Temptations of Seamstresses.--Indiscriminate
Employment of both Sexes in Shops.--Factory Life.--Business of the
Fathers of Prostitutes.--Mothers' Business.--Assistance to Parents.--
Death of Parents.--Intoxication.--Drinking Habits of Prostitutes.--
Delirium Tremens.--Liquor Sold in Houses of Prostitution.--Parental
Influences.--Religion of Parents and Prostitutes.--Amiable Feelings.--
Kindness and Fidelity to each other.

_Question._ IS PROSTITUTION YOUR ONLY MEANS OF SUPPORT?

Resources. Numbers.
Dependent solely upon prostitution 1698
Have other means of support 302
----
Total 2000

No surprise will be excited by the fact indicated above, that seventeen of
every twenty women examined in New York reply to this question in the
affirmative, for it is almost impossible to conceive that any honest
occupation can be associated with vice of such character. The small
minority who have other means consists principally of women who work at
their trades or occupations at intervals, or who receive some slight
payment for assisting in the ordinary work, or for sewing, in the houses
of ill fame where they reside. It is difficult to believe women working as
domestics in brothels are virtuous themselves; on the contrary, it is a
well-known fact that they are, in every sense of the word, prostitutes;
the only difference being that they work a portion of the time, while the
"boarders" do not work at all.

Those who follow an employment at intervals are mostly women whose trades
are uncertain, and who are liable at certain seasons of the year to be
without employment. Then real necessity forces them on the town until a
return of business provides them with work. They are more to be pitied
than blamed.

There is another class not entirely dependent on prostitution. It consists
mostly of German girls, who receive from five to six dollars per month as
dancers in the public ball-rooms. In the first ward of New York there are
several of these establishments, and the Captain of Police in that
district has attached some interesting memoranda to his returns, from
which is gleaned the following information respecting these places and
their inhabitants. It is submitted to the reader, in order that he may
draw his own conclusions as to the virtue of the dancers.

"These dance-houses are generally kept by Germans, who consider dancing a
proper and legitimate business. They are in general very quiet. The girls
employed to dance do not consider themselves prostitutes, because the
proprietors will not allow them to be known as such. Each girl receives
monthly from five to six dollars and her board, and almost every one of
them hires a room in the neighborhood for the purpose of prostitution. I
have classed them all as prostitutes, because, in addition to the previous
fact, I know that the majority of them have lived as such. Very few of
these girls are excessive drinkers. Although the regulations of the
ball-room require them to drink after each dance with their partners, yet
the proprietor has always a bottle of water slightly colored with port
wine, from which they drink, and he charges the partner the same price as
for liquor."

Alluding to the keeper of one of these places, the same officer says:

"The proprietress of this house is a German woman over seventy years of
age. She established the house over eighteen years since, to my certain
knowledge. Her husband had just then arrived from Germany with their four
children. They were not worth one hundred dollars at that time. The man
died three years ago, and by his will directed forty thousand dollars to
be divided among his children. The widow is possessed of an equal amount
in her own name."

_Question._ WHAT TRADE OR CALLING DID YOU FOLLOW BEFORE YOU BECAME A
PROSTITUTE?

Occupations. Numbers.
Artist 1
Nurse in Bellevue Hospital, N. Y. 1
School-teachers 3
Fruit-hawkers 4
Paper-box-makers 5
Tobacco-packers 7
Attended stores or bars 8
Attended school 8
Embroiderers 8
Fur-sewers 8
Hat-trimmers 8
Umbrella-makers 8
Flower-makers 9
Shoe-binders 16
Vest-makers 21
Cap-makers 24
Book-folders 27
Factory girls 37
Housekeepers 39
Milliners 41
Seamstresses 59
Tailoresses 105
Dress-makers 121
Servants 933
Lived with parents or friends 499
----
Total 2000

Wherever the social condition of woman has been considered, one fact has
always been painfully apparent, namely, the difficulties which surround
her in any attempt to procure employment beyond the beaten track of
needlework or domestic service. Numerous light or sedentary employments
now pursued by men might with much greater propriety be confided to women,
but custom seems to have fixed an arbitrary law which can not be altered.
If a lady enters a dry goods store, she is waited upon by some stalwart
young man, whose energy and muscle would be far more useful in tilling the
ground, or in some other out-door employment. If she wishes to make a
purchase of jewelry, she is served by the same class of attendants. Why
should not females have this branch of employment at their command? It
would in a majority of cases be more consonant with the feelings of the
purchasers, and consequently more to the interest of store-keepers. It
would open an honorable field of exertion to the women, and improve the
condition of the men who now monopolize such employments, by forcing them
to obtain work suitable to their sex and strength, and driving from the
crowded cities into the open country some whose effeminacy is fast
bringing them to positive idleness and ruin.

Many people are prepared to frown upon any attempt to improve the social
condition of dependent women. They regard it as a part of that myth which
they call opposition to constituted authorities, without any reference to
the consideration which should form the basis of all society, namely,
ensuring the greatest amount of good to the greatest number. Others who
are opposed to any amelioration sustain their views by a libel upon woman,
and upon her Almighty Creator. They assert that she has not sufficient
intellect for any thing beyond routine employment, or blame her because
she has received only such an imperfect education as the world has thought
proper to award her, and thus has not had an opportunity to cultivate her
faculties. It is not necessary to point to the productions and
achievements of women even in our own days, omitting all mention of what
has been done heretofore, to expose the fallacy of this proposition. The
facts are patent to the world. With special reference to the subject in
hand it may be asserted, unhesitatingly and without fear of contradiction,
that were there more avenues of employment open to females there would be
a corresponding decrease in prostitution, and many of those who are now
ranked with the daughters of shame would be happy and virtuous members of
the community.[390]

In the list of occupations pursued by the women who are now prostitutes in
New York, a most lamentable monotony is visible. Domestic service and
sewing are the two principal resources. From the gross number of two
thousand deduct those who lived with their parents or friends, children
attending school, domestic servants, and housekeepers, amounting in the
aggregate to 1322, and there is a balance of 678, nearly six hundred of
whom depend upon needles and thread for an existence. In the total number
reported there are _only four, or exactly one in every five hundred_, who
relied for support upon any occupation requiring mental culture, that is,
one artist and three school-teachers. This fact in itself sustains the
theories that mental cultivation and sufficient employment are
restrictions to the spread of prostitution.

If women are compelled to undergo merely the slavery of life, no moral
advancement can ever be expected from them. If every approach to
remunerative employment is systematically closed against them, nothing but
degradation can ensue, and the moralist who shuddered with horror at the
bare possibility of a woman being allowed to earn a competent living in a
respectable manner will ejaculate, "What awful depravity exists in the
female sex!" He and others of his class drive a woman to starvation by
refusing to give her employment, and then condemn her for maintaining a
wretched existence at the price of virtue.

But to notice more particularly the employments which the courtesans of
New York have followed. The domestic servants amount to 931. No modern
fashion has yet been introduced to deprive females of this sphere of
labor, but so progressive is the age that even that may be accomplished
within a few years, and the advertising columns of the newspapers teem
with announcements of some newly-invented "scrubbing-machine." The space
will not permit any extended remarks on this employment, but, while
allowing that many employers treat their servants as human beings gifted
with the same sensibilities and feelings as themselves, it must be
regretted that there are others who use them in a manner which would bring
a blush to the cheek of a southern slave-driver. With such mistresses the
incapacity of servants is a constant theme, nor do they ever ask
themselves if they have learned the science of governing. Assuming that
they themselves are right, they conclude that the "help" is, of course,
wrong. Is it any wonder that girls are driven to intoxication and disgrace
by this conduct? Another reason which forces servant-girls to prostitution
is the excessive number who are constantly out of employment, estimated at
one fourth of those resident in the city, an evil which would be
diminished were there more opportunities for female labor.

What is the position of the needle-woman? Far worse than that of the
servant. The latter has a home and food in addition to her wages; the
former must lodge and keep herself out of earnings which do not much
exceed in amount the servant's pay. The labor by which this miserable
pittance is earned, so truthfully depicted in the universally known "Song
of the Shirt," is distressing and enervating to a degree. Working from
early dawn till late at night, with trembling fingers, aching head, and
very often an empty stomach, the poor seamstress ruins her health to
obtain a spare and insufficient living. There is no variety in her
employment; it is the same endless round of stitches, varied only by a
wearisome journey once or twice a week to the store whence she receives
her work, and where the probabilities are that a portion of her scanty
wages will be deducted for some alleged deficiency in the work. She has no
redress, but must submit or be discharged.

Nor is the position of a milliner or dress-maker much superior to this.
She has a room provided for her in the employer's establishment, and there
she must remain so long as the inexorable demands of fashion, or the
necessity of preparing bonnets or dresses for some special occasion
require. It matters not if she faint from exhaustion and fatigue; Mrs.
---- wants her ball-dress to-morrow, and the poor slave (we use this word
advisedly) must labor as if her eternal salvation rested on her nimble
fingers. But the gay robe which is to deck the form of beauty is
completed; the hour of release has come at last; and, as at night the
wearied girl walks feebly through the almost deserted streets, she meets
some of the frail of her own sex, bedecked in finery, with countenances
beaming from the effects of their potations, and the thought flashes
across her mind, "They are better off than I am." Her human nature can
scarcely repress such an exclamation, which is too often but the precursor
of her own ruin.

Paper-box-makers, tobacco-packers, and book-folders are no better off.
They must work in crowded shops, must inhale each other's breath during
the whole day (for such work-shops are not the best ventilated buildings
in New York, generally speaking), and receive, as their remuneration,
barely sufficient to find them food, clothes, and shelter.

It is needless to pursue this subject. Enough has surely been advanced to
demonstrate the necessity of a more extended field of female labor.

_Question._ HOW LONG IS IT SINCE YOU ABANDONED YOUR TRADE AS A MEANS OF
LIVING?

Length of Time. Numbers.
3 months 174
6 " 151
1 year 273
2 years 254
3 " 147
4 " 104
5 " 117
10 " 90
12 " and upward 16
Not abandoned 296
Unascertained 378
----
Total 2000

A very few words will suffice on this table, as the remarks which would
arise from it have been already made in reference to other questions. In
most instances the occupation is abandoned as soon as the first false step
is taken, unless in those cases of destitution where a previous want of
employment renders prostitution necessary as the only means of living. Of
course, as before observed, a life of prostitution must be incompatible
with any description of honest employment, and, in those cases where a
woman has followed any trade or occupation after she had yielded to
promiscuous intercourse, it will generally be found that her motive was to
deceive the world as to her own pursuits, or else to satisfy her
conscience that she was not entirely depraved.

_Question._ WHAT WERE YOUR AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS AT YOUR TRADE?

Average Earnings. Numbers.
1 dollar 534
2 dollars 336
3 " 230
4 " 127
5 " 68
6 " 27
7 " 8
8 " 5
20 " 1
50 " 1
Unascertained 663
----
Total 2000

This question is of equal importance with that referring to the number of
employments available for females, and the replies quoted above will give
as many reasons for prostitution as in the former case. From the work of a
French author on this subject the following is condensed as indicative of
the hardships and insufficient remuneration of women employed in factories
in France:

"Women are employed principally in the manufacture of cotton, silk, and
wool. The preparation of cotton presents two dangerous features, in the
'beating' and 'dressing,' _which are performed solely by women_. In the
manufacture of silk there are also two processes dangerous to life, and
_these are performed by women_. The woolen manufacture has no real danger
but in the 'carding,' and _all the carders are women_. Of these mortal
occupations there is not one that will afford the workwoman a sufficient
maintenance, the average wages being from sixteen to twenty-five sous per
day, subject to the fluctuations of trade."[391]

Commenting upon these facts, the Westminster Review says,

"We took some pains to ascertain the relative wages of men and women
employed in the same trades (in England), and almost in every instance it
appeared that for the same work, performed in the same time, they received
one third less, sometimes one half less than men, without any inferiority
of skill being alleged. One master gravely said that he "_paid women less
because they ate less_."[392]

In a subsequent chapter of this volume will be found some particulars of
the wages paid in manufacturing districts of the United States, and the
same disparity between male and female operatives will be noticed.

M. Parent-Duchatelet assigns insufficient wages as one of the principal
causes of prostitution in Paris. He says,

"What are the earnings of our laundresses, our seamstresses, our
milliners? Compare the wages of the most skillful with those of the more
ordinary and moderately able, and we shall see if it be possible for these
latter to procure even the strict necessaries of life; and if we farther
compare the price of their work with that of their dishonor, we shall
cease to be surprised that so great a number should fall into
improprieties thus made almost inevitable."[393]

This low rate of wages is defended upon the plea of competition. A
manufacturer practically says, "If one man or woman will do my work for
five per cent. less than another, I must employ him or her unless I am
prepared to carry on my business at a positive loss; for if I do not give
them work, my neighbor will." Valid as this reason may be in the old
countries, where the supply of labor far exceeds the demand, it is invalid
in America, where there is a constant demand for workers. Our cities are
overcrowded; remove some of their inhabitants to the country. In our
cities work can not be obtained; in the country both male and female
laborers are urgently required. In cities an unemployed woman is exposed
to innumerable temptations; in the country she need never be unemployed,
and consequently would escape such dangers. The difference between the New
and Old worlds is simply that in the former the cities are overcrowded,
but the country is free; in the latter, both cities and country are full
to repletion.

In the city of New York one fourth part of the domestic servants are
constantly out of employment; remove them, and, while the wants of the
community will be amply supplied, the market value of a faithful servant
would increase to a living rate. Send away a number of needle-women,
reducing the supply of labor to meet the actual demand; tailors,
shirt-makers, and dress-makers must employ seamstresses, and in such cases
they could not obtain them without paying remunerative wages. The prices
of our wearing apparel would probably be advanced five per cent., with a
saving of fifteen per cent. taxation in the reduced expenses of police,
judiciary, prisons, hospitals, and charitable institutions.

The experience of the winter of 1857-8 has proved that but very slight
difficulties attend this plan when efficiently carried out, and to the
"Children's Aid Society" and the other benevolent organizations, which
have shown not only the possibility, but the success of the system, all
praise is due. No man entering upon a farm in the West requires any
argument to convince him that his property will increase in value as it
is cultivated, and many will gladly advance the sum necessary to pay the
expenses of a servant's journey out. As fast as men are sent to fell the
timber or break the prairie, the farmer's necessities force him to engage
women for the increasing work of his house and dairy, and to supply the
places of those who obtain husbands in their new home. When the tide of
emigration to the Australian colonies commenced, nearly the whole of those
who left England were single men, and in a few months the cry was ringing
from one end of the island to the other: "Send us female help, send us
wives." A benevolent woman, resident in the colony, repeated the demand,
and subsequently lent the aid of her powerful talents to it. She made a
voyage to England, and there influenced public opinion to such an extent
that the British government yielded to the outside pressure, and many
ship-loads of well-recommended, healthy, and virtuous women were sent out
at the national expense to supply the want. The subsequent advancement of
the colony has proved that the measure was a judicious one, nor can the
abuses to which it became subject detract from its merits.

Similar plans with respect to destitute children have been practiced in
New York for several years, and their subsequent extension to meet the
wants of adult females has been limited only by the means of the
projectors. If the necessity and prospective benefit of this emigration
were known and appreciated, the required funds could be raised without any
difficulty. The citizens of New York are never dilatory in responding to
calls upon their benevolence in aid of any practicable and judicious
scheme of philanthropy, and, under the management of an energetic business
committee, arrangements could be made which would render the movement
self-supporting within a few years.

The competition which keeps wages at starvation point is aggravated by a
notion entertained by many native women, and by some foreigners who have
been long in the country, that domestic service is ungenteel. This idea
drives them to needlework to maintain their respectability, and thus,
while service is abandoned, the ranks of seamstresses are augmented. By
decreasing the number to be employed, and consequently advancing their
wages and insuring better treatment from their employers, the servant's
life would be divested of many of its objections, and old-fashioned
house-work would once more be deemed respectable. This consummation rests
more with mistresses than servants. The former give tone to the manners
of the latter. It can not be denied that many young women date their ruin
from unkind or unwomanly treatment by their mistresses, who have given a
free rein to their caprices, confident that if a girl left them they could
soon supply her place. This confidence would be shaken if a housekeeper
knew that servants were less plentiful, and her own interest would induce
her to use well those who suited her. Such a conclusion would be an
important step toward reducing prostitution, and elevating the character
of the masses.[394]

It can not be expected that this vice will decrease in New York when five
hundred and thirty-four, out of a total of two thousand, earn only one
dollar weekly. No economist, however closely he may calculate, will
pretend that fourteen cents a day will supply any woman with lodging,
food, and clothes. She who should attempt to exist on such a sum would
starve to death in less than a month, and yet it is a notorious fact that
many are expected to support themselves upon it. How such expectations are
realized, and the sad manner in which the deficiency is made up, are amply
shown by the result of this and similar investigations, here and
elsewhere.

Thus far manufacturers have been blamed for the depression of wages, but
is not the consumer equally open to censure? He purchases an article of
dress from A, because it is a trifle cheaper than in B's store. The cost
of the raw material is the same to each, and each uses the same quantity
in every article; but if A can find customers for three times the amount
of goods which B can sell, on account of the saving he effects through
paying lower wages, it is scarcely in human nature, decidedly not in
commercial nature, to be expected that he will refuse the opportunity. He
flatters himself that competition forces him to make the reduction, and as
the public do not denounce his action, but flock to his store so long as
his price continues lower than his neighbor's, he concludes that his
customers should bear the blame. Nor are his conclusions false. The public
sanction a system which enforces starvation or crime, and, for the sake of
saving a few cents, add their influence to swell the ranks of prostitutes,
and condemn many a poor woman to eternal ruin.[395]

Before leaving the question of employment, the effects of different
branches of female occupation, as inducing or favoring immorality, must be
noticed. Apart from the low rate of wages paid to women, thus causing
destitution which forces them to vice, the associations of most of the few
trades they are in the habit of pursuing are prejudicial to virtue. The
trade of tailoress or seamstress may be cited as a case in point. One mode
in which this business is conducted between employer and employed is as
follows: The woman leaves either a cash deposit or the guarantee of some
responsible person at the store, and receives a certain amount of
materials to be made up by a specified time: when she returns the
manufactured goods she is paid, and has more work given her to make up.
This may seem a very simple course, and so it is, but one feature in it
gives rather a sinister aspect. The person who delivers the materials,
receives the work, and pronounces on its execution, is almost invariably a
man, and upon his decision rests the question whether the operative shall
be paid her full wages, or whether any portion of her miserable earnings
shall be deducted because the work is not done to his satisfaction. In
many cases he wields a power the determinations of which amount to this:
"Shall I have any food to-day, or shall I starve?"

It is reasonable to conclude that hardly any thing short of positive want
can force a girl to undertake this labor at its present price, and it is
reasonable to imagine that her necessities will force her to use every
means to accomplish her task in a satisfactory manner. If she finds that a
smile bestowed upon her employer or his clerk will aid her in the struggle
for bread, she will not present herself with a scowling face; or if a kind
entreaty will be the means of procuring her a dinner as a favor, she will
not expose herself to hunger by demanding it as a right. In this there is
no moral or actual wrong, but there are instances where lubricity has
exacted farther concessions, and the sacrifice of a woman's virtue been
required as an equivalent for the privilege of sewing at almost nominal
prices. If this is conceded, the victim may be assured of the best work
and the most favors until her seducer becomes satiated with possession,
when means will easily be found to displace her for some new favorite. If
the outrageous request is denied, she will get no more work from that
shop, and may seek other employment with almost a certainty of meeting the
same indignity elsewhere. That this is a frequent occurrence,
unfortunately, can not be denied: that it exercises much influence on
public prostitution can not be doubted.

The employment of females in various trades in this city, in the pursuit
of which they are forced into constant communication with male operatives
has a disastrous effect upon their characters. The daily routine goes very
far toward weakening that modesty and reserve which are the best
protectives against the seducer, and renders them liable to temptation in
many shapes. A girl frequently forms an attachment to a man working in the
same shop, believing it to be a mutual one, and only finds out her mistake
when she has yielded to his persuasions and is deserted. Or women contract
acquaintance for the sake of having an escort on their holiday
recreations, or because some other woman has done so, or as the mere
gratification of an idle fancy; but all tend in the same direction, and
aid to undermine principles and jeopardize character.

In this connection only city employments have been mentioned, but the same
reasoning may be applied with greater force to factory life in any of our
manufacturing districts. There the operatives of both sexes in one mill
may sometimes be counted by hundreds, and their large numbers cause a more
frequent and constant communication than in smaller workshops. It has been
urged in support of the superior morality of such places, that the very
nature of the employment requires the most constant attention to be paid
to it, and precludes the possibility of any idle time. We freely concede
to the apologists all the advantages they claim, and admit that during the
time--say ten hours daily--when the machinery is running, neither males
nor females can abandon their respective positions; but, unfortunately for
the force of the argument, the motion is not a perpetual one. A
steam-engine or a water-wheel can run for a week or a month without
complaining of fatigue, but human machines become exhausted after a few
hours' consecutive labor. Machinery can receive the necessary attention
and supplies without arresting its progress, but men and women must
sometimes cease work in order to eat and drink.

Granting, then, that during actual working hours a young woman can not
leave her post, yet the mind is free, and the range of thought, when
locomotion is denied her, will often turn to the hardships of her
position. Busy as may be her hands, her brain is disengaged, and while her
mechanical duties are adroitly performed, the mental faculties will be in
full exercise, and for these she has ample scope. Dissatisfied with her
close confinement in the factory, weary of the dreadful monotony which
makes to-day but a repetition of yesterday and a sure type of to-morrow,
she is happy, when the bell rings the signal to leave work, to escape from
the building, and renew outside its walls an acquaintance she has formed
before; and too frequently the persuasions and promises of her lover will
induce her to seek, in some less guarded position, the independence for
which she longs. It may be taken as a general rule that any confinement or
restraint which is irksome to human nature must result injuriously.

Domestic servants are not exempt from temptation when employed in large
establishments where both sexes are engaged, and many a poor girl ascribes
her ruin to the associations formed in places of this description.

Thus far it has been supposed that man is the chief agent in the
propagation of vice, nor is there any apparent reason to recede from that
position. The numerous cases of seduction under false promises and
subsequent desertion; of seduction by married men; of violations of
helpless and unprotected females, are abundantly sufficient to prove this,
much as it may be regretted for the credit of the stronger sex, and also
to vindicate the opinion that employing males and females under one roof,
in different branches of the same business, has a strong tendency to
promote prostitution. Sometimes, however, it is true that woman, lost and
abandoned herself, lends her aid to drag her fellow-women down to
perdition. In many of the stores and workshops in our city, in every
factory throughout the country, such are to be found, and their insidious
influence is quickly felt. By false representations and elaborate
coloring, they work upon the minds of the simple, or inflame the passions
of the ambitious, but in either case their object is the same, and in it
they frequently succeed.

_Question._ WHAT BUSINESS DID YOUR FATHER FOLLOW?

Fathers' business. Numbers.
Architects 4
Auctioneer 1
Agents 5
Butchers 47
Blacksmiths 63
Barbers 2
Bakers 21
Builders 11
Book-keepers 3
Boatmen 7
Brothel-keeper 1
Bankers 2
Carpenters 139
Carmen 26
Coopers 19
Clerks 32
Coachmen 10
Clergymen 6
Coach-makers 9
Cabinet-makers 16
Diver 1
Drover 1
Dyers 3
Engineers 18
Engraver 1
Farmers 440
Fishermen 6
Grocers 14
Gilders 2
Gardeners 10
Glass-blowers 2
Hotel and Tavern keepers 36
Hatters 13
Jewelers 10
Laborers 259
Liquor-dealers 22
Lawyers 13
Lumber-merchants 7
Livery-stable-keepers 5
Millers 20
Masons 82
Merchants 37
Moulders 3
Manufacturers 24
Musicians 8
Men of Property 5
Naval Officers 31
Overseers 5
Peddlers 5
Policemen 15
Painters 16
Printers 3
Planters 5
Pavers 4
Physicians and Surgeons 19
Plumbers 2
Pawnbrokers 2
Ship-carpenters 23
Sailors 35
Shoe-makers 48
Stage-drivers 4
Store-keepers 37
Stone-cutters 20
School-teachers 14
Silversmiths 3
Soldiers 38
Sail-makers 4
Saddlers 14
Servants 4
Surveyor 1
Tailors 35
Traders 11
Tanners and Curriers 7
Tinsmiths 2
Weavers 20
Wheelwright 1
Unascertained 106
----
Total 2000

This table shows that almost all classes of society are exposed to the
influences which result in prostitution, from the children of men of
property, bankers, merchants, and professional men, down to the families
of mechanics and laborers. The numerous and varied occupations of the
fathers of those women who answered the question renders any
classification of them almost impossible. A majority of the parents were
either mechanics or laborers, men who earned the daily food for themselves
and families by manual labor, and whose resources would be governed by the
ordinary fluctuations of trade.

In following the proportion of natives and foreigners as exhibited in
previous tables, it must be remembered that about five eighths of these
fathers were residents of other countries than the United States when
those daughters were born whose replies form the bases of these
statistics, and it is scarcely necessary to say that labor is nowhere so
well remunerated as with us. The average wages, for instance, of a
first-class mechanic in England or Ireland seldom exceed, and, indeed,
rarely amount to, nine dollars per week, and an ordinary laborer is very
well paid if he receives half that sum. This estimate refers to large
cities, where the expenses of maintaining a family are as heavy as in New
York, and it indicates poverty, which has already been proved to be one of
the main causes of female depravity.

If the investigation is pursued into the rural districts of Great Britain,
the wages of mechanics and laborers will be found lower than they are in
large cities, without any material reduction in the necessary expenditure
except in the item of house-rent. The pitiful amounts paid to agricultural
laborers (often only twenty-five cents a day) will surprise any one who is
not fully acquainted with the hardships endured by this unfortunate class,
and the state of destitution in which they are compelled to _exist_ (it
can not, with any propriety, be called _living_), and to rear their
families.

More than one half of the foreigners are from Ireland, and no person
acquainted with the social history of that unhappy country need be told of
the want and deprivation endured by its peasantry, of their useless
efforts to benefit themselves, or of the ruin, starvation, and disease
with which they are so frequently afflicted. To constitute a farmer in
Ireland, a man must hire an acre or two of land, for which he pays a heavy
rent, as two or sometimes three "middle-men" have to obtain their profits
before the landlord receives his share. In this field he plants as many
potatoes as can be crowded into it; and in his hut or cabin he keeps a pig
or some fowls, regularly domesticated as members of the family, and
receiving more attention than the children. From the sale of the pig the
rent has to be obtained, and from the proceeds of the poultry, with the
potatoes, all their wants have to be supplied. Thus, with the potatoes he
raises for almost his sole means of support, with peat from some bog in
the neighborhood to furnish him with fuel, he lives until the impoverished
soil refuses to yield its annual crop, or yields it in a diseased and
poisonous state, when fever and starvation come to fill his cup of misery,
and render him dependent upon charity for an existence. And this in a land
peculiarly rich in all that is necessary to make its people a great and
happy nation.

This has been known as the state of Ireland for many years, and in this
condition it unquestionably was when the women who here are now
prostitutes were born there. Whether the severe lessons taught by the last
famine, the more enlightened and liberal policy which has governed
England, since that terrible calamity, in its legislation for the sister
island, the introduction of Anglo-Saxon capital and enterprise, and the
large exodus of the natives of the soil, have been of advantage to the
country, it is difficult to determine in the face of the conflicting
testimony furnished respectively by English and Irish partisans. It seems
reasonable to conclude that an improvement must have taken place under
these circumstances. But this is not the place to argue the political
questions so often agitated there and elsewhere; it is enough for the
purpose of this work to show the poverty of twenty years ago, and the vice
resulting from it now, and to remind the reader that because of the
lamentable manner in which the Irish have suffered in their own country,
we must be taxed in New York for the support in hospitals, alms-houses,
and prisons, of the women whose poverty compelled their crime.

_Question._ IF YOUR MOTHER HAD ANY BUSINESS INDEPENDENT OF YOUR FATHER,
WHAT WAS IT?

Mothers' business. Numbers.
No independent business 1880
Dress-makers 35
Tailoresses 26
Seamstresses 12
Store-keepers 9
Boarding-house-keepers 7
Servants 6
Vest-makers 6
Laundresses 4
Bakers 4
Hat-trimmers 3
Milliners 3
Artificial Flower-maker 1
Music teacher 1
Nurse 1
Umbrella-maker 1
House-cleaner 1
----
Total 2000

Only one hundred and twenty of two thousand women answer that their
mothers had any business independent of their fathers, and they were
mostly of the same ill-paid class as those alluded to in the portion
referring to the occupations of the women themselves. The exceptions were,
boarding-house, store, and bakery-keepers, amounting to twenty only, the
remaining one hundred being servants or needle-women. The fact that even
this number found it necessary to augment the income of their families by
their own exertions is another evidence of poverty.

_Question._ DID YOU ASSIST EITHER YOUR FATHER OR MOTHER IN THEIR
BUSINESS? IF SO, WHICH OF THEM?

Assisted. Numbers.
Assisted neither parent 1515
" both parents 149
" mothers 306
" fathers 30
--- ----
Totals 485 1515
--- 485
----
Aggregate 2000

To this question, thirty women reply that they were in the habit of
assisting their fathers, three hundred and six say they assisted their
mothers, and one hundred and forty-nine assisted both parents. The two
latter answers, embracing four hundred and fifty-five cases, must be
construed to mean such assistance in the ordinary work of a family as
usually falls to the lot of children. The residue say that they never
assisted either father or mother, or, in other words, that they were
brought up in habits of idleness, which can scarcely have forsaken them in
after-life, and probably had some considerable agency in their fall.

_Question._ IS YOUR FATHER LIVING, OR HOW OLD WAS YOU WHEN HE DIED?

Age at fathers' death. Numbers.
Fathers living 651
Under 5 years 289
From 5 " to 10 years 208
" 10 " to 15 " 252
" 15 " to 20 " 389
Unascertained 211
---- ----
Totals 1349 651
---- 1349
----
Aggregate 2000

_Question._ IS YOUR MOTHER LIVING, OR HOW OLD WAS YOU WHEN SHE DIED?

Mothers living 766
Under 5 years 268
From 5 " to 10 years 195
" 10 " to 15 " 277
" 15 " to 20 " 281
Unascertained 213
---- ----
Totals 1234 766
---- 1234
----
Aggregate 2000

From the preceding tables, it appears that more than half of these women
are orphans, 1349 of them have lost their fathers, and 1234 were deprived
of their mothers. In both cases, the ages of the children at the death of
their parents are in nearly the same ratio; thus, two hundred and
eighty-nine fathers and two hundred and sixty-eight mothers died when
their children were under five years of age; two hundred and eight fathers
and one hundred and ninety-five mothers died when their children were
under ten years of age; two hundred and fifty-two fathers and two hundred
and seventy-seven mothers died when their children were under fifteen
years of age. The average of the deaths of either parent will therefore
be, when the children were

Under 5 years of age 279
From 5 " to 10 years 202
" 10 " to 15 " 265

and the aggregate result that 1479 parents died before their daughters had
reached the age at which a female most needs aid and advice.

At any time and under any circumstances the thought of death is
dispiriting. The idea of rending all earthly ties; of bursting asunder
bonds which have formed for years a part of our very existence, of leaving
the world with its joys and pleasures, its cares and griefs, for the
"undiscovered bourne," is appalling in contemplation; more appalling still
when the family circle is invaded, and a father whom we have revered, or a
mother whom we have loved, is taken from us.

The death of a father is a sad calamity for his children; the hand that
has nourished and protected them, that has toiled for their support, is
cold in the grave; their earthly support is gone. But a more grievous
affliction still is the death of a mother. It is she to whom the children
look in all their infant sufferings; it is her ear that is ever open to
their sorrows; it is her bosom on which they are pillowed in sickness; her
care which guides their steps in infancy; her love which warns them of the
dangers that menace them in after life. Bereft of a mother's watchful
tenderness, they are comparatively alone in the world, and many of their
sorrows must be dated from that event.

The answers to these questions are full of material for mournful
reflection, and strongly indicate the increased responsibilities of
surviving relatives toward the orphans. This point has been already so
strongly insisted upon that it would be a needless reiteration to argue
its necessity.

_Question._ DO YOU DRINK INTOXICATING LIQUOR? IF SO, TO WHAT EXTENT?

Extent. Numbers.
Do not drink liquor 359
Drink moderately 647
" intemperately 754
Habitual drunkards 240
---- ----
Totals 1641 359
---- 1641
----
Aggregate 2000

It may be assumed as an almost invariable rule, that courtesans in all
countries are in the habit of using alcoholic stimulants to a greater or
less degree, in order to maintain that artificial state of excitement
which is indispensably necessary to their calling. One of the class in
London said to Mr. Mayhew, when he was making the inquiries alluded to in
the chapters upon English prostitution, "_No girls_ COULD _lead the life
we do without gin_;" and drinking is undoubtedly universal among abandoned
women. Even according to the most favorable view of the replies to the
query now under consideration, and admitting them to be strictly correct,
it will be found that five sixths of the total number confess they are in
the habit of using intoxicating liquors. But with the knowledge of facts
already ascertained in other cases, the inquirer will be compelled to
believe that this is not the whole truth, for it is almost certain that
the three hundred and fifty-nine who claim to be total abstinents indulge
themselves in occasional potations. In prosecuting investigations like the
present, there are many difficulties to encounter. A woman who is found
residing in a house of ill fame will scarcely attempt to deny that she is
a prostitute, although even this has been done in some cases, yet she will
equivocate upon other matters. The facts of her birth, family, and life
will probably be given correctly, because there exists no motive for
concealment; but the answers to any questions which she deems degrading,
such as relate, for example, to her habits or the state of her health,
must be received with some considerable allowance, and compared with
well-ascertained facts.

Among the more aristocratic prostitutes it is considered a disgrace to be
absolutely intoxicated, and the keeper of a first-class house would
scarcely retain a boarder who was addicted to habitual inebriety. Still,
the most fastidious are ready and eager to sell champagne, or what passes
for it, to any visitor of liberal disposition, and will generally
condescend to assist him to drink it, of course inviting all the ladies to
participate. In the lower grades it is not deemed disreputable to be
inebriated, but the proprietors, knowing intoxication would interfere
with their business, interdict it until late at night, when "the mirth and
fun grows fast and furious," and when visitors, women, proprietors,
bar-keepers, and servants frequently all contrive to be drunk, and close
the night with a general saturnalia. The following morning, every thing is
changed. The proprietor takes his stand behind the bar, and tenders the
inmates, as they appear, their "bitters," namely a bumper of raw spirits.
The visitors depart about their business, and the women await, with all
the patience they can command, the result of another day's campaign,
anxiously watching for any contingency which may arise likely to bring
them another glass of liquor. Even in this case they are narrowly watched,
and as soon as the depression from the previous night's debauch has been
overcome, they must either take "temperance drinks," or colored water,
when any stray customer invites them to the bar. _Our decided impression
is that not one per cent. of the prostitutes in New York practice their
calling without partaking of intoxicating drinks._

The effects of this habit are well known. In the first instance the woman
drinks but little, probably just enough to cause a slight artificial
excitement, and bring a color to her cheeks. After a time the proportion
must be increased as the effect upon the system is diminished, until the
finale is a habit of confirmed and constant drinking. As a general rule,
the horrible consequences then become apparent. The whole frame is
relaxed, and every movement of the limbs is a motion of uncertainty; the
brain is impaired; the reasoning faculties are destroyed; the powers of
the stomach and digestive organs are weakened, and an attack of delirium
tremens is the _ultimatum_, usually cured, if cured at all, at the public
expense in a hospital or prison.

A work of fiction, published some ten years ago, gives the following
truthful account of the effects of drunkenness on prostitutes, by one of
whom the words are supposed to be used:

"I must have drink. Such as live like me could not bear life without
drink. It's the only thing to keep us from suicide. If we did not drink we
could not stand the memory of what we have been, and the thought of what
we are, for a day. If I go without food and without shelter, I must have
my dram. Oh! what awful nights I have had in prison for want of it." She
glared round with terrified eyes as if dreading to see some supernatural
creature near her, and then continued: "It is dreadful to see them. There
they go round and round my bed the whole night through. My mother carrying
my baby, and sister Mary, and all looking at me with their sad stony eyes.
Oh! it is terrible. They don't turn back either, but pass behind the head
of the bed, and I feel their eyes on me every where. If I creep under the
clothes I still see them, and, what is worse, they see me. _I must have
drink. I can not pass to-night without a dram. I dare not._"[396]

Although this is an imaginary picture its counterpart can be seen at
almost any time in the hospitals under the charge of the Governors of the
Alms House on Blackwell's Island, New York City, where large numbers of
such cases are constantly treated. In 1854, in the Penitentiary Hospital
alone, more than fourteen hundred persons received medical assistance for
delirium tremens and other maladies arising from excess in drinking. This
fact induced the remarks in the report for that year, that the "cases
actually treated here during the last year were directly caused by the
lowest and foulest kinds of dissipation and vice, a fact which speaks
trumpet-tongued in favor of shutting up 'grog shops,' and shows the
absolute necessity of adopting some plan whereby the enormous amount of
prostitution now among us shall be decreased."[397] Since then an
alteration in the law has sentenced drunken persons to an incarceration in
the City Prison, and the number sent to Blackwell's Island has diminished,
but not to the extent which would be supposed, as, during 1857, the
hospitals thereon afforded relief to seven hundred and ninety-one
inebriates.

The fearful havoc upon the constitution is produced as well by the quality
as the quantity of the liquors consumed. Let any man not thoroughly
informed on these subjects taste a glass of the compounds retailed at
these places, and he will be immediately convinced that it would be quite
as judicious an act to swallow the same quantity of camphene or sulphuric
acid if diluted, sweetened, and colored. The various liquors, gin, rum,
brandy, whisky, or wine, having nothing in common with the genuine
articles of commerce but the name, are so many varieties of the cheapest
and most poisonous "raw spirits" that the markets afford, and are
manufactured in this city in large quantities to meet the demands arising
from such places. Instances have been known where liquors subsequently
sold in houses of ill fame as pure French brandy have been furnished by
wholesale dealers at prices ranging from thirty-six to fifty cents a
gallon. There may be exceptions; some few brothels of the higher rank may
sell what is called "good liquor," but they are very rare indeed. Is it
any matter of surprise that drunkenness, or, more properly speaking,
stupefaction and insensibility are so rife; that so many constitutions are
ruined and so many characters destroyed when agencies like these are
tolerated?

_Question._ DID YOUR FATHER DRINK INTOXICATING LIQUORS? IF SO, TO WHAT
EXTENT?

Fathers' habits. Numbers.
Did not drink liquor 548
Drank moderately 636
" intemperately 596
Unascertained 220
---- ----
Totals 1452 548
---- 1452
----
Aggregate 2000

_Question._ DID YOUR MOTHER DRINK INTOXICATING LIQUORS? IF SO, TO WHAT
EXTENT?

Mothers' habits. Numbers.
Did not drink liquor 875
Drank moderately 574
" intemperately 347
Unascertained 204
---- ----
Totals 1125 875
---- 1125
----
Aggregate 2000

How much of the intemperate habits of these women must be traced to the
influence of the parent's example? One thousand four hundred and fifty-two
fathers; one thousand one hundred and twenty-five mothers, are represented
as having been addicted to the use of liquors in various degrees, the
moderate in both cases exceeding the intemperate drinkers. And yet even
moderate drinking, when pursued by parents in the presence of, or to the
knowledge of children, is a practice open to the gravest censure. In the
mind of a child any action is deemed right if performed by a father or
mother. As the children advance in years parental customs are followed,
and, in such a case as this, probably the single glass of beer or wine of
the father lays the foundation of intemperance in the children. Without
undertaking to argue the question of the absolute necessity for a total
abstinence from all liquors under all circumstances, the proposition may
be seriously submitted that the effect of this personal example upon
children is satisfactorily ascertained, from many different sources, to be
prejudicial to their best interests, and a natural deduction therefore is
that it is the duty of parents to abstain.

Instances are upon record where both fathers and mothers, in the temporary
insanity of intoxication, have turned their daughters from home into the
streets, and that, too, in cases where not even the remotest grounds
existed for any suspicion of improper conduct on the part of these
children. Occurrences like this are sufficient to enforce the necessity of
temperance on the part of parents, in view of the fearful responsibility
which rests upon them.

_Question._ WERE YOUR PARENTS PROTESTANTS, CATHOLICS, OR NON-PROFESSORS?

Religion. Numbers.
Protestants 960
Roman Catholics 977
Non-professors 63
----
Total 2000

_Question._ WERE YOU TRAINED TO ANY RELIGION? IF SO, WAS IT PROTESTANT OR
CATHOLIC?

Religion. Numbers.
Protestant 972
Roman Catholic 977
No religious training 51
----
Total 2000

_Question._ DO YOU PROFESS THE SAME RELIGION NOW?

Profession. Numbers.
Profess religion as educated 1909
Non-professors 91
----
Total 2000

_Question._ HOW LONG IS IT SINCE YOU HAVE OBSERVED ANY OF ITS
REQUIREMENTS?

Time. Numbers.
1 year and under 861
From 1 " to 2 years 310
" 2 " " 3 " 226
" 3 " " 4 " 135
" 4 " " 5 " 106
" 5 " " 6 " 72
" 6 " " 7 " 42
" 7 " " 8 " 42
" 8 " " 9 " 20
" 9 " " 10 " 36
" 10 " " 12 " 20
Unascertained 130
----
Totals 2000

It certainly seems a very incongruous association to connect religion and
prostitution; to place in juxtaposition the most noble aspirations of
which the mind is capable, and the lowest degradation to which, the body
can descend. But such a contrast is not without its moral. It is not too
great a stretch of imagination to suppose that of those unfortunate women
who subsequently lost their position in society, some had the advantages
of an early Christian education; were taught to believe in and reverence
the Inspired Writings; were taught that there is a God who judgeth the
world, and that there exists for all a future state. Reflecting upon this,
and considering how deplorably such have fallen from the observance of
precepts inculcated in the days of childhood, all persons will feel the
necessity of watchfulness and care that the same fate does not befall
themselves or their connections. The facts may teach another lesson. It
may be presumed that some of these women were trained in the rigid and
austere manner animadverted upon in the remarks on the causes of
prostitution, and that their present career is but the recoil from that
unnatural restraint. Such conclusion would afford a solemn warning to all
who have charge of the education of children to choose the happy mean
between the extremes of careless laxity and excessive harshness. Either
course is alike fatal to the welfare of their trust, and must end in
disappointment and sorrow.

If it were consistent with propriety, it would not be possible to make any
comparison between the results of Protestant and Roman Catholic teachings,
because of the nearly equal number in each case. In the table exhibiting
the religions professed by the parents there are seventeen more Roman
Catholics than Protestants; in the table of the religions professed by the
prostitutes themselves there are five more Roman Catholics than
Protestants. The relative value of the two creeds as rules of life can not
therefore be made the subject of argument from such data. So far as our
duties to the Almighty, to our fellow-men, and to ourselves--so far as the
obligations to virtue and morality are concerned, the adherents of both
parties are agreed, and in the investigation of the intricate social
problem of female depravity it matters but little whether a majority of
the pitiable subjects of the inquiry were educated in the tenets of the
Church of Rome or in the doctrines of the Reformation. If the articles of
faith of either Church are honestly observed by those who professedly
believe in them, they will be effective in preventing immorality; but when
this observance is confined to words, and not exemplified by actions,
neither the simple rituals of Protestantism nor the more elaborate and
artistically arranged ceremonials of Roman Catholicism can be of any
avail. Neither, if our lives accord not with our profession, will it make
an iota of difference in our future destiny whether we have bowed the knee
in a temple devoted to Roman Catholic service before the image of a
crucified Savior, and endeavored to train our thoughts to a contemplation
of his mercy and beneficence, or have knelt in a Protestant Church, and
there joined in the public confession that we are sinners.

The facts exhibited in the tables show that 1937 women had parents who
were professedly members of one or the other of these communions; that
1949 women out of 2000 were taught to believe in the necessity of some
religion, and that 1909 of these women still assert their confidence in
the creed in which they were educated.

It can not be expected that, living in the constant practice of that which
their consciences must teach them is sinful, these women would have
continued to observe the outward form of religion. By comparing the table
upon this point with the one framed from the replies to the question, "For
what length of time have you been a prostitute?" it will be observed that
1674 admit they have been prostitutes for six years and upward, and 1710
confess they have neglected to observe the requirements of religion for
the same space of time; a coincidence which leads us charitably to suppose
that the crime and the omission are nearly parallel, so far as dates are
concerned, and that hypocritical professions of religion do not rank among
prostitutes' offenses.

But even with their neglect of the outward requirements of faith, and
while in the actual commission of known and acknowledged sin, they still
preserve many traits which are much to their credit. They possess one of
the chief virtues belonging to the female character, which never seems to
become extinct or materially impaired; namely, kindness to each other when
sick or destitute, and indeed to all who are in suffering or distress.
This has attracted the attention, and called forth the admiration, of
every one who has been thrown into contact with them. A very touching
instance of these amiable feelings occurred some years ago, and is
narrated in the Westminster Review for July, 1850. A poor girl, who was
rapidly sinking into a decline, after a short but impetuous course of
infamy, had no means of support but from the continued exercise of her
calling. With a mixture of kindness and conscientiousness which may well
surprise us under the circumstances, her companions in degradation
resolved among themselves that, as they said, "at least she should not be
compelled to die in sin," and contributed from their own sad earnings a
sufficient sum to enable her to pass her few remaining days in comfort and
repentance.

This is far from being an exceptional case. An extended hospital
experience has brought under our personal observation many acts of real
sympathy and kindness toward each other among the prostitute class. If one
of their number is discharged, and is unprovided with suitable clothing,
they will club their scanty resources to supply her needs, frequently
contributing articles they really want themselves. In any case of serious
sickness, where prompt attention is required, they form most reliable
nurses, and will cheerfully sacrifice their own rest at any time to
minister to the sufferer, performing their duties with the utmost care and
tenderness. Their fidelity to each other is strongly marked. It is
literally impossible, in any case where a breach of discipline has
occurred, to find a woman who will bear witness against any of her
companions, and neither threats nor promises are sufficiently potent to
extract the desired information.

These traits are not submitted with any intention of offering them as an
equivalent to the morality which has been violated, but merely to prove
that hearts which can conceive and execute such kindly purposes can not be
entirely lost to the sense of virtue or the claims of benevolence. Truly
they are but as an atom in the balance, but, like an oasis in the desert,
they show that all is not arid and sterile.

CHAPTER XXXV.

NEW YORK.--PROSTITUTES AND HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION.

First Class, or "Parlor Houses."--Luxury.--Semi-refinement.--Rate of
Board.--Dress.--Money.--Lavish Extravagance.--Instance of Economy.--
Means of Amusement.--House-keepers.--Rents.--Estimated Receipts.--
Management of Houses.--Assumed Respectability.--Consequences of
Exactions from Prostitutes.--Affection for Lovers.--Second Class
Houses.--Street-walkers.--Drunkenness.--Syphilitic Infection.--Third
Class Houses.--Germans.--Sailors.--Ball-rooms.--Intoxication.--Fourth
Class Houses.--Repulsive Features.--Visitors.--Action of the Police.--
First Class Houses of Assignation.--Secrecy and Exclusiveness.--
Keepers.--Arrangements.--Visitors.--Origin of some Houses of
Assignation.--Prevalence of Intrigue.--Foreign Manners.--Effects of
Travel.--Dress.--Second Class Houses.--Visitors.--Prostitutes.--
Arrangements.--Wine and Liquor.--Third Class Houses.--Kept
Mistresses.--Sewing and Shop Girls.--Disease.--Fourth Class Houses.--
"Panel Houses."

It will not be out of place here to say somewhat concerning the manner of
life among prostitutes; how they occupy the time, and what facilities they
possess for mental or bodily recreation. The domestic life of a number of
women whose every action is contrary to all the rules of virtue, who are
living in the constant violation of the law, with a daily subsistence
contributed by those whose folly or passions make them visitors to their
abode, can not but possess considerable interest to all who have followed
thus far in this painful task. In entering upon the subject, the endeavor
will be to give such particulars as will enable the reader to form
satisfactory conclusions, without recording what would merely minister to
a prurient curiosity. The object is to give information as explicitly as
possible without offending the most sensitive delicacy, wounding the most
refined feelings, or unnecessarily parading these poor women before the
public eye. The subject is invested with such an array of real and
palpable horrors as to render unnecessary any endeavor to excite undue
emotion by penetrating the mysteries of the saturnalia.

There is a wide diversity among the various grades of prostitutes in New
York. The first class are those who reside in what are technically called
"Parlor Houses." These very seldom leave their abodes, unless for the
purpose of making purchases of dress, jewelry, or articles of toilette, or
taking an afternoon promenade on the fashionable side of Broadway,
excepting when they accompany their lovers or visitors in a ride, or to
some public place of amusement. These utterly repudiate the name of
"street-walkers," and very seldom perform any act in public which would
expose them to reprobation, or attract the attention of the police. They
assume to be, and are, in fact, the most respectable of their class, if
any respectability can be associated with so vicious a course. Being
almost invariably young and handsome, and always very well dressed, they
pass through the streets without their real character being suspected by
the uninitiated.

The houses in which this class of courtesans reside are furnished with a
lavish display of luxury, scarcely in accordance with the dictates of good
taste however, and mostly exhibiting a quantity of magnificent furniture
crowded together without taste or judgment for the sake of ostentation.
The most costly cabinet and upholstery work is freely employed in their
decoration, particularly in the rooms used as reception parlors. Large
mirrors adorn the walls, which are frequently handsomely frescoed and
gilt. Paintings and engravings in rich frames, vases and statuettes, add
their charms. Carpets of luxurious softness cover the floors, while sofas,
ottomans, and easy chairs abound. Music has its representative in a
beautiful pianoforte, upon which some professed player is paid a liberal
salary to perform. Even the bed-chambers, passages, halls, and stairways
are furnished in a similar style. In such an abode as this probably dwell
from three to ten prostitutes, each paying weekly for her board from ten
to sixteen dollars, exclusive of extras, which will be noticed hereafter.
Their active life comprises about twelve or fourteen hours daily, ranging
from noon to midnight or early morning. Their visitors are mostly of what
may be called the aristocratic class; young, middle aged, and even old men
of property, of all callings and professions; any one who can command a
liberal supply of money is welcome, but without this indispensable
requisite his company is not sought or appreciated.

None of the disgusting practices common in houses of a lower grade are met
with here. There is no palpable obscenity, and but little that can outrage
propriety. Of course there is a perfect freedom of manner between
prostitutes and visitors, but so far as the public eye can penetrate, the
requirements of common decency are not openly violated. Profanity, as may
naturally be expected, exists to some extent; it is an almost invariable
accompaniment of prostitution, but even that is divested of its
grossness, and is not of frequent occurrence. There is no bar-room or
public drinking place in the house, but it is a general custom for each
visitor to invite his _pro tempore_ inamorata and her companions to take
champagne with him, which is supplied by the keeper of the place at the
charge of three dollars a bottle. As remarked in the preceding chapter,
excessive drunkenness is rare, both prostitutes and keepers trying to
suppress it, because an intoxicated man would be likely to give them
trouble, damage their furniture, and injure the reputation of the house.
By means of a small aperture in the front door, covered by a wrought-iron
lattice-work, the candidates for admission can be examined before entrance
is given, and the door is kept closed against any person who is likely to
prove an annoyance.

As a natural consequence of their position, the women exert all their
powers of fascination, by adopting the latest and most superb fashions in
dress, and by a very tasteful arrangement of their hair, for which purpose
a hair dresser visits them every day, charging each woman two or three
dollars a week for his assistance. Besides these they practice a thousand
other artifices, unknown to mere lookers on, in order to secure the favor
of their visitors.

About three fourths of the courtesans of this grade are natives of the
United States, and mostly from New England or the Middle States. Some of
them are very well educated; accomplished musicians and artists are
sometimes found among them, while others aspire to literature. With the
greater number much elegance and refinement of manner, or a close
observance of what may be called the conventionalities of life, is seen.
Their income is large, but so are their expenses. It is no exaggeration to
state that their individual receipts very seldom fall short of fifty
dollars per week. From this amount deduct the sum charged for their board,
an additional fee which they pay the proprietress for every visitor they
entertain, the expenses of hair-dressing, perfumery, etc., the cost of
their washing, which is all done at their own charge, away from the house,
and must be considerable, and the remainder will give their expenditure
for dress. All are not equally extravagant. Some seem to consider
prostitution a business, and act upon the idea of saving as much money as
possible. In one case a woman asserted that she had seven thousand dollars
in the bank, which she had accumulated by prostitution in a few years, and
her statement was confirmed by the captain of police for the district.
The economical ones are generally shrewd, calculating "down-Easters," who
argue that if they can save enough during the zenith of their charms to
support them when their attractions fail, or to help them establish a
house of this description on their own account, they are only doing their
duty. Others have dependent relatives whom they support, or illegitimate
children whom they maintain and educate, frequently appropriating
considerable sums for these purposes. In nearly all of them, kindness
toward the unfortunate of their own sex and grade is a striking trait.
Much as they may quarrel among each other when all are alike in health,
let one be visited with sickness, or overcome by misfortune, and, as a
general rule, their envy or jealousy is forgotten, and they freely
contribute to her support.

Their means of amusement are limited. When they have no visitors they
generally indulge in a luxurious indolence. For any useful employment,
such as even sewing or fancy needlework, they have but little inclination,
and their general refuge from _ennui_ is found in reading novels. These
are not, as would be generally supposed, works of lascivious character; to
these they seem to have an objection, most probably because their own
experience has proved the fallacies of the highly-colored descriptions of
the delights of love which abound in such productions. To one source of
recreation they are extremely partial, namely, driving in carriages some
few miles out of town, and they frequently persuade their visitors to
indulge them in these rural excursions. They are well acquainted with the
most pleasant drives, and know exactly where to find quiet and retired
hotels where all the delicacies of the season can be served in the most
approved style. If they can not induce their friends to gratify them in
this manner, they will endeavor to secure an invitation to take luncheon
or oysters at some fashionable saloon. Dress, gay life, and excitement
seem necessary to their existence.

And amid all this array of luxurious homes, of splendid dresses, of
comparative affluence, the question arises, Are they happy? A moment's
consideration will prompt the answer that they can not be. Continued
indulgence in their course of life tends to obliterate the sense of
degradation, and makes their career almost second nature, but even the
most confirmed must at times reflect. The memory of what they have been,
the thought of what they are, the dread of what they must be, haunt their
minds; conscience will make itself heard. Many a poor girl dressed in
silks or satins, gleaming with jewelry, and receiving with a gay smile
the lavish compliments of her "friend," is mentally racked with a keen
appreciation of her true position. She knows that the world condemns her,
and her own heart admits the justice of the verdict. She knows that he who
is so ostentatiously parading his admiration regards her but as a
purchased instrument to minister to his gratification. She feels that she
is, emphatically, alone in the world, and her merry laugh but ill conceals
a breaking heart.

These houses are generally kept by middle-aged women who have themselves
passed through the initiatory course of a prostitute's life. In some cases
they own the real estate and furniture. In others they hire or lease the
house, paying an exorbitant rent (often to some wealthy man who considers
himself a respectable member of society), and provide their own furniture;
in other cases they rent both house and furniture. _In one house in this
city the enormous sum of nine thousand one hundred_ (9100) _dollars is, or
was at the time of examination, paid annually for rent and use of
furniture_, the owner being a woman who formerly kept the place, but who
is now living in the enjoyment of a large income in one of the Italian
cities.

The following extracts from information obtained on this subject will give
a very good idea of the facts:

E. M. pays $1300 per year for rent and use of furniture, which is
owned by a woman who formerly kept the house.

M. S. pays $1000 per year rent, and owns the furniture.

M. L. owns the house and furniture, estimated to be worth $15,000.

M. A. T. pays $700 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $5000.

J. G. pays $700 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $3000.

E. T. owns the real estate and furniture, valued at $30,000.

C. G. pays $1800 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $6000.

M. C. K. pays $3900 per year for rent and use of furniture.

C. E. pays $1400 per annum rent, and owns furniture valued at $6000.

M. B. owns the house and furniture, valued at $15,000.

J. B. pays $560 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $2000.

E. B. pays $1000 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $3000.

M. M. owns house and furniture, valued at $15,000.

C. C. pays $850 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $8000.

M. M. pays $750 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $2000.

M. G. pays $625 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $1000.

V. N. pays $1300 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $3000.

C. E. pays $1400 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $6000.

L. C. pays $1000 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $2000.

A. T. pays $1000 per year rent, and owns furniture valued at $3000.

The financial effects of the system of prostitution will furnish a theme
for some remarks hereafter. These facts are quoted now to explain the
expenses connected with first-class houses. Of course, where such outlays
are incurred the receipts must correspond. The following statement will
exhibit the _minimum_ weekly receipts in a house where ten boarders
reside:

Board for ten women, at $16 00 per week each $160 00
Fees for visitors, say one each day to each woman ($1 00 each) 70 00
Profit from sale of one basket of Champagne each day (weekly) 168 00
-------
Total $398 00

This estimate does not reach the daily average of visitors, and a more
correct statement would be:

Board for ten women, at $16 00 per week each $160 00
Fees for visitors, say two each day to each woman ($1 00 each) 140 00
Profit from sale of two baskets of Champagne each day (weekly) 336 00
-------
Total $616 00

Taking the mean of these two calculations will give receipts exceeding
twenty-six thousand dollars per year, or five hundred dollars weekly. The
cost of maintaining these luxurious establishments, in addition to the
rent, is considerable, but still there is a very large excess. This is
satisfactorily proved by the fact that the women who own the houses in
which they conduct their traffic have, almost without exception, purchased
them _since_ they commenced housekeeping, and also that many of them own
considerable personal property in addition to the real estate. One woman
is positively affirmed to be worth over one hundred thousand dollars, many
are reported as worth sums ranging from fifty thousand downward, and many
more are reputed to be rich, but no special amount mentioned.

The management of many of the houses is confided to a housekeeper, acting
for the principal, who is rarely visible unless specially called for, and
under this housekeeper are a number of servants, varying from three to
seven, according to the size of the house and the number of boarders it
accommodates. These servants are almost invariably colored women, and no
difficulty is ever experienced in obtaining a full complement. Their wages
are liberal, their perquisites considerable, and their work light. A neat
and well-arranged breakfast is prepared for the "lady boarders" about
eleven or twelve o'clock, and their dinner is served about five or six
o'clock. As a general rule these are the only meals supplied them in the
course of the day. If they require any thing more they send out for it,
or persuade their visitors to escort them to some saloon.

The proprietors of this class of houses assume to be respectable women
when they are away from the scenes of their business. An anecdote, and a
true one, has been related of one of them who, on a recent visit to
Newport, so effectually carried out her disguise as to receive the escort
of a reverend gentleman, a D.D. of this city, to the dinner-table and
elsewhere, with his family, he thinking her a most amiable and deeply
afflicted widow. Some of them have private residences up town, in the
quiet respectable streets, and come to their houses of prostitution every
forenoon, returning at night. A portion of them profess to be religious,
frequently attending some place of worship the better to preserve their
mask. Naturally benevolent, as are all women, they contribute liberally to
charitable objects, and freely relieve any indigent persons who may ask
their assistance. Even in political matters they have some weight, their
resources and connections proving valuable to some aspirant for local
distinction who has promised them that he will, if elected, use all his
influence to protect them from annoyance.

Toward the miserable women whose vice is the source of their wealth, these
proprietors act as interest dictates. A girl who has not the tact or
disposition to attract visitors is seldom treated with much consideration,
while one who is successful receives more favors, but favors, generally
speaking, of a nature to render her subservient to their wishes; such as
the loan of money to purchase new and fashionable articles of dress, a
short credit for her board, or some equivalent which will place her under
an obligation, and render it difficult for her to leave the house. They
are actuated in this by a desire to retain an attractive girl; for, in
addition to the actual cash payments she makes, she also possesses the
power of inducing her visitors to be liberal in their orders for wine, and
the profit from its sale, about two hundred per cent., is an important
source of revenue.

The excessive demands made upon the earnings of prostitutes by these women
has been productive of a serious social evil. Many unfortunate girls can
not appreciate the advantages of leading a vicious life for the benefit of
a landlady, and in self-defense have hired apartments in some private
house, so as to secure their earnings for themselves. This is generally
arranged so that two of them engage a suite of rooms, say a parlor and two
bed-rooms, representing themselves as virtuous women, governesses or
seamstresses, and frequently as the wives of sailors or of men who are in
California or some other distant land. Here they either board themselves
or resort to some saloon, and to this lodging, or to the house of
assignation, which will be noticed in due course, they introduce their
visitors. It is a fact more than suspected that many prostitutes are
living in this manner in our city. It is needless to enlarge upon the
injurious effects likely to result therefrom.

Before leaving this branch of the subject, there is another characteristic
of keepers of these houses which must be noticed, namely, an exaggerated
affection for some man to whom they are passionately attached. Some few of
them are professedly living with their husbands, but this is an exception
to the ordinary rule. Generally speaking, they are the mistresses of some
persons upon whom they lavish all their tenderness, and for whose
gratification they willingly incur any amount of expense. Some of these
individuals are men upon town, gamblers, or rowdies of the higher class,
whose noblest aspirations are satisfied by a liberal supply of money. They
will readily ignore all social virtues for the same consideration. It is
related as a fact concerning a celebrated brothel-keeper in the city, that
when she was residing in the interior of the State, some years since, she
became desperately enamored of a young man whose friends discovered the
connection. They removed him to the far West. Undaunted by the dangers and
difficulties which surrounded her, she followed him, and during her
journey through the large towns had many offers of protection from men
acquainted with her antecedents. True to her affection, she refused them
all, and traced her lover to the forests. Here she remained with him,
living in a log hut, deprived of many of the necessaries and all of the
comforts and elegances of life, for three years. At least, infidelity to
her love can not be charged against this woman, and is it not a natural
conclusion that a heart so sincere and devoted in its attachment could
have been led to a more virtuous course had a different social feeling
existed toward her and her former transgressions?

As a general rule, the keepers of these first-class houses will not permit
the boarders to have the men whom they style their "lovers" residing with
them, although they allow them to visit; a constant residence is
considered as likely to engross too much of the girl's time to the neglect
of the interest of the proprietress.

We come now to the second grade of prostitutes and houses of prostitution.
Many of the women of this rank are those who made their _début_ in
first-class houses, but left them when their charms began to fade. To some
extent, they endeavor to carry out the same rules of conduct which
governed them while there, and, generally speaking, the management of some
portion of the houses of this grade assimilates very much with the former,
the same privacy being observed, though in a less expensive manner. In
others a marked difference is perceptible, and these will now claim
attention.

A longer continuance in the habits of prostitution, and the association
with a less aristocratic class of visitors, has diminished the refinement
of the women and imparted to them coarser manners. There is not the same
desire to "assume a virtue, if they have it not," or the same ambition to
make vice seem unlike itself. Degradation has had its effect upon them,
and now that they are reduced to a humbler sphere they feel more of the
world's pressure, and become more daring and reckless in their conduct.
Many of the street-walkers and women frequenting theatres are of this
class, and any one who has ever come in contact with them would have found
no difficulty in at once assigning their true position. It is right to say
here, that many of the managers of our best theatres have abolished the
third tier, so called, and if any improper woman visits them she must do
so under the assumed garb of respectability, and conduct herself
accordingly.

Other women in this grade, or rather this section of the second grade,
commenced their life of vice in it, and as the natural tendency of
prostitution is to depress instead of elevating its followers, they have
very little chance of ever rising beyond their present rank, although such
instances do occasionally happen, the keeper of a first-class house
sometimes consenting to receive a boarder from a lower rank, if she has
only recently commenced prostitution and is sufficiently prepossessing in
manners and appearance for this exaltation. A great number of foreign-born
women are found in this class, victims of emigrant boarding-houses, or of
seduction on board ship during their passage to this country.

The houses are generally conducted in a similar manner to those of the
first class, with this distinction, that what is costly luxury in the one
is replaced by tawdry finery in the other, and for expensive mirrors and
valuable paintings they substitute cheaper ornamentation. Their
reception-rooms are of much inferior finish. They also furnish wine and
brandy to customers who wish for them. Drunkenness is more general, both
with the prostitutes and their visitors, and the most revolting scenes are
not uncommon. Profanity is indulged in to a considerable extent, and in
some places seems the vernacular language. The attempts at fascination
made by the women are more excessive, and frequently vulgar to a degree
which, while it excites a smile, also inspires disgust. The general charge
for board here will be from six to ten dollars a week, rarely reaching the
latter figure.

When evening approaches, if there is little or no company in the house,
the girls resort to the streets, dressed in their most attractive finery,
in the expectation of finding some man whom they can induce to accompany
them home. They are seldom unsuccessful in this search, and very
frequently repeat it several times in the course of the evening. Others of
them visit the third tier of such theatres as will admit them, and there
exert their charms to secure conquest. Intercourse with these women is
attended with considerable danger, professional experience having shown
many of them to be infected with syphilis, while numbers are connected
with dishonest men who would not scruple to rob a stranger, if any
opportunity offered for the purpose, such opportunity being not
unfrequently afforded by some arrangement of the woman herself.

In such places vice presents comparatively few attractions, and yet these
houses are numerously visited, principally by travelers, clerks from
stores, the higher class of mechanics, etc., some of whom will spend in an
evening the earnings of a week.

The women who preside over these brothels are usually of the
strong-minded, and frequently of the strong-handed order, the latter being
those who can by their own strength suppress any riot that may occur
without calling in aid from the police, and generally calculate to
preserve a moderate decorum in their establishments. Their profits are
very large, derived not merely from the board money and extras paid by the
women, but also from the wines and liquors they sell. They do not endeavor
to screen their own character, as do those of the upper class, but openly
acknowledge what they are, and do not hesitate to give their personal
attention to the business of the place. Anxious to accumulate money as
rapidly as possible, they are not very particular about the means they
employ, and although they would not allow any positive act of dishonesty
to be performed toward a visitor while he was in the house, on account of
the trouble to which it might subsequently expose them, yet they would
scarcely consider it their duty to warn him against the proceedings of the
men who live as "lovers" with the prostitutes under their roofs. The
virtue of these keepers is certainly not of a very rigid order, and their
favored lovers are universally selected from among men of the same
character as themselves.

The meals provided for boarders are served at about the same hours as in
the fashionable houses, but they lack that neatness and arrangement which
a good cook would give, the domestic matters being mostly confided to
inexperienced servants, and frequently to some old prostitutes who are
retained at nominal wages to do as much work as they can, and in their own
style.

It has been already stated that some of the second-class houses of
prostitution are conducted in a similar manner to those of the first, and
therefore no attempt has been made to give any detailed account of them,
which would be a mere repetition of what has been once described. The
lower class have been taken as illustrating the second grade, and
consequently the account must not be taken as a sweeping condemnation of
the whole.

The next, or third grade of prostitutes and houses of prostitution may be
found very fully developed in the first police district, among the
Germans; in the fourth district, where sailors mostly resort; and also in
the third, fifth, sixth, and fourteenth districts. A majority of the women
in these districts are of foreign birth, the largest proportion being
Irish and German. Although rated as third-class houses, some of them are
equal in all respects, and sometimes superior in many, to houses of the
second class. Most of the women are young, and many of them are very
good-looking, while the houses, particularly those kept by Germans, are in
general conducted very quietly. Even in those places resorted to by
sailors, the principal part of any noise which may occur is caused by the
boisterous mirth and practical jokes of the visitors themselves. The
houses are, in every sense of the word, "public" places of prostitution,
and neither women nor keepers seek to disguise the fact in any manner, the
general argument seeming to be, "We live by prostitution, no matter who
knows it."

There are many distinctive features in the several districts, but the
first and the fourth will be fair average types of the whole, and these we
will notice briefly, commencing with the German houses in the first
district.

Here drinking is openly carried on, although seldom to such an extent as
to cause absolute intoxication. There is a public bar-room opening
directly from the street, where can be obtained lager beer and German
wines, as well as the usual liquors sold in porter-houses. This is the
reception-room of the establishment, and a stranger in the city, who might
walk in to get a glass of lager beer, without knowing the character of the
place, or being aware of the signification of the crimson and white
curtains festooned over the windows, would find himself followed to the
bar by some German girl, who would ask him in broken English if he would
"treat her." If he feels inclined to gaze around him and study human
nature in this phase, he sees that the room is very clean; a common sofa,
one or two settees, and a number of chairs are ranged round the walls;
there is a small table with some German newspapers upon it; a piano, upon
which the proprietor or his bar-keeper at intervals performs a national
melody; and a few prints or engravings complete its furniture. Two or
three girls are in different parts of the room engaged in knitting or
sewing; for German girls, whether virtuous or prostitute, seem to have a
horror of idleness, and even in such a place as this are seldom seen
without their work. Every thing bears an unmistakable Teutonic appearance;
from the heavily-mustached proprietor, or the recently-imported
bar-keeper, to the mistress, or madame as she is generally called, and the
women themselves, all plainly tell their origin. He is surprised at the
entire absence of all those noisy elements generally considered
inseparable from a low-class house of prostitution. He can sit there and
smoke his cigar in as much peace as at any hotel in the city; and if he
once tells a woman he does not wish to have any conversation with her, he
will scarcely be annoyed again, unless he makes the first advances. If he
thinks proper to enter into conversation with the proprietor, he will be
certain of a courteous reply, and will frequently find him an intelligent
and communicative man. Finally, concluding to resist the temptations
around him, he leaves the place in the most perfect security, and without
the least fear of being insulted.

The majority of the girls here have recently arrived in the United States.
Some have embraced this course of life from absolute poverty and
friendlessness; some have followed it in their own country; others have
been the victims of seduction; and with some the ruling motive seems to
have been a desire to speak and be spoken to in their native tongue. Their
pecuniary arrangement with the proprietor, for there is almost invariably
a man at the head of each establishment, is that they shall give him one
half of all the money they receive, for which he provides them with board
and lodging. They are not generally intemperate women, the light German
wines being their principal beverage, and although they frequently indulge
in profanity, yet, as it is in their national language, it is
unintelligible to those who understand only English, and the annoyance is
consequently restricted. They are generally honest; in fact, it is the
testimony of those best qualified to judge, that there is very seldom much
disturbance, and very rarely any dishonesty practiced in this class of
brothels. It can not be said that literally there is not much noise, for
any one who has been in a room where two or three Germans of each sex were
talking and gesticulating with their characteristic earnestness will be of
opinion that they talked quite loud enough; but by _disturbance_ is to be
understood quarreling or fighting, which sometimes occurs, but not very
frequently.

As before remarked, a man and his wife are mostly the keepers of such
houses. The man, sometimes with a lad for his assistant, attends to the
bar-room, and takes charge of the money, the wife does the cooking and
general house-work, and the girls attend to their own rooms. By this
division of labor the work is generally done to the satisfaction of all
parties, and, the expenses being light, a considerable profit is made.
There are mostly three or four girls in each house, seldom exceeding that
number, and the rule among house-keepers is to consider any girl an
unprofitable acquisition who does not pay them about ten dollars a week.
Their rents are low, because they have but little room. The basement of an
ordinary-sized house is generally the extent of their accommodation; the
front part of this forms the bar-room, and the remainder is partitioned
into very small bed-rooms.

There is another feature connected with German prostitution, and exhibited
in the same neighborhood, which has already received a cursory notice on a
former page, namely, their dancing-saloons. Saltatory amusements are
carried on, more or less, in all their houses of prostitution, but in
these saloons it is considered a respectable business enterprise, although
the morality of the establishments is, at least, questionable. The
ball-room is a large, open apartment devoid of all furniture excepting
chairs or benches round the walls; the musical arrangements generally
comprise a piano and violin, and the dances are national waltzes and
polkas. No charge is made for admission, and the bar is the only source of
revenue. The "orchestra" occasionally appeal to the charitable for
assistance, and the call is mostly responded to in a liberal manner. The
business commences in the evening, and is invariably discontinued at
midnight. The places are frequented by very few but Germans, and order is
well maintained.

Leaving the Germans of the first district, the reader's attention will now
be asked to the brothels of the fourth police district. Here the principal
part of the women are of Irish parentage; some few are natives of the
United States. The greater part of the visitors are sailors. When a
succession of storms which have driven homeward-bound vessels off the
coast is followed by a fair wind, so as to allow them to enter the harbor
in large numbers, these houses are crowded, and for a few days, or while
the sailors' wages last, a very extensive business is carried on. The
bar-room, as in the case of the German houses, is the reception-room, and
here may be seen at almost any hour of the day a number of weather-beaten
sailors, verifying the truth of the old proverb, which says they resemble
two distinct animals in earning and spending their money. It matters not
who it may be, but any one who enters the room is almost sure to be asked
to take a drink immediately, and if he remains, in less than five minutes
somebody else will ask him to take another. A sailor with cash in his
pocket has a decided antipathy to drinking alone, and generally invites
every one in the room, male and female, to partake with him. By such a
course he very soon gets intoxicated, when the girl whom he has honored
with his special attention convoys him to bed, and leaves him there to
sleep himself sober.

In these houses less neatness is observable than in those just noticed,
but they have entirely a different class of customers. A German, in the
midst of his pleasures, likes to see every thing neat and orderly about
him; a sailor is not particular, so that his pleasures are unobstructed. A
curious observer, also, does not meet with the same civility: if he comes
to spend money he is welcome; if not, the landlord does not care about his
company. Considerable card-playing is practiced; not what may be termed
gambling, but for amusement, the stakes being seldom more than
intoxicating drinks for the players. There is less noisy rowdyism than
might be expected, since the men who generally cause such disturbances
lack the courage to impose upon a crowd of hard-fisted sailors, who are
always able and willing to take their own part, and resent any
interference. Still, occasional quarrels occur among the visitors
themselves, frequently resulting in a pitched battle. The landlord is then
called for, and his knowledge of his customers enables him speedily to
discover the aggressor, who always happens to be the man that has the
least money, and he is forthwith pushed into the street without any
ceremony, as a kind of peace-offering to the rest of the company.

The landlord is a character in his way. He is a man who has been to sea
himself, for no one else would be deemed fit to keep a house where sailors
resort, and is usually a large, powerful man. By the freemasonry of the
craft, and by freely joining his visitors whenever they ask him to drink,
and occasionally treating them in return, he is sure of their custom until
their wages are all spent and they are obliged to go to sea again.

The women in these houses use liquor very freely, but they are not
permitted to get drunk in the daytime. If the landlord observes any
symptom of intoxication he gives them water, instead of gin, the next time
they are asked to drink, as he knows very well his prospects for business
would be injured unless the girls were kept sufficiently sober to be on
the watch for contingencies, or, as he phrases it, "to look out for
chances."

In some of these houses it is the rule that all the money received by the
girls is to be given to the landlord, who provides them with clothing and
necessaries, but in others a fixed rate of board--six or eight dollars a
week--is paid, and the women retain the surplus. In either case it is a
very profitable business, particularly where many girls are kept. In one
house that we visited, in the fourth district, the keeper informed us that
his expenses amounted to about one hundred and fifty dollars weekly, and
of course some estimate can be made from this as to the amount of business
he transacted.

The dancing-saloons in this neighborhood are not conducted on the platonic
principles of the Germans. They are, in fact, so many accessories to
prostitution, and many scenes there witnessed will not permit description.
The women residing in the house are there, dressed in the most tawdry
finery they can command, many of them assuming the bloomer costume. The
band consists of a violin, a banjo, and a tambourine, and whatever is
wanting in musical ability is adequately supplied by vigorous execution.
The bar is very liberally patronized, and before midnight drunkenness is
the rule and sobriety the exception.

Passing now to the fourth grade of this vice, we find prostitution in a
most repulsive form; the women themselves diseased and dirty, the houses
redolent of bad rum. The prostitutes are the refuse of the other classes
who have fallen through the successive gradations on account of disease
and drunkenness, or they are some of those children of iniquity who, born
in scenes of vice and squalid misery, know nothing of a virtuous or happy
course of life. Destiny seems from their birth to have intended them for
vagrants, and has planted them so low in the moral scale that they can
scarcely hope to rise.

It would be useless to attempt a specification of the localities of these
houses; any one who has been through the purlieus of New York City must
have observed some of them, and it will be quite sufficient to glance at a
few of their peculiarities. They are generally kept by an old prostitute,
who gathers around her some of the most debased of her class, takes a
cheap basement wherever she can obtain possession of one suited to her
purpose, erects a small bar furnished with three or four bottles of the
commonest liquor she can procure, partitions off one or two small hovels
of bed-rooms, and forthwith begins housekeeping. Her arrangements are
about as extensive as her preparations. She seldom professes to board the
girls, generally making a charge for every visitor they entertain, and
giving them the privilege of cooking any thing they want. These dens are
largely patronized by the vilest of the male sex; the petty thieves who
hang around the public markets, stealing from the wagons, or who haunt the
doors of grocery stores and abstract whatever they can reach; as they find
them convenient places of concealment, and can frequently dispose of their
booty by means of the women. Another class of visitors consists of the
lowest order of rowdies, who assume a free license to perpetrate any
mischief they please, because there is no one to interfere with them. A
fatal case of this nature, which occurred but a few months since, will be
fresh in the recollection of all citizens.

It is dangerous for a stranger to enter a place of this description, for
if he does not get his pocket picked by the one, he will most probably be
assaulted by the other class of visitors. Upon such establishments the
police are compelled to keep a watchful eye, and although they have no
power to enter them except some actual necessity calls for their services,
yet they frequently induce a neighbor to make a complaint against the
keepers for maintaining a disorderly house, and then, duly armed with a
warrant, they enter, and arrest every one found on the premises. The
_finale_ of such an experiment at housekeeping as this is very frequently
a commitment for vagrancy to Blackwell's Island. The character of the
place will be a sufficient proof that syphilis abounds there, and its
dangers must be added to those already enumerated.

The divisions thus made are presumed to be accurate as far as the
distinctive characters of the various grades are concerned, but the lines
of demarkation are of course arbitrary. Any attempt to classify so large a
social evil must, from its very nature, be incomplete, and in this case
farther experience or a more extended inquiry would very probably warrant
an alteration in the arrangement. But there is another class of whom a few
words must be said, namely, those truly wretched beings, the outcasts of
the outcasts. In many cases destitute of home or shelter, diseased,
starving, and afflicted with an insatiable thirst for ardent spirits, they
present most ghastly and heart-rending spectacles, retaining scarcely any
vestiges of humanity. These wretched beings can be found clustered round
the bars of liquor-stores in low neighborhoods, begging for the price of a
glass of gin. Much of their time is spent in the prisons on Blackwell's
Island, from which they are no sooner released than they return to their
old haunts and habits. They can scarcely be called prostitutes, for their
aspect is so disgustingly hideous that all feminine characteristics are
blotted out, and thoroughly sensual and animalized must he be who could
accept their favors. They are, in every sense of the word, outcasts;
compelled, for the short time they may be in the city--and this is seldom
more than a few days at once--to eke out a wretched existence by stealing
or begging; frequently so miserable that they gladly hail the day on which
they are returned to prison. They present subjects for mournful
consideration, and the reflection that they are experiencing the
degradation to which every prostitute in the city is rapidly tending,
should be a powerful argument in favor of any remedial measures which can
be devised to ameliorate the condition of the frail women of New York, and
prevent them from falling so far below humanity.

HOUSES OF ASSIGNATION.

Every resident of New York is aware of the existence of houses used
especially as places for the meeting of the sexes with a view to illicit
intercourse; but so carefully have all particulars respecting them been
concealed from the public gaze, that very little more than this mere fact
is generally known, particularly with reference to those of a higher
grade. Secrecy is necessary to their continuance, and essential for the
maintenance of the social position of their patrons.

The most exclusive are generally situated in the quietest and most
respectable portion of the city. They are fitted up neatly, and even
luxuriously, but without any extravagant or gaudy display. Their
arrangements, of course, do not require reception or sitting rooms, and
the whole care bestowed upon them is lavished on the bed-chambers, the
appointments of which contain every possible comfort and convenience.

The keepers of this class of houses are generally very shrewd, quiet,
cautious women, who never seek to penetrate into any engagements made by
their visitors, who never know any person that enters their house, and
from whom it is impossible to obtain information by any means. In fact, it
has been said that the keepers and servants around these places have
neither eyes, ears, nor tongues. Money is confessedly their object, and,
as they receive liberal pay, self-interest dictates quietness, because if
they adopted any other course, their houses would inevitably become known
to the public, which would be an effectual barrier against visitors, and
result in an entire loss of their customers. Consequently, if a liberal
bribe could ever induce treachery, their shrewdness enables them to
discern that such an act would at once and forever close their
establishments.

It will be readily understood that, as the intrinsic value of these houses
as places for meeting depends upon the secrecy and selectness with which
they are operated, in order to carry out this principle fully,
arrangements are made with much precision. Two parties are not allowed to
meet casually in the halls or staircases. The keeper maintains a strict
watch, in order that ingress and egress may be free and uninterrupted, and
there can be little doubt that the desire to make money on her side, and
the fascination of illicit passion on the part of her visitors, conjointly
tend to insure more actual secrecy than could be obtained by any system
of oaths or discipline. In some of the most exclusive, the system is
carried to such an extreme that no accommodation will be afforded to
parties unless the gentleman has been previously introduced to the
proprietress, and his character for secrecy and integrity vouched for by
some person with whom she is acquainted. This rule is adopted to prevent
the possibility of the house becoming known as a place of assignation to
any one who might use his knowledge to the prejudice of the keeper or her
visitors.

No public women reside in these houses, nor would they be admitted under
any pretext, as such a course would attract attention and defeat the
purposes contemplated. Many of them are open for months without the
knowledge of the neighbors or of the police of the district, as visitors
very rarely enter or leave together, and to prevent any delay the outer
door is generally kept unlocked, so that persons pass immediately into the
hall, where a second door, with a bell attached, is generally found.

The business of these houses is done mainly during the promenade hours of
Broadway, say from eleven or twelve to four or five o'clock. The visitors
are confined to the upper walks of life, the men being of all sorts of
business, and the women exclusively from our fashionable society. If the
mysterious "personal" advertisements in the daily papers could be
understood by the outside world, it would be seen that appointments are
not unfrequently made through their agency. Arrangements for a meeting are
generally made with the keepers in advance, and at the designated time the
parties arrive from different directions and proceed direct to the room
which has been already selected. If they wish it they can obtain wine or
refreshments by ringing a bell in their apartment.

A majority of the females who visit these places can scarcely be called
prostitutes, notwithstanding their undeniable fall from virtue. They sin
but with one individual, and that, in many cases, from positive affection,
and in others from the desire of sexual gratification. Whatever may be the
motive, it does not concern the keeper of the house, whose only business
is to receive the rent of her room, which ranges from two or three dollars
upward to any amount that policy or the desire to insure secrecy may
dictate. Doubtless very few of the visitors regard money in their
negotiations. Females are very frequently closely veiled when they enter
the house, so that their features can not be recognized, as has been
illustrated in trials for divorce in this city, especially if the prior
arrangements for the meeting have been made by the gentlemen. If, on the
other hand, the lady takes the preliminary steps, she can scarcely be
unknown to the proprietress, in whose keeping she consequently places her
character.

The unsuspecting moral men of New York will scarcely credit these facts,
but men of the world know that such meetings and places for meeting are
not uncommon. It may be objected that the exposure of these mysteries
imparts information which may lead the uninitiated into similar practices.
It is believed that the information here given is not sufficiently
definite for this end, and, certainly, nothing could be farther from the
design of this work than to aid an immoral purpose. But it is a duty to
record the general facts, in order that our citizens may be aware of the
dangers that abound on every side; and particularly is it necessary
because many of the female visitors are married women, who take advantage
of the absence of their husbands at business.

A question will arise: "Who are the women that keep these houses?" That
they can not have lived as common prostitutes, or been the keepers of
houses of prostitution, is evident. In the first place, the acquaintances
they would have made in either of those avocations would preclude the
possibility of their maintaining the inviolable secrecy necessary in a
house of assignation; and, again, no female would enter a place of this
description, the keeper of which would be likely to betray her. It is
apprehended that some of these houses originate in the following manner;
in fact, we know of more than one that did commence so:

A female engaged in an intrigue which she can not carry out at her own
residence, and desiring a place of security for her meetings, has an
acquaintance with some shrewd woman, possibly one who works for her as
seamstress, or in some other capacity, whom she makes partially a
confidant. She tells her that she is desirous of seeing a gentleman, whom,
for some particular reason, she can not invite to her house, and asks if
she will accommodate her with a room in which the interview can take
place. It is not likely that a person who felt under any obligation to her
employer would refuse such a request, especially for so simple a purpose
as a short conversation. The meeting accordingly takes place, and a
handsome present is made her. It is frequently repeated, until she becomes
suspicious, and finally satisfied that these interviews are for the
purpose of sexual intercourse. By this time it has become a question of
_policy_ with her. She argues that if she refuses to extend any future
accommodation she will lose not only a considerable income from the
presents, but also all employment from the lady. She knows that by
allowing such meetings she realizes considerably more than she can procure
by her daily labor, and self-interest is generally strong enough to
overcome her scruples. She goes on extending her accommodations, and
enlarging the circle of her visitors, until she becomes mistress of a
select house of assignation, which will be always liberally patronized so
long as her power of maintaining the requisite secrecy remains
unimpeached. Some of these women are from distant cities; entire strangers
in New York, except to their immediate customers. If they are widows who
have children, these are invariably educated away from home. From the
privacy observed it is very difficult to estimate their receipts, which
must be large. They sometimes degenerate into keepers of houses of public
prostitution, and then become dangerous members of society, on account of
the secrets which have been intrusted to them.

Probably some of our ultra-fashionable citizens might be enabled to give
more particulars of these houses than are here collected. What has been
stated is gathered from authentic sources, and may command implicit
belief. Indeed, so trustworthy is the authority that it may be confidently
asserted that even Fifth Avenue and Union Square are not exempt from these
resorts.

Such houses must be regarded as the connecting link between the licentious
excesses of the capitals of Europe and this city of the New World. They
are dangerous from their secrecy and exclusiveness. As yet they are rare;
and it speaks well for the morals of our upper classes that they are so.
It shows that the majority of people in the higher walks of life are
untainted. But the course of deterioration has commenced. Will not
American good sense and American morality check this base imitation of a
foreign custom?

The recently avowed sentiments, or rather the resuscitation of sentiments
which were proclaimed years ago respecting the obligations of marriage and
the theory of "free love," have doubtless increased the patrons of houses
of assignation among our fashionable novel-reading people, or weak
romantic heads made giddy by the sudden acquisition of wealth. For the
last fifteen years a loose code of morals has been promulgated among us,
the foreign apostles of which--many of them pretending to nobility, but
being in truth mere adventurers--have visited us, and by them and through
their influence many intrigues have originated. A spice of romance in the
American character has induced many to join this movement in search of
adventure, while a portion of our female society are ardent admirers of
every thing foreign, be it a lord or a lace veil, and these delight in an
intrigue because it is an exotic.

The facilities of communication with Europe are now so great that American
travel on that continent is largely on the increase, and perhaps there are
at this time in the cities of continental Europe more representatives of
our society than of any other nation. Many of our people go there with the
laudable desire to improve their minds by general culture, or for the
study of particular branches of science or art, but it is to be regretted
that some come back to our shores with ideas calculated to be any thing
but beneficial to their native country in a social or moral point of view.
The sons of our staid and "solid men" go to the capital of the French
empire to study medicine. Apart from the impropriety of this course when
there are the same facilities for study here, where a few seconds of
lightning intercourse will place them in immediate communication with
their friends, instead of their being separated four thousand miles from
parents and guardians, does the end justify the means? What course do
these young men frequently pursue? Unable to speak the language
intelligibly, they resort to the acquaintance of a _grisette_, in order to
study in her company. The language they acquire by this means is, at best,
a vulgar _patois_; but they also obtain a knowledge of intrigue entirely
incompatible with the simplicity and purity of our republican
institutions--a species of male and female diplomacy foreign to the
character of our people.

Young ladies, too, when they return from a foreign tour, are more
fascinated with the charms and successes of the favored mistress of some
European prince or potentate than benefited by the useful solid lessons of
travel. With them, as with the others, it is all superficiality.
Superficial when they started, superficial while traveling, they are still
more superficial when they return. There are always weak-minded people in
this country who will ape foreign manners, and to this cause must be
assigned the gradual approximation of our fashionable society to the vices
of the European capitals, their ladylike and gentlemanlike frailties,
their genteel peccadilloes and affectations. The effects of foreign travel
upon such persons can not but be injurious. It demands a clear head and a
sound heart to decide between the vicious frivolities and the positive
good submitted to their notice, and with the class mentioned it requires
but little judgment to know which will first attract them. They must see
Lord A---- or Count B----, no matter what valuable opportunities for
instruction they miss. They must become _au fait_ in the observances of
courts and the manners of courtiers, no matter what else they leave
undone.

As remedial measures for another evil are elsewhere spoken of, this may be
an appropriate place to suggest for profound consideration whether it
would not be a wise policy to adopt some preventive system for this evil.
We might establish a phrenological and psychological bureau, armed with
full powers to examine all persons desiring to travel, so as to ascertain
whether they may safely make the grand tour, and have sufficient strength
of intellect and firmness of principle to resist the vitiating influences
and examples which will surround them there, so that they may return only
with a knowledge of the good and valuable lessons taught!

But the evils of foreign manners and customs are not imported solely by
the traveling class of our own community. The political turmoils of
Europe, in the last eight or ten years, have thrown among us numerous
_refugees_ who have been reared in the hot-beds of intrigue, and who,
styling themselves _artistes_, depend upon our unexampled prosperity, the
increase of our wealth, the improvement of our country, and our known
predilections for foreigners, to enable them to make a living, and also to
establish the same state of morals and manners existing in the cities
whence they came. The United States are now the great harvest-field for
art, which, with science, music, and poetry, aids to improve the mind. At
the same time these bring with them an excessive devotion to fashion, both
in dress and manners, as the low-necked dress and the lascivious waltz,
which are so decidedly positive degenerations from our normal state that
none but the most superficial will ever copy.

That we are rapidly introducing many of the most absurd follies and worst
vices of Europe is a patent fact. Almost every one can specify acts now
tolerated in respectable families which, so far from being permitted
fifteen years ago, would have been thought by our plain common-sense
parents amply sufficient to warrant the exclusion of the offender from the
domestic circle; and it is an equally conspicuous fact that our social
morality is deteriorating in a direct ratio to the introduction of these
habits. Every day makes the system of New York more like that of the most
depraved capitals of continental Europe, and it remains for the good
innate sense of the bulk of the American people to say how much farther we
shall proceed in this frivolous, intriguing, and despicable manner of
living; or whether they will not strive to perpetuate the stern morality
of the Puritan fathers, our great moral safeguard so far, and thus put an
effectual barrier against the inroads of a torrent which must undermine
our whole social fabric, and finally crush us beneath the ruins.

The second class of assignation-houses are, to a great extent, private,
but not so rigidly exclusive as the others. Their furniture is of the same
luxurious style, but of a more gaudy character. Generally the same routine
is observed in regard to entrance as in those of the first class. The
principal portion of the females who resort to them are married women,
most of whom are from the upper classes, whose sexual passions are not
gratified elsewhere, or who resort to this means to obtain more money to
expend in dress; kept mistresses, residing with their lovers as husband
and wife in hotels or boarding-houses, whose attachment is not strong
enough to keep them faithful to one man; occasionally the best class of
serving-women, or shop-women, or females whose occupations, such as
milliners, artificial florists, etc., lead them into contact with the
fashionable classes. It is told on good authority that there are husbands
cognizant of the fact that their wives visit such places, and who live
wholly or in part upon money earned in this way. These cases are not
supposed to be numerous, but it is to be hoped, for the credit of our
national character, that the number will become still smaller. A few
prostitutes of the upper grades sometimes visit this class of houses; they
are known to the keeper, and she encourages them for the following reason:
An habitué of the place will make an appointment to visit it at a
specified time, and he tells the keeper he would wish to meet a female
there. At the appointed day his wishes are gratified, the keeper having
acted as negotiator with one of the girls mentioned. More wine is consumed
in these houses than in the strictly select ones, probably from the
different class who frequent them.

The third-class houses of assignation are not situated in such select
parts of the city as are the other two classes. Some of them are managed
with much privacy and seclusion, while others are simply houses of public
prostitution on a large scale. Their principal female patrons are those
prostitutes who have rebelled against the exorbitant charges made by
keepers of fashionable houses, and shop-girls who resort to prostitution
to augment their income. Many of these live some distance up town, and any
one who is journeying downward in the after part of the day may see
numbers of them going to these places in the cars and stages. This is
another imitation of the French and English systems. Very little disguise
is attempted about these third-class houses. Each has a parlor or
reception-room, where a man can have a bottle of wine, and one or two of
the girls named will join him. Of course many couples visit there, but a
large number of men go alone, knowing that there are always women in the
house. Fast young men about town are in the habit of keeping their
mistresses at these houses, as more economical than boarding with them at
hotels. Considerable disease is propagated in such places, a contingency
from which the first and second classes are almost entirely exempt.
Business is generally over here in three or four hours, commencing in the
dusk of the evening; but it is unquestionably a source of considerable
revenue to the keeper, particularly in those cases where she acts as
procuress, since, in addition to the rent of the room which the man pays,
she always receives a _present_ from the woman.

There is another or fourth class of assignation-houses to which the
commonest portion of street-walkers take their company, and these may be
emphatically described by an old saying, "Cheap and nasty." Dirty and
insufficient accommodations are the equivalents for low prices, and such
places are, in the general estimation of connoiseurs, very _low_ and
despicable. Notwithstanding this they thrive and multiply, from which it
may safely be inferred that they are profitable in a business point of
view, repulsive as they may be in their features and arrangements. Some of
them are ingeniously arranged with a view to robbery, and are called
"panel-houses." The plan adopted is somewhat as follows: Some man,
generally a countryman not very well informed in the tricks of the
metropolis, meets with a prostitute, and agrees to ac-company her to an
assignation-house. She is in league with the "panel thieves," and
therefore introduces her victim to one of their rooms. The apartment
seldom contains more furniture than a bed and a chair or lounge, with the
floor covered with a thick carpet. To make "assurance doubly sure," the
man himself locks the door by which he enters, and, when undressing,
naturally throws his clothes upon the chair or lounge. The bedstead is
placed so that the feet come toward the only _apparent_ door in the room,
with one side against the wall, and the head and other side hung with
curtains, which the woman carefully draws as soon as the man lies down by
her side. At the head of the bed, and of course concealed by the drapery
from any one occupying it, is another door, which forms the secret
entrance. It is so adroitly arranged, and so neatly covered with paper the
same as the walls, that no one would suspect its existence. The hinges and
fastening on the outside are oiled, so that no noise can be perceived when
it is opened, and the operator steals with cat-like step over the carpet,
and quietly examines the clothes without alarming the unsuspecting
stranger. The thief completes his inspection, appropriates as much as he
thinks proper, and the temporary occupant of the apartment resumes his
clothes and prepares to leave. If his suspicions are excited by the
circumstance that his wallet looks less plethoric than it did, and an
examination reveals that some of its contents are missing, he knows not
how to account for it. He is perfectly certain that no one has entered
that room while he was there, and if he has "visited" much before meeting
the girl, he concludes that he must have lost some of his money in his
career, and that the only way is to take the loss contentedly, and avoid
New York fascinations in future. Sometimes the loser has not enough
philosophy for this, and if he can be certain that his money was right
when he entered the room, will call in the police, and thus expose the
secret arrangements of the establishment. This is comparatively a rare
case, as most men would rather submit to a pecuniary loss than encounter
the trouble and exposure attending a criminal prosecution, and the
knowledge of this reluctance enables the "panel thieves" to pursue their
operations almost with impunity.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

NEW YORK.--EXTENT, EFFECTS, AND COST OF PROSTITUTION.

Number of Public Prostitutes.--Opinion of Chief of Police in 1856.--
Effects on Prostitution of Commercial Panic of 1857.--Extravagant
Surmises.--Police Investigation of May, 1858.--Private Prostitutes.--
Aggregate Prostitution.--Visitors from the Suburbs of New York.--
Strangers.--Proportion of Prostitutes to Population.--Syphilis.--
Danger of Infection.--Increase of Venereal Disease.--Statistics of
Cases treated in ISLAND HOSPITAL, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.--Primary
Syphilis and its Indications.--Cases of Venereal Disease in Public
Institutions.--Alms-house.--Work-house.--Penitentiary.--Bellevue
Hospital.--Nursery Hospital, Randall's Island.--Emigrants' Hospital,
Ward's Island.--New York City Hospital.--Dispensaries.--Medical
Colleges.--King's County Hospital.--Brooklyn City Hospital.--Seamen's
Retreat, Staten Island.--Summary of Cases treated in Public
Institutions.--Private Treatment.--Advertisers.--Patent Medicines.--
Drug-stores.--Aggregate of Venereal Disease.--Probabilities of
Infection.--Cost of Prostitution.--Capital invested in Houses of
Prostitution and Assignation, Dancing-saloons, etc.--Income of
Prostitutes.--Individual Expenses of Visitors.--Medical Expenses.--
Vagrancy and Pauper Expenses.--Police and Judiciary Expenses.--
Correspondence with leading Cities of the United States.--Estimated
Prostitution throughout the Union.--Remarks on "Tait's _Prostitution
in Edinburgh_."--Unfounded Estimates.--National Statistics of
Population, Births, Education, Occupation, Wages, Pauperism, Crime,
Breweries and Distilleries, and Nativities.

The preceding chapters have given a statistical and descriptive account of
prostitution in New York. Before considering what measures can be best
applied for the amelioration of its accompanying evils, it will be
necessary to ascertain the extent of the system, and this inquiry must
include the number of abandoned women in the city, and the amount of
venereal infection propagated through their agency.

It has been assumed in these pages that the two thousand women whose
replies form the basis of the statistical tables, represent about one
third of the aggregate prostitution of New York. This is allowing an
increase of twenty per cent. during the winter of 1857-8, in consequence
of the commercial panic of last autumn, and the resulting paralysis of
trade, and suffering of the laboring community.

In the progress of this investigation it was deemed advisable to consult
those whose acquaintance with the details of city life would entitle their
opinions to confidence, as to the actual number of prostitutes within our
limits; and in addition to much information obtained privately, the
following correspondence took place with the then Chief of Police:

(Copy.)

"Resident Physician's Office, Blackwell's Island,
"New York, September 1, 1856.

"GEORGE W. MATSELL, Esq., Chief of Police:

"DEAR SIR,--During the last twenty years various estimates have been
made by different persons, foreigners and natives, interested and not
interested, as to the number of prostitutes in the city of New York.
It is generally supposed that they reach the large number of
twenty-five or thirty thousand. You, sir, have been at the head of the
police department of the city for the past fifteen years, while
previous to that time you acted, if I mistake not, as one of the
police justices of the city. I presume, therefore, that you have a
considerable knowledge of prostitution as it exists here, and
consequently can give a very correct opinion as to the number of
prostitutes in New York City.

"You will greatly oblige me if, at your earliest leisure, and in any
form most convenient to yourself, you will state what you believe to
be the total number of prostitutes now in the city.

"It is proper to add that, with your permission, I intend to publish
this letter, with your answer, in the report on Prostitution which I
am preparing, and shall soon have the honor to lay before the public.

"Yours respectfully,
"WILLIAM W. SANGER,
"Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island."

(Reply.)

"Office of the Chief of Police, New York, Dec. 12, 1856.

"Doctor WILLIAM W. SANGER:

"DEAR SIR,--I received your letter asking me to express in writing my
estimate of the whole number of known public prostitutes in the city
of New York. In the absence of any law compelling the registering of
public prostitutes, it would be very difficult to testify with
accuracy to the exact number of such persons in the city. I have no
hesitancy in stating that, in my opinion, they do not number over five
thousand persons, if indeed they reach so high a figure. Having been
engaged in public life for many years, my opinion is based on the
observations made by me from time to time, and from various official
reports made to me.

"You are at liberty to make such use of this answer to your
interrogatory as you may deem proper.

"Very respectfully yours,
"GEO. W. MATSELL, Chief of Police."

This communication, in addition to the facts gleaned from other sources,
was amply sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the known public
prostitutes in New York did not exceed five thousand in number at the
close of the year 1856. Then ensued the summer, with its artificial
inflation--that false prosperity which excites unbounded hopes and
stimulates to measureless extravagance, followed by the revulsion and
panic of the fall and winter. Trade was literally dead: operatives, never
too well paid, were threatened with starvation; females, particularly,
felt the rigid pressure of the times. In many families the embarrassments
of the fathers compelled a reduction of the servants employed, and a large
number of domestics were added to the aggregate of that class already out
of situations. The occupations of the army of seamstresses, dress-makers,
milliners, and tailoresses were suspended, and their struggles for bread
were merged in the general cry for labor. It was, in short, a trying time
alike for the sufferers and the observers. But one resort seemed
available; the poor workless, houseless, foodless woman must have recourse
to prostitution as a means of preserving life.

As usual in any time of great excitement, surmise ran actually wild as to
the extent of the consequences, and extravagant theories abounded; one
gentleman actually stating in a public meeting that a thousand virtuous
girls were becoming prostitutes every week through sheer starvation! An
assertion so appalling as this is its own refutation. It assumes that one
woman in every hundred of the female population of New York City, between
the ages of fifteen and thirty years, became a prostitute every week; and
therefore, during the six months of fall and winter, twenty-six thousand
women, one fourth of the inhabitants of the ages named, one in every four
of all the women under middle age, would have been forced into vice! The
practice of "jumping at conclusions" upon serious matters like this is
much to be reprehended. An exaggerated statement made in the fervor of
enthusiasm, while advocating a benevolent object, must always recoil to
the injury of the cause it is intended to promote. It will be necessary
only to consider for a moment the financial condition of New York to be
convinced that such an increase of prostitution was impossible. It can not
be denied that the number of abandoned women is regulated by the demand;
or that the only inducement which could lead virtuous girls to the course
alleged must have been the necessity to earn money for subsistence. But
this necessity to earn money was felt as strongly by men as by women. The
revulsion for a time left a large portion of the community without
resources. Merchants, manufacturers, and store-keepers found their
receipts inadequate to meet their expenditures. Commercial _employés_,
book-keepers, clerks, salesmen, and agents were discharged. Mechanics in
every branch were without work, and consequently without wages. Merchants
from other parts of the country had no money to meet their liabilities or
make fresh purchases, and therefore did not visit the city as usual. These
causes combined to reduce the business of houses of prostitution, and
instead of large accessions to the ranks of courtesans, many of this very
class were forced to seek a refuge in the public charitable institutions.
Hence arose the increase in the denizens of Blackwell's Island, where
hospital, alms-house, work-house, and penitentiary were alike
over-crowded. Some of the places vacated by these recipients of
eleemosynary aid were doubtless filled by new recruits; but the
supposition that a thousand were added every week would imply a change in
the whole _corps_ every six weeks, or a change nearly five times completed
during the fall and winter.

That female virtue was yielded in many instances can not, unfortunately,
be doubted, but the sufferers did not become public prostitutes. Poor
creatures! they surrendered themselves unwillingly to some temporary
acquaintance, probably in gratitude for assistance already rendered, or
anticipating aid to be afforded. There is something truly melancholy in
the consideration that bread had to be purchased at such a price; that the
only alternative lay between voluntary dishonor and killing indigence. It
is but charity to conclude that the woman who thus acted, if her
subsequent course was not a continuous life of abandonment, was impelled
by the stern necessity of the times rather than induced by a laxity of
moral feeling. Unchaste as she must be admitted, she can scarcely be
deemed a prostitute in the ordinary acceptation of the word.

It would be foolish to deny all increase of prostitution since the date of
the correspondence just transcribed. The population of New York is now
some thirty or forty thousand more than at that time, and female
degradation has extended as a natural consequence. Relying upon the
estimate of five thousand as correct at the time made, the subsequent
augmentation of inhabitants would suppose an addition of about three
hundred prostitutes, but to take the widest scope, and assume that the
debasement required by hunger degenerated into a habit of confirmed vice,
it may be admitted that the number of abandoned women in New York has
increased from five thousand in 1856 to six thousand in 1858. This is a
very liberal estimate, and the total assigned is certainly not too small.
How much it may be in excess can not be said with precision, but in an
argument of this nature it is safer to err in the direction of overstating
an evil than to be lulled into false security by too flattering a
representation.

The known public prostitutes of New York are thus presumed to amount to
six thousand at the present day. But to this number exceptions might be
taken. To secure farther accuracy, additional evidence was sought. In the
month of May, 1858, the assistance of the Board of Metropolitan Police
Commissioners was requested, and, under the direction of its president
(General JAMES W. NYE), to whom our acknowledgments are respectfully
tendered for his courtesy and aid, a list of queries was submitted to the
Inspector of each Police precinct. Below is a copy of the circular, with a
synopsis of the replies.

(Copy.)

"Office of the Metropolitan Police Commissioners,
"New York, May 1, 1858.

"Inspector ------ ------: -- Police Precinct.

"SIR, You will please report to this office as early as possible on
the questions given below. Let your answers be full and explicit, to
the best of your knowledge and belief. Space is left below each query
for the insertion of your replies, and you will therefore write them
on this sheet, and return it without delay.

"1. How many houses of prostitution, from the most public to the most
private, are there in your police district?

"2. How many houses of assignation are there in your district?

"3. How many dancing-saloons, liquor and lager-beer stores, are there
in your district, where prostitutes are in the habit of assembling, in
addition to the known houses of prostitution?

"4. How many prostitutes do you suppose reside in your district?"

SYNOPSIS OF REPLIES.

+--------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | |
| | | Houses | Houses |
|Precincts.| Reported by | of | of |
| | |Prostitution.|Assignation.|
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------|-----------------------|-------------|------------|
| 1 |Inspector James Silvey | 22 | |
| 2 | " Hart B. Weed | 1 | |
| 3 | " J. A. P. Hopkins | 9 | |
| 4 | " Morris De Camp | 35 | 13 |
| 5 | " Henry Hutchings | 63 | 7 |
| 6 |Acting Inspector Lush | 52 | 6 |
| 7 |Inspector John Cameron | 6 | |
| 8 | " C. S. Turnbull | 43 | 15 |
| 9 | " Jacob L. Sebring | | |
| 10 | " T. C. Davis | 26 | 1 |
| 11 | " Peter Squires | | |
| 12 | " Galen P. Porter | | |
| 13 | " Thomas Steers | 15 | 4 |
| 14 | " J. J. Williamson | 39 | 5 |
| 15 | " G. W. Dilks | 5 | 19 |
| 16 | " Samuel Carpenter | 6 | 4 |
| 17 | " J. W. Hart | 20 | 3 |
| 18 | " Theron R. Bennett| 1 | |
| 19 | " James Bryan | 5 | 1 |
| 20 | " F. M. Curry | 15 | 1 |
| 21 | " Francis Speight | 15 | 10 |
| 22 | " James E. Coulter | | |
| | |-------------|------------|
| | Totals | 378 | 89 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------+
Dancing-saloons,| Estimated |
Liquor or | Number |
Lager-beer | of |
Stores, where |Prostitutes.|
Prostitutes | |
assemble. | |
----------------|------------|
3 | 76 |
1 | 2 |
| 26 |
8 | 750 |
46 | 420 |
12 | 228 |
4 | 100 |
| 300 |
| 50 |
4 | 100 |
12 | 50 |
| |
8 | 150 |
| 125 |
7 | 175 |
10 | 500 |
6 | 150 |
3 | 250 |
2 | 30 |
5 | 250 |
6 | 75 |
14 | 50 |
----------------|------------|
151 | 3857 |
-----------------------------+

Upon some of the reports are notes, which may be extracted.

Inspector Silvey, 1st district, says, in answer to question 4, "There are
_to my knowledge_ seventy-six common prostitutes living in this precinct."

Inspector De Camp, 4th district, says, in answer to question 4: "350 who
reside in houses of prostitution, 150 kept mistresses, 150 who reside in
the ward, and prostitute themselves in this and other wards, and probably
100 occasional prostitutes."

Inspector Hutchings, 5th district, in answer to question 3, classifies the
resorts as

Dancing-rooms 2
Saloons and cigar-stores 31
Lager-beer-stores 13
--
46

and, in answer to question 4, subdivides the prostitutes into

Whites 360
Blacks 60
---
420

Acting Inspector Lush, 6th district, says, in answer to question 4: "One
hundred and seventy-eight known prostitutes whose names we have; supposed
to be _at least_ fifty more residing in the district."

Inspector Cameron, 7th district, in answer to question 3, classifies the
resorts into

Lager-beer-stores 3
Cigar-store 1
--
4

and, in answer to question 4, says: "Can give no reliable information;
probably one hundred."

Inspector Sebring, 9th district, says, in answer to question 1, "This
precinct does not contain any houses of prostitution that I am aware of;"
and in reply to question 4: "Scattered through the precinct there are
_probably_ fifty."

Inspector Squires, 11th district, says, in answer to question 1: "None,
properly speaking. There are many low drinking places where dissipated
persons of both sexes often meet, and where, no doubt, prostitution is
sometimes practiced, but no regular houses of that character." To question
3: "There are about a dozen lager-beer-saloons where Dutch girls of loose
character assemble and dance at night. They do not remain long in the same
place, but when driven from one place they locate in another." To question
4: "I presume there are fifty young women and married women, some of whom
pass for respectable persons, who are in the habit of going across to the
eighth, fifteenth, and other disreputable wards for purposes of
prostitution, and some of the lowest of these are even said to visit the
fifth ward, but I have never been able to ascertain this fact positively."

Inspector Porter, 12th district says, "This precinct, comprising all that
portion of the island north of 86th street, is not infested with any of
the evils enumerated in the within questions."

Inspector Williamson, 14th district, says, in answer to question 4, "I
should _suppose_ about 125."

Inspector Carpenter, 16th district, says, in answer to question 4, "It is
generally conceded by those of us who presume to know that there are in
this precinct at least five hundred prostitutes, of all ages, nations,
grades, and colors."

Inspector Hartt, 17th district, says, in answer to question 4, "This being
a hard question to answer, the answer must be taken as entirely
guess-work: supposed to be about one hundred and fifty."

Inspector Curry, 20th district, says, in answer to question 4: "Probably
two or three hundred, but this is mere guess-work. We know there are a
great many; some of them very young."

Those reports from which no extracts have been made consist simply of
figures without any remarks, and are given fully in the synopsis. It will
be observed that all the officers quoted give the number of prostitutes
more as a conjecture than a certainty; and although their avocations would
lead them to know most of the disreputable women in their several
districts, none of them assume to be so thoroughly informed as to be
enabled to answer positively. To the numbers they give must be added the
floating prostitute population of station-houses, city and district
prisons, hospitals, work-house, alms-house, and penitentiary, which varies
from one thousand to two thousand, and may be taken at an average of one
thousand five hundred. This, with those known to the police, makes a total
of 5357, and the balance of six hundred and forty-three (643), required to
raise the number to six thousand (6000), is but a moderate allowance for
those who have escaped the eyes of the officers when taking the census. As
before remarked, it is better to overestimate than underestimate the
abandoned women of the city.

But to this number are to be added those whose calling is so effectually
disguised as to prevent its being known--those who practice prostitution
in addition to some legitimate occupation, and those who resort to illicit
pleasures for the indulgence of their passions. To obtain information on
these points some supplementary questions were addressed to the captains
of police at the commencement of this investigation in 1856, and their
replies are now submitted.

The first inquiry was, "How many houses of assignation are there in your
district?" It was known when this interrogatory was propounded that the
secrecy maintained in these places would in some instances baffle the
keenness, not often at fault, of our shrewdest police officers, and no
surprise was felt when their replies indicated that only seventy-four (74)
of these houses were known to them. Reliable information from other
sources led to the conviction that this was understated. The investigation
of May, 1858, fixes the number at eighty-nine (89), which is also too low;
and we shall be perfectly justified in estimating the number of houses of
assignation in New York at one hundred (100).

The next question was, "What, to the best of your belief, are the average
number of visitors to such houses every twenty-four hours?" The replies
gave an average of six couples to each house every day, or an aggregate of
six hundred women every twenty-four hours. This was followed by the query,
"Are all the females who visit these houses of assignation known public
prostitutes? If not, of what class do you suppose or know them to be?"
From the replies it was found that about two fifths were known as
prostitutes, the remainder being sewing or shop girls, kept mistresses,
widows, and some married women.

Again: "State your opinion as to how many kept mistresses there are in
your district?" In the twenty-two districts two hundred and sixty-eight
(268) were ascertained, and the presumption was that there were more. The
number may be safely taken at four hundred. The next question was, "How
many women, to the best of your belief, and that you have not previously
examined, are there in your district that obtain a livelihood in whole or
in part by prostitution?" To this the numbers are stated (upon belief, for
the nature of the question precludes any positive information) as about
four hundred. "Can you form an opinion as to how many women in your
district, who are not impelled by necessity, prostitute themselves to
gratify their passions?" No definite answers were obtained to this, the
general suppositions ranging from one third to one fourth of those who
were not recognized as public prostitutes. "To what extent, in your
opinion, is prostitution carried on in the tenant houses in your
district?" It is generally admitted that there is some, but no calculation
can be made with any accuracy. Many of what may be called private
prostitutes live in this class of houses, but their visitors would be
taken to houses of assignation, where the numbers are included in the
estimate given. "It is believed that there are many women who follow
prostitution living in nearly all the respectable portions of the city.
They (singly or in couples) hire a suite of rooms, and under the garb of
honest labor, sewing, etc., pass as respectable among those living near
them. It is also known that such as these are the great frequenters of
houses of assignation. How many such women (to the best of your belief)
are there in your district?" The officers reply that they have ascertained
that there are about two hundred, but they believe there are many more.

Thus much for the information we have been enabled to collect. There are
six hundred women who visit these houses of assignation every day, of whom
two fifths are known as public prostitutes, and the remainder are of other
classes. It may be assumed that the known prostitutes visit such houses at
least once every twenty-four hours, which leaves over three hundred visits
daily for the others. Kept mistresses or married women who resort there
for the gratification of their passions probably amount to one hundred
per day. It can scarcely be supposed that such visit houses of assignation
more than once a week as a general rule, while the others, sewing or shop
girls, etc., who resort there to augment their income, would probably take
this step two or three times per week, which would bring their number to
about four hundred. It thus appears that a very fair estimate of the total
number of frail women who are now in New York may be stated as follows:

Known public prostitutes 6000
Women who visit houses of assignation for sexual gratification 1260
Women who visit houses of assignation to augment their income 400
One half the number of kept mistresses, assuming the other half
to be included in those who visit houses of assignation 200
Total 7860

It will be seen that, to arrive at this conclusion, all are included who
are suspected to be lost to virtue, although of the number who visit
houses of assignation for sexual gratification many are guiltless of
promiscuous intercourse.

This total number falls very far short of the estimates made at different
times by various persons, that there are from twenty to thirty thousand
prostitutes in New York City! Such rash conclusions, hastily formed in the
excitement of the moment--sometimes influenced by the fact that "the wish
is father to the thought"--must give place to the results of a careful and
searching investigation made for this special purpose. The _modus
operandi_ of examination in the city rendered it incumbent on those having
it in charge to approximate to the facts, and is itself a sufficient
guarantee of correctness.[398]

If it were possible to parade the six thousand known public prostitutes in
one procession, they would make a much larger demonstration than the mere
printed words "six thousand" suggest to the reader. It requires a man who
is in the habit of seeing large congregations of persons to comprehend at
a glance the aggregate implied in this statement. Place this number of
women in line, side by side, and if each was allowed only twenty-four
inches of room, they would extend two miles and four hundred and eighty
yards. Let them march up Broadway in single file, and allow each woman
thirty-six inches (and that is as little room as possible, considering the
required space for locomotion), and they would reach from the City Hall to
Fortieth Street. Or, let them all ride in the ordinary city stages, which
carry twelve passengers each, and it would be necessary to charter five
hundred omnibuses for their conveyance. These simple illustrations will
make the extent of the vice plain to many who could form but an inadequate
idea from the mere figures.

Yet the estimate will probably appear low to those residents of the city
who have been accustomed to believe New York reeking with prostitution in
every hole and corner, while it will seem excessively large to readers
residing in the country. For the information of the latter it may be
remarked, that vicious as Manhattan Island unquestionably is, much as
there may be in it to need reform, in this matter of prostitution it must
not bear all the blame of these six thousand women, for although they
certainly reside in it, a very large number of their visitors do not dwell
there. Brooklyn, the villages on Long Island, Fort Hamilton, New Utrecht,
Flushing, and others; Jersey City, Hoboken, Hudson, Staten Island,
Morrisania, Fordham, etc., contain numbers of people who transact their
daily business in New York, but reside in those places. In very few of
these localities are any prostitutes to be found, nor would they be
encouraged therein while New York is so close at hand and so easy of
access. Again, the strangers flocking into this city from all parts of the
world average from five to twenty thousand and upward every day, and they
must relieve it of some part of this obloquy.

The population of New York at the last census (1855) was officially stated
to be (in round numbers) 630,000, and the proportionate increase for three
years to the present time will bring it very near 700,000. If illicit
intercourse here were carried on only by permanent residents, its
proportion of public prostitutes would be one to every one hundred and
seventeen (117) of the inhabitants; but the calculation must include the
denizens of the places already enumerated, and, adding 500,000 for them
and the number of strangers constantly visiting the city, we have a total
of 1,200,000 persons; making the proportion of prostitutes only one in
every two hundred, including men, women, and children. It is desirable,
however, to ascertain what proportion courtesans bear to the classes who
patronize them, and the census shows that males above the age of fifteen
form about thirty-two per cent. of the population. A wider range might
have been taken, as it is notorious that many boys under fifteen years
old, especially among the lower classes, practice the vice; but assuming
that to be the standard, there is one prostitute to every sixty-four adult
males, certainly not a large proportion in a commercial and maritime city.
It is impossible to form any idea of the proportion of male inhabitants
and visitors who encourage houses of prostitution. Marriage is not always
a check to indiscriminate intercourse, and professions of religion are
often violated for illicit gratification. Still there are a vast number
whom these obligations bind, and, if they could be exactly ascertained,
this would make a corresponding difference in the proportions.

As the case now is, New York City stands somewhat in the position of a
seduced woman, and has to endure all the odium attached to the number of
prostitutes residing within her limits; while her neighbors and strangers
who largely participate in the offense are like seducers, and escape all
censure, self-righteously saying, "How virtuous is our town (or village)
compared with that sink of iniquity, New York." It has been already stated
what the effect would be if all visitors to New York were moral men, and,
although the remark need not be repeated, its appositeness is apparent.

From the prostitutes within our borders emanates the plague of syphilis,
and when the number of abandoned women is considered in conjunction with
the certainty that each of them is liable at any moment to contract and
extend the malady; when the probabilities of such extension are viewed in
connection with the acknowledged fact that each prostitute in New York
receives from one to ten visitors every day (instances are known where the
maximum exceeds and sometimes doubles the highest number here given),
there can be no reasonable doubt of the danger of infection, nor any
surprise that the average life of prostitutes is only four years.

The actual extent of venereal disease must be the first point of inquiry,
and here the records of public institutions are of great service. The
hospitals on Blackwell's Island, under the charge of the Governors of the
Alms-house, present the largest array of cases, the principal part of
which were treated in the Penitentiary (now Island) Hospital. The number
of these cases was in

1854 1541
1855 1579
1856 1639
1857 2090

Upon these facts the writer of these pages remarked in his annual report
to the Board of Governors for 1856:

"The ratio of venereal disease on the gross number
of patients treated in 1854 was 37-4/10 per cent.
The ratio of the same disease in 1855 was 58-7/10 "
Showing an increase in the year 1855 of 21-3/10 "
The ratio of venereal disease on the gross number
of patients treated during 1856 was 73-1/10 "
Showing an increase in 1856, as compared with 1855, of 14-4/10 "
Or an increase, as compared with 1854, of 35-7/10 "

This steady increase, 21-3/10 per cent. in one year, and 14-4/10 per cent.
in the next, or 35-7/10 per cent. within two years, may be considered an
incontrovertible proof of the progress of this malady in the city of New
York. The fact that the people regard the Penitentiary Hospital as a
_dernier resort_, an institution to which nothing but the direst necessity
will compel them to apply, justifies the conclusion that the cases treated
are but a fraction of the disease existing, and its increase here may be
taken as a sure indication of a corresponding or larger increase among the
general population."[399]

Again, on the same subject in 1857:

"In my last report I took the opportunity to submit to your Honorable
Board facts proving the increase of venereal disease, and I then gave the
ratio of that malady on the gross number of patients treated as 73-1/10
per cent. In the year 1857 the ratio was 65-2/10 per cent.; but this
reduction of 7-9/10 per cent, must be considered in connection with the
fact that other diseases, much beyond the general average, have been
treated in the last year, so that a larger number of venereal cases will
yet show a smaller percentage. The cases of phthisis pulmonalis
(consumption), which have advanced from 58 in 1856 to 159 in 1857,
sufficiently explain that the decrease of venereal affections is apparent
and not real."[400]

An investigation beyond the statistics upon which these remarks were
based, and including the Penitentiary Hospital, Alms-house, Work-house and
Penitentiary, had shown that of the total number admitted to these several
institutions 59-1/2 per cent. had suffered or were suffering from venereal
disease at the time the inquiry was made. Of this proportion 45 per cent.
of the total were suffering _directly_ at the time of investigation, and
19 per cent. were suffering _indirectly_, or, in non-professional
language, were laboring under diseases more or less consequent on the
syphilitic taint.

The following detailed statistics of venereal disease treated in the
Penitentiary Hospital for four years ending December 31, 1857, will be
found to embrace many subjects which have been alluded to in these pages.

1854. 1855. 1856. 1857.
Total number of patients treated 4058 2657 2083 3158

Cases of primary syphilis 606 660 650 882
" of secondary and other forms of syphilis 935 919 989 1208
---- ---- ---- ----
Total of syphilitic diseases 1541 1579 1639 2090
NATIVITIES:
Natives of United States 410 489 531 673
Foreigners 1131 1090 1108 1417
---- ---- ---- ----
1541 1579 1639 2090

AGES:
Under 16 years 65 72 77 68
From 16 " to 20 years 481 457 472 593
" 21 " to 25 " 490 481 494 631
" 26 " to 30 " 314 304 311 423
" 31 " to 40 " 128 151 165 190
" 41 " to 50 " 42 99 101 157
" 51 " and upward 21 15 19 28
---- ---- ---- ----
1541 1579 1639 2090

EDUCATION:
Good 175 227 231 175
Imperfect 787 794 830 1161
Uneducated 579 558 578 754
---- ---- ---- ----
1541 1579 1639 2090

From the total number of venereal patients under
treatment 1541 1579 1639 2090
Deduct those discharged each year 1253 1316 1389 1710
---- ---- ---- ----
Leaving to add to the next year's account 288 263 250 380

Of the numbers discharged the following is the
RESULT OF TREATMENT:
Cured 874 1051 1201 1491
Relieved 370 263 183 213
Not relieved 7 1
Died 2 2 5 5
---- ---- ---- ----
1253 1316 1389 1710

DURATION OF TREATMENT:
5 days and under 13 16 17 83
6 " to 10 days 57 36 68 102
11 " to 20 " 80 59 81 131
21 " to 30 " 154 121 137 187
1 month to 2 months 293 333 453 528
2 months to 3 months 304 443 340 328
3 " to 4 " 220 245 207 260
4 " and upward 132 63 86 91
---- ---- ---- ----
1253 1316 1389 1710

Some few remarks may be made on the subject of primary syphilis. The
proportion of the cases of this malady to the gross number of patients
treated was in

1854 14-9/10 per cent.
1855 25-2/10 "
1856 31-2/10 "
1857 27-9/10 "

By the term "primary syphilis," non-professional readers will understand
the commencement of the disease, or symptoms which are the direct
consequence of an impure connection, in contradistinction to "secondary
syphilis," which is the comparatively remote result of infection; never
appearing until after the primary symptoms are well developed, and
frequently not until all traces of them are removed. He will thus see that
every case of primary syphilis is in itself a proof of recent intercourse
with a diseased person. These cases, then, have increased from 15 per
cent. in 1854 to 31-1/4 per cent. in 1856, and 28 per cent. in 1857. The
remarks recently quoted explain how 882 cases in 1857 make a smaller
percentage than 650 in 1856. The fact of this increase compels us to but
one conclusion, and that is a very important and suggestive one, namely,
that _commerce with prostitutes in 1857 was attended with nearly twice the
risk of infection incurred in 1854; and, of course, the health of
abandoned women has deteriorated in the same proportion_. This is not said
with any wish on the part of the writer to be considered an alarmist. The
facts are those which have come under his personal observation: the
inference is but a plain and natural deduction.

But the Hospital, although the chief, is not the only institution on
Blackwell's Island where patients are treated for venereal disease. The
Alms-house, Work-house, and Penitentiary have each a share of sufferers
from this malady, to what extent will be shown by the annexed table:

1854. 1855. 1856. 1857.
Alms-house 33 173 85 52
Work-house 65 31 5 56
Penitentiary 176 234 430

Bellevue Hospital, New York City, also under charge of the Governors of
the Alms-house, is not professedly available to venereal cases. By a
report from the Medical Board of that institution, which will be found in
the next chapter, it is seen that they estimate "not far from 10 per
cent. of the inmates of Bellevue Hospital are admitted for affections
which have their origin remotely in venereal disease." These data are
sufficient to fix the numbers thus treated as follows:

Year. Total number 10 per cent for
of patients. venereal cases.
1854 7033 703
1855 6697 670
1856 6392 639
1857 7676 768

In regard to the Nursery Hospital on Randall's Island, it is stated by Dr.
H. N. Whittlesey, the Resident Physician, that "nine tenths of all
diseases treated in this hospital during the past five years have been of
constitutional origin, and for the most part hereditary. The exact
proportion which hereditary syphilis bears to this sum of constitutional
depravity can not be stated with accuracy." It is an estimate far within
the bounds of probability to assume that one half of the diseases referred
to by Dr. Whittlesey are complicated with or by syphilitic taint, and the
numbers in the Nursery Hospital will therefore stand as follows:

Year. Total number 50 per cent. for
of patients. venereal cases.
1854 2199 1100
1855 2310 1155
1856 1275 638
1857 1469 734

Following the institutions in charge of the Governors of the Alms-house is
the New York State Emigrants' Hospital on Ward's Island, New York City,
under the direction of the Commissioners of Emigration, in the reports
whereof the following cases of venereal disease are noted:

1853 657
1854 732
1855 856
1856 511
1857 559

The New York Hospital, Broadway, next claims attention. The reports for
the under-mentioned years give the number of venereal cases as follows:

1852 478
1853 338
1856 372
1857 405

These embrace the principal public hospitals of New York. There are other
institutions, such as St. Luke's Hospital, St. Vincent's Hospital, the
Jews' Hospital, etc., but they are of recent origin, and their practice
will not form an element in this calculation.

The dispensaries of the city relieve yearly a large amount of sickness. In
the New York Dispensary, Centre Street, the cases of venereal disease are
reported as follows:

1855 1154
1856 1393
1857 1580

This gives an average of about three per cent. of all the patients
treated.

The Northern Dispensary, Waverley Place, does not publish any detailed
report of the diseases treated, and to make an estimate it will be
necessary to assume that the proportion is the same as in the New York
Dispensary, namely, three per cent. By this rule the following results are
obtained:

Year. Total number 3 per cent. for
of patients. ven. cases.
1850 19,615 588
1851 20,680 620
1852 21,941 658
1854 14,075 422
1855 12,378 371
1856 11,797 354
1857 10,895 327

The Eastern Dispensary, Ludlow Street, does not give any detailed report
of the diseases treated, and the same approximation will be made as
previously:

Year. Total number 3 per cent. for
of patients. ven. cases.
1855 25,612 768
1856 21,017 630

To the Demilt Dispensary, Second Avenue, the same system of approximation
will be applied:

Year. Total number 3 per cent. for
of patients. ven. cases.
1852-3 2,197 66
1853-4 9,006 270
1854-5 14,034 421
1855-6 20,004 600
1856-7 20,684 620
1857-8 26,785 803

The Northwestern Dispensary, Eighth Avenue, subjected to the same rule
gives

Year. Total number 3 per cent. for
of patients. ven. cases.
1854 9,264 277
1855 11,581 347
1856 11,477 344

Cases of venereal disease are treated in the Clinical Lectures at the
three medical colleges of New York City. From the New York University
Medical College the following report of patients has been obtained. It is
undoubtedly much too low an estimate.

1855 47
1856 53
1857 69

and assuming that the practice of the others is of the same extent, we
have as the venereal cases treated in the three colleges:

1855 141
1856 159
1857 207

As many of the patrons of New York houses of ill fame reside out of the
city, some further information must be sought beyond our own limits.
Without professing to inquire into the public health in all the suburbs
previously enumerated, it will be sufficient to take the reports of the
superintendents of the poor of King's County to ascertain what amount of
syphilitic infection has been treated at the public cost in Brooklyn and
its environs. The reports of Doctor Thomas Turner, Resident Physician of
the King's County Hospital, show the following cases:

1853 165
1855 362
1857 311

or about ten per cent. on the total number treated.

In the Brooklyn City Hospital the cases of venereal disease received and
treated were in

1854 158
1855 173
1856 160
1857 186
1858 (to May 1) 65

It has been already stated that sailors are great patrons of prostitutes,
and to obtain any true statement of venereal disease among them, some
estimate respecting this class must be made. For this purpose the reports
of Dr. T. Clarkson Moffatt, Physician-in-chief of the "Seaman's Retreat,"
Staten Island, New York, are available. The number of cases treated in the
several years is here given:

1854 657
1855 473
1856 355
1857 365
1858 (to April 1) 82

This is nearly twenty-four per cent. on the gross number treated.

This concludes the published reports of charitable institutions, and the
question next arises, What amount of syphilis is treated by physicians in
private practice? It is impossible to obtain any reliable data upon this
head. The Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital, composed of some of the
leading members of the profession in the city, state that they "are unable
to say what proportion of the practice among regular and qualified
physicians in this city is derived from the treatment of venereal
diseases, but they know it is large, and that many receive more from this
source than from all other sources together."

There are also a very large number of advertising pretenders who offer
their services for the treatment of secret diseases; and many drug-stores
whose main business is derived from a similar source; together with an
infinity of patent medicines announced and sold as specifics for all
venereal maladies. Upon the simple commercial principle of supply and
demand these are so many proofs of the extent of the evil they profess to
relieve. Should the number of cases of venereal disease treated in private
practice by qualified physicians and by advertisers, added to the number
of patients who supply themselves with patent or other medicines from
drug-stores, be regarded as equal to the aggregate of those treated in
public institutions, the estimate could not be deemed extravagant.

The design is now to ascertain how much venereal disease exists in New
York at the present time, and to do this it will be necessary to
recapitulate the information already given. The cases below are those
treated in 1857:

Institutions. Cases.
Penitentiary Hospital, Blackwell's Island 2090
Alms-house, Blackwell's Island 52
Work-house, Blackwell's Island 56
Penitentiary, Blackwell's Island 430
Bellevue Hospital, New York 768
Nursery Hospital, Randall's Island 734
New York State Emigrants' Hospital, Ward's Island 559
New York Hospital, Broadway 405
New York Dispensary, Centre Street 1580
Northern Dispensary, Waverley Place 327
Eastern Dispensary, Ludlow Street 630
Demilt Dispensary, Second Avenue 803
Northwestern Dispensary, Eighth Avenue 344
Medical Colleges 207
King's County Hospital, Flatbush, Long Island 311
Brooklyn City Hospital, Brooklyn, Long Island 186
Seaman's Retreat, Staten Island 365
----
Total 9847

Medical men, and those acquainted with the internal arrangements of public
institutions, need not be reminded that the general system of record in
hospitals includes only what may be called the prominent malady. Thus, if
a man were admitted with a broken limb, it would be registered as a
fracture; and if the same man were suffering indirectly from syphilis at
the same time, no entry would be made thereof, although the physician
rendered him every professional assistance toward its cure. It is
estimated that in this manner a large number of the cases of venereal
disease treated in all public institutions, except such as make a
specialty of those maladies, is never recorded elsewhere than on the
private case-books of the attending physicians. More particularly is this
the rule in institutions supported wholly or in part by voluntary
contributions. Their benevolent directors have not yet outlived the
prejudice which formerly held it almost as disgraceful to treat as to
contract syphilis. Some of the spirit which drove the unhappy men and
women so afflicted from civilized life to perish in the fields or woods,
as in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and at a later period drew from the Papal government a bull
recognizing the affliction as a direct punishment from the Almighty for
the sin of incontinence, still survives in the present generation. The
trustees of more than one of the dispensaries in New York have directed
their medical officers not to prescribe for such complaints, and a
hospital in a sister city, which receives a yearly grant from public
funds, has in its printed rules and regulations: "No person having
'Gonorrhoea' or 'Syphilis' shall be admitted as a charity patient." Some
remarks are made hereafter upon this course, and the facts are mentioned
now to explain why many cases of venereal disease never appear upon the
reports of institutions where patients are treated.

Practically such prohibitions are a dead letter. No physician of a public
institution, applied to by a poor wretch suffering from syphilis, could
pass him by without attempting to relieve, let the orders of the board of
trustees be what they may. His mission is simply to apply the aid of
science and skill to the alleviation of any ailment which may be presented
to his notice, and his appreciation of the responsibility of his office is
too keen to allow him to refuse the prayer of such an applicant. Hence
arises the circumstance that the case is treated under some other name.

If then the cases recorded are but two thirds of the aggregate, the
numbers stand thus:

Cases recorded in public institutions 9847
Cases not recorded 4923
-----
Total. 14770

cases in the year 1857 in public institutions.

The difficulty of forming an opinion as to the extent of venereal disease
treated in private practice has been already mentioned. In the absence of
all information, collateral circumstances form the only guide to a
conclusion. The amount is unquestionably very large; so large that, if its
full magnitude could be discovered and announced, every reader must be
astonished. The first consideration to support this view may be found in
the army of advertising empirics who make it a source of revenue. Each of
these men must have numerous patients; he could not keep up his business
without them. Any practical advertiser knows that to insert an
announcement of some twenty or thirty lines every day in at least two
daily papers, to repeat the same in weekly journals, and, in addition to
this, to post handbills on the corner of every street, and employ men or
boys to deliver them to passengers at steam-boat docks, ferry landings,
and rail-road depôts, can not be done without a considerable outlay,
whatever its prospective advantages may be. No one supposes these
charlatans to be actuated by pure disinterested benevolence. They crowd
the columns of our journals, and insult us with their printed
announcements in the public thoroughfares, simply because "it pays." These
means obtain them customers, and whenever this result ceases the
announcements will be discontinued. While they appear there is positive
proof that their issuers are gathering patronage.

The number of patent medicines always in the market for the cure of secret
diseases, and which the vendors announce "can be sent any distance
securely packed, and safe from observation," affords a corroboration. They
are made and sold as a business speculation. When their reputation
diminishes, and the public become doubtful if all the virtues of the
_materia medica_ are comprised in a single bottle of "Red Drop," or
"Unfortunate's Friend," the manufacture will soon stop, and the inventors
will resort to some other employment for their capital. The extent to
which advertising empirics and patent medicines are flourishing is an
undeniable proof of the prevalence of the maladies they professedly
relieve.

The legitimate business of drug-stores affords another link in the chain
of evidence. Beyond the regular nostrums, almost every druggist in the
city sells large quantities of medicine for the cure of venereal disease.
Sometimes a man will candidly tell the storekeeper that he has contracted
disease, and ask him to make up something to cure it. At other times a
prescription, which has been efficacious in a former attack, will be
presented, or the sufferer has taken counsel among his friends and
companions, and obtained some infallible recipe from one of them. In
short, there are so many different means taken by persons who have
contracted disease that it is impossible to enumerate the various methods
in which the aid of the drug-store may be invoked.

There are many traditional recipes which can be used without the necessity
of purchasing ingredients of a druggist. One favorite remedy among the
lower classes is "Pine Knot Bitters." Bottles of this preparation are kept
for sale in liquor stores, particularly in those neighborhoods where
prostitutes "most do congregate."

Another reason may be submitted why a large amount of venereal disease
must be treated privately. Many of the victims are men who move in a
respectable sphere of society, and have probably been led to the act which
resulted so disastrously in a moment of uncontrollable passion. Their
social position would be irreparably damaged should they enter a public
hospital, and the desire to retain their _status_ forces them to secrecy,
even if the natural repugnance of every man to the former course did not
exist. It is vain to deny that, while medical institutions designed for
the public good are so managed as to inflict a disgrace upon their
inmates, their benefits are circumscribed, and will never be accepted by
any but the poor unfortunates who have no other means of obtaining relief.
In the case of syphilis this is particularly to be regretted from the
nature of the disease. Every day it is neglected it becomes in a tenfold
degree more aggravated, and entails proportionate misery in after life.

If it be assumed that the private cases of venereal disease equal in
number those treated in public institutions, an aggregate is obtained of
more than 29,500 cases every year. If the former are double the number of
the latter, the sum will be over 44,000 cases per annum. Either of these
conjectures is below the truth, and we are satisfied, from professional
experience and inquiry, that there is no exaggeration in estimating the
number of patients treated privately every year for _lues venerea_ as at
least quadruple the cases receiving assistance in hospitals and charitable
establishments. _The result is the enormous sum of seventy-four thousand
cases every year!_ If each person suffered only one attack each year, this
would represent one sixth of the total population above fifteen years of
age. But many persons, especially among abandoned women and profligate
men, are infected several times in the course of twelve months, and any
attempt to say what proportion of individuals are represented in these
74,000 cases would be mere speculation without a particle of conclusive
evidence to support it.

Notwithstanding the magnitude of the result, a very brief consideration
will show that it is not extravagant. In addition to the arguments already
advanced in this chapter, the reader will recollect that in a previous
section it has been shown that two out of every five prostitutes in New
York _confessed the syphilitic taint_. Supposing a girl relinquishes her
calling as soon as she becomes aware of being diseased, several days may
have elapsed before she discovered her condition, and during that interval
she must have infected every man who had intercourse with her. To take the
most liberal view, it may be conceded that the portion who acknowledged
infection were not all suffering from the primary or communicable form;
many of them had doubtless recovered from that; but if only one half were
so suffering, and each of these infected only one man, the result would be
365,000 men diseased every year.

This is not an exaggerated estimate. As was said when alluding to the
prostitutes who admitted their contamination, there can be no possible
suspicion that they would acknowledge sickness if they could avoid doing
so, and consequently the sick are certainly not overrated. It may be
objected that the numbers who owned disease were spread over a
considerable space of time, but this can be met with the fact that the
inquiry which produced this result was in progress simultaneously in all
parts of the city. At the farthest it did not extend three months from the
time of commencement to completion, and the natural presumption would be
that, as during that time the health of the women was neither better nor
worse than in any other three months of any year, the same proportion of
diseased women could be found whenever an investigation was made; in other
words, that two out of five prostitutes in New York are diseased.

The calculation that of these diseased women one half only are affected in
a manner which renders them liable to infect their paramours is also a
liberal one. Syphilis, when manifested in its secondary stage in the shape
of sores, eruptions, and blotches upon the face or person, is so
disgusting that no prostitute thus disfigured could retain her place in
any brothel, unless it was one of the very lowest grade, because her
appearance would immediately repel all visitors. In its primary or local
form it is of course concealed from her customers, and may be so concealed
for a considerable length of time. These facts borne in mind, is it not
almost too liberal an estimate to assume that one half who admit syphilis
are suffering in the secondary or palpable form?

This line of argument, supported by the facts given, is perfectly
justifiable, view it in what light you may, and proves that the estimate
of 74,000 cases of venereal disease annually is much too small.

Another course of reasoning may be adopted. The time occupied in taking
the census is stated at three months. This included all the needful
preliminary measures, the instructions to examiners, the conferences with
police captains, etc; and the final proceedings, such as arranging and
writing out reports. Allow one third of the time for these introductory
and concluding adjuncts, and it will leave about sixty days, including
Sundays, or fifty-two working days devoted to the actual inquiry. The
inquiry resulted in the discovery of syphilis in such a proportion of
women as would amount to an aggregate of two thousand on the total number
of public prostitutes. Suppose the disease of two thousand women equally
distributed over the fifty-two days; or, in other words, that an average
number were infected and confessed it every day, and the result is
thirty-eight women diseased every twenty-four hours. We wish to make this
argument as plain as possible, and the reader will pardon what may appear
needless repetition. If this disease existed in each woman for four days
before she was conscious of it, or it became so troublesome as to force
her from her calling, and during this interval of four days each woman had
intercourse with only one man per day, over fifty thousand men would be
exposed to the risk, almost the certainty of contracting infection in the
course of the year. As the _Medico-Chirurgical Review_ said, in the course
of a similar argument upon syphilis in London, this estimate is
"ridiculously small." In the first place, a majority of the women would
not abandon their calling in four days after infection, but would continue
it as long as they could possibly submit to the suffering involved. Every
resident of New York will remember the excitement caused in the spring of
the year 1855 by the arrest of a large number of prostitutes in the public
streets, their committal to Blackwell's Island, and their subsequent
discharge on writs of _habeas corpus_, on account of informality in the
proceedings; but it is not generally known that of those arrested at that
time a very large proportion, certainly more than one half, were suffering
from syphilis in its primary form, and many of them in its most inveterate
stage. We make this assertion from our own knowledge, the result of a
professional examination, and mention the circumstance now to prove that
women will not abandon their calling when they know themselves diseased,
so long as they can possibly continue it. If the estimate had been made
that each woman continued prostitution for eight days instead of four days
after she was infected, it would have been a closer approximation to the
truth, and it would have shown over _one hundred thousand_ (100,000) men
exposed to infection every year.

Again: The supposition that a prostitute submits to but one act of
prostitution every day is "ridiculously small." No woman could pay her
board, dress, and live in the expensive manner common among the class upon
the money she would receive from one visitor daily; even two visitors is a
very low estimate, and four is very far from an unreasonably large one.

But suppositions might be multiplied, and the argument extended almost _ad
infinitum_. One more calculation shall be submitted, and then the reader
can form his own conclusion upon the question whether the theory of
seventy-four thousand cases of venereal disease in New York every year has
not been supported by a mass of evidence far more weighty than can
ordinarily be adduced to establish a controverted point.

It shall be assumed that the thirty-eight women infected every day
continue their calling for six days after the appearance of venereal
disease, and during such six days one half of them shall submit to one,
and the other half to two sexual acts daily. Then, in the course of a
year, one hundred and twenty-five thousand men would be exposed to
contamination. To this add the number of women infected, which, at
thirty-eight daily, would amount to nearly thirteen thousand in the year,
and a total of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand will be presented, or
nearly double the number assumed as a basis for remark. It is needless to
advance farther reasons in support of the soundness of that opinion.

Next in order will be the consideration of the amount of money
prostitution costs the public. The amount of capital invested in houses of
ill fame, and the outlay consequent thereupon presents a total which can
not but surprise all who have not deeply reflected upon the ramifications
of the evil. The police investigation of May, 1858, quoted a few pages
back, gives the total number of houses of prostitution as 378, and the
worth of property thus employed can be ascertained with a tolerable degree
of accuracy from information obtained, in many cases, by actual inquiry.
The value of real estate where it was owned by the keepers of these houses
has been already given in some instances, and in others the rent may be
assumed equivalent to ten per cent. per annum upon the cost of the
property, which is certainly not an undue valuation. Dividing the total
number of houses into four classes the estimate stands as follows:

80 houses of the first class are estimated, from
actual inquiry, to be worth, including real estate
and furniture, $13,800 each, or a total of $1,104,000
100 houses of the second class are estimated at
twenty-five per cent. less than those of the first
class, namely, $10,350 for each, or a total of 1,035,000
120 houses of the third class at $5000 each 600,000
78 houses of the fourth class at $1000 each 78,000
----------
378 houses of prostitution are estimated worth $2,817,000

Add for houses of assignation:

25 houses of the first class at $12,000 each 300,000
25 " second " 9,000 " 225,000
35 " third " 5,000 " 175,000
15 " fourth " 3,000 " 45,000
--- ----------
100 Total for houses of prostitution and assignation $3,562,000

In addition to this are 151 dancing-saloons, liquor and
lager-beer stores, mainly dependent upon the custom of
prostitutes and their companions. Any place in which it
is possible to carry on either of these businesses must
be worth $200 a year rent, which would give a value of
$2000 each, or a total of 302,000

The necessary stock, fixtures, and implements can not be
worth less, on an average, than $100 in each place:
this gives a total of 15,100

and an aggregate capital of $3,879,100

invested in the business of prostitution. That this is not an extravagant
estimate will be admitted by any real estate owner or person acquainted
with the value of property in the city; especially if he takes into
consideration the location of many of the houses, and calculates how much
more the adjacent lands and buildings would be worth if these resorts of
vice and infamy were removed.

On a scale correspondingly large is the amount of money actually spent
upon prostitutes. The weekly income of each woman can not be less than
ten dollars. Many pay much more than that sum for their board alone, and
in first-class houses it is not uncommon for a prostitute to realize as
much as thirty or fifty dollars, or upward, in a week. But if the income
is taken at the lowest point, the aggregate receipts of six thousand
courtesans amount to $60,000 per week, or $3,120,000 per year.

Every visitor to a house of prostitution expends more or less money for
wines and liquors therein. In some cases this outlay will be larger than
the cash remuneration given to the women, but other men are not so lavish
in their hospitality; and it is fair to assume that such expenditures
amount to two thirds of the previous item--a weekly total of $40,000, or
$2,080,000 spent for intoxicating drinks in houses of prostitution every
year.

In describing the customers of houses of assignation, it has already been
remarked that in the first class many of the female visitors take that
step, not for gain, but impelled by affection or sexual desire. They would
spurn the idea of being paid for their company; but the houses at which
their intrigues are consummated being luxuriously furnished, and conducted
by women of known discretion and secrecy, have a high tariff of prices as
one of their features. Visitors must pay as much there for accommodation
as the rent of a room and compensation to a female would amount to in
places of less pretension. It is assumed that 4200 visits are paid to
houses of assignation every week, and for the foregoing reason estimating
them to cost the men the same in every instance, and fixing that cost at
three dollars for each visit, this item will amount to $12,600 per week,
or $655,200 per year.

The consumption of wine and liquor is small in houses of assignation, as
compared with houses of prostitution. It may probably amount to $5000 per
week, or $260,000 per year.

The income of the dancing-saloons, liquor, and lager-beer stores,
frequented and mainly supported by prostitutes and their friends, can not
be less than $30 per week for each house, and as there are 151
establishments of that description, the aggregate of money disbursed in
them will be $4530 per week, or $235,560 per year.

These sums exhibit the outlay for the pleasures of prostitution: the
ensuing items give its penalties. Of the inmates of the Island (late the
Penitentiary) Hospital, in 1857, over 65 per cent. were afflicted with
venereal disease. The total expense of that institution for the year was
$35,000, and the _pro rata_ amount for syphilitic patients would be
$22,750 during the year, or $438 per week.

Bellevue Hospital cost to maintain it during 1857, $70,000 in round
numbers. The Medical Board say that ten per cent. of its inmates are
treated for diseases originating in the syphilitic taint, and this
proportion of the expenses being chargeable to prostitution amounts to
$7000 per year, or $135 per week.

The Nursery Hospital on Randall's Island cost the city of New York $17,000
for maintenance during 1857. One half its infant patients are treated for
diseases resulting from venereal infection, and $8,500 per year, or $163
per week, is the quota of expense caused by this vice and its sequel.

The number of cases of venereal disease treated in the New York State
Emigrants' Hospital on Ward's Island was 6-1/2 per cent. of the total
relieved on that island. The expenses for 1857 were $109,000, and the
share chargeable to prostitution will be $7075 per year, or $136 per week.

In the New York City Hospital, Broadway, 14 per cent. of the patients
during 1857 were treated for venereal disease. The cost of maintenance for
that year was $59,000, and the share caused by prostitution was $8260 per
year, or $159 per week.

The cases treated in dispensary practice have been averaged at three per
cent. throughout the city. The yearly expenses of those charities are as
follows:

New York Dispensary $9100
Northern Dispensary 3550
Eastern Dispensary 3700
Demilt Dispensary 5300
Northwestern Dispensary 2630
-------
Total $24,280

and the proportion chargeable to syphilis must be $728 per year, or $14
per week.

Very little expense is incurred by the medical colleges in the cases of
syphilis treated at their clinical lectures, as the relief is generally
confined to a prescription or a slight operation, and if medicine is
supplied in a few cases the amount is so small that in a calculation of
this sort it is not worth notice.

The expenses of the King's County Hospital, Long Island, for 1857,
amounted to $75,300. About ten per cent. of the patients treated were
venereal sufferers, and the cost for them amounts to $7530 per year, or
$145 per week.

In the Brooklyn City Hospital the proportion of venereal patients is
twenty-seven per cent. of the aggregate. The total annual expenses are
$17,200, and the amount incurred on account of this disease is therefore
$4644 per year, or $89 per week.

In the Seaman's Retreat, Staten Island, New York, twenty-four per cent.
of the inmates suffer from venereal disease. The expenses during the year
1857 were $43,500, of which $10,540 per year, or $203 per week, must be
considered the proportion rendered necessary by syphilis.

To ascertain the amount expended for private medical assistance it will be
necessary to recapitulate the outlay of the public institutions mentioned.

Institutions. Yearly Outlay. Weekly Outlay.
Island Hospital, Blackwell's Island $22750 $438
Bellevue Hospital, New York 7000 135
Nursery Hospital, Randall's Island 8500 163
Emigrants' Hospital, Ward's Island 7075 136
City Hospital, New York 8260 159
Dispensaries 728 14
King's County Hospital, Long Island 7530 145
Brooklyn City Hospital, Long Island 4644 89
Seaman's Retreat, Staten Island 10540 203
----- ----
Total 77027 1482

These totals must be multiplied by four, and the product will show the
amount paid for private medical assistance as $5928 weekly, or $308,108
yearly. This is calculated on too liberal a scale, for no one believes
that an individual requiring professional aid can obtain it so
economically in private life as in a public institution; nor would even
the fact that in the latter case the patients are boarded and supplied
with all necessaries more than counterbalance the sums which must be paid
for individual medical attendance. The desire not needlessly to exaggerate
facts which are sufficiently comprehensive without such a procedure is the
only reason that induces so low an estimate.

But there are yet other items of expenditure which must be noticed before
the long array is completed. Foremost of these is the cost for support of
abandoned women in the Work-house and Penitentiary on Blackwell's Island.
The proportion of females committed to the Work-house during 1857 was
three fifths of the total commitments. It is not asserted that all these
were prostitutes, but it is certain that the larger part were unchaste,
and for argument's sake we will take the ratio as two abandoned to one
virtuous woman, the latter representing the class whom poverty, sickness,
or friendlessness may have driven to accept a shelter in the institution.
The expenses of the Work-house for the year amounted to $76,000, and the
share of cost incurred on behalf of prostitutes would therefore be $30,400
per year, or $585 per week.

The females sentenced to the Penitentiary from courts of criminal
jurisdiction during 1857 amount to twenty-seven per cent. of the total
number incarcerated. It will violate no probability to assume that all
these women were prostitutes; there may be exceptions to the rule, but so
rare are they as not to invalidate the principle. The Penitentiary was
supported during 1857 at an outlay to the tax-payers of nearly $89,000,
and the proportion chargeable to prostitutes, at the ratio given above, is
$24,030 per year, or $462 per week.

A farther portion of the expenses of the Work-house and Penitentiary might
very plausibly be included in the list; namely, the share incurred by the
maintenance of those men who owe their imprisonment either to crimes
committed at the instigation of common women, or for the sake of
supporting them; or to a course of idleness and dissipation resulting from
the companionship of prostitutes. To pursue this subject in all its
_minutiæ_ would lead to the conclusion that nearly every male prisoner
owes his confinement, less or more remotely, to one or the other of these
causes, and hence it could be argued that all the expenses of male
imprisonment should be taken into this account. On the other hand, such a
course could be opposed with the plea that crimes which send men to
Blackwell's Island are only indirect results of the system under
discussion, and to recognize them would force the recognition of many
other indirect consequences daily occurring elsewhere. Strictly speaking,
the position is scarcely demonstrable enough to form an arithmetical
calculation, but its moral certainty is so far acknowledged as to make it
a serious matter of reflection in connection with the attendant evils of
prostitution.

To resume: About fifty-five per cent. of the population of the
Alms-houses, Blackwell's Island, are females. Some of these are old
decrepit women whom it would be impossible to consider as prostitutes;
others are virtuous women whose poverty has driven them there; but many
are broken down prostitutes who have lost whatever of attraction they once
possessed, and with ruined health and debilitated constitutions it is
impossible for them to exist even in the lowest brothels. They make the
Alms-house their last resting-place, and there await the final summons
which shall close their career of sin and misery. Yet another class in
this institution is composed of women with young children. Some claim to
be respectable married women, while others are known as disreputable
characters; but the former have little to support their pretensions except
their own assertion, and collateral testimony sometimes invalidates that.
It is not an uncharitable conclusion, that at least one half of the female
inmates of the Alms-house owe their dependence upon charity to their own
prostitution. The support of the Alms-house in 1857 cost the city of New
York $63,000, and the proportion resulting from prostitution, on the above
data, is $15,750 per year, or $303 per week.

The children on Randall's Island may be classified according to the rule
already adopted in reference to disease in the nursery hospital there;
namely, to assume that one half owe, if not their existence, certainly
their support from public funds to causes that originated in vice. The
nursery, exclusive of the hospital, cost during last year $60,000, one
half of which must, in accordance with the previous estimate, be charged
to prostitution; namely, $30,000 per year, or $577 per week.

The final charge arises from the police and judiciary expenses of the city
of New York, of which it is believed that ten per cent. is caused by
prostitution and its concomitant crimes and sufferings. The aggregate
forms a large amount, and will be rather a surmise than an assertion. The
maintenance of police-officers and station-houses, of police-justices and
their court-rooms, of the city judge and recorder, with their respective
courts, of the city and district prisons, and numerous contingent
expenses, can not be less than two million dollars a year. The percentage
chargeable to prostitution will therefore be $200,000 per year, or $4000
per week.

Thus much for preliminary explanations. It will now be possible to present
the reader with a tabular statement of the weekly and yearly cost of the
system of prostitution existing in the metropolis of the New World. Those
who have followed us through this argument, and noted the facts upon which
every calculation is based, will bear witness that nothing has been
exaggerated, that no dollar is debited to the vice without strong
presumptive evidence to support such charge, and that the endeavor has
been throughout rather to underestimate than exceed the bounds of strict
probability. Upon this ground the attention of the public is earnestly
requested to the first exposition ever attempted of the amount paid by
citizens of and visitors to New York for illicit sexual gratification.

RECAPITULATION.

Weekly Yearly
Expenditure. outlay. outlay.
INDIVIDUAL EXPENSES:
Paid to prostitutes $60,000 $3,120,000
Spent for wine and liquor by visitors 40,000 2,080,000
Paid by visitors to houses of assignation 12,600 655,200
Spent for wine and liquor by visitors to
houses of assignation 5,000 260,000
Spent in dancing-saloons, liquor and lager-beer
stores frequented by prostitutes and
their friends 4,530 235,560

MEDICAL EXPENSES:
Island Hospital, Blackwell's Island 438 22,750
Bellevue " New York 135 7,000
Nursery " Randall's Island 163 8,500
Emigrants' Hospital, Ward's Island 136 7,075
New York City Hospital, New York 159 8,260
Dispensaries 728
King's County Hospital, Long Island 145 7,530
Brooklyn City " " 89 4,644
Seamen's Retreat, Staten Island 203 10,540
Private medical assistance 5,928 308,108

VAGRANCY AND PAUPER EXPENSES:
Work-house, Blackwell's Island 585 30,400
Penitentiary " " 462 24,030
Alms-house " " 303 15,750
Nursery, Randall's Island 577 30,000

POLICE AND JUDICIARY EXPENSES:
Proportion of aggregate 4,000 200,000
-------- ----------
Totals $135,467 $7,036,075

The footings of the columns show the total expense to be

Weekly $135,467
Yearly $7,036,075

over SEVEN MILLIONS of dollars! or nearly as much as the annual municipal
expenditure of New York City.

Comment upon these figures would be superfluous. They present the monetary
effects of prostitution in a convincing point of view, and will prepare
the reader for an attentive perusal of the suggested remedial measures
which form the subject of the next chapter. The American mind is said to
be proverbially open to argument based upon dollars and cents. Without
giving an unqualified assent to the proposition, we may be permitted to
hope that financial considerations, combined with the claims of
benevolence and humanity, the appeals of virtue and morality, the demands
of public health, and the future physical well-being of the community at
large, will exercise that influence on the public mind which is necessary
to the accomplishment of any valuable practical result from the present
investigation.

Before leaving the subject of the extent of prostitution it may be
appropriate to remark that it was considered advisable to ascertain the
prevalence of the vice in some of the leading cities of the United States,
and, in order to do this effectually, a circular letter was addressed to
the Mayors of

Albany, New York,
Baltimore, Maryland,
Boston, Massachusetts,
Brooklyn, New York,
_Buffalo_, New York,
Charleston, South Carolina,
Chicago, Illinois,
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Detroit, Michigan,
Hartford, Connecticut,
_Louisville_, Kentucky,
Memphis, Tennessee,
Mobile, Alabama,
_Newark_, New Jersey,
_New Haven_, Connecticut,
New Orleans, Louisiana,
_Norfolk_, Virginia,
_Philadelphia_, Pennsylvania,
_Pittsburgh_, Pennsylvania,
Portland, Maine,
Richmond, Virginia,
_Savannah_, Georgia,
St. Louis, Missouri,
Washington, District Columbia.

(The names printed in _italics_ are those of cities from which replies
were received.)

The circular forwarded was as follows:

(Copy.)

"Mayor's Office, New York City, Sept. 1, 1856.

"TO HIS HONOR THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF ------:

"DEAR SIR,--Below you will receive from Dr. Sanger a note containing a
few questions concerning Prostitution and Prostitutes in your city,
which I shall feel obliged if you will have the kindness to answer.

"Very truly yours,
"FERNANDO WOOD, Mayor New York City."

"DEAR SIR,--During the past six months, with the aid of His Honor,
Mayor Wood, of this city, and the police force at his command, I have
been collecting materials for a report on Prostitution, as it exists
in New York at the present time. I inclose you a list of questions
that have been asked all the women examined here.[401] Of course I do
not expect that you will or can give answers to these questions from
the prostitutes in your city, but I would wish to have your replies to
the following queries:

"1. How many houses of prostitution are there in your city?

"2. How many houses of assignation are there in your city?

"3. How many public prostitutes are there in your city?

"4. How many private prostitutes are there in your city?

"5. How many kept mistresses are there in your city?

"6. What is the present population of your city?

"Of course these questions can be answered to you, by your chief of
police and officers, only as to the best of their knowledge; but, as a
general thing, shrewd police-officers will be able to give correct
answers to them. I do _not_ wish names, only the round numbers in each
class.

"I shall do myself the honor to forward you a copy of the report when
completed, and shall be glad to receive your replies to the above
queries by the 30th of this month. You will please direct your answer
to

"Yours respectfully,
"WILLIAM W. SANGER,
"Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island, New York City."

The following are the replies received:

BUFFALO, N. Y.

(Copy.)

"Mayor's Office, Buffalo, October 2, 1856.

"DEAR SIR,--I received your circular of the 1st of September, asking
that certain questions concerning houses of prostitution, prostitutes,
etc., might be answered.

"I immediately directed our chief to collect the necessary information
through the police, and I have just received his report: I here
inclose the answers.

"To show how far the report can be relied on for accuracy, I here copy
from his report: 'The captains inform me that they experienced much
difficulty in their endeavors to make a correct report and answer to
the several questions proposed; they, however, believe that the
returns, so far at least as the number of houses and public
prostitutes is concerned, are very near correct.'

"Any farther information you may desire I will cheerfully give, so far
as I am able. I am respectfully yours,

"F. P. STEVENS, Mayor."

(Inclosure.)

"Houses of Prostitution, 87
" of Assignation, 37
Public Prostitutes, 272
Private Prostitutes, 81
Kept Mistresses, 31
Population, 75,000."

LOUISVILLE, KY.

(Copy.)

"Police Office, Louisville, Ky., December 26, 1856.

"HON. JOHN BARBER, MAYOR:

"DEAR SIR,--Below I give a statement of such matters as called for by
Dr. Wm. W. Sanger, Resident Physician of Blackwell's Island, New York
City, which I think you will find correct, or as near as can be
arrived at from the facilities afforded. Hoping that it will prove
satisfactory to the doctor, and that it will _many tales unfold_, I
remain respectfully yours,

"JAS. KIRKPATRICK, Chief of Police.

"Houses of Prostitution 79
" " Assignation 39
Public prostitutes 214
Private " 93
Kept mistresses 60
Population of city (supposed to be) 70,000

"I am now preparing to take the census for 1857."

NEWARK, N. J.

(Copy.)

"Newark, N. J., October 4, 1856.

"WM. W. SANGER, M.D.:

"DEAR SIR,--I can not make any excuse for not answering your letter of
inquiry that will justify me. (Yours of September 1st was
unfortunately mislaid.)

"Our population in 1855 was 55,000 by census.

"We have no houses of ill fame in our city; none of assignation; there
are no public prostitutes.

"It may appear strange to you that the above should be the case, but
there is good reason for it. From the best information that I can get
there are perhaps fifty private prostitutes in this city, composed of
girls living at service or as seamstresses, but who conduct themselves
so as not to be known. Our city is so near to New York that as soon as
a girl turns out she makes her way to it, where associations and
congenial amusements make it more agreeable. It is rather singular,
but so soon as it becomes known that a girl is loose, she is marked
and followed in the streets by half-grown boys hooting at and really
forcing her to leave town. Occasionally it is made known to the police
that a couple of girls staid a night or two at some boarding-house,
when they are arrested as vagrants, or warned off, and they are gone.

"New York being so much greater field for them, they are the least of
our troubles. Truly and respectfully yours,

"H. J. POINIER, Mayor."

NEW HAVEN, CONN.

(Copy.)

"New Haven, September 18, 1856.

"Dr. WM. W. SANGER:

"DEAR SIR,--Herewith I hand you the report of our chief of police in
answer to your inquiries relative to prostitution in this city.

"Your obedient servant,
"P. S. GALPIN, Mayor."

(Inclosure.)

"TO HIS HONOR THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW HAVEN:

"SIR,--I have had the communication addressed to you by Wm. W. Sanger,
Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island, New York, in regard to
prostitutes and prostitution in the city of New Haven, under
consideration, and beg leave to report:

"That the answers to the questions propounded are given in a general
manner, with near approximation to exactness without pretending to be
minutely accurate.

"And to the first question, namely, 'How many houses of prostitution
are there in the city?' I answer, That the number now known as such to
the police is _ten_, and that these are only such (some of them)
occasionally; and that none of them would be so called in New York,
being inconsiderable, in poor, out-of-the-way houses, and conducted
with great secrecy, and are constantly liable to the penalties of a
law peculiar to Connecticut, which punishes _reputation_, rendering it
impossible for them to gain strength and become permanent.

"And to the second inquiry, 'How many houses of assignation are there
in the city?' I answer, There are known to be _six_, and others
suspected; but these all are not such proper, but are connected with
some business, as eating-houses, hotels, dance-houses, etc.

"And to the third inquiry, 'How many public prostitutes are there in
the city?' There are known by name, ninety-three, all well known.

"And to the fourth inquiry, 'How many private prostitutes are there in
the city?' I answer, That there are thirty, with many married women;
and, indeed, this class is mostly composed of married women.

"And to the fifth question, 'How many kept mistresses are there in the
city?' the answer is, That the number is not known, but is small, and
no one instance is certainly known to us.

"The population of the city is thirty-two thousand.

"All which is respectfully submitted.

"JOHN C. HAYDEN,
"Chief of Police City of New Haven.

"Dated at New Haven, September 16, 1856."

NORFOLK, VA.

(Copy.)

"Mayor's Office, Norfolk, Va., Sept. 15, 1856.

"DEAR SIR,--Yours of 1st instant was duly received, and in reply would
state that I have endeavored to be as accurate as possible in my
replies to your several interrogatories, namely,

"1. How many houses of prostitution in your city?

"Answer. About forty.

"2. How many houses of assignation in your city?

"Answer. None as such; there being no places, so far as I can learn,
used as meeting-places.

"3. How many public prostitutes are there in your city?

"Answer. About one hundred and fifty.

"4. How many private prostitutes are there in your city?

"Answer. About fifty.

"5. How many kept mistresses are there in your city?

"Answer. About six or eight.

"6. What is the present population of your city?

"Answer. About eighteen thousand.

"I would, in connection with the above, state that about twenty-five
of the forty houses are used almost exclusively by sailors and
seafaring men, and are sometimes improperly called 'Sailor
Boarding-houses,' especially the most decent of them.

"Any other information I can give you I will most cheerfully do,
should you desire any.

"I am very respectfully yours,

"F. F. FERGUSON,
"Mayor City of Norfolk, Virginia.

"To Dr. WM. W. SANGER, Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island, New
York."

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

(Copy.)

"Office of the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, Sept. 8, 1856.

"DEAR SIR,--As near as we can arrive at the facts (of course no great
reliance can be placed on this general answer) the following are the
figures:

1. Houses of prostitution 130
2. Houses of assignation 50
3. Public Prostitutes 475
4. Private " 105
6. (Say) six hundred thousand population.

"Our city has one hundred and twenty-nine (129) square miles of police
jurisdiction, and six hundred and fifty (650) policemen besides
officers. You will therefore make some allowances for the want of time
to enable me more fully to state answers to your questions.

"The answers given are from estimates made by the lieutenants of
police of their own districts.

"Respectfully,
"RICHARD VAUX, Mayor of Philadelphia.

"To WM. W. SANGER, M.D., Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island."

PITTSBURGH, PA.

(Copy.)

"Mayor's Office, Pittsburgh, Sept. 18, 1856.

"WM. W. SANGER, M.D.:

"DEAR SIR,--Your favor of the 1st instant came to hand a few days ago,
requesting answers to the following questions:

"1. How many houses of prostitution are there in our city?

"Answer. Nineteen.

"2. How many houses of assignation?

"Answer. Nine.

"3. How many public prostitutes?

"Answer. Seventy-seven.

"4. How many private prostitutes?

"Answer. Thirty-seven.

"5. How many kept mistresses?

"Answer. Sixteen.

"6. What is your population?

"Answer. Seventy-five thousand seven hundred and fifty (75,750).

"The above is arrived at from the personal knowledge of some of our
police-officers; no doubt the number is much greater.

"At the last census our population of the city proper was over sixty
thousand (60,000). The population at that time of Pittsburgh,
Alleghany, and the suburbs of Pittsburgh, was nearly one hundred
thousand.

"Respectfully, your obedient servant,
"WM. BINGHAM, Mayor."

SAVANNAH, GA.

(Copy.)

"Mayor's Office, City of Savannah, Ga., Sept. 18, 1856.

"WM. W. SANGER, Resident Physician,
"Blackwell's Island, New York City:

"DEAR SIR,--In this city there are fifteen houses of prostitution,
three assignation-houses, ninety-three white, and one hundred and five
colored prostitutes. In the winter season the number is greatly
increased by supplies from New York City.

"I can not answer what number of private prostitutes or kept
mistresses there are here.

"Our present population is about twenty-six thousand.

"Very truly yours,
"EDWARD C. ANDERSON, Mayor."

These replies may be condensed as follows:

+-------------------------------------------------------
| | | Houses. |
| Cities. | Reported by |--------------------------|
| | | Houses of | Houses of |
| | |Prostitution.|Assignation.|
| | | | |
| | | | |
|------------|--------------|-------------|------------|
|Buffalo |Mayor Stevens | 87 | 37 |
|Louisville | " Barber | 79 | 39 |
|Newark | " Poinier | | |
|New Haven | " Galpin | 10 | 6 |
|Norfolk | " Ferguson| 40 | |
|Philadelphia| " Vaux | 130 | 50 |
|Pittsburgh | " Bingham | 19 | 9 |
|Savannah | " Anderson| 15 | 3 |
+-------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------+
| Prostitutes. | |
|-----------------------------------------------|Population.|
| Public | Private | Kept | Total | |
|Prostitutes.|Prostitutes.|Mistresses.| of | |
| | | |abandoned| |
| | | | Women. | |
|------------|------------|-----------|---------|-----------|
| 272 | 81 | 31 | 384 | 75,000 |
| 214 | 93 | 60 | 367 | 70,000 |
| | 50 | | 50 | 55,000 |
| 93 | 30 | | 123 | 32,000 |
| 150 | 50 | 8 | 208 | 18,000 |
| 475 | | 105 | 580 | 600,000 |
| 77 | 37 | 16 | 130 | 75,750 |
| 198 | | | 198 | 26,000 |
------------------------------------------------------------+

It has already been stated, on the authority of the state census of 1855,
that the adult male population of New York City form nearly one third of
the total inhabitants, and the same rule may be applied to these cities to
ascertain the comparative number of prostitutes and their customers. The
proportions stand as follows:

New York, on the resident population of the city proper, has
1 prostitute to every 40 men.
but including the suburbs 1 " " " 64 "
Buffalo has 1 " " " 65 "
Louisville has 1 " " " 64 "
Newark has 1 " " " 366 "
New Haven has 1 " " " 87 "
Norfolk has 1 " " " 29 "
Philadelphia has 1 " " " 344 "
Pittsburgh has 1 " " " 192 "
Savannah has 1 " " " 44 "

It can scarcely be doubted that the worthy mayors of Newark, Philadelphia,
and Pittsburg have been misinformed as to the extent of the vice in their
respective cities. Respecting Newark, for instance, the writer was
recently informed that prostitution was not so rare as Mayor Poinier's
letter would imply, but that prostitutes and known houses of prostitution
were to be found scattered over the city, and that the fact was notorious
to nearly every resident. This information was received from a gentleman
himself an inhabitant of Newark. There is no doubt that much of the vice
of Newark finds a home in New York, as the mayor says, but it is equally
certain that it is not all expatriated.

The mayor of Philadelphia is particularly wide of the mark. There may not
be as many public prostitutes there as in New York, but it is proverbial,
and is as widely known as is Philadelphia itself, that its streets abound
in houses of assignation and private houses of prostitution.

Pittsburgh is situated at the head of navigation on the Ohio River, at the
confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers, both navigable. She
has canals, rail-roads, and large manufactories, and, if closely examined,
would probably show a larger proportion of prostitutes than above
reported.

Norfolk is the largest naval depôt in this country, and its population can
not be held responsible for all the prostitution within its limits. In
both Norfolk and Savannah we presume that the larger portion of the
abandoned women at the time the census was taken were colored people,
whose virtue is always at a discount under the most favorable
circumstances, and to which a seaport is always fatal.

But another calculation may be made upon the assumption that the males who
have commerce with prostitutes form only one fourth of the population, and
the proportions resulting from that are as follows:

New York, on the resident population of the city proper, has
1 prostitute to every 30 men.
but including the suburbs 1 " " " 50 "
Buffalo has 1 " " " 49 "
Louisville has 1 " " " 48 "
Newark has 1 " " " 275 "
New Haven has 1 " " " 65 "
Norfolk has 1 " " " 23 "
Philadelphia has 1 " " " 258 "
Pittsburgh has 1 " " " 144 "
Savannah has 1 " " " 33 "

To arrive at an average we will omit the calculation of the proportion of
prostitutes to the population of New York City proper, it having been
shown already that the responsibility of much of it must rest upon the
suburbs and upon visitors, and also omit Newark, Philadelphia, and
Pittsburg, because the reports from those cities are palpably underrated.
This done, the mean of the two estimates stands thus:

New York 1 prostitute to every 57 men.
Buffalo 1 " " " 57 "
Louisville 1 " " " 56 "
New Haven 1 " " " 76 "
Norfolk 1 " " " 26 "
Savannah 1 " " " 39 "
--
and the mean of the whole is 1 " " " 52 "

This mean may be fairly assumed as the proportion existing in all the
large cities of the Union, and the farther assumption that the men who
visit houses of prostitution form one fourth of the total population will
give a basis upon which the total number of the Prostitutes in the United
States may be estimated with some accuracy. The calculation can not, of
course, be claimed as absolutely correct, as that would be an
impossibility, but is submitted as a probability on which the reader can
form his own conclusion.

The population of the United States in 1858 was estimated by Professor De
Bow, when preparing the compendium of the census of 1850, and his
calculation at that time was that by the present year it would amount to
29,242,139 persons, which may be taken in round numbers 29,000,000. From
this must be deducted 3,500,000 slaves, which will leave the free
inhabitants 25,500,000, and the proportion of adult males to this number
is 6,375,000. It may next be assumed that one half of these men live in
country places or small cities where prostitution does not exist, the
other moiety being inhabitants of cities with a population of twenty
thousand or upward; and upon the basis already proved of one prostitute to
every fifty-two men, the result would be a total of 61,298 prostitutes.
The whole area of the United States is 2,936,166 square miles, and if all
the prostitutes therein were equally divided over this surface, there
would be one for every forty-seven square miles, or if they were walking
in continuous line, thirty-six inches from each other, they would make a
column nearly thirty-five miles long. If the inhabitants of large cities
were only one third, the number of prostitutes would be 41,058. These
suggestions are, of course, mere matters for consideration, and are not
given as definite facts.

Allusions have already been made to many exaggerated opinions as to the
extent of prostitution in New York City, and it may be well to notice in
this place some passages in a work entitled "An inquiry into the extent,
causes, and consequences of Prostitution in Edinburgh, by William Tait,
Surgeon: 2d edition, 1842." The author starts with the impression that the
capital of Scotland is the most moral city on the face of the earth, and
after fixing the number of public prostitutes in Edinburgh at eight
hundred, or one to every eighty of the adult male population, remarks:

"In London there is one for every sixty, and in Paris one for every
fifteen. Edinburgh is thus about twenty-five per cent. better than London,
while the latter is about seventy per cent. better than Paris." (Happy
Edinburgh!) "And what is to be said of the chief city of the United States
of America, of the independent, liberal, religious, and enlightened
inhabitants of New York? It will scarcely be credited that that city
furnishes a prostitute for every six or seven of its adult male
population! Alas! for the religion and morality of the country that
affords such a demonstration of its depravity. It was not surpassed even
by the metropolis of France during the heat and fervor of the Revolution,
when libertinism reigned triumphant, and the laws of God and man were
alike set at defiance."--Page 6.

This picture is any thing but flattering to our national pride; but it
loses very much of its effect because it is contrary to the truth. It
will, however, satisfy our readers that Mr. Tait was misinformed, and they
may feel a slight gratification in the conclusion that his pathetic lament
for the religion and morality of their country was unnecessary. On page 8
of the same work we find:

"After stating that there were upward of ten thousand abandoned women in
the city of New York, the Rev. Mr. M'Dowall, chaplain to the New York
Magdalen Asylum, goes on to say: 'Besides these, we have the clearest
evidence that there are hundreds of private harlots and kept mistresses,
many of whom keep up a show of industry as domestics, seamstresses,
nurses, etc., in the most respectable families, and throng the houses of
assignation every night. Although we have no means of ascertaining the
number of these, yet enough has been learned from the facts already
developed to convince us that the aggregate is alarmingly great, perhaps
little behind the proportion of the city of London, whose police report
asserts, on the authority of accurate researches, that the number of
private prostitutes in that city is fully equal to the number of public
harlots.'"

In this passage Mr. Tait shifts the responsibility of his figures to the
shoulders of the Rev. Mr. M'Dowall, who is represented as declaring the
number of public prostitutes in New York sixteen years ago to be ten
thousand, and assuming the private prostitutes to amount to the same
number, making an aggregate nearly three times as large as an actual and
searching inquiry has found at the present time. During the last sixteen
years vice has not decreased in New York, but has steadily increased, and
yet the most diligent search can discover in 1858 only 7860 public and
private prostitutes, instead of the twenty thousand mentioned in the
publication under notice! We imagine it to be an imperative duty to be
tolerably well acquainted with a social evil before attempting to write
upon it, and although Mr. Tait's book can not, by any possibility, injure
our city, on account of the palpable misrepresentations it contains, we
allude to it to show the opinion entertained of New York and its vices on
the other side of the Atlantic. Were an apology necessary for the preset
work, such statements as these would be amply sufficient.

Mr. Tait loses no opportunity to hurl a sly dart at New York. Thus (on
page 38), after quoting the words of the Rev. Mr. M'Dowall as to the
character of an abandoned woman in New York, he (Mr. Tait) continues:

"He says nothing of the state of religious feeling among the prostitutes
there; and if we are to regard his statement of the number of prostitutes
as strictly correct, it may very well be questioned whether any
considerable number of the inhabitants of that city are under the
influence of sincere religious feeling."

Some of our New York City readers may probably recollect that the
publication of Mr. M'Dowall's "Inquiry" produced very considerable
excitement here at the time, and opinions were freely expressed that he
was either very ignorant on matters of that nature, or intentionally
colored his statements, and was in either case entirely unfitted for the
task he had assumed.

Mr. Tait assumes the population of Edinburgh at about two hundred
thousand, the number of public prostitutes at eight hundred, and of
private prostitutes at nearly twelve hundred, or a total of two thousand
abandoned women. This gives one prostitute to every thirty-two adult
males, if we adopt his system of calculation; or one prostitute to every
twenty-five adult males, if we adopt the system of calculation which has
been applied to the United States in the present work. From his own
figures, then, it can be seen, that although New York City is so awfully
irreligious, it has less prostitution than pious Edinburgh.

Again: on page 189, while speaking of the demoralizing effects of
theatrical representations, Mr. Tait says:

"In the report of the House of Refuge in New York, it is stated that one
hundred and fifty boys and girls, out of six hundred and ninety, are
guilty of theft and impurity to get a seat in the theatre." He does not
mark this as a quotation, nor does he state the report from which it was
extracted. As he has printed it, it must be supposed correct, although we
must confess we can not see very clearly what connection exists between
the New York House of Refuge and prostitution considering the ages of
children generally admitted to that institution; and while we have very
little doubt that many of the inmates thereof have committed theft for the
reason he assigns, we are rather dubious as to the acts of impurity
alluded to, except in a very few exceptional cases.

Farther: on page 194, Mr. Tait quotes "The address of the Rev. Mr.
M'Dowall on prostitution in America" as follows:

"At the very hour in the morning, afternoon, and evening of every Lord's
day when the people of God assemble for religious worship, then, in a
special manner, do the children of the wicked one meet in troops at
harlots' houses. On the Sabbath days the rooms are so filled with visitors
that there is no place for them to sit down, and on that account many are
refused admission at the doors." These palpable exaggerations require no
contradiction. They show, however, the extremes of misrepresentation to
which an enthusiastic and incompetent writer may be led.

Inclined to exaggeration as Mr. Tait has been proved to be, he yet
protests (in page 251) against some opinions upon infanticide by
prostitutes in New York, advanced by his informant, the Rev. Mr. M'Dowall,
and quotes the opinion of Parent-Duchatelet to prove that mothers are
generally very fond of their children. This fact warrants the conclusion
that his other opinions upon social morals in New York are entirely
derived from Mr. M'Dowall, who is shown to be any thing but a credible
witness. His reliance upon such a source is much to be regretted as
materially impairing the value and truthfulness of his otherwise
interesting and useful volume.

* * * * *

The following extracts from the "Compendium of the Seventh Census of the
United States, 1850," will be interesting, from their relation to various
points which have been discussed in the progress of this work. They have
all a more or less direct bearing upon the subject of prostitution, and
the condensation of them here will give readers an opportunity of
verifying many of the previous remarks.

The estimated population of the Union at the present time (1858) has been
already given as 29,242,139 persons (including slaves). The proportion of
females to males at each census from 1790 to 1850 is stated as
follows:[402]

+-------------------------------------------------------+
| |1790. |1800. |1810. |1820. |1830. |1840. |1850.|
|-------|------|------|------|------|------|------|-----|
|Males | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100·|
|Females| 96·4| 95·3| 96·2| 96·8| 96·4| 95·6| 95·|
+-------------------------------------------------------+

This relates only to the free population. In enumerating slaves no
distinction of sex was made earlier than the year 1820. The ratio of male
and female slaves since that date is as follows:[403]

+---------------------------------------+
| |1820. |1830. |1840. |1850. |
|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|
|Males | 100· | 100· | 100· | 100· |
|Females| 95·19| 98·36| 99·55| 99·95|
+---------------------------------------+

From these tables it appears that the males in the free population and the
females in the slave population have been steadily increasing, but with no
determined ratio of progression.

Taking the total of free and slave population since the census of 1820,
the excess of males is stated thus:[404]

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| | 1820.| 1830.| 1840.| 1850.|
|---------------|----------|----------|----------|-----------|
|Males |4,898,127 |6,529,696 |8,688,532 |11,837,661 |
|Females |4,740,004 |6,336,324 |8,380,921 |11,354,215 |
| |----------|----------|----------|-----------|
|Excess of males| 158,123 | 193,372 | 307,611 | 483,446 |
+------------------------------------------------------------+

It will be seen from this that in 1850 the males were in excess at the
rate of 2.08 per cent., and by applying the same rule to the population
of 1858 a fair estimate of the relative number of each sex at the present
time may be made as follows:

Males (1858) 14,925,188
Females 14,316,951
Excess of males 608,237
----------
Total estimated population 29,242,139

In the several geographical divisions of the Union the proportion of white
males to white females is thus shown:[405]

_New England States_ (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, and Connecticut), 100·87 females to 100 males.

_Middle States_ (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
and District of Columbia), 97·70 females to 100 males.

_Southern States_ (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and
Florida), 98·54 females to 100 males.

_Southwestern States_ (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
and Tennessee), 91·66 females to 100 males.

_Northwestern States_ (Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa), 92·11 females to 100 males.

_California and Territories_, 36·73 females to 100 males.

Two facts are developed in this statement. In the New England States
females are in excess of males. From this district comes the majority of
all the native-born prostitutes who find their home in New York City. In
the Northwestern States, to which it has been proposed to remove some of
the surplus female labor of New York, the males are in excess, and any
women sent there would aid in restoring the equilibrium of the sexes.

The following table gives the relative percentage of each sex at different
ages, and also the number of females to each hundred males:[406]

+---------------------------------------------------------+
| |Percentage|Percentage| Females |
| | of | of | to each |
| Ages. | Males. | Females. |100 Males.|
|------------------------|----------|----------|----------|
|Under 5 years | 14·68 | 14·95 | 96·76 |
|From 5 years to 10 years| 13·69 | 13·98 | 97·03 |
| " 10 " 15 " | 12·23 | 12·35 | 96·00 |
| " 15 " 20 " | 10·39 | 11·42 | 104·46 |
| " 20 " 30 " | 18·64 | 18·46 | 94·08 |
| " 30 " 40 " | 12·85 | 11·84 | 87·55 |
| " 40 " 50 " | 8·38 | 7·86 | 89·09 |
| " 50 " 60 " | 4·97 | 4·83 | 92·15 |
| " 60 " 70 " | 2·64 | 2·69 | 96·88 |
| " 70 " 80 " | 1·11 | 1·18 | 101·01 |
| " 80 " 90 " | ·31 | ·36 | 110·11 |
| " 90 " 100 " |} ·04 | ·05 {| 123·16 |
| " 100 years upward |} | {| 120·45 |
|Ages unknown | ·07 | ·03 | 44·09 |
| |----------|----------|----------|
| | 100· | 100· | 95· |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

Experience has proved that the age at which female virtue is exposed to
the most temptations, or at least the age at which the greater part of the
prostitutes in New York have embraced their wretched calling, is from
fifteen to twenty years, and the table above shows that at those periods
females are in excess over males nearly 4-1/2 per cent. Is it to be
supposed that the numerical predominance is the cause of the temptations;
or may it not rather be concluded that both are co-existent, and equally
contribute to the sad result; or even would not temptation be more
aggravated, because concentrated, if, at that critical period of life,
males and females were in equal numbers?

The following table gives the relative ages of the whole population
without distinction of sex, but compares the white, free colored, and
slave classes:

+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |Percentage of|Percentage of|Percentage of|
| Ages. | white | free colored| slave |
| | Population. | Population. | Population. |
| | [407] | [408] | [409] |
|------------------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
|Under 5 years of age | 14·81 | 14.00 | 16.87 |
|From 5 years to 10 years| 13·83 | 13·86 | 14·95 |
| " 10 " " 15 " | 12·28 | 12·04 | 13·61 |
| " 15 " " 20 " | 10·89 | 10·08 | 11·15 |
| " 20 " " 30 " | 18·55 | 17·85 | 17·86 |
| " 30 " " 40 " | 12·36 | 12·71 | 11·04 |
| " 40 " " 50 " | 8·13 | 8·73 | 6·86 |
| " 50 " " 60 " | 4·90 | 5·60 | 3·96 |
| " 60 " and upward | 4·20 | 5·56 | 3·68 |
| Ages unknown | ·05 | ·07 | ·02 |
| |-------------|-------------|-------------|
| | 100· | 100· | 100· |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+

BIRTHS.

The ratio of births is in the[410]

United States 1 birth to every 36 persons, or 2·75 per cent.
Great Britain 1 " " 31 " 3·22 "
France 1 " " 35 " 2·86 "
Russia 1 " " 36 " 2·75 "
Prussia and Austria 1 " " 26 " 3·87 "

EDUCATION.

The importance of education and its influence upon the social problem of
prostitution is a sufficient apology for the following extracts, in
addition to what has been said already on the subject.

There are in the United States

239 colleges with an annual income of $1,964,428
80,978 public schools 9,529,542
6,085 academies and private schools 4,644,214
------ -----------
87,302 educational institutions which cost $16,138,184

These institutions are attended by 3,644,928 scholars.[411]

There are in the United States

Natives 858,306
Foreigners 195,114
---------
Total 1,053,420

persons above twenty years of age who can not read or write. This number
is subdivided thus:[412]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| | White. | Free colored. | Total. |
+--------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|
| Males | 389,664 | 40,722 | 430,386 |
| Females | 573,234 | 49,800 | 623,034 |
| |---------------|---------------|---------------|
| Total | 962,894 | 90,522 | 1,053,420 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

This shows a remarkable preponderance of uneducated women. The percentage
of children attending school in the United States, calculated on all
between the ages of five and fifteen years is

Natives 80·81 per cent.[413]
Foreigners 51·73 "

a proof of the fact intimated already that foreign parents do not endeavor
to avail themselves of the facilities provided for the education of their
children.

The illiterate of the population are thus minutely analyzed:[414]

White illiterate to total white 4·92 per cent.
Free colored illiterate to total free colored 20·83 "
Native white and free colored illiterate to total
native white and free colored 4·85 "
Foreign white and free colored illiterate to total
foreign white and free colored 8·24 "
Native illiterate white and free colored to total
of both (native) over 20 years of age 10·35 "
Foreign illiterate white and free colored to total
of both (foreign) over 20 years of age 14·48 "
Foreign illiterate over twenty years of age 195·114
Foreign illiterate to total foreign over 20 years
of age, supposing the illiterate to be all white 14·51 "

Following the geographical sections we obtain the following results:[415]

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Percentage | Percentage |Percentage of|
| Sections. | of Pupils |of Pupils to |illiterate to|
| |to the white|the white and| white |
| |Population. |free colored | Population. |
| | |Population. | |
+-------------------|------------|-------------|-------------|
|New England States | 25·90 | 25·71 | 1·88 |
|Middle States | 21·79 | 21·02 | 3·16 |
|Southern States | 14·52 | 13·92 | 9·22 |
|Southwestern States| 16·32 | 16·10 | 8·45 |
|Northwestern States| 21·72 | 21·51 | 5·03 |
+------------------------------------------------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | |Percentage| |Percentage| |
| |Percentage| of |Percentage | of |Percentage|
| | of |illiterate| of |illiterate| of |
| Sections. |illiterate|to Natives|illiterate | to |illiterate|
| | to | over 20 | to |Foreigners| to free |
| | Natives. | Years of |Foreigners.| over 20 | Colored.|
| | | age. | | Years of | |
| | | | | age. | |
|---------------|----------|----------|-----------|----------|----------|
|New England | | | | | |
| States | ·26 | ·42 | 14·63 | 24·39 | 8·45 |
|Middle States | 1·84 | 3·00 | 9·55 | 15·92 | 22·42 |
|Southern States| 9·30 | 20·30 | 5·28 | 8·80 | 21·20 |
|Southwestern | | | | | |
| States | 8·41 | 16·63 | 9·12 | 15·20 | 18·54 |
|Northwestern | | | | | |
| States | 4·97 | 9·92 | 4·63 | 7·72 | 21·44 |
|California and | | | | | |
| Territories | 17·50 | 21·63 | 14·13 | 23·51 | 12·47 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

OCCUPATIONS.

In the tables of occupations the only class noticed is the white and free
colored male population over fifteen years of age, no returns of female
employment being given. As interesting to the general reader, although not
in immediate connection with the subject, the following is given:[416]

Ratio per cent.
Occupations. to the total
employed.
Commerce, trade, manufactures, mechanic arts, and mining 29·72
Agriculture 44·69
Labor (not agricultural) 18·50
Army ·10
Sea and river navigation 2·17
Law, Medicine, and Divinity 1·76
Other pursuits requiring education 1·78
Government civil service ·46
Domestic service ·41
Other occupations ·41
------
100·00

A similar but more elaborate statement of the occupations of the people of
Great Britain was published in the British census for 1841, and is
reprinted by Professor De Bow in his compendium.[417]

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |Percentage|Percentage|Percentage |
| Occupations. | to total | to total | to total |
| | Males. | Females. |Population.|
|----------------------------------|----------|----------|-----------|
|Commerce, trade, and manufactures | 26·24 | 7·12 | 16·52 |
|Agriculture | 15·33 | ·84 | 7·96 |
|Labor (not agricultural) | 6·99 | 1·21 | 4·05 |
|Army | 1·42 | | ·70 |
|Navy and merchant seamen, boatmen,| | | |
| &c. | 2·35 | | 1·17 |
|Clerical, legal, and medical | | | |
| professions | ·66 | ·02 | ·34 |
|Other pursuits requiring education| 1·17 | ·36 | ·76 |
|Government and municipal civil | | | |
| service | ·43 | ·02 | ·22 |
|Domestic servants | 2·78 | 9·48 | 6·18 |
|Persons of independent means | 1·47 | 3·88 | 2·69 |
|Pensioners, paupers, lunatics, | | | |
| and prisoners | 1·11 | 1·01 | 1·06 |
|Unoccupied (including women and | | | |
| children) | 40·05 | 76·06 | 58·35 |
| |----------|----------|-----------|
| | 100· | 100· | 100· |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

WAGES.

In introducing this subject, Professor De Bow remarks, "The money price of
wages, unless the price of other articles be known, gives but an
unsatisfactory idea of the condition of the laboring classes at different
periods and in different countries." In the following tables of the rates
of remuneration in 1850 this difficulty will scarcely exist, so far as New
York is concerned at least. The large number of domestic servants who have
been added to our population since that year precludes the possibility of
any considerable advance in the rate of wages, and, as every reader has an
idea of what a woman's necessary expenses must be, each will be enabled to
decide for himself whether the compensation is sufficient, or whether
society at large would not be benefited were some of the surplus domestic
servants removed to other localities, and thus, by increasing the demand,
augment the wages. The following was the average weekly wages (with board)
of a domestic servant in the year 1850:[418]

States. Wages.
Alabama $1 41
Arkansas 1 67
California 13 00
Columbia (District of) 1 31
Connecticut 1 36
Delaware 0 84
Florida 1 83
Georgia 1 52
Illinois 1 14
Indiana 0 90
Iowa 1 07
Kentucky 1 09
Louisiana 2 57
Maine 1 09
Maryland 0 89
Massachusetts 1 48
Michigan 1 10
Mississippi 1 52
Missouri 1 17
New Hampshire 1 27
New Jersey 0 97
New York 1 05
North Carolina 0 87
Ohio 0 96
Pennsylvania 0 80
Rhode Island 1 42
South Carolina 1 42
Tennessee 1 00
Texas 2 00
Vermont 1 19
Virginia 0 96
Wisconsin 1 27
Territories.
Minnesota 2 25
New Mexico 0 78
Oregon 10 00
Utah 1 46

The following is a table of the monthly wages in factories in the
different states. It is, of course, exclusive of board and lodging.
Looking at the amount received by female operatives, will any one feel
surprised that they should abandon the incessant and poorly paid
employment?

WAGES PER MONTH (WITHOUT BOARD).

+------------------------------------------------
| | Cotton. | Wool. | Pig Iron. |
| | | | |
| States. |-----------|-----------|-----------|
| | M. | F. | M. | F. | M. | F. |
|-----------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| |$ c.|$ c.|$ c.|$ c.|$ c.|$. c.|
|Alabama |11 71| 7 98| | |17 60| |
|Arkansas |14 61| 5 88| | | | |
|California | | | | | | |
|D. of Col. |14 02| 8 00|30 00| | | |
|Connecticut|19 08|11 80|24 12|12 86|26 80| |
|Delaware |15 31|11 58|18 79|17 33| | |
|Florida |32 14| 5 00| | | | |
|Georgia |14 57| 7 39|27 47|14 10|17 44| 5 00|
|Illinois | | |22 00|12 52|22 06| |
|Indiana |13 02| 6 77|21 81|11 05|26 00| |
|Iowa | | |11 14| | | |
|Kentucky |14 95| 9 36|15 30|11 11|20 23| 4 70|
|Louisiana | | | | | | |
|Maine |29 35|12 15|22 57|11 77|22 00| |
|Maryland |15 42| 9 48|18 60|11 89|20 14| |
|Massach'sts|22 90|13 60|22 95|14 22|27 50| |
|Michigan | | |21 65|11 47|35 00| |
|Mississippi|14 21| 5 94| | | | |
|Missouri |10 93|10 00|32 00| 6 50|24 28| |
|N. Hamp. |26 00|13 47|22 86|14 53|18 00| |
|New Jersey |17 98| 9 56|25 22| 8 60|21 20| |
|New York |18 32| 9 68|19 97|11 76|25 00| |
|N. Carolina|11 65| 6 13|18 00| 7 00| 8 00| 4 00|
|Ohio |16 59| 9 42|20 14|10 90|24 48| |
|Pennsylv'a |17 85| 9 91|19 23|10 41|21 65| 5 11|
|Rho. Island|18 60|12 95|20 70|15 18| | |
|S. Carolina|13 94| 8 30| | | | |
|Tennessee |10 94| 6 42|17 66| 6 00|12 81| 5 11|
|Texas | | |20 00|20 00| | |
|Vermont |15 53|12 65|24 46|11 81|22 08| |
|Virginia |10 18| 6 98|18 17| 9 91|12 76| 6 86|
|Wisconsin | | |22 48| |30 00| |
+------------------------------------------------

+-----------------------------------------------+
| | Iron | Wrought |Fisheries. |
| | Castings. | Iron. | |
| States. |-----------|-----------|-----------|
| | M. | F. | M. | F. | M. | F. |
|-----------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| |$. c.|$ c.|$ c.|$ c.|$. c.|$. c.|
|Alabama |30 05| |15 29| | | |
|Arkansas | | | | | | |
|California |23 33| | | | | |
|D. of Col. |27 05| | | | | |
|Connecticut|27 02| 8 00|31 59| |20 81| |
|Delaware |23 36| |25 53| | | |
|Florida | | | | |17 58| 8 40|
|Georgia |27 43| |11 35| 5 00| | |
|Illinois |28 50| | | | | |
|Indiana |25 74| |27 45| 4 00| | |
|Iowa |32 35| | | | | |
|Kentucky |24 89| 4 15|32 06| | | |
|Louisiana |35 60| | | | | |
|Maine |29 00| 5 00| | |19 12| |
|Maryland |27 50| |24 31| | | |
|Massach'sts|30 90| |29 46|12 79|15 70| |
|Michigan |28 68| | | |22 43| |
|Mississippi|37 91| | | | | |
|Missouri |19 63| |30 00| | | |
|N. Hamp. |33 05| |31 34| |10 00| |
|New Jersey |24 00| |27 31|13 34| | |
|New York |27 49| |28 91| |20 35| |
|N. Carolina|23 46| |10 43| 4 78|23 64|11 77|
|Ohio |27 32| |29 58| |19 07| |
|Pennsylv'a |27 55| 6 00|28 31| 6 57| | |
|Rho. Island|29 63| |57 85| |34 00| |
|S. Carolina|13 59| 4 00| | | | |
|Tennessee |17 96| 4 50|15 20| 5 00| | |
|Texas |43 43| | | | | |
|Vermont |28 27| |32 08| | | |
|Virginia |19 91| 9 44|25 41| |21 70| |
|Wisconsin |26 73| | | |21 50| |
+-----------------------------------------------+

The number of hands employed in these manufactures is as follows:[419]

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Men |Men's average | Women | Women's |
|Manufactures. | employed.| Wages per | employed.|average Wages|
| | | Month. | | per Month. |
|--------------|----------|--------------|----------|-------------|
|Cotton | 33,150 | $16 79 | 59,136 | $9 24 |
|Wool | 22,678 | 21 49 | 16,574 | 11 86 |
|Pig-iron | 20,298 | 21 68 | 150 | 5 13 |
|Iron castings | 23,541 | 27 38 | 48 | 5 87 |
|Wrought iron | 16,110 | 27 02 | 138 | 7 35 |
|Fisheries | 20,704 | 20 49 | 429 | 10 08 |
| |----------| |----------| |
|Total employed| 136,481 | | 76,475 | |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

PAUPERISM.

From tables relating to pauperism in the United States we learn that in
the year ending June 1, 1850, when our population was 23,191,876, there
were supported (in whole or in part) at public expense:[420]

Natives 66,434
Foreigners 68,538
-------
Total 134,972

The cost of such support was $2,954,806. This is much less than the outlay
in England, where, in the year 1848, there was expended £6,180,764
sterling (or over thirty million dollars), the population being
17,521,956.[421]

CRIME.

There were confined in the various state prisons throughout the Union on
June 1, 1850:[422]

White males 4643
" females 115
Total whites ---- 4758

Colored males 801
" females 87
Total colored ---- 888
----
Aggregate 5646

Of these there were

Native whites 3259
" colored 866
Total natives ---- 4125

Foreign whites 1499
" colored 22
Total foreign ---- 1521
----
Aggregate 5646

INTEMPERANCE.

It need not be repeated that habits of intemperance and prostitution are
closely allied. The following figures give the statistics of the breweries
and distilleries in the United States:[423]

The total number of these establishments is 1217
In which is invested a capital of $8,507,574

They employ 6140 hands, and consume during the year,

Barley 3,787,195 bushels.
Corn 11,067,761 "
Rye 2,143,927 "
Oats 56,607 "
Apples 526,840 "
Hops 1,294 tons.
Molasses 61,675 hogsheads.

Their yearly production is,

Ale, 1,179,495 barrels, or 42,471,820 gallons.
Whisky, etc. 41,364,224 "
Rum 6,500,500 "
----------
Total 90,336,544 "

If these stimulants were used in the United States, exclusive of export or
import, the average allowance for each man, woman, and child in the
community would be nearly four gallons per year. The figures show how much
we produce, but will not aid the inquiry as to how much is consumed.

NATIVITIES.

The words "Natives" and "Foreigners" have been so frequently used in the
course of this investigation, that the official census returns as to their
relative numbers can not but be interesting.[424]

Of the white population of the United States there were

Born in the state in which they are now living 67·02 per cent.
" " United States, but not in the state in
which they are now living 21·35 "
-----
Total of natives 88·37 "

Born in foreign countries 11·46 "
Unknown nativities ·17 "
------
100 "

Thus of every hundred white inhabitants of the United States, eighty-eight
were natives of the soil.

Of the free colored inhabitants there were[425]

Natives 98·59 per cent.
Foreigners ·94 "
Unknown nativities ·47 "
------
100

The slave population are (for all practical purposes) entirely native.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

NEW YORK.--REMEDIAL MEASURES.

Effects of Prohibition.--Required Change of Policy.--Governmental
Obligations.--Prostitution augmented by Seclusion.--Impossibility of
benevolent Assistance.--Necessity of sanitary Regulations.--Yellow
Fever.--Effect of remedial Measures in Paris.--Syphilitic Infection
not a local Question.--Present Measures to check Syphilis.--ISLAND
HOSPITAL, BLACKWELL'S ISLAND.--Mode of Admission.--Vagrancy Commitment
"on Confession," and its Action on Blackwell's Island.--Pecuniary
Results.--Moral Effects.--Perpetuation of Disease.--Inadequacy of
Present Arrangements.--Discharges.--Writs of _Habeas Corpus_ and
_Certiorari_, how obtained, and their Effects.--Public
Responsibility.--Proposed medical and police Surveillance.--
Requirements.--_Hospital Arrangements to be entirely separated from
punitive Institutions._--Medical Visitation.--Power to place diseased
Women under Treatment and _detain them till cured_.--Refutation of
Objections.--Quack Advertisers.--Constitution of Medical Bureau.--
Duties of Examiners.--License System.--Probable Effects of
Surveillance.--Expenses of the proposed Plan.--Agitation in England.--
The London _Times_ on Prostitution.--Objections considered.--Report
from MEDICAL BOARD OF BELLEVUE HOSPITAL on Prostitution and
Syphilis.--Report from RESIDENT PHYSICIAN, RANDALL'S ISLAND, on
Constitutional Syphilis.--Reliability of Statistics.--Resumé of
substantiated Facts.

Having traced the causes and delineated the extent and effects of the evil
of prostitution as it exists in New York at the present time, an evident
duty is to inquire what measures can be devised to stay the march of this
desolating plague in its ravages on the health and morals of the public.
This is a problem the solution of which has for centuries interested
philanthropists and statesmen in different countries. They commenced with
the theory that vice could be suppressed by statutory enactments, and the
crushing-out process was vigorously tried under various auspices, until
experience demonstrated that it virtually increased and aggravated the
evil it was intended to suppress. At subsequent periods, however,
different measures have been adopted with different results.

It will be necessary, in the first place, to consider the effect of
stringent prohibitory measures. The records given in the previous chapters
of this work show what these have attempted, and they also show at the
same time the uselessness of endeavoring to eradicate prostitution by
compulsory legislation. The lash, the dungeon, the rack, and the stake
have each been tried, and all have proved equally powerless to accomplish
the object. Admitting that, in religion, morals, or politics, it is
impossible to force concurrence in any particular sentiment, while a
kindly persuasive plan may lead to its adoption; admitting that all
attempts to compel prostitutes to be virtuous have notoriously failed; has
not the time arrived for a change of policy? If, in direct ratio to the
stringency of prohibitory measures, the vice sought to be exterminated has
steadily increased, does not reason suggest the expediency of resorting to
other measures for its suppression?

It has been said that "History is philosophy teaching by example," and, if
such instruction is well considered, none can fail to see therein an
unanswerable argument against excessive severity in this matter. The
several statutes proscribing prostitution have been detailed, and their
specific results given, as gathered from the experience of various
countries. At the time these laws were in force, it is hardly probable
that their authors regarded them as unsusceptible of improvement; and the
question now arises for decision, in this age of general progress, is it
not our duty to try the effect of some other line of action in this
country?

In common with other nations, we have passed laws intended to crush out
prostitution; have made vigorous protests (on paper) against its
existence; and there our labors have ended. The experience acquired in
this course of legislation only demonstrates that such laws can not be
enforced so as to produce the desired effect. But why are they still
retained on the statute books? Is it not an opprobrium upon our national
character to allow them to exist, if they are never to be enforced? If
they are powerless for good, effective only to increase the plague they
were designed to check, why not expunge them at once, and substitute
others more practicable and more useful in their stead? A candid
acknowledgment of error, whether by an individual or a community, is
always a creditable and graceful act. It shows that experience has
dictated a wiser course; that reflection and experiment have condemned the
former plan.

It is not to be supposed that any system of laws will entirely eradicate
prostitution; history, social arrangements, and physiology alike forbid
any such utopian idea. But will not a more enlightened policy do much
toward diminishing it? Many of the present generation can recollect the
time when it was considered right and proper to imprison an insolvent
debtor; but this idea is now wisely repudiated by society, and no one will
assert that the effect of the change has been to place any additional
difficulties in the way of collecting legal claims. Capital punishment has
been abolished in many cases, and yet it is a well-known fact that crime
has diminished where this experiment has been tried. This is more
particularly the case in England, where forgery, which was punished with
death, is comparatively rare since the amelioration of the law. A general
conviction is becoming prevalent that the most effectual way to deal with
criminals is to attempt to raise them above what they were, in
contradistinction to the old plan of sinking them lower.[426] It is now
freely acknowledged that the elevating, instead of the depressing process,
is consonant both with the spirit of our republican institutions and with
humanizing policy. Even if American society is not yet prepared to take a
course directly the reverse of its present prohibitory practice, prudence
dictates the adoption of some medium rule by which prostitution can be
kept in check without being encouraged or allowed, as in the Prussian
laws, which expressly declare that the vice is "tolerated but not
permitted."

Government should be patriarchal in its character, and exercise an
effective but parental supervision over all its subjects. This is the
living principle which gives vitality and strength to any organization,
and no satisfactory government can exist if it is absent. Now, in regard
to prostitutes, admitting that they have erred, still, the people, who
constitute the government in this country, are concerned in the matter,
and their mutual obligations, their policy, and their pecuniary interests
require that these wandering members of the body corporate should have a
reasonable opportunity for reformation. Which will give this opportunity
most effectually--to crush them under the weight of their own misdeeds, or
to adopt a liberal course likely to induce them to abandon their depraved
habits? One of the secrets which bound the soldiers of the empire to the
standard of Napoleon through all his battles and vicissitudes was the
knowledge that France regarded them as her children, and would not fail to
protect and support them. The words "I am a Roman citizen" derived their
magic power from the fact that the Roman Empire treated all her citizens
as sons, and watched over their interests with parental care. The recent
outburst of popular enthusiasm in our own country when the commander[427]
of an American national vessel rescued a citizen from threatened outrage
in a foreign land, was an emphatic recognition of the principle. Can we
now consistently refuse to apply the rule to all who need our kindly
care?[428]

It may be considered a bold assertion, that our present mode of dealing
with prostitution is calculated to widely extend its prevalence, yet the
historical facts already given are sufficient to prove its truth without
further argument. The existing rule of treatment, instead of suppressing
the vice, merely drives it into seclusion--a result far different from the
design, and infinitely increasing its power. To those secret haunts of
prostitution resort the lowest and most depraved of the male sex, with the
full knowledge that a fundamental law of our commonwealth considers every
house a castle, into which no officer can enter unless armed with a
special legal authority, or called in to suppress an outrage. The result
of such seclusion is to confirm the vicious habits of the prostitutes, and
frequently to lead them to the commission of other and more heinous
offenses.

Again: Secrecy further augments prostitution by preventing the approach of
those benevolent individuals who would feel a pleasure in advising and
directing the daughters of misery for their real good. Philanthropists
have organized Prison Associations and Magdalen Asylums to bear upon
prostitution, but they can only reach it in its lowest grades, when the
females become inmates of public institutions from destitution and
disease. Reformers can not come near the fountain-head, and they are
consequently now as far from the consummation of their praiseworthy
intentions as when they commenced their labors; because prohibitory
measures force prostitutes to take shelter in seclusion, and it is only
when women are consigned to our hospitals, work-houses, and penitentiaries
that they become accessible. By this time they are so far sunk in
depravity as to afford very slender hope of reformation. This is more
especially true of Magdalen Asylums. There is indeed a "field white unto
the harvest" for benevolent exertions in the most secluded haunts of
prostitution, if they could only be made accessible. Sympathy is worthily
bestowed upon the sick or dying women transferred from public institutions
to charitable organizations. To alleviate the sorrows of their final
sufferings, to soothe the agony of the hour of death, to divest of its
terrors the passage from this world to the dread future, is a work in
which the heart of any Christian must rejoice. But it is only a part of
the duties contemplated by such asylums. While their projectors gladly
administer the consolations of our holy religion to an expiring Magdalen,
they also seek an opportunity to direct erring women to the paths of
virtue during the life that still remains to them; to guide them to a path
in which they can retrace the false steps already taken, and become useful
members of society. This opportunity for exertion is denied under the
system which drives vice into seclusion.

Turning now from considering the operation of repressive laws, we notice
the importance of sanitary and quarantine regulations. One of the first
cares of a good government is to preserve and promote the public health.
An illustration of this position occurred in the summer of 1856, when
fears were entertained that the city would be visited by a frightful
epidemic fever. The public voice declared through the newspapers that the
most rigorous and careful sanitary measures were needed, and the cleaning
of streets, the removal of nuisances, the purification of tenant-houses,
and many other measures of the same kind, were loudly called for, and
adopted as far as possible, while the quarantine regulations of the harbor
were strictly enforced. In view of this danger, so dreadful and apparently
so imminent, the united voice of public opinion sanctioned the very course
advocated here; namely, the adoption of remedial, or, more properly
speaking, preventive measures. Venereal poison is as destructive, although
not so suddenly fatal, as yellow fever, and every motive of philanthropy
and economy urges the necessity of effective means for its counteraction.

Since remedial or preventive measures have been adopted in Paris the
number of cases of disease and the virulence of its form have materially
abated. This fact is asserted not merely on our own personal knowledge,
but also from the corroborative testimony of physicians who have had
recent opportunities of investigating the subject in that capital. The
diminution can be easily explained by a comparison of the laws and
regulations applicable to prostitution. We in New York, by our stringent
prohibition, drive the vice into seclusion, and deprive ourselves of the
means of watching either its progress or results; while our French
contemporaries insist that it shall be at all times open to the
_surveillance_ of properly appointed persons.

The extent of syphilitic infection in New York has been portrayed in the
preceding chapter, but the danger of contamination must not be viewed as a
merely local question. From its commercial importance, its mercantile
marine, its centralization of rail-roads and canals, and its facilities
for river navigation, this city is now the great point of arrival and
departure of travelers and emigrants from and to all parts of the Union.
Foreigners reach here in large numbers every day, intending to travel to
other states. If they remain in the city a few days only, they are
exposed to its temptations, and may contract disease which, by their
agency, will be perpetuated in the district they have selected as their
future home. Returned adventurers from the Pacific shores come here to
find the readiest transit to their several destinations. They are exposed
to the same temptations, with a probability of the same result. Merchants
and store-keepers visit this commercial emporium to obtain supplies of
goods, and they are exposed to the same fascinations and the same
contingencies. The sailors in port are similarly liable. In short, it is
scarcely possible to imagine the extent over which the syphilitic poison
originating in the proud and wealthy city of New York may be spread, nor
would it be an error to describe the Empire City as a hot-bed where, from
the nature of its laws on prostitution, syphilis may be cultivated and
disseminated.

Possessed, then, of indubitable proofs of the existence of syphilis, and
the knowledge that its range is more widely extended every day, gathering
additional malignity in its progress, the next point is to inquire what
measures have been adopted to check its ravages. These have hitherto been
found totally inadequate, because based upon an erroneous theory, namely,
the idea of suppression. The principal public or free hospital where the
venereal disease is _confessedly_ treated is the Penitentiary Hospital on
Blackwell's Island, now known as the Island Hospital. To obtain the
benefit of medical treatment therein, it is necessary that the patient
should have been sentenced from the Court of Sessions to the Penitentiary
for the commission of some crime; or committed to the Work-house by a
police justice for vagrancy, drunkenness, or disorderly conduct. From this
fact it will be seen that there is, strictly speaking, no "free" hospital
for such diseases, as the only one intended for their treatment will or
can receive none but those sentenced for an infraction of the laws.

Still the necessity for professional assistance compels many, both males
and females, to submit to the degradation of a police commitment.
Unfortunate women, or laboring men, find that they are suffering from
infection. Possibly they have no money, or probably they have exhausted
their funds in payments to charlatans, and so resort for aid and advice to
some one of the public dispensaries. Unless the case is a slight one, the
medical officers there advise them to resort to hospital treatment, to
procure which the poor sufferers are furnished with a certificate of their
state, and directed to apply to a police justice. They follow this
advice, and in nine cases out of ten the magistrate's only remark is, "Do
you want me to send you to the Hospital?" The answer, of course, is in the
affirmative, and he forthwith signs a printed commitment to the
Penitentiary or Work-house for a time named therein, and ranging from one
to six months at the discretion of the magistrate. The following is a copy
of one of these documents:

"_City and County of New York, ss._

"_By_ ------ ------, ESQUIRE, one of the Police Justices in and for
the City and County of New York.

"To the Constables and Policemen of the said City, and every of them,
and to the Warden of the Penitentiary of the City and County of New
York:

"THESE ARE IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, to
command you, the said Constables and Policemen, to convey to the said
PENITENTIARY the body of ------ ------, who stands charged before me
with being a VAGRANT, viz., being without the means of supporting
----self, and having contracted an INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN THE PRACTICE
OF DEBAUCHERY, viz., the venereal disease, requiring charitable aid to
restore ---- to health, whereof --he is convicted of record on
confession, the record of which conviction has been made and filed in
the office of the Clerk of the Court of Sessions of the City and
County aforesaid, and it appearing to me that the said ------ ------
is an improper person to be sent to the Alms-house, you, the said
Warden, are hereby commanded to receive into your custody, in the said
PENITENTIARY, the body of the said ------ ------, and ----safely keep
for the space of ------ month--, or until --he shall be thence
delivered by due course of law.

"Given under my hand and seal, this ---- day of ------, in the year of
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty----.

"------ ------, Police Justice."

This is technically called a commitment "on confession," and its effects
are precisely the same as they would be if the individual had been
convicted of any tangible act of vagrancy. He is in law and in fact a
prisoner for the space of time named in the commitment; he must wear the
prison garb, and submit to the prison discipline, until the expiration of
his sentence. It is well known to the justices that a penal commitment
like the above will immediately secure the sufferer the medical attention
his case requires, but they have no power to send any one direct to the
Hospital.

And here an inquiry will naturally suggest itself, What does, or what
should a magistrate know about committing a sick person, and how can he
decide the time such invalid shall remain under treatment? A self-evident
conclusion will be that the whole process is an absurd one at the best,
and its requirements a hardship on magistrates already overburdened with
legitimate duties.

The reader's attention is requested to the pecuniary effects of this plan.
To illustrate: Suppose the case of a man committed for six months. He is
suffering from some form of venereal disease, and in this state is
received at the Penitentiary or Work-house, where his clothes are taken
from him, the institution costume supplied, and the particulars of his
name, age, nativity, occupation, etc., are registered with an abstract of
the commitment by virtue of which he is detained. He is then subjected to
medical examination and transferred to the Hospital. In this institution
he remains until cured, if that end is attained before the expiration of
his sentence, and is then re-transferred to the Penitentiary or
Work-house. The average time required for the successful treatment of the
disease named, in the Blackwell's Island Hospital, will not probably
exceed _two_ months, and often a much shorter period is sufficient. But
the man has been committed for _six_ months, and for the unexpired _four_
months of his incarceration he has to be fed, clothed, and lodged at the
expense of the Alms-house Department. The labor he can perform will never
amount in value to the actual cost of his support, so that he is
maintained four months _in accordance with law_ at a positive cost to the
tax-payers of the city, because they have already supported him for two
months in the Hospital. In the aggregate of cases during a year these
costs amount to a very large sum. Need any farther argument be adduced to
show the palpable absurdity of the system?

A few words upon the moral effect of this local system upon prostitution
in New York, premising that being a prostitute is acknowledged by all as a
degradation; while a vagrancy commitment to the Work-house or Penitentiary
is a positive disgrace. The system is a portion of the crushing-out plan
already mentioned, and it says, in effect, "We (the people of New York
City) will give you an opportunity to be cured of your loathsome and
destructive malady, but only upon the condition that you become the inmate
of a penal institution. We know that you can not be cured unless you
accept our terms, and we will make those terms as hard and repulsive to
human nature as ingenuity can devise." It has been a medical axiom that no
two poisons can exist in the system at one and the same time; but the
citizens of New York have been experimenting for some years to ascertain
whether two moral poisons can not be coexistent in the same person, by
adding farther and unnecessary disgrace to the vice of prostitution--thus
widening the gulf between the sinner and her possible return to virtue.

The impolicy of making syphilis a reason for imprisonment, except so far
as curative measures actually require it, must be apparent to all, were it
merely from the fact that it deters many who are suffering from embracing
the opportunity of cure until they are absolutely compelled to do so. How
excessively wrong is this principle in a hygienic point of view must be
evident; a directly contrary course, making the hospital attractive
instead of repulsive, would be the true policy, and would be the most
economical in its results. Nor is it justice to the medical departments of
our public institutions to clog their labors with a proviso which prevents
their aid being sought until the last extremity, when it can only exert a
palliative and not a curative agency. If syphilis could be reached in its
primary stages, their task would be much less difficult and their services
much more effectual; whereas little or nothing can be accomplished when
official regulations keep away the patients until the disease becomes
constitutional, and the mischief is done. As in morals, so is it in
medicine. Any evil, to be treated with success, must be encountered in its
first stage, and if our regulations preclude this opportunity, but slight
hopes can be entertained of any good results. Under a more liberal system,
the physician and the philanthropist could combine their efforts. The
former would not have to encounter disease inveterately fixed on a
broken-down constitution; the latter would not find his benevolent designs
frustrated by a lengthened career of depravity now become habitual.

The effect of the provision which offers medical aid to prisoners only is,
that every woman of the town will try all possible means to dispense with
the treatment. It is only when she has actually fallen to the lowest deep
of her class, when one step more will plunge her into a bottomless abyss
of helpless and hopeless woe, that she will voluntarily accept the
proffered aid. She will endure torture from her maladies, or rely upon the
assistance of empirics, and submit to all their extortions, rather than
become a prisoner. But when every resource is exhausted, and her physical
torments plainly tell her that she must obtain medical relief or die, then
she submits. Once in the hospital, she is relieved, after a period of
protracted sickness, and leaves it to return to her old haunts, because
she can go nowhere else, the law having affixed the additional disgrace of
imprisonment upon her former bad character. Sociality is a characteristic
of human nature, and if these women can not gain admission to any company
but that of the vicious and abandoned, they prefer that to solitude.
Returned once more to her former associates, the time soon comes when
farther medical assistance is needed, and thus she alternates for a few
months or years between prison, hospital, and brothel, till death puts an
end to her sufferings, and a nameless grave in Potters' Field receives the
remains of one whom charitable measures, properly applied, might possibly
have made a useful member of society.

The sense of shame which follows a single deviation from the paths of
virtue drives many women to prostitution. Why add to the existing sense of
shame another infamy when she unfortunately contracts disease? Can we
consistently blame her if she becomes callous, when every legal provision
directly tends to indurate her sensibilities? The misconduct of parents
toward children has been shown as one of the causes of prostitution. The
father or mother drives from the paternal roof the child who has committed
but a single error. Then, under the pressure of hunger, she inevitably
sins more deeply, becomes diseased, applies to the public for relief, and
is sentenced to imprisonment! The first mistake, that of the parents,
makes her vicious: the second mistake, incarceration, confirms her in
vice. We denounce such ill-treatment in the parents, while practically we
ourselves, as the natural guardians of all who need assistance, are doing
precisely the same thing. Where, then, is our consistency? If it is right
for us, a body corporate, to practice such cruel oppression, is it not
equally justifiable for each member of the body to act in the same manner
in his individual capacity? Of course, what is right for the multitude
must be right for the individual, and our own conduct convicts us of
inconsistency. We have no warrant to condemn parents for single acts which
we perform collectively; or, if we are right in censuring them, we are
wrong in performing the same acts ourselves: if they are reprehensible, we
also are culpable.

This system, with all its absurdity, its prejudicial effect on public
health, and its obvious tendency to immorality, is not adequate to stay
the destroying scourge; on the contrary, it is likely to extend its
ravages. If a prostitute, arrested and committed to Blackwell's Island for
drunkenness or any disorderly conduct, is found to be diseased, or if she
commits herself knowing that she is infected, she is immediately placed
under medical charge. She will probably remain contentedly in the hospital
until the worst symptoms of the disease are subdued: by this time the
discipline of the institution has become irksome to her. She communicates
with the brothel-keeper with whom she formerly boarded, or with some
"lover" or acquaintance, who sues out a writ of _certiorari_ or _habeas
corpus_, which instantly effects her discharge. She now returns to her
former haunts, half-cured, again to aid in disseminating disease, farther
to undermine her own constitution, and to infect men who will in turn
become a charge upon the tax-payers, or by their agency cause others to
become thus liable. The instance of wholesale release mentioned in the
previous chapter will recur to the mind of the reader.

The experience of almost every day confirms these statements. It is well
known that there are those who hang around the various police courts
expressly to attend to such business, and who make a large income from
this source, exclusive of other matters pertaining to prostitution in
which they occasionally exert their abilities. The vagrancy commitments by
which women are "sent up" are generally insufficient, and there is no
legal power to detain them, and force them to submit to the treatment they
so much require. It has been asserted by legal men of high standing that
nearly the whole of the commitments issued by police justices are
defective, and that there exists in law no impediment to the immediate
discharge of every prostitute now on Blackwell's Island. The public can
readily perceive the necessary inefficiency of these institutions so far
as the prevention of venereal disease is concerned.

The facility with which prostitutes committed to Blackwell's Island can
obtain their discharge may be attributed to want of care in making out the
commitments. A recent statute (1854) prescribes the form in which these
should be made, requiring the recital of admitted or substantiated facts,
and the filing of a copy of the original in the office of the clerk of the
Court of Sessions. These requirements are not observed, and the reason
assigned by magistrates is, that their own time, and the time of their
clerks, is so fully occupied by the press of business before them that
they can not proceed as minutely as the act directs. This confirms the
view already expressed of the impolicy and impropriety of placing such
onerous and extra-judicial duties upon the justices. But as they would be
liable to be sued for false imprisonment if they committed under this act
without observing all its requirements, they issue their commitments in
the old form required by the Revised Statutes, and are sheltered thereby
from ulterior consequences. These commitments direct the persons to be
confined in the Penitentiary, but the local arrangements of Blackwell's
Island require them to be sent to the Work-house, and unless this transfer
is actually made in each case by the Governors of the Alms-house--for they
can not deputize their power--it is a _waiver_ of the right of custody,
and consequently entitles the prisoner so transferred to a discharge. It
has been claimed that the Work-house is a part of the Penitentiary, but
this point has been overruled, because the statute establishing the
Work-house plainly shows a contrary intent.

A prisoner is entitled to a discharge on another ground, namely, because
the commitment has not been filed as directed; or, on another ground, that
the commitment does not recite the evidence by which the fact of vagrancy
was proved. A final ground of discharge, which is never pressed till all
the minor technicalities have failed, is that the whole proceeding is
illegal because the statute of 1854 has not been complied with.

On these grounds a writ of _certiorari_ or _habeas corpus_ is sued out,
the preliminary steps being a petition from the prisoner or his friend,
setting forth that he is illegally detained, an affidavit of verification,
and a certificate of the clerk of the Court of Sessions that the
commitment has not been filed in his office. Upon the presentation of
these documents, the judge to whom application is made issues the required
writ, and specifies the time at which it shall be returnable. The action
of the two writs is similar, excepting that a writ of _habeas corpus_
requires the production of the prisoner before the judge in addition to a
return of the cause of detention, while a writ of _certiorari_ only
requires a return of the cause of detention. The return is made by the
person having custody of the prisoner, and consists of a copy of the
commitment under which he is held; and, from the already-stated
informality of these documents, it will be apparent there can be no legal
ground for his detention. The judge is strictly prohibited from
entertaining any question beyond the legality of the papers; with the
moral aspect of the question he can not interfere, and as the commitments
are generally informal he has no alternative but to discharge the
prisoner.

Application for these writs must be made in the name of an attorney, but
such name is often used by an agent who transacts the business, and
divides the fee with his principal.

From this sketch it will be evident that, if the prescribed form were
observed in these commitments, frequent discharges would be avoided, or
there would be so many difficulties to surmount that they would be very
rarely attempted.

Does no responsibility rest upon the public, and on our law-makers, for
negligence in this matter? Without conceding that a vagrancy commitment is
likely to reform a prostitute (in fact, the weight of evidence is against
the possibility of its doing so), the case stands thus: the Legislature
has provided a mode of relief which was deemed effectual at the time, but
this mode is evaded, or can not be observed, by those upon whom its
administration devolves. The public have long known the existence of these
difficulties, but have never interfered to give us a better act. By their
refusal to interfere they stand in the position of aiders and abettors in
this neglect, or, worse than neglect, the actual propagation of a dreadful
disease. Had public opinion been concentrated upon this matter, an inquiry
would long ago have shown the fallacy of our present system, and suggested
the required amendments. This has not been done; but public remissness in
no way diminishes public responsibility.

This doctrine of public accountability may be profitably examined for a
few moments in connection with the general aspect of prostitution. Few
will deny that the mass of the people are answerable for many of its
evils. They are cognizant of the existence of vice in the aggregate, if
not in detail; they can understand its effects, and are not ignorant of
the principal causes which lead to it; yet they make no effort to remove
existing causes or to prevent future evils. They practically treat women
as an inferior race of beings, and can not even give a poor seamstress
employment without saying, in fact if not in words, "You can not be
trusted to make this unless a man examines every button hole, and inspects
every row of stitching, to see that you are not defrauding us." The only
way to secure confidence is to bestow confidence; but if a person is
treated in a manner likely to destroy self-respect, the inevitable result
will be a recklessness as to his or her own character. Despised without a
cause; treated in mere business matters as imbeciles, or children, or
thieves, it is not surprising that women become careless as to their
future life, and, smarting under the injustice of their position, too
frequently degenerate into the wretched beings who infest our streets and
pollute the atmosphere with their deadly infection.

The public, then, are responsible for this prostitution, because they have
never bestowed any attention upon it. It is one of the gravest and most
difficult of social problems, involving the interests of every man in the
community, and yet the most stupid indifference has been shown respecting
it. The subject has been canvassed by medical men on account of its sad
effects upon the physical organization; its extent has been known to
judicial and police authorities from its social and civil results; but the
great body of the public have hitherto decided that they know nothing, and
want to know nothing about it. They admit its existence, being too evident
to be denied; but so far they have taken no steps to ascertain its source
or stay its progress, because it was a matter with which they were afraid
to interfere, and now the deplorable consequences accruing from it must be
laid to their charge.

It can not be denied that there are many difficulties attending any
investigation of this vice; that many well-meaning but timid people
entertain the opinion that it is one of those gangrenous ulcers upon
society which can not be alluded to except in whispers; that more harm
would result from instituting inquiries than if it were allowed to exist
and fester on unnoticed.[429] This apathy, which has heretofore been the
policy, has made prostitution the monster evil which it now is, and upon
those who have advocated, or may advocate, a continuance of the same
course of silence and inaction the sufferers from the vice may justly
charge their destruction. The "masterly inactivity" of the statesman is
unquestionably justifiable in any case where passive resistance will
overcome an evil, but in dealing with prostitution a diametrically
opposite method must be pursued. It requires an active aggression upon all
old prejudices; an explosion of still older theories; a vigorous
commencement of a new course.

It has been shown elsewhere that the public are responsible for
prostitution, because they persist in excluding women from many kinds of
employment for which they are fitted; while for work in those occupations
which are open to them they receive an entirely inadequate remuneration.
It has also been shown that the community are equally responsible on
account of their non-interference with known and acknowledged evils.
Another reason why accountability can not be evaded may be designated;
namely, the carelessness, or, more properly, heartlessness, with which the
character of woman is treated. Let there be but a breath of suspicion
against her fair fame, no matter from what vile source it may emanate, and
the energies of man seem directed toward her destruction. "She is down,
keep her down!" is the almost universal cry, and this malignant process is
continued until the victim is positively forced into a life of undisguised
immorality. The sacred decision, "Let him that is without sin among you
cast the first stone," is entirely forgotten, and the most violent in
their denunciations are frequently those who are the most blameworthy
themselves.

The whole force of the world's opinion has been directed, not to the
censure of actually guilty parties who induced the crime, but to the poor
wronged sufferer. She, who is too frequently the victim of falsehood and
deceit, or the slave of an absolute necessity, must expiate her fault by
submitting to a constant succession of indignities and annoyances. He,
whose conduct has made her what she is, escapes all censure. But some
moralist will ask, "How would you have us treat such women?" Treat them,
sir, as human beings, actuated by the same passions as yourself; as
susceptible beings, keenly sensitive of reproach; as injured beings, who
have a claim upon your kindness; as outraged beings, who have a demand
upon your justice. Lead them into a path by which they can escape from
danger; protect the innocent from the snares which environ them on every
side. And when this is done, pour the vials of your hottest wrath on those
of your own sex whose machinations have blighted some of God's fairest
created beings.

Public responsibility must be understood in its broadest and most literal
sense, as meaning the individual accountability of every member of the
community. The time has not yet arrived, unfortunately, when this matter
can be left in the hands of corporations or legislatures. Their
constituents must be aroused to consideration of its importance before any
satisfactory action can or will be taken by them; and it is to the
thinking men of the age that these pages are addressed, in the full
confidence that so soon as their sympathies are enlisted public action
will follow.

To this end an endeavor has been made to show the injurious effects of
prohibition, disappointing expectation as a means of decreasing syphilis,
or of curtailing the limits of prostitution; the necessity which exists
for effectual preventive measures; and the inefficient, or worse than
inefficient, nature of the local arrangements of New York to accomplish
this desideratum. Thus the way for a consideration of the remedial process
has been opened, and now with such evidence as he has before him the
reader may be asked, in all sincerity, if he does not seriously believe
that _it would be a prudent step, instead of trying to extirpate the evil,
to place prostitutes and prostitution under the surveillance of a medical
bureau in the Police Department_? Extirpation never has been, never can be
accomplished in any community; repression and restriction, as proposed,
have been tried and have proved successful.

Assuming an affirmative answer to this question, and it is difficult to
imagine it otherwise if the facts are dispassionately considered,
attention is respectfully requested to the manner in which the change
could be effected.

To meet the exigencies of the case there are required

(1.) A suitable hospital for the treatment of venereal disease;

(2.) A legally authorized medical visitation of all known houses of
prostitution, with full power to order the immediate removal of any woman
found to be infected to the designated hospital;

(3.) The power to detain infected persons under treatment until they are
cured, a term of time which none but medical men can decide.

By a suitable hospital is meant an institution devoted to the treatment of
such diseases, like the special hospitals of Paris and other Continental
cities, and entirely removed from all connection with any punitive
establishment. The rules proposed for the government of the Island
Hospital, when its name was changed from Penitentiary Hospital, do not, by
any means, meet the urgent requirements of the case. The Penitentiary, its
officers and inmates, must be entirely shut out from the desired hospital,
and no prison-warden or keeper of criminals must have any jurisdiction
within its walls or over its grounds. Inmates of hospitals have too long
endured the stupid interference of non-medical men, and it is time that
medical law exclusively was considered in the direction and management of
buildings devoted to medical purposes. This is especially necessary in a
syphilitic hospital, on account of the character of its patients. _No
amount of imprisonment as a punishment ever yet reformed a prostitute, and
it never will; all intercourse with prisoners, be it ever so transient,
has but confirmed women in vice._

The tendency of imprisonment is directly contrary to any reformation,
confirming previous habits instead of rooting them out. The instinctive
dread of incarceration has prevented many from availing themselves of the
medical advantages offered them, particularly among the better and higher
grades of frail women. We want a hospital exclusively for the treatment of
syphilis, with the power to place and keep there all women so diseased
until cured. Matters of detail can be arranged in such a manner as to
admit of a proper classification, based upon the degree of moral turpitude
belonging to each. Payment could and should be required from all who
possess the means, for expenses actually incurred, and this would
contribute a considerable sum to meet the expenditures of the institution.
Among these women, as a body, there exists an excessive amount of pride.
Those of the upper class will not associate with any of a lower rank, and,
in fact, look upon them in very much the same manner that moralists regard
the whole body. To be enabled to reach them at all, a liberal management
must be adopted. But will not this be deferring to vice because it is
dressed in silks or satins? asks some one. Most decidedly not. Let the
arrangements be what they might, such a hospital as described would afford
no encouragement to vice, for in it all must submit to the same course of
treatment, varied only in the minor accessories which surround it.

Even if the arrangements were exposed to an objection like the above, the
end would justify the means. The city of New York contains, at this day,
venereal infection sufficient to contaminate all the male population of
the United States in a very short space of time. It has been proved from
official and medical statistics that this malady is rapidly on the
increase, and a paramount question is, how to be relieved of the incubus.
Rigorous prohibitory measures will not effect this; they only make the
matter worse. Punitive hospitals will not effect this; they have been
tried and found wanting. Free institutions would, in all probability,
succeed in accomplishing far more than any other measure our citizens have
ever tried. The question is one, if not absolutely of life, certainly of
healthy existence, and its inestimable importance must over-ride all
doubts and difficulties. In view of the dangers surrounding our rising
generation, even supposing the men and women of the present day exempt
from them, it would be perfectly inexcusable to refuse any available plan
because some one of its features might not please all tastes. Adopt an
arrangement similar to that suggested, and if any crudities are discovered
they can be readily cured as experience points them out. The plan is not
presented as a perfect one, but merely as an outline sketch of what is
necessary.

A regular medical visitation of all prostitutes is an essential part of
the scheme, and its organization should be a matter of serious
consideration. The Parisian plan already submitted might form a very good
basis; and an arrangement which throws the whole system of prostitution
open to an effective police supervision, and the establishment of a
medical bureau in connection therewith for professional purposes, is
suggested as most desirable. This medical visitation, conducted by
physicians to be connected with the Police Department, and sustained by
the power of that body, should be confided to men of recognized skill and
known integrity. To insure public confidence, so essentially necessary in
the inception of any social innovation, it would be necessary that the
agents upon whom its execution devolved should be men of tried probity and
acknowledged reputation, both professional and personal. The slightest
symptom of disease should be sufficient evidence to warrant the immediate
removal of any woman to the syphilitic hospital. The residence of any
woman, be it temporary or permanent, in a known house of prostitution must
subject her to a medical examination, as it would afford a very strong
presumption that she was there for immoral purposes.

The propriety of a medical examination of prostitutes at certain intervals
can not be doubted, and, in fact, it is practically admitted at the
present time by some few of the brothel-keepers in the city. These pay a
physician a liberal salary to visit their boarders every few days for the
express purpose of carrying out the plan suggested now; resorting to
treatment whenever he finds it necessary. Some of the most aristocratic
houses of prostitution are thus attended, but the system is in use more
especially among those natives of Continental Europe who are now keeping
houses of ill fame in New York, and who, in bringing to the New World many
of the customs of the old, have thus testified to the benefit of the
regulations enforced there.

But although such visiting physician may pronounce a girl infected, the
world has no security that she will not continue her avocation; and in
order to remove all doubt upon this question she should be instantly
removed to an institution where she can not possibly propagate the malady.
This must be done under conjoint medical and police authority. Among
prostitutes of the lower grades systematic visitation is more imperatively
necessary. They will not place themselves under medical treatment unless
they are compelled, but until their disease assumes a character that
prevents the possibility of farther concealment from their visitors, they
continue to ply their loathsome and destructive trade. The summit of
ambition with them is to keep their liberty; so long as they can earn
enough to provide themselves a shelter, and feed their ravenous appetite
for intoxicating liquor, they are content to submit to the pains and
ravages of syphilis, alike heedless of their own sufferings and the
injuries they inflict on others. We have had cases under our own
professional treatment where women have actually persevered in this course
for many weeks after they had become aware they were diseased, solely for
the reasons indicated.

It may be objected that such a plan would offer a premium to lewdness by
circumscribing the dangers of infection; but this argument can have little
weight, as it is scarcely possible that promiscuous sexual intercourse
can be carried on much more extensively than it is at present. The vice
seems to have reached its culminating point. Experience proves that in all
ages of the world there have been many men whose passions were so violent
and so ill regulated that they would attain their gratification at any
risk, even though that risk included the probability of venereal
infection. As in games of hazard every player hopes to be a winner, so in
carnal indulgences every man flatters himself that, because some gratify
their lusts unscathed for a long series of years, so may he; that as
hitherto he has escaped disease in his unhallowed amours, he may continue
equally fortunate to the end of his career. This is confessedly a poor
dependence, but it is the reliance of hundreds and thousands of the
followers of her whose "house is the way to hell."

Diseases of a syphilitic nature are viewed by some persons as special
punishments for special sins, and hence they argue that it would be an
interference with the order of Providence to attempt to eradicate them.
The discussion of a theological question would be altogether out of place
in these pages, but the supposition may be met by a parallel case.
Delirium tremens is the result of an excessive use of intoxicating
liquors, and may justly be considered a special punishment for that
offense; but did any body ever know a case in which those who object to
the treatment of syphilis extended a single obstacle to the case of a
drunkard? If it is right to adopt curative measures in one case, why
exclude them in the other? But even supposing that the treatment of
syphilis is open to this objection so far as the guilty parties are
concerned, shall their descendants be involved in suffering because the
parents sinned? If a rigorous medical examination offers additional
inducements to prostitution by reducing the probabilities of disease, it
also guarantees that helpless wives and unborn children shall not be
included in its list of victims. Go to the thousands of married women now
childless or suffering from abortion; ask their opinion. Go to the
thousands of disappointed husbands whose hopes of offspring have been
blighted in consequence of their own youthful dissipation; ask their
opinion, and see what the answers would be. Go and ask the diseased
children on Randall's Island, and in their emaciated frames read their
testimony. The evidence thus obtained would prove unanswerable arguments
in favor of the plan proposed.

It can not be imagined that forcing diseased women to submit to a
specific routine of treatment in a special hospital involves any undue
interference with their personal liberty. The right to commit a wrong, be
it social, moral, or physical, never can exist; the slightest reflection
upon such a proposition will at once prove it untenable. The spread of
venereal disease is a positive wrong, and, therefore, a woman who is
suffering from it, and is certain or likely to propagate it, is as
legitimate an object for compulsory treatment as would be a maniac whom we
should find roaming through the streets of the city, or a person afflicted
with small-pox, yellow fever, or any other contagious or infectious
malady. If either of these cases were to come before any member of the
community, he would not for one moment regard it an infringement of
personal liberty to place the subject under proper care and restraint. On
the contrary, he would think of the danger to which he and his family were
exposed, and, flinging theory to the winds, would immediately urge prompt
and practical measures. This is all that is asked respecting prostitution.
Let the public be once thoroughly convinced of the extent and danger of
syphilitic infection, and there would be but few objectors to these
suggestions. Among that few, the principal portion doubtless would be the
advertising empirics whose disgusting announcements occupy so much space
in the columns of our daily journals. That they derive a large income from
this source is indisputable, and it is equally certain that if the
recommendations now made were adopted they would find their "occupation
gone." Speaking in all candor, the health, decency, and good morals of the
city would be better cared for in their absence than it now is, with all
the combinations of their "extraordinary success," "unequaled experience,"
and "unparalleled facilities." In a financial view, the money they extort
(we refrain from using a harsher term) from their credulous patients could
be far better applied than in contributing to their wealth.

Farther: Such an institution and organization as has been described would
be useless did it not possess the absolute power to retain every patient
under treatment until cured. Whatever modification of principle or mode of
action may be ultimately adopted (and, sooner or later, _something must be
done_), this is an indispensable requisite. One half the danger of
venereal infection arises from imperfectly cured cases. Under the existing
system, as already explained, writs can be issued at an almost nominal
cost to remove any, or all of the prostitutes now under medical treatment
on Blackwell's Island; and such an abuse of a valuable privilege on
account of mere technical errors must be fatal to the success of any
remedial project. It would be as reasonable for a lawyer to petition the
courts to order a vessel detained in Quarantine by the Board of Health
because she was infected with yellow fever to be brought to her wharf in
this city, and there to have permission to disseminate the disease on
board, as it is for the same individual to apply for a writ of
_certiorari_, the effect of which is to take an abandoned woman reeking
with disease from an institution where she is under treatment, and allow
her to extend the venereal poison to every one who may have intercourse
with her. This must not be understood as indicating a wish to curtail the
constitutional privileges attached to writs of _habeas corpus_ or
_certiorari_, but merely their applicability to cases like the supposed
one. How can the evil be prevented? Simply by making any legislative
enactment on the subject so plain that it can not be misunderstood or
evaded. No lawyer would find any difficulty in drafting a short act giving
the Police Department the power, based upon an affidavit made by a member
of their own medical bureau, to remove any diseased woman to a proper
hospital, and _retain her there until cured_.

It may appear to a casual observer that this detention would be of the
same nature as the imprisonment required by the existing mode, but a
little thought will point out a wide difference. Now, we force a woman to
become an inmate of a penitentiary, and add disgrace to her disease by
assuming her to have been guilty of crime. Then, we should require her to
become an inmate of the Hospital, with no additional disgrace but that
arising from the fact that she had contracted syphilis by vicious habits.
In the one case, we make her the companion of some of the vilest wretches
on the face of the earth; in the other, she would have no associates but
those of her own class.

The Medical Bureau to whom these reforms should be intrusted, although
connected with the Police Department, would require to be an independent
body so far as professional duties are concerned. Its connection would be
necessary, because there would be many cases requiring the intervention of
the civil power; and its isolation would be equally important, because
much would depend on the discretion of the examiners, and many
contingencies might arise where a strict line of routine duty would defeat
the object in view. They would be literally a "detective corps," and with
a known amount of duty before them must be left to choose their own method
of performing it. Any definite arrangements or positive orders from a
non-medical board would only embarrass their action, for medical and
non-medical executives always clash when they aim at one common object.

Of course a leading requirement in their instructions must be that their
examinations be rigid and thorough. No half-way measures in this respect
could meet the absolute demands of the case, or satisfy the expectations
of the community. It must be plainly understood by the world that the
Medical Bureau was required to perform its whole duty, uncompromisingly
and fearlessly; and that its members were men who would not evade the
responsibility. In their investigations many cases would occur where their
services would be valuable to society, beyond the pale of professional
duty. It is not to be expected that they would become evangelists, but
they could be the willing and efficient coadjutors of those who delight to
bear the Gospel to these poor degraded beings; and even while listening to
a recital of bodily sufferings, instances would arise where the acts of
the good Samaritan would be required at their hands. They would be the
depositaries of many a narrative of wrong and outrage, of sorrow and
suffering, and it is not unreasonable to believe that of the histories
poured into their ears some would indicate a channel by which the lost one
might be restored to home and friends and virtue, or point to some chord
in the mind which would give a responsive sound when touched by the hand
of pity.[430]

The adoption of these suggestions would be, at least, a step in the right
direction, and lay the foundation of a system which can be gradually
enlarged until it embraces regulations as to registry, management of
houses of ill fame, etc., to the same extent as is now done in Europe.

And here a few words relative to the licensing system may not be
inappropriate. The propriety of granting licenses, and thus making vice a
sort of revenue, is open to grave objections, but on the other hand
acknowledged social evils have, ere this, been made to contribute to the
public funds. Witness the dealing in ardent spirits. The city does now,
and has for years derived a considerable income from licenses to sell
liquors. A great number of wise and good men contend that the sale or use
of intoxicating beverages is not only an unmitigated evil, but even
criminal; they have entertained and publicly declared these sentiments for
years, but still the license system is continued. It may be a question for
decision whether prostitution is not as liable for taxation as
drunkenness, and if both were equally taxed whether, as a body, we should
be more responsible for the results of one or the other. _En passant_, it
may be noticed that an annual tax of one per cent. upon the property
engaged in the business of prostitution, and a similar assessment upon the
revenue of houses of ill fame, would amount to over one hundred thousand
dollars.

The plan here shadowed forth would not be likely to extend prostitution,
but on the contrary there is very little doubt but it would check it. Even
if it did not, the community would reap an advantage in the sanitary
reform it would enforce. In low neighborhoods many of the brothels are as
dangerous to public health on account of their crowded and excessively
filthy state, as are the syphilized inmates themselves. Such places would
legitimately come within the province of the medical inspectors, and their
reports thereon to the police executive would insure immediate attention.

Public morals would be advanced by such visitations. These houses, or a
great number of them, are the resort of all species of dishonest
characters who would unquestionably abandon them, at least as places of
residence, if they knew they were at any moment liable to a domiciliary
visit. Again, almost every person has in his remembrance some female who
left home and could not be found, because securely secreted in some one of
these houses of prostitution; at least it is not uncommon to read of such
cases in the daily papers, accompanied with an account of the unsuccessful
search of her friends and the police. Occurrences like this could not take
place if all known houses of bad repute were under the _surveillance_ of
the Medical Police Department.

Nor is it unreasonable to hope that prostitution would be diminished. It
has flourished of late years in seclusion, but our plan would render
privacy impossible. Seclusion has attracted many unfortunate women, whom
shame, or a dread of exposure, would have deterred, had they known that
houses of ill fame were always open to the visits of the police, or that
every few days a physician would make a tour of inspection, and a personal
examination, to which they must submit. Generally speaking, these women
have a dread of falling into the hands of a doctor, and in present
circumstances they know that a medical examination is optional with
themselves, until they become so sick as to render it unavoidable. But if
their miserable life were burdened with the additional annoyance of a
compulsory medical treatment it is probable that a considerable check
might be imposed thereon.

Public decency would be advanced by such visitations. To effectually
perform their duties the Medical Bureau and the General Police Department
would find it necessary to make themselves personally acquainted with
these women, and to keep a register of all houses where prostitution was
carried on. Now, the prohibition which has driven it into secrecy has also
rendered it difficult to determine who are frail. Prostitutes are found in
hotels, fashionable restaurants, steam-boat excursions, watering-places,
and suburban retreats. They visit balls and other public entertainments;
sometimes by sufferance, but more frequently because they are not known.
It is needless to say how virtuous women can be annoyed and insulted by
such companionship, or to what extent prostitutes can use their influence
in miscellaneous society. If the police were personally acquainted with
these women, they could act in the same manner as on the Continent of
Europe, namely, touch them upon the shoulder and quietly give them a hint
to leave. Or another reform could easily be introduced--the confinement of
all prostitutes to particular localities in the city, so as to limit
their influence. This would be tantamount to the ancient regulations
prescribing their dress or some distinctive mark; and to the present
arrangements in Europe, where the houses are distinguished by some
specified peculiarity. It would also prevent the depreciation of property
which takes place in any neighborhood where a brothel is established.

Public decency would be served in another manner. It is a most humiliating
admission, that New York is fast approaching to the condition of certain
foreign cities, where unnatural practices first led to the contemplation
and adoption of these or similar remedial measures. In our case, _they are
known to the authorities_, but are so revolting that they never have been,
and never can be, made public. Of course, such an organization would take
special cognizance of these detestable abominations.

Objections to the expense of the plan may be raised, and it can not be
denied that it will be large, yet it will be a matter of economy to incur
it, even at the risk of increasing taxation, which _it will not do_.
Recollect that every year, as the virulence of syphilis was abated, the
cause of the expense would diminish, and that in a direct ratio to the
energy displayed in the examination would be the progressive reduction of
expenditure. It has already been indicated how some of the inmates of a
syphilitic hospital, from whom hitherto nothing has been received, could
be made to contribute their quota of the cost. Now, the public bear all
the expenses, either as assessments or as private payments in individual
attacks. The magnitude of the latter item has been already estimated, and
were it possible to calculate in addition the value of lost time, the
injury to business, and the deterioration of the constitution, the total
in one year would be far more than sufficient to carry out the whole of
this plan for double the time.

It would also be economy to incur the outlay on account of the benefits to
succeeding generations. Syphilis is not confined in its effects to the
life-time of the men or women who contract it, but is entailed on their
descendants. These, provided they survive its baneful effects during
infancy, are mentally and physically unfitted for business or the active
pursuits of life, and, consequently, are frequently indebted for the means
of sustenance to their friends or to public institutions. If the liability
to that disease among parents can be removed, no fears need be entertained
about their children.

We are not so sanguine as to imagine that all the good effects above
enumerated could be accomplished _instanter_. It would be a work of time,
but the sooner it is commenced the better for all the interests involved.
Many persons will say, "Oh! these evils do not concern us; these diseases
will never injure us or ours; why should we trouble ourselves, and give
our money, time, and attention to such matters?" Stop, reader! _While
human passion exists, and while the means of gratifying it can be
obtained, you and yours can and will, nay, do now suffer from it, directly
or indirectly._ The first question for any citizen to ask himself is, Can
prostitution be abolished; can it be crushed out? If this be answered in
the negative, as it must be, then the next question brings him to the
point sought to be attained in these pages, namely, the means that shall
be taken to circumscribe and diminish its consequent diseases and evils.

This question has latterly been attracting some attention in England, and
plans to mitigate the evil have been publicly discussed. The chief grounds
of complaint, or at least those brought most prominently forward, were the
assembling of prostitutes in the streets, the annoyance they caused to
passengers, and the disorderly character of "night-houses." This term is
applied in London to those public houses, supper-rooms, wine and cigar
saloons, etc., which are situated near the theatres and places of public
entertainment, and, being permitted to remain open all night, become
resorts for prostitutes. A public meeting for consultation upon these
evils was held in London in January last (1858), and the remarks made by
some of the speakers are so much in accordance with the general tenor of
this work as to be worth extracting. In justice to the writer it must be
premised that the preceding part of this chapter was penned twelve months
before the report of this meeting was made public.

The chairman observed "that he was glad to see so general an interest
elicited on this subject, and that he hoped it would lead to some
practical result. It would, in fact, be impossible to aggravate the
evil, for neither in Paris, Berlin, New York, nor even in the cities
of Asia, was there such a public exhibition of profligacy."

The following resolutions were submitted and adopted:

"_Resolved_, That a deputation do wait as early as possible upon Sir
George Grey, for the purpose of most respectfully but earnestly
representing to her majesty's government the necessity of effectual
measures being taken to put down the open exhibition of street
prostitution, which in various parts of the metropolis, particularly
in the important thoroughfares of the Haymarket, Coventry Street,
Regent Street, Portland Place, and other adjacent localities, is
carried on with a disregard of public decency and to an extent
tolerated in no other capital or city of the civilized world.

"That such deputation be instructed to urge upon her majesty's
government the following measures, whereby it is believed that the
evil complained of may be effectually controlled:

"Firstly, the enforcement, upon a systematic plan and by means of a
department of the police specially appointed and instructed for that
purpose, of the provisions of the 2d and 3d of Victoria, cap. 47, in
reference to street prostitution, which provisions have in certain
localities been heretofore carried out with the best effect, and in
others have been ineffectual only because acted upon partially, and
not upon any uniform system.

"And, secondly, the passing an act for licensing and placing under
proper regulations, as to supervision and hours of closing, all houses
of entertainment, or for the supply of refreshments, intended to be
opened to the public after a certain fixed hour, it being matter of
public notoriety that the houses of this description popularly known
as night-houses have, by becoming the places of resort of crowds of
prostitutes and other idle and disorderly persons at all hours of the
night, greatly contributed to the present disgraceful exhibition of
street prostitution.

"That the attention of the government be also directed to the number
of foreign prostitutes systematically imported into this country, and
to the means of controlling this evil."

The substance of one of the addresses made on the subject was as follows:

The speaker "begged to remind the meeting that a change had already
been effected through the action of the police in the aspect of the
Haymarket and Regent Street, heretofore so much complained of. The
sense that the public eye was upon their class had caused a
corresponding amendment in the dress and demeanor of the females
frequenting those streets; and the objects of this association were,
so far, in good train. Strongly oppressive, or, as some delicately
said, repressive measures could only be carried out by an extent of
police interference inconsistent with the prejudices of English
people, who were indisposed to deny a large extent of personal freedom
to persons of even the most disorderly classes who had not absolutely
forfeited their civil rights. If the association went the length of
advocating that the act of prostitution should involve such
forfeiture, and the entire riddance of London streets from the
presence of prostitutes, they would soon find their hands over full.
Unless they thought it possible to exterminate the vice altogether,
they would find that its wholesale clearance from the streets would
necessitate registration, licensing, and confinement in certain
authorized quarters or streets, as prevailed abroad; but such
restrictions would entail a more ample recognition and legalization
than had hitherto obtained, and so ample, indeed, as to be very
distasteful to what was called the religious public. It would be
obviously unjust to exempt from pressure the lady-like prosperous
harlot, while a miserable, vulgar, painted outcast was consignable,
because she stood out from the picture somewhat broadly, to the police
cell and the bridewell. The meeting must be aware that there was
already abroad among the lower half million of Londoners an impression
that the police was already strict enough--and that this opinion was
shared by numbers of intelligent men, neither paupers nor criminals.
They must remember that many a gentleman of character had passed a
night in a police cell for interfering in the defense of prostitutes
against the police. And this sentiment would deepen very dangerously
if the police pressure were put on double, or, as some would have it,
tenfold. The very policemen, too--men sprung from the same class of
society as those female offenders--were as likely as any one else to
be fainthearted in the work of relieving the eyes and ears of
gentility from the presence of those whose situation they were not
slow to trace to the schemes and desires of the genteel class. He did
not think that the power of discrimination could be safely intrusted
to the ill-paid constables of the Metropolitan Police, and the
association of certain rate-payers with the police as witnesses, as
hinted at by one of the delegates, would soon, if established, fall
into desuetude. With the view of checking the evil in a satisfactory
manner, he would recommend the institution of a special service of
street orderlies or regulators in uniform, a well-paid, superior,
temperate, and discreet class of men, if possible, whose functions
should be to observe, not to spy upon all prostitutes, especially
those of the street-walking order, and whose circulation, as opposed
to loitering and haunting particular spots, they should insist upon.
They should work, not by threats, but by entreaty, advice, suggestion;
but in case of contumacy, should have the right to call in the regular
force. He believed that the right of entry and inspection of all
places of ill fame should be vested in the Home Secretary and his
delegates, and this would be attained least oppressively by a proper
system of licensing. Forced concentration would not be tolerated here;
but concentration was valuable, as bringing immorality more under
control. Parochial crusades, though _prima facie_ a public blessing,
had often the effect of spreading corruption. It was recollected at
Cambridge that when a certain proctor made very frequent descents upon
the hamlet of Barnwall, where much of the parasitical vices of that
University had taken root, the people in question, far from cure or
conversion, merely extended their radius into more rural villages.
These were so soon corrupted that representations were addressed to
the University by the parochial clergy, praying that the plague of
Barnwall should be confined to its old bounds, and not let loose upon
their simpler parishes. It was notorious that the same kind of thing
followed on a very large scale the expulsion of prostitutes from
Brussels, and it could not be supposed that the attempt to strangle
the growth of immorality by broadcasting its seeds, which was found
impracticable under the powerful discipline of the English University
and the Belgian capital, could answer among this enormous, and when
roused, unmanageable population. The evicted of Norton Street, in the
parish of All Souls, had settled quietly down in the next parish.
Incompressible as water, the vice had but shifted its ground, and from
a really moral point of view, more harm than good had accrued from the
change."

These remarks do not call for any amplification. A few days after the
meeting a leading article appeared in the London _Times_. It must be
remembered that for many years the settled policy of the conductors of
that journal has been to make it rather the exponent than the leader of
public opinion, and the importance generally attached to it arises from a
knowledge of this fact. We give the article almost entire.

"There is a very disagreeable subject which we are compelled to bring,
although most reluctantly, before the notice of the public, because it
has become necessary to bring public opinion to bear upon it. Many
clergymen and gentlemen are now associating themselves together for
the purpose of dealing in some degree with the notorious evil of
street prostitution. It is our earnest desire to give them all the
support in our power, so long as they confine themselves to reasonable
measures of discouragement and repression. Let us not nourish any
visionary expectations; it would be simply idle to suppose that the
evil against which we are now directing our efforts, can be put down
by the strong hand of power. It is with moral as with physical
disease--there is no use in looking for an entirely satisfactory
result from the treatment of symptoms; there may be alleviation, there
may be diminution of the disorder, but there will be no perfect cure.
_Whatever tends to raise the standard of public morality will also
tend to diminish prostitution._ In such a case we are dealing with two
parties: the tempter, let us say, and the tempted; with the man and
with the woman. It is probably with the first of the two that we
should principally concern ourselves if we would bring about any
serious result. It is on the sacred action of family life, with the
thousand influences it brings to bear upon the minds and conduct of
men, that we must chiefly depend if we would see any notable
diminution in the numbers of those unfortunate creatures who now
parade our streets. Let it be once understood that even among a man's
fellows and associates immorality is a thing to be ashamed of, and at
least we should get rid of the contagion of vice. Time was, and the
time is not a very remote one, when a British gentleman--we speak of
all three home divisions of the empire--would nightly stagger or be
carried up to his bed fuddled, if not absolutely drunk. A man who
should thus expose himself in our own days would be set down as a
beast, and his society would be avoided by all who set store on their
own good name. In this respect there has been a palpable improvement
in the manners of the age. Surely public opinion can be brought to
bear against one vice as well as another. The time may come when a man
may shrink from presenting himself in the sacred circle of his mother,
his sisters, and his other female relatives, reeking from secret
immorality. Conscience can turn on a bull's eye as well as a
policeman, and the culprit may stand self-convicted, although no one
has been there to convict him save himself.

"The influences, however, of which we speak are of slow growth, and
can not be much quickened by the hand of power. It has become
necessary to deal at once with certain results. Now we say it with
much shame, that in no capital city of Europe is there daily and
nightly such a shameless display of prostitution as in London. At
Paris, at Vienna, at Berlin, as every one knows, there is plenty of
vice; but, at least, it is not allowed to parade the streets, to tempt
the weak, to offend and disgust all rightly-thinking persons. If any
one would see the evil of which we speak in its full development, let
him pass along the Haymarket and its neighborhood at night, when the
night-houses and the oyster-shops are open. It is not an easy matter
to make your way along without molestation. In Regent Street, in the
Strand, in Fleet Street, the same nuisance, but in a less degree,
prevails. Now we are well aware that, if all the unfortunate creatures
who parade these localities were swept away to-morrow, if the
night-houses and oyster-shops were closed by the police, we should not
have really suppressed immorality. We should, however, have removed
the evil from the sight of those who are disgusted and annoyed by its
display; and, still more, we should have removed it from the sight of
those who, probably, had they not been tempted by the sight of these
opportunities, would not have fallen.

"Now, as one practical measure for the discouragement of prostitution,
all these night-houses and others might be placed under the
surveillance of the police. Licenses for opening them and keeping them
open might be given only in the cases of persons who offered some
guarantees of their respectability. They might be compelled to close
at certain hours; in point of fact, the community could tolerate
well-nigh any degree of inconvenience inflicted upon their
frequenters. In two other analogous cases similar evils have been
dealt with in this way, and with the happiest results: we speak of
gaming-houses and betting-offices. It is quite certain that persons
who are firmly resolved to play and to bet will effect their purpose
even now, but at least the sum of the evils resulting from these two
vices has been greatly diminished since the community has resolved to
withdraw from them its recognition. England should not grant her
_exequatur_ to prostitution. This is one thing which might be tried;
another would be to give increased force to clauses which, as we
believe, already exist in police acts, by which the police are
empowered to stop the solicitation and gathering together of
prostitutes in the public streets. In such a case we must trample down
definitions and exceptional cases with an elephant's foot, and go
straight for results. The rule in all such cases is to give the power,
and to leave it in the discretion of the authorities only to employ it
on proper occasions. We have ample guarantees nowadays that such
discretion can not be abused.

"Here, then, are two things which may be done without opening any
visionary trenches. The police may be directed to deal with
prostitutes as they do with mendicants, and the centres of pollution
may be brought under proper regulation.

"We know well enough that in such a capital as London it is hopeless
to expect that vice of this description can be expunged altogether
from the catalogue of our national sins, but at least let as many
difficulties as possible be thrown in its way. Again: the benevolent
persons who have taken it in hand to deal with this monstrous evil
assert that the introduction of foreign prostitutes, or, what is still
worse, of girls yet uncontaminated, for the purposes of prostitution,
might be discouraged much more than it is, perhaps well-nigh totally
prevented. Undoubtedly England does not desire free trade in
prostitution. Preventive measures upon this subject are surrounded
with difficulties; but that is no reason for despair, but one for
additional exertion. Very numerous and influential meetings have been
held upon this subject, and we augur well of their success. There was
no display of ultra-Puritanic rigor, no attempt to deal with
impossibilities. The speakers in the main contended that the public
exhibition of prostitution might be successfully dealt with, even if
the vice were beyond their reach. Our streets, at least, can be purged
of the public scandal, the disgraceful night-houses may be deprived of
their powers of corruption, the keepers of brothels may be brought
under the lash of the law, and the importation of foreign prostitutes
may be diminished, if not put down altogether, if the public will take
the subject up in earnest. Such were the principal points on which the
speakers insisted; at least their views deserve a trial."

This plan is calculated to restrict prostitution by placing it under
_surveillance_. It requires no additional licensing system, as every
public house, wine-shop, or cigar-shop in London, whether kept open at day
or night, whether of a respectable or immoral class, requires a license
under the excise laws. The proposals just quoted urge that the permission
to keep these places of entertainment should be limited, and "given only
in the cases of persons who offered some guarantees of their
respectability." It will be necessary for the reader to bear in mind that
"night-houses" are not houses of prostitution, but merely resorts for
prostitutes, as already mentioned, as, in default of this, a natural
construction would be that the _Times_ proposed to license brothels. The
two are as distinct as possible, and it would be as consistent to style
some of the fashionable oyster-saloons and restaurants of New York houses
of ill fame because abandoned women resort to them, as to class the
"night-houses" of London in that catalogue. They are simply places for
public refreshment in the neighborhoods of theatres, markets, etc., which
are permitted to continue open all night in deference to a supposed public
requirement, and though, from the character of their visitants, they can
not be considered schools of morality or decency, yet no prostitution
takes place in them. The interests of the proprietors guard against this,
as it would immediately cause the licenses to be revoked, and consequently
close the place entirely.

By placing the resorts of London prostitutes under this restriction much
would be gained, so far as the public decency of the streets and the
transit of passengers are concerned, but no possible check would be
imposed on the ravages of disease. The proposition at the meeting to
license the brothels would do this, but, as was anticipated by the
speaker, "it would be very distasteful to the religious public," and the
act of recognition would be immediately construed as an act of approval,
or at least of sanction. That it would not merit this censure must be
evident. The only approval or sanction given to the vice would, in fact,
consist in saying to the keepers of houses of ill fame: We shall not
attempt to close your doors, for we know that would be impossible, but we
shall claim the right of entry at any moment to watch your proceedings.

It has ever been an unquestioned policy to choose the least of two evils
when you must take one, and if the British government should ever license
brothels, they will certainly adopt the theory. To the population of
London less danger would inure from this toleration than from the unknown,
unwatched courtesans who haunt their streets. Many an apparently
respectable man will follow a woman into a house of prostitution when it
is conducted quietly and furtively, who would hesitate before he
accompanied her into a known and licensed brothel, while many a stranger
who may date his physical ruin, and possibly the loss of character and
honor, from the hour when he entered a private house of prostitution,
would be saved many a bitter memory had an official recognition of its
true character met him on its threshold, and intimated that it was the
resort of the abandoned and vicious. In London, as in New York, we do not
believe that illicit sexual intercourse can be carried to any greater
extent than it is now; so no danger of an increase of vice need be
apprehended there from any measures calculated to remove some of the
ulterior and fatal effects of dissipation.

In contrast to the public display of immorality in the streets of London,
is the following description of prostitution in Paris. It is extracted
from the foreign correspondence of a New York journal:

"Paris, Thursday, May 27, 1858.

"In a late letter on the subject of the 'turning-boxes' of the
Foundling Hospitals I spoke of the repugnance of Protestant
communities to any official compromise with one sin in order even to
destroy a greater; for, that the secret reception of illegitimate
children by the state does contribute enormously to the extinction of
the crime of infanticide, while it does not generally increase the
number of these unfortunate children, is too well shown by statistics
to remain longer a question for discussion. But we have another and a
more striking example of this repugnance to a collusion with one evil
in order to smother out another and a greater in the want of
legislation in Protestant countries on the subject of prostitution.

"For many months, as you know, the municipality officers, the
church-wardens, and the journals of London have been excited over this
very question of prostitution; and no wonder. One need but to leave
Paris and fall suddenly in the streets of London at an advanced hour
of the evening to comprehend the excitement of its citizens on this
subject. To the Frenchman, crossing the Channel is like crossing the
River Styx; he falls suddenly into a pandemonium of street disorder
and drunken licentiousness for which he is not prepared. He recalls
Mery's terrible picture in 'Nezim,' and does not find it overdrawn. He
sees nothing like this in his own city, and he is surprised beyond
measure, for he has been taught to believe in the Puritanism of
Protestant countries.

"When an American or an Englishman, habituated to the revolting
night-scenes of New York or London, first arrives in Paris, he is
astonished at the absolute absence of similar scenes in our streets.
He has, perhaps, arrived here with the impression--most foreigners
do--that prostitution, and revelry, and drunken debauchery stalk forth
in the day and render hideous the night. But he forgets that he has
arrived in a city where there are laws and a police to execute
them--in a city where refinement and the proprieties of life are
carried to their extreme perfection, and where such license and
debauchery as prevails in English and American cities would be an
absolute contradiction to the spirit and habits of the people. The
reader will please observe that I do not speak of the morals of the
people, but of their ideas of decorum and of the proprieties of life;
of what is due to decency and an ordinary respect for appearances.

"This extreme attention to appearances is, in fact, one of the
principal attractions of a residence in Paris. The city is not only
maintained free of inanimate filth, but of animate filth as well; at
least, you are not forced to see it if you do not wish to. In London
no lady dare walk out unattended after 8 o'clock in the evening, and
after 11 o'clock she will have her eyes and ears insulted, no matter
how well attended, while in Paris she may remain in the streets to any
hour of the night, and neither have her eyes offended nor her ears
insulted.

"How is this happy result accomplished? In 1851 the official register
of the police of Paris showed 4300 public girls on its books; the
number now may be stated at 5000. These girls and the houses in which
they live are subjected to a series of stringent laws which renders
them innoxious and inoffensive to the community, the police adopting
the principle that since it is impossible to suppress the evil, it
should be rendered as inoffensive to the public eye and to the public
salubrity as possible. All these houses are obliged to be closed at 11
o'clock precisely. The girls are obliged to remain in the house, and
the windows are always covered with blinds, night and day. A few girls
are permitted, here and there, to walk up and down, in front of their
door, from 7 to 11 o'clock precisely, but it is against the law to
accost the passers-by. The houses are visited once a week by a medical
and an ordinary inspector--real inspectors, appointed by government,
and not humbugging ward politicians.

"Another class of girls, and much the larger class, are those who
frequent the public balls, concerts, and theatres--girls who live
alone in public lodging-houses, and who, for the most part, are not
enrolled on the police-books nor submitted to the ordinary sanitary
regulations. But this class are no more permitted than the rest,
either in the street or at their favorite evening resorts, to accost
people for purposes of commerce. The streets and the public balls are
full of policemen in citizen's dress, whose business it is to detect
such girls as violate the law in regard to addressing people, and to
put their names on the police-books, thus requiring them to take out a
license, and to submit to all the police regulations on the new class
to which they have entered. As a girl regards herself as forever lost
when her name is once placed on the police-book, and as she never
knows when an officer's eye may be upon her, she takes good care to
violate as rarely as possible this law prohibiting solicitations in
public. This class are always elegantly dressed; it is notorious even
that they are the first to initiate and to propagate those very
fashions which make the tour of the world as the latest Paris modes.
Many of them are reserved and elegant in their manners, and require a
punctiliousness of etiquette which would not be out of place in the
most aristocratic saloon. But one of the great aids to the Paris
police in the maintenance of public decency in this class, is the fact
that they do not use strong drinks; a drunken public woman is never
seen. As liquor is the greatest debaser of mankind, this one fact
strikes out a marked line of distinction between this class here and
in England and the United States. The great majority do not lose their
self-respect, and they take good care of their health, hoping later on
to reform and get married. This is here the rule, whereas in England
and the United States they throw themselves away as rapidly as
possible.

"It is thus that the fashionable promenades of Paris, the public
balls, and the gardens even, may be frequented by ladies and children
at all hours of the evening and night without once seeing any of those
offensive movements of public women so common in the streets of
English and American cities. Contrast this state of things with that
of London. Let the reader, if he has ever lived there, recall to mind
the Strand, the Haymarket, Piccadilly, Leicester Square, and Regent
Street--the fashionable business quarters of the city. One hesitates
to enter upon a description of such a scene. It refreshes his
historical recollections of the decadence of Rome; his name should be
Plato to look upon such sights. The streets swarm with drunken and
foul-spoken young girls--often mere children; and when I say swarm, I
mean that you have to push your way to get through them. Is it then
strange that the citizens of London should feel scandalized at this
state of things, or that its journals or its church-wardens should
seek to find a remedy for the nuisance? They will think of every thing
else before they arrive at the simple, _effective_, and beautifully
working Paris system, because they are a Protestant people and must
not compromise with a sin. It must be left to find its own level.
Honorable citizens must consent to allow their sons, often their
families, to come in contact with these demoralizing, stony-hearted
horrors of the streets; they must suffer individually and as a
community from the vile tendencies of street prostitution, because
they hesitate to legalize it and to give it over to the care of the
police. To see the finest evening promenades of a Protestant and
Christian city given up exclusively to the unutterable shames and
horrors of street-prostitution is a problem in the catalogue of
inconsistencies which Catholic and infidel France can not fathom. In
France the law acts on the principle that for a public woman to be
seen in the street is an insult to public taste, and hence, when it is
necessary for these girls to be conveyed to prison, to the Hospital,
or to the dispensary of the Prefecture of Police, they are mounted in
close carriages constructed for the purpose; or when by hazard they
are obliged to take a public _fiacre_ they are required to keep the
blinds down. You may say what you please about the surface-morality of
the French, but their respect for the public eye does honor to their
civilization, and their law on this evil would be well adopted
elsewhere. There is no truer principle in civil government than that
the moral sores of society should be hidden as much as possible from
the public view, for it is now too late in the day to combat the maxim
long ago put in print by Pope, that vice is propagated by a
familiarity with it. The French law may be culpable in permitting
masked balls and the keeping of concubines, but these are affairs that
belong to the interior, which the public need not see if they do not
wish to; the important distinction is, that the French law does not
compel an honest father of a family, in returning from church or
theatre, to push his way through mobs of drunken lewd women, who
salute his children's ears with language they ought never to hear.

"In one of its last articles on the general subject of prostitution,
the London _Times_ makes some judicious remarks which are completely
verified in the same class in Paris. Thus the _Times_ declares that
the proper method of diminishing the number of these unfortunates (for
to think of eradicating the evil is an illusion) is not by missionary
efforts directed to them, but rather to their poor parents; for these
poor girls were raised in sin, and _never made a fall_. The same thing
holds good here. Ninety-five hundredths of all the public women of
Paris are born and raised in filthiness of mind and body; at the age
of ten, twelve, and fourteen years they are already prostitutes and
thieves, and when they get their first silk dress, their first fine
toilet, earned in their shameful profession, they take a step higher
in the scale of morality; for then they cease to steal, they acquire a
certain degree of pride in their conduct, they are more respectful and
decently behaved. So that, paradoxical as it may seem, the immense
majority of the public women of Paris, instead of making a fall, have
actually been promoted in the scale of morality. But all these women
know nothing else than the life in which they have been raised; they
are fit for nothing else, they are incorrigibly averse to all the
moral suasion that can be addressed to them, and the real remedy is an
enlightenment of the parents of such children, a general improvement
in the moral tone of the lowest classes. In fine, if it is an evil
which can not be eradicated, if the children of beggars, and
rag-pickers, and _concièrges_ will fall into evil-doing, it is right
to protect society at least from the public demonstration of their
vile occupation by the passage of effective police laws."

As an indication that the sentiments advanced in this chapter are
entertained by others of the medical profession, and as endorsing our
views to a considerable extent, the reader's attention is requested to the
annexed report adopted at a special meeting of the Medical Board of
Bellevue Hospital, New York, in reply to interrogatories addressed to them
by Isaac Townsend, Esq., President of the Board of Governors of the
Alms-house (by whose direction they are embodied in this work); and also
to a report from H. N. Whittelsey, M.D., Resident Physician of the Nursery
Hospital, Randall's Island, on the same subject.

(Copy.)

"_Report of the Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital in reply to
Interrogatories of_ ISAAC TOWNSEND, _Esq., President of the Board of
Governors of the Alms-house, upon Constitutional Syphilis._

"Office of the Governors of the Alms-house, Rotunda, Park,
"New York, August 24, 1855.

"TO THE MEDICAL BOARD, BELLEVUE HOSPITAL:

"GENTLEMEN,--I am led to believe that a large number of the inmates of
Bellevue Hospital are affected with syphilis in some of its many
forms, and believing that the Governors of the Alms-house are called
upon to take measures to remove, as far as possible, the cause of this
great malady, to dry up the sources of an evil which prevails so
extensively, saps the health and taxes the wealth of the city, etc.,
largely; and believing farther that, if the vice can not be stayed,
humanity as well as policy would suggest that the dangers which
surround it can be lessened, I propose a few interrogatories tending
toward the accomplishment of this great object, desiring your views
upon them in reply as early as 1st of October.

"1. What percentage of the total number of patients admitted to
Bellevue Hospital suffer directly or indirectly from syphilis?

"2. Are there not patients admitted to Bellevue Hospital whose
diseases are attributable to the taint of syphilis; and have not many
of the inmates been forced to place themselves under treatment
therein, and thus become dependent on the city, from being unfitted in
body and mind for the ordinary duties of life in consequence of
syphilitic diseases?

"3. Are not the children of parents thus affected unhealthy?

"4. What means, in your opinion, could be adopted to eradicate or
lessen the disease in the city?

"By giving the above queries your earliest attention, you will greatly
oblige your very obedient servant,

"ISAAC TOWNSEND, President."

"At a special meeting of the Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital, held
December 18, 1855, the following report, in answer to a letter from
Isaac Townsend, Esq., President of the Board of Governors of the
Alms-house, dated August 24, 1855, touching the subjects of syphilis
and prostitution, was read by Doctor Alonzo Clark, Chairman of the
Committee appointed by the Medical Board to consider and reply to said
letter.

"On motion, the report was accepted, and ordered for transmission to
the President of the Board of Governors, after having received the
signatures of the President and Secretary.

"JOHN T. METCALFE, M.D.,
"Secretary _pro tem._ to the Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital.

"New York, December, 1855."

"REPORT ON PROSTITUTION AND SYPHILIS.

"To ISAAC TOWNSEND, Esq.,
"President of the Board of Governors of the Alms-house.

"In answer to your inquiries, the Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital
respectfully reply,

"That they caused a census of the Hospital to be taken on the 24th
October last, for the purpose of ascertaining what proportion of the
patients had suffered from venereal diseases. From that enumeration
they learn that out of 477 persons then under medical and surgical
treatment, 142, or about one third, had been so affected. In the
several divisions of the house the numbers are as follows, viz.:

"Of 72 females on the surgical side, 17, or 1 in 4·24.

"Of 130 females on the medical side, 17, or 1 in 8 nearly.

"Of 118 males on the medical side, 45, or 1 in 2·6.

"Of 127 males on the surgical side, 63, or 1 in 2.

So that out of 245 males then under treatment, 108, or 1 in 2·27, had
had some form of venereal disease; and among 202 females, 34, or 1 in
6, had been similarly affected.

"Of the whole number who confessed that they had had affections of
this class, 106 had had syphilis, and 36 had had gonorrhoea.

"Of the 106 who had had syphilis, 53, or just one half, were still
laboring under the influence of the poison with which they had been
inoculated, in many instances, years before.

"As almost all these patients were admitted for other diseases, or
with affections which the physician alone would recognize as the
remote effects of syphilis, it is perhaps fair to assume that they
represent, with some exaggeration, the class of society from which
they come.

"The Board has been favored with the census of the New York Hospital
(Broadway), taken for the purpose of ascertaining the proportion of
syphilitic cases among the patients of that institution; from which it
appears that the whole number of patients on the 8th of December was
233, and that 99 of that number had had venereal disease, and 37 were
then under treatment for the same affections recently contracted.
Counting the old cases alone, most of which were admitted, probably,
for other diseases, this proportion considerably exceeds that above
recorded for Bellevue Hospital, it being as high as 1 in 2·35. It is
proper, however, in this connection to state that the returns for
Bellevue Hospital are believed to be incomplete. They are based in a
considerable degree on the confessions of the patients; and it is
known that many, especially among the women, have denied any
contamination, when facts, subsequently developed, have shown that
their statements were not true.

"Is it to be believed, then, that one in three, or even one in four,
of that large class of our population whose circumstances compel them
to seek the occasional aid of medical charities, are tainted with
venereal poison? This the Medical Board do not think they are
authorized to state. But the facts here cited, and others within their
reach, justify them in saying that venereal diseases prevail to an
alarming extent among the poor of the city. The large number of women
sent by the police courts to be treated for these diseases at the
Penitentiary Hospital would alone be sufficient evidence of this. Yet
such persons constitute but a small proportion of those who, even
among the poor, suffer from these disorders. Dispensary physicians,
and those in private practice, can show a much longer list of the
victims of impure intercourse.

"But the disease is not confined to this class. The advertisements
which crowd the newspapers, introduced by men who 'confine their
practice to one class of disease, in which' they 'have treated twenty
thousand cases,' more or less, demonstrate how large is the company of
irregulars who live and grow rich on the harvest of these grapes of
Sodom. And yet their long list of 'unfortunates' would disclose but a
fraction of the evil among those who are able to pay for medical
services. The Medical Board are unable to state what proportion of the
income of regular and qualified physicians in this city is derived
from the treatment of venereal diseases, but they know it is large,
and that many who never advertise their skill receive more from this
source than from all other sources together. They believe that there
is no one among the unavoidable diseases, however prevalent, for the
treatment of which the well-to-do citizens of New York pay one half so
much as they pay to be relieved from the consequences of their illicit
pleasures.

"The city bills of mortality give little information regarding the
frequency of venereal affections. _Lues Venerea_ keeps its place in
the tables, and counts its score or two of deaths annually. Although
this class of disorders is not frequently fatal, except among
children, it is credited with only a fraction of the work it actually
performs. The physician does not feel called upon, in his return of
the causes of death, to brand his patient's memory with disgrace, or
to record an accusation against near relatives. During infancy the
real disease is buried under such terms as Marasmus, Atrophia,
Infantile Debility, or Inflammation, while in adults, Inflammation of
the Throat, Phagedæna, Ulceration, Scrofula, and the like, take the
responsibility of the death.

"These affections are strictly what the advertisers denominate them,
'private diseases'--a leprosy which the 'unfortunate' always strives
to conceal, and, so long as it spares his speech and countenance,
usually succeeds in concealing. The physician is his only confidant,
and the physician refers all to the class of 'innocent secrets,' which
are not to be revealed. The public, therefore, know little of the
prevalence of such diseases, and still less of the fearful ravages
they are capable of making.

"Still, as has been just said, syphilis is not often the immediate
cause of death in adults. After its first local effects are over--and
these, though generally mild, are sometimes frightful--the poison
lingers in the system ready to break out on any provocation in some
one of its many disgusting manifestations, often deforming and
branding its victim, threatening life and making it a burden, and yet
refusing the poor consolation of a grave. Like the vulture which fed
on the entrails of the too amorous Tityus, it tortures and consumes,
but is slow to destroy, and often its visible brand, like the scarlet
badge once worn by the adulteress, proclaims a lasting disgrace. The
protracted suffering of mind and body produced by this class of
distempers, the ever-changing and often loathsome form of their
secondary accidents, and the almost irradicable character of the
poison, seem almost to justify an old opinion, sanctioned by a papal
bull as late as 1826, that these diseases are an avenging plague,
appointed by Heaven as a special punishment for a special sin.

"The relentless character of syphilitic diseases stands out in painful
relief in its transmission from parent to offspring. Here it is,
indeed, that the children's teeth are set on edge, because the fathers
have eaten sour grapes. The contaminated husband or wife is left
through years of childlessness or of successive bereavements to mourn
over early follies, and to repent when repentance is fruitless. The
syphilitic man or woman can hardly become the parent of a healthy
child.

"A young man has imbibed the contagion; it has become constitutional.
After a few weeks, or months perhaps, of treatment, the visible signs
of the disease no longer torment him. He has contracted a matrimonial
alliance, and soon marries a healthy and virtuous woman. He flatters
himself that he is cured. A few months suffice to give him painful
proof of his error, for then his growing hopes of paternity are
suddenly blasted. Instead of the child of his hopes he sees a
shriveled and leprous corpse. This is but the first in a series of
similar misfortunes. He has poisoned the fruit of his loins, and again
and again, and still again, it falls withered and dead. At length
nature seems to have triumphed over this foe to domestic happiness,
and the parents' hearts are gladdened by the sight of a living child.
Their joy is short-lived. The child is feeble and sickly, and in a few
days or weeks another death is added to the penance list of the
humbled and grieving father.

"This mournful story will need no essential changes in the narration,
should the poison of impure intercourse, legitimate or illicit, linger
in the veins of the mother.

"A child of such a connection may be born in apparent health, but
before six months have passed, some one of the numerous forms of
infantile syphilis will be likely to appear and threaten its life. In
the contest which follows between disease and the treatment, the
physician is commonly victorious, but the contest is in many cases
protracted, and often it is to be renewed again and again. And after
all, it is not believed that children thus tainted at their birth
often grow up and acquire that degree of health and vigor which is
popularly ascribed to a _good constitution_.

"These are facts familiar to physicians practicing in large towns. But
the history of inherited syphilis is not complete. If, in the case
just recited, the wife escape contamination from her husband and her
unborn child, yet the sad consequences of that husband's folly are not
yet exhausted. That tainted child, now a sickly nursling at her
breast, has a venom in its ulcerated lips which can inoculate the
mother with its own loathsome poison, while it draws its sustenance
from the sacred fountain of infantile life. But this is not all. These
little innocents sometimes spread their disease through the whole
circle of those who bestow on them their care and kindness. The
contagion spreads through the use of the same spoon, the same linen,
and even by that highest token of affection, a kiss. It has been known
that a single diseased child has contaminated its mother, a hired
nurse, and, through that nurse, the nurse's child, and, in addition to
these, the husband's mother and the mother's sister. Such are
sometimes the weighty consequences of a single error.

"PREVENTION.

"That the great source of the venereal poison is prostitution,
requires no argument. The first question, then, to be answered, is,
Can prostitution be prevented? In answering this question, it is
necessary to remember that the history of the world demonstrates the
existence of this vice in all ages, and among all nations, since the
day its first pages were written. The appetite which incites it has
always been stronger than moral restraints--stronger than the law. No
rigor of punishment, no violence of public denunciation; neither
exile, nor the dungeon, nor yet the disgusting malady with which
nature punishes the practice has ever effected its extermination, even
for a single year. Great as this evil has always been, it can not be
denied that in our own time some of the accidents of what is called
_the progress of society_ tend, at least in large towns, greatly to
increase it. The expenses of living are every where the great obstacle
to early marriages, whether such expenses be positively necessary or
be demanded by the social position of the individual, the fashion of
his class, and therefore become relatively necessary. Wherever these
expenses increase more rapidly than the rewards of labor, marriage
becomes impossible for a constantly increasing number, or can only be
purchased at the price of social position. But abstinence from
marriage does not abolish or moderate the natural appetites. The great
law of nature on which the existence of the race depends is not
abrogated by any artificial state of society. Moral or religious
principles will restrain its operations in some; human laws in some;
the fear of consequences in some; yet there always have been, and
probably always will be, many of both sexes who are not restrained by
any of these considerations. These have sustained, and probably will
continue to sustain, not only prostitution but houses of prostitution,
in the face of every human law. Suppressed in one form, it immediately
assumes another. Again pursued, it retreats to hiding-places where
darkness and secrecy protect it from the pursuer.

"Severe penalties have heretofore only increased the evils of
prostitution. If a hundred women are consigned to prison for this vice
to-day, before a month has elapsed a hundred more have taken their
places, and the hundred, though punished, are not reformed. Impelled
by a love of their profession, or some by the passion to emulate the
more fortunate of their sex in the finery of dress (a passion which
first occasioned their fall), many by want, and all by a sense that
they are outcasts, they are no sooner liberated than they return with
new zeal to the life from which they have been detained only by force.
Severe laws compel secrecy; they can do no more. When prostitution is
criminal, disease, if known to others, is a practical conviction.
Under such circumstances the contaminated will be slow to confess
disease, and so subject themselves to punishment. Yet their passions
and their necessities alike forbid even temporary abstinence. They
spread disease without limit.

"Under this fact lies an important thought. Were it no more
disgraceful to contract syphilis than it is to have fever and ague,
the diseased would seek early relief, which is nearly equivalent to
certain relief, and the disorder would soon be confined to the
pitiable few who have lost in drunkenness and misery the instinctive
dread of all that is foul and disgusting in personal disease.
Prostitution, it is true, would then be restored to its old Roman
dignity, yet _venereal disease could then be reached, and all but
eradicated_. But a respectable syphilis does not belong to our age and
nation. It lost caste in the beginning, and its exploits in modern
times have not been of a character to win it friends. The supposition
aims only to show, by contrast, the evils of well-intended, but
probably injudicious legislation. Regarding pains and penalties: if
the whip, confiscation, and banishment, in the hands of Charlemagne
and St. Louis, aided by a right good will and all the powers of a
military despotism, could not suppress prostitution, or even prevent
the opening of houses of prostitution; if penal laws in Europe, from
the days of these earnest princes until now, have utterly failed of
their object, as they notoriously have, it is fair to ask how much
more can prohibitory laws accomplish in a country where the right of
private judgment and personal liberty in speech and action are the
very foundation of the body politic? They have hitherto been
ineffectual. In spite of such laws, the vice is increasing. _In
consequence of such laws, its most enormous physical evil is extending
its baleful influence through every rank and circle of society._ It
is still emphatically the plague of the poor; it still brings sorrow
and misery to the firesides of the affluent and titled.

"A utopian view of the perfectibility of man might look for the remedy
to this evil in universal early marriages, in domestic happiness, and
in a universal moral sense which will compel men and women to keep
their marriage vows. But, taking man as he is, we find the tides of
society set with constantly increasing strength against early
marriages; that domestic happiness is not synonymous with marriage,
whether early or late; and that the moral sense which should teach all
men to observe even their solemn promises would be miraculous. For
these things the law has done all that has been thought wise to
attempt, probably all that it can do.

"But it may be asked, If government has the power to relieve society
of the vice of drunkenness, why despair of its power regarding
prostitution? In reply it may be asked if the drunkard himself is ever
cured of his vicious appetite by penalties? The statute despairs of
this. It even recognizes its inability to prevent the sale of
intoxicating drinks while they exist; it therefore claims the right to
seize and destroy them. Can it seize on and destroy the inborn passion
which fills and supports houses of prostitution? Then it can not do
for the one what it hopes to do for the other.

"Again: the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade have been cited
in this connection as illustrating the power of law. In trespass,
theft, violence, or fraud, some one is wronged; and those who have
been injured seek to bring the offender to justice. Here there is no
aggrieved person. All who are in interest are so in interest that they
deprecate the interference of all law, except what they claim to
believe is the law of Nature.

"But is there no hope in the societies of moral reform? For the
suppression, or even checking of the general vice, none whatever. The
association in New York deserves much praise for its zealous
benevolence. They have brought back some of these erring women to the
paths of virtue, but they have done no more to stop the current of
prostitution than he could do to dry up the current of the Hudson who
dips water with a bucket. In truth it may be said that the paths of
virtue have been found to be slippery places for some that would be
thought converts. Wisdom's ways have been found too peaceful for these
daughters of excitement. This is said in no spirit of disparagement to
the efforts of the society. They may well be proud of what they have
done. But it is said to show how little the kindest and the best can
do to reclaim those who have once fallen from virtue and honor.

"Let the great fact, then, be well understood, that prohibitory
measures have always failed, and, from the nature of the case, must
forever fail to suppress prostitution.

"Let this additional fact, illustrated in the foregoing remark, be
well considered, that penalties do not reform the offender, but that
they enforce secrecy in the offense, and silence regarding its
consequences, which is a chief cause of the present wide diffusion of
the venereal poison.

"What, then, is the proper province of legislation in this important
matter?

"The wise lawgiver does not attempt impossibilities. He knows that
laws which experience has demonstrated can not be enforced, teach
disrespect and disobedience to all law. He knows that human passions
can not be changed by human legislation. He knows that, if he attempt
the impossible greater in the control of vice, he is certain to
neglect the possible and important less. He knows that the river will
not cease to flow at his command. If it overflows and desolates, he
raises its banks and dikes in the flood to prevent a general
inundation. For hundreds of years the governments of Europe have tried
in vain to dry up the sources of prostitution; with the opening of the
present century they began to dike in the river and prevent avoidable
mischief. For a long time we too have had laws against prostitution,
which, with every proper effort on the part of those in authority,
have proved as useless as those who live by this illicit traffic could
desire--as mischievous in spreading disease as the quack advertiser
could wish. Is it not time, then, to inquire whether we have not
attempted too much; whether, if we attempt less, we shall not
accomplish more? May we not be able to limit and control what we have
not the power to prevent? If we can not do all that a large
benevolence might wish to accomplish, in the name of humanity is it
not our duty to do what is useful and practicable--all that is
possible?

"While the Medical Board are persuaded that by a change of policy,
such as is suggested by the facts and reasons herewith submitted, much
can be done to limit and control prostitution, and much more toward
the eradication of venereal diseases, they are not yet prepared to
offer the details of a plan by which they hope these important ends
can be attained. With the assistance of the Board of Governors, they
are now in correspondence with the medical officers of many of the
larger cities of Europe, where restrictive measures have replaced
prohibitory. When they have obtained the information which they hope
this correspondence will furnish, they will ask leave to submit a
supplementary report.

"JOHN W. FRANCIS, M.D., President.

"JOHN T. METCALFE, M.D., Secretary _pro tem._

"NOTE.--It is believed that not far from ten per cent. of the inmates
of Bellevue Hospital are admitted for affections which have their
origin remotely in venereal disease. A certain form of rheumatism,
certain inflammations of the throat, eyes, bones, and joints;
stricture and cutaneous eruptions are the most common diseases of this
class. What proportion, if any, of those who suffer from scrofula and
scrofulous inflammations, from consumption and other chronic diseases,
owe their present illness to a constitutional syphilitic vice,
inherited or acquired, there are no means of determining
satisfactorily."

_Medical Board, Bellevue Hospital, New York_:

JOHN W. FRANCIS, M.D., President.
ISAAC WOOD, M.D.
JOHN T. METCALFE, M.D.
ALONZO CLARK, M.D.
BENJAMIN W. M'CREADY, M.D.
ISAAC B. TAYLOR, M.D.
GEORGE T. ELLIOTT, M.D.
B. FORDYCE BARKER, M.D.
VALENTINE MOTT, M.D.
ALEXANDER H. STEVENS, M.D.
JAMES R. WOOD, M.D.
WILLARD PARKER, M.D.
CHARLES D. SMITH, M.D.
LEWIS A. SAYRE, M.D.
JOHN J. CRANE, M.D.
JOHN A. LIDELL, M.D.
STEPHEN SMITH, M.D.

(Copy.)

"_Report of Doctor_ H. N. WHITTELSEY, _Resident Physician of Randall's
Island, in answer to certain queries of_ ISAAC TOWNSEND, _Esq.,
Governor of the Alms-house, upon Constitutional Syphilis_:

"New York, November 28, 1855.

"DEAR SIR,--From repeated conversations with you, I am led to believe
that many diseases incidental to the children on Randall's Island may
properly be traced to parents who are affected with constitutional
syphilis. Please give me your views as to the following questions as
early as 10th December.

"1. Among the children under your care, to what extent does inherited
syphilis exist?

"2. Under what form does constitutional syphilis present itself, and
what diseases are attributable to its taint?

"3. Are not the children of parents thus affected unhealthy,
scrofulous, subject to diseases of the eye, joints, etc.?

"Very respectfully,
"ISAAC TOWNSEND, Governor A. H.

"Doctor H. N. WHITTELSEY, Resident Physician, R. I."

"Randall's Island, Dec. 24, 1855.

"ISAAC TOWNSEND, Esq., President of the Board of Governors of the
Alms-house.

"DEAR SIR,--In regard to the interrogatories contained in your note of
a recent date on the subject of hereditary syphilis, I have the honor
to reply:

"1. Regarding its prevalence. It is a matter of record that nine
tenths of all diseases treated in this hospital during the past five
years have been of constitutional origin, and for the most part
hereditary. These diseases assume a variety of forms, and involve
nearly every structure of the body, terminating in cachexia, marasmus,
phagedæna, etc., etc. The exact proportion which hereditary syphilis
bears to this sum of constitutional depravity can not be stated with
accuracy for the following reasons:

"Children are admitted to this institution between two and fifteen
years of age, thus throwing out of the category infantile syphilis in
all its forms; and except in few cases, showing none of its specific
characteristics, having been modified by appropriate treatment, but
manifests itself by general constitutional depravity, and determines a
great variety of diseases, embracing nearly every form of skin
disease, affection of the mucous membranes and their dependencies,
diseases of the eye and ear, of the bones, especially of joints, etc.,
proving the prolific and lamentable source of many of the diseases
incident to children of the class presented in this institution.
Making, then, due allowance for its masked form, in which the
consequences of inherited syphilis appear in this institution,
together with the absence of the previous history both of patients and
parents, it is believed an approximate estimate may be made of the
part which this malady bears to the sum of constitutional disease.
From the foregoing facts, and from careful observation during the past
few years in this branch of the Alms-house Department, it appears that
human degradation is the source of the stream of pollution supplying
this hospital with disease; and farther, that of all the vices which
make up the sum total of depravity, both moral and physical,
prostitution and its consequences furnish the larger proportion.

"Here we have the sad picture presented of a large number of children
doomed to an early grave, or to breathe out their miserable existence
bearing a loathsome disease, carrying the penalties of vice of which
they themselves are innocent, being a generation contaminated, and
capable only of contaminating in turn.

"In the above sketch I have confined my statement to syphilis as
manifested in the Nursery Hospital, where the average number of cases
of disease treated is about two thousand. From this field is excluded
every variety of the disease except the one, viz., constitutional
syphilis affecting children after having been modified by treatment in
the infant.

"H. N. WHITTELSEY, M.D."

It has been stated already that the information obtained in the course of
this investigation is, to a very great degree, undoubtedly reliable; but a
few words more in reference to the same subject will not be out of place,
if we consider the importance such information assumes when it is made the
basis of serious deduction. These women were examined singly and alone,
and a person who has been engaged for a number of years in any particular
inquiry is able, by his experience, to judge whether his informants are
speaking the truth in their replies. For this, among other reasons, we are
satisfied that in almost every case there was no deception practiced, but
that the answers obtained were true in all essential points. Another
evidence of correctness is the degree of congruity that characterized the
greater part of the replies. Farther than this: a reference to the
questions themselves (as reprinted in chapter XXXII.) will show that they
were so arranged that falsehoods would be easily detected unless very
carefully contrived before the time of examination, of which those
examined had no notice, and consequently no opportunity for fraud or
deception could possibly exist.

It is not denied that there were many difficulties to be encountered,
although the mode of operation was simple. It may be briefly described as
follows. The captain of each police district (and oftentimes the writer
with him) explained his object to the keeper of the house, assuring her
that there was no intention to annoy, harass, or expose her; and,
particularly, that no prosecutions should be based upon any information
thus collected. This latter promise was supported by a letter from a high
legal functionary addressed to the Mayor and Police Department, assuring
them that the particulars they collected should not be used in any manner
prejudicial to the women themselves, as it was believed that a collection
of the necessary information required by such a work as the present would
be productive of good to the city. When satisfied upon the subject of
prosecution, they were told that the real motive was to obtain correct
particulars of prostitution without exposing individual cases, so as to
enable the public to judge of its extent, and assist them in forming an
opinion as to the necessity of arrangements which would ultimately become
protective to our citizens at large, as well as to housekeepers and
courtesans, and many of the housekeepers expressed a hope that the design
might be accomplished. Their interests, therefore, led them to speak the
truth. In short, from the precautions taken, and from the result itself,
very little doubt can be entertained as to the authenticity of the
principal part of the replies on all essential points; and upon this
consideration these replies have been made the basis of the description
and remarks upon PROSTITUTION IN NEW YORK.

The task is completed, and the reader's attention may be invited to the
various facts substantiated, as embodied in the following

RECAPITULATION.

There are six thousand public prostitutes in New York.

The majority of these are from fifteen to twenty-five years old.

Three eighths of them were born in the United States.

Many of those born abroad came here poor, to improve their condition.

_Education is at a very low standard with them._

One fifth of them are married women.

One half of them have given birth to children, and more than one half of
these children are illegitimate.

The ratio of mortality among children of prostitutes is four times greater
than the ordinary ratio among children in New York.

Many of these children are living in the abodes of vice and obscenity.

The majority of these women have been prostitutes for less than four
years.

The average duration of a prostitute's life is only four years.

Nearly one half of the prostitutes in New York admit that they are or have
been sufferers from syphilis.

Seduction; destitution; ill treatment by parents, husbands, or relatives;
intemperance; and bad company, are the main causes of prostitution.

Women in this city have not sufficient means of employment.

Their employment is inadequately remunerated.

The associations of many employments are prejudicial to morality.

Six sevenths of the prostitutes drink intoxicating liquors to a greater or
less extent.

Parental influences induced habits of intoxication.

A professed respect for religion is common among them.

A capital of nearly _four millions of dollars_ is invested in the business
of prostitution.

The annual expenditure on account of prostitution is more than _seven
millions of dollars_.

Prohibitory measures have signally failed to suppress or check
prostitution.

A necessity exists for some action.

Motives of policy require a change in the mode of procedure.

INDEX.

Abortion, New York, 481

Abyssinia, 389

Ædiles, Powers of, 67

Afghanistan, 418

Africa, 385

" Northern, 444

Ages of Prostitutes, Great Britain, 347

" Hamburg, 200

" New York, 452

" Paris, 140

" Rome, 49

Agnes Sorel, 109

Aid to reformatory Measures, 23

Algeria, 180

Alms-house, Blackwell's Island, 587-604

American Medical Association on Infant Mortality, 482

Anglo-Saxon Rule in England, 283

Anne Boleyn, 294

Anne, Empress of Russia, 266

Arcadians and Flute Players, 50

Archiatri, 85

Architecture, obscene, 95

_Areoi_ of the South Sea Islands, 398

Areopagus, 45

Aspasia, 55

Assignation Houses, Hamburg, 211

" New York, 566

" " Origin of, 568

Asylum of _Bon Pasteur_, Paris, 152

Athens, 44

Attempts to suppress Prostitution, 19

Augustan Age, Rome, 67

Auletrides, 46, 50

Australia, 392

" Female Emigration to, 395

Avignon, 162

" public Brothel at, 100

Baal, Worship of, 37

Babylonian Banquets, 42

Bacchis, 56

Barbarous Nations, 385

Beatrice Cenci, 159

Belgium, 187

" Immorality of, 187

" Illegitimacy in, 187

Belle Ferronnière, 111

Bellevue Hospital, New York, 589, 602

" Report of Medical Board, 665

Berlin, Dancing Saloons, 246

" Effects of French Revolution, 234

" " Suppression of Prostitution, 244

" Illegitimacy, 250

" Increase of Syphilis, 248

" Number of Prostitutes, 233

" Police Regulations, 251

" Popular Feeling against licensed Brothels, 241

" Private Life, 247

" Public Life, 245

Biblical Description of Prostitution, 39

Bicetrê, Hospital of, 135

Blackwell's Island, Commitments to, 633

" Discharges from, 638

Boarding Schools, Dangers of, 519

Board of Governors, Duties of, 27

" Interrogatories by, 28

" Members of, 27

" Preliminary Report to, 29

_Bon Pasteur_ Asylum, Paris, 152

Borneo, 413

Brahmins, religious Ceremonies of, 423

Breslau, Effects of Suppression of Brothels, 237

Brides' Fair, Russia, 274

Britain, Roman Invasion of, 282

British Army, Syphilis in, 357

" Kings, Lives of the early, 285

" Merchant Service, Syphilis in, 357

" Navy, Syphilis in, 357

" North America, 460

Britons, Marriage Ceremonies of ancient, 282

Brooklyn City Hospital, Long Island, 592, 602

Brothels in Algiers, 184

" Avignon, 100

" Belgium, 188

" Berlin, abolished by Royal Order, 243

" " public Opposition to, 241

" China, 433

" Denmark, 256

" England, 316

" Hamburg, 206

" Japan, 437

" Leipzig, 253

" Mantua, 161

" New York, Capital invested in, 599

" " Management of, 554

" " Receipts of, 554

" " Value of, 553

" " German, 560

" " Sailors', 562

" Paris, 141

" Rome, 161

" Spain, 171

" Sweden, 279

" Venice, 161

Bubastis, Festival of, 40

Buffalo, N. Y., Prostitutes in, 608

Byron (Lord) on Italian Morality, 166

Callipygian Games, 52

Canute, Laws of, 284

Capital Punishment, Effects of Abolition of, 629

Career of a Prostitute, 453

Carthage, 42

Catharine I., of Russia, 263

" II., " , 267

Causes of Prostitution, Algiers, 184

" Paris, 141

" New York, 488

Cavalière Servente, 165

Celebes, 428

Celsus on secret Diseases, 84

Central and South America, 364

Ceylon, 425

Charlemagne, Legislation of, 94

Charles II., of England, 299, 304

Charles VIII, 109

Chastity enforced by the early Christians, 86

Children's Aid Society, New York, 530

Children of Prostitutes, New York, 477

Chili, 367

China, 429

Chinese Holidays, 434

Chivalry in England, Effects on Morality of, 290

Christian Doctrine, Features of, 86

" Era, 86

" Fathers on Prostitution, 91

" Virgins, Persecution of, 87

Chrysarguron, or Tax on Prostitutes, 92

Cicisbeo, 165

Circassia, 441

Civil Condition of Prostitutes, New York, 473

Classes of Prostitutes, 148

Classical Studies, Effects of, 521

Claudine du Tencin, 127

Cologne, Effects of Suppression of Brothels in, 243

Commodus, 83

Competition a Plea for insufficient Wages, 530

Connecticut, 458

Consequences of Prostitution, 19

Continuance of Prostitution, New York, 484

Conventual Life, immoral Instances in, 90

" in Portugal, 178

Copenhagen, Number of Prostitutes in, 256

" Syphilis in, 257

Corinth, 44

Corinthian Prostitutes, 58

Cork, Number of Prostitutes in, 342

Cortejos, 175

Cost of Prostitution in New York, 599

Costume of Prostitutes, Bergamo, 162

" Greece, 46

" Mantua, 62

" Milan, 162

" Parma, 162

Council of Trent, 156

Court of Prostitutes, Naples, 160

Dahomey, 387

Dancers, Rome, 69

Dancing Saloons, Berlin, 246

" Hamburg, 212

Dangers of a Prostitute's Life, 485

Danish Rule in England, 287

De la Vallière, Mademoiselle, 124

Delirium Tremens, 542, 543

De Maintenon, Madame, 124

Demilt Dispensary, New York, 591, 602

Denmark, 256

" Brothels in, 256

" Illegitimacy in, 256

Destitution a Cause of Prostitution, 489

" Instances of, in New York, 491

Diana de Poictiers, 111

Dicteria, 43

" Inviolability of, 48

Dicteriades, 46, 47

Disease in Children, 334

Dispensary, Algiers, 182, 185

" Belgium, 188

" Paris, 138

Distinguishing Costume of Prostitutes, 44

Domestic Life of Prostitutes, Hamburg, 202

" Leipzig, 255

Domestic Servants, Belgium, 187

" England, 330

" Hamburg, 199, 211

" Leipzig, 253

" New York, 526

Draconian Laws, 43

Dress, Indecency of, 117

" of French Prostitutes, 97

Dubarry, Madame, 128

Dublin, Number of Prostitutes in, 341

Duchess of Berri, 126

Duke of Orleans, 125

Duration of a Prostitute's Life, 455

Duties of Husbands, 505

" Parents, 498

" Relatives, 511

Early Christians, alleged Immorality of, 89

Eastern Dispensary, New York, 591, 602

Edinburgh, Number of Prostitutes in, 341

Education, compulsory, 471

" in Great Britain, 335

" of Prostitutes, New York, 468

" " Paris, 140

" in United States, 620

Educational Facilities in Europe, 469

" in U. States, 469

" Neglect of, 469

Effects of Indifference upon Prostitution, 25

Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, 40

Egyptian Courtesans, 40

Elagabalus, 83

Elizabeth, of England, 295

Elizabeth, of Russia, 266

Emigrant Boarding-house Keepers, 461

Emigrants, Influences at Port of Departure on, 461

" Influences during Voyage on, 461

" Influences on reaching New York on, 461

" Poverty of, 465

" Hospital, Ward's Island, 590, 602

Emigrate, Assistance to, 466

" Inducements to, 465

England, 460

" Brothels, 316

" Causes of Prostitution, 319

" Continental Trade in Prostitution, 315

" Court Morals, 305

" Discussion on Prostitution, 653

" Domestic Servants, 330

" Effects of Chivalry on Morality, 290

" excessive Poverty, 327

" Feudal Lords, 288

" Lodging-houses, 324

" overcrowded Dwellings, 322

" Procuresses, 308, 313

" Profligacy of Troubadours, 292

" Prostitution at the present Time, 312

" Public Amusements, 330

" Puritan Rule, 298

" Restoration of Charles II., 298

" Work-house System, 326

Erotic Literature, 77

Esquimaux, 447

Example, its Effects on Prostitution, 325

Expediency of Investigation, 22

Extent, Effects, and Cost of Prostitution, 575

Factories, Great Britain, 332

" United States, 534

Fair Rosamond, 292

Fathers of Prostitutes, Business of, 535

Female Employment, 529

Female Occupations, Effect of, 533

" Monotony of, 526

Female Penitentiary, London, 351

Feudal Lords in England, 288

Financial Panic, Effect of, 577

Floralian Games, 64

Foreign-born Prostitutes, 460

Foreign Manners, Influence of, 570

Foreign Women, Demoralization of, 461

Foundling Hospitals, Belgium, 187

" Italy, 167

" Mexico, 363

" Portugal, 180

" Rio Janeiro, 371

" Russia, 276

" Spain, 176

" Sweden, 278

Fracastor, Diagnosis of Syphilis by, 132

France, 93

" during the Middle Ages, 93

" from the Middle Ages to Louis XIII., 108

" from Louis XIII. to present Day, 120

" Female Employment, 529

" obscene Literature, 102

" present Regulations, 139

" Provincial Legislation, 98

" Syphilis, 131

Francis I., 110

Franks, Concubinage among the, 94

Free Love, 569

French Legislation, 119

" Republican, 122

French Revolution, Effects in Berlin of, 234

" Effects in Great Britain, 310

" Effects in Hamburg, 191

" Effects in Paris, 122

Gauls, Morality of the, 93

" Roman Description of the, 93

George III., 308

" IV., 309

German Ball-rooms in New York, 523, 561

" Brothels in New York, 560

Glasgow, Number of Prostitutes in, 341

Glycera, 61

Gnathena, 57

Gnathenion, 57

Governmental Duty, 629

Governors of Alms-house, 27

" Interrogatories by, 28

Gradation of Prostitution, 453

Granada, public Brothels at, 172

Great Britain, 282

" Ages of Prostitutes, 347

" Education, 335

" Factories, 332

" Illegitimacy, 337

" Juvenile Prostitution, 331

" Needle Women, 344

" Occupations of Inhabitants, 622

Great Britain, Syphilis, 354

" Work-houses, 332

Greece, 43

" erotic Literature of, 62

" Flute Players, 50

" Tax on Prostitutes, 46

Greenland, 449

Gretna Green Marriages, 311

Guardian Society, London, 351

Guatemala, 365

Gynecea, 94

Hair of Greek Courtesans, 46

Halle, Effects of Suppression of Brothels in, 243

Hamburg, 189

" Ages of Prostitutes, 200

" Assignation Houses, 211

" Brothels, 198, 206

" Classes of Prostitutes, 199

" Dancing-saloons, 212

" Illegitimacy, 199

" Kept Mistresses, 210

" Kurhaus, 216

" Laws, 191

" Magdalen Hospital, 218

" Nationality of Prostitutes, 200

" Number of Prostitutes in, 198

" Police Regulations, 193

" Prostitutes, domestic Life of, 202

" Prostitutes, Physique, 201

" private Prostitution, 210

" Recognized Procuresses, 205

" Street-walkers, 210

" Syphilis, 214

Hamburger Berg, 201

Henry II., of France, 112

" III., " , 116

" VIII., of England, 294

" of Navarre, 114

Hetairæ 46, 53

" Influence of, 62

" social Position of, 54

Hipparchia, 56

Honduras, 366

Hospital du Midi, Paris 136

" in Rome, 164

Hottentots, 385

Houses of Assignation, New York, 566

Iceland, 449

Idols retained as Christian Symbols, 90

Illegitimacy in Belgium, 187

" Berlin, 250

" Denmark, 256

" Great Britain, 337

" Lima, 368

" New York, 480

" Norway, 280

" Sweden, 278

Ill Treatment by Parents, etc., a Cause of Prostitution, 498

Immigration, its Effects on Prostitution, 459

Immorality of Belgium, 187

" Spain, 169

Inclination a Cause of Prostitution, 488

Incubes, Belief in, 103

India, 421

Infanticide in China, 432

" India, 424

" Lima, 368

Infant Mortality, New York, 481

Inscription of Prostitutes, 144

Intelligence Offices an Agency for Prostitution, 517

Intemperance of Prostitutes, 540

" Parents of Prostitutes, 544

Intoxication a Cause of Prostitution, 497

Introduction, 17

Ireland, 460

Irish Farmers, 537

Isabel of Bavaria, 108

Island Hospital, Blackwell's Island, 586, 601, 633

Italian Morality, 165

" Lord Byron on, 166

Italian Vices introduced to France, 112

Italy, 154

" Decline of public Morals, 155

" Influence of Papal Court, 155

" Syphilis, 157

" unnatural Crimes, 159

James I., of England, 296

" II., " , 304

Jane Shore, 293

Japan, 435

Java, 408

Jephthah's Daughter, 38

Jerusalem, 37

Jews, the, 35

Judah and Tamar, 36

Julian Laws, 67

Justinian, 93

Juvenal's Description of a House of Prostitution, 72

Juvenile Depravity, 32, 331, 453

Kaffirs, 386

Kashmir, 419

Kept Mistresses, 172, 210

Kings County Hospital, Long Island, 592, 602

Kordofan, 390

Kurhaus of Hamburg, 216

Lamia, 53

Lais, 58

Lateran Council, 156

Latin Authors, Pruriency of, 80

Laws on Prostitution by Moses, 36

" France, 119

" " Republican, 122

" Lycurgus, 45

" Naples, 159

" Portugal, 179

" Prussia, 219, 225

" Russia, 261

League, the Huguenot, its Influence in France, 116

Leeds, Number of Prostitutes in, 341

Leipzig, 252

" Brothels, 253

" domestic Life of Prostitutes, 254

" Nationality of Prostitutes, 254

" Syphilis, 255

Lesbian Love, 52

Licensed Prostitutes in Persia, 417

License System in New York, 651

Lima, 367

" Illegitimacy and Infanticide, 368

Literature, France, 129

" Great Britain, 299

Liverpool, Number of Prostitutes in, 341

Lock Hospital, London, 350

Lodging Houses, England, 324

London Female Penitentiary, 351

" Guardian Society, 351

" Lock Hospital, 350

" Night Houses, 653

" Number of Prostitutes in, 340

" obscene Publications, 334

" public Meeting on Prostitution, 653

" Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, 357

_London Times_, the, on Prostitution, 657

Louisville, Ky., Prostitution in, 608

Louis IX., of France, 95

" XI., " , 109

" XII., " , 110

" XIII., " , 123

" XIV., of France, 124

" XV., " , 128

Louise de Querouaille, 302

Lupanaria, 70

Lycurgus, Laws of, 45

Magdalen Asylums, 631

" Hamburg, 218

" Paris, 152

Maine, 457

Male Prostitutes, 70

Manchester, Number of Prostitutes in, 341

Mantua, Brothels in, 161

Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 114

Marriage Ceremonies of the ancient Britons, 282

Marriage Ceremonies in France, 107

Marriage, Belgium, 187

" Norway, 280

" Rome, 81

" Effects of early, 474

" ill-assorted, 331

" Violation of, 473

Martial, 78

Maryland, 457

Massachusetts, 458

Medical Bureau, proposed, New York, 649

Medical Colleges, New York, 591

Medical Institutions, Theory of, New York, 633

Medical Visitation of Prostitutes, 645

" Paris, 149

Medicis, the, Effects upon French Morality of, 112

Messalina, 72

Mexican Clergy, Morals of, 360

" Society, 361

Mexico, 359

" Foundling Hospitals, 363

Moloch, Worship of, 37

Montpellier, public Brothel at, 100

Moral Chastity, Doctrine of, 88

Mothers of Prostitutes in New York, 538

Mrs. Fry, benevolent Exertions of, 353

Nach Girls, 420

Naples, Court of Prostitutes, 160

" Laws on Prostitution, 159

Nationality of Prostitutes, Algiers, 184

" Hamburg, 200

" Leipzig, 254

" New York, 456

Naucratis, 41

Needle-women, Great Britain, 344

" New York, 527

Nell Gwynne, 302

Nepotism, 155

Nero, 83

Newark, N. J., Prostitution in, 609

New Hampshire, 458

New Haven, Conn., Prostitution in, 609

New Jersey, 458

New York, Abortion, 481

" Age of Prostitutes, 452

" Aggregate Prostitution, 584

" Assignation Houses, 566

" Assistance to emigrate to, 466

" Average Wages of Women, 529

" Brothels, Capital invested in, 599

" " Management of, 554

" " Receipts of, 554

" " Value of, 553

" Brothel-keepers, 553

" Business of Fathers of Prostitutes, 535

" " of Mothers of Prostitutes, 538

" Career of a Prostitute, 453

" Causes of Prostitution, 488

" Census Returns, Reliability of, 674

" Children's Aid Society, 530

" Children of Prostitutes, 477

" civil Condition of Prostitutes, 473

" Continuance of Prostitution, 484

" Cost of Surveillance, 653

" Dangers of a Prostitute's Life, 485

" Dangers of Syphilitic Infection, 632

" Death of Parents of Prostitutes, 539

" Delirium Tremens, 543

" Dispensaries, 590, 602

" Duration of a Prostitute's Life, 455

" Education of Prostitutes, 468

" Effects of Destitution, 489

" " early Marriage, 474

" " female Occupation, 533

" " of Inclination, 488

" Extent, Effects, and Cost of Prostitution, 575

" German Ball-rooms, 523, 561

" " Brothels, 560

" Gradation of Prostitutes, 453

" foreign-born Prostitutes, 460

" Hospitals, 590, 602

" Illegitimacy, 480

" ill Treatment of Parents, Husbands, and Relatives, 498

" Inducements to emigrate, 465

" Infant Mortality, 481

" Influence of Suburbs on Prostitution, 585

" Instances of Destitution, 491

" Intemperance of Prostitutes, 540

" Intemperance of Parents of Prostitutes, 544

" Intelligence Offices, 517

" Intoxication a Cause of Prostitution, 497

" Juvenile Depravity, 453

" License System, 651

" Life of a Seamstress, 490

" Medical Institutions, Theory of, 633

" Metropolitan Police Estimate of Prostitutes, 579

" Nativity of Prostitutes, 456

" Necessity for a Syphilitic Hospital, 644

" Number of Prostitutes, 576

" Obscene Publications, 521

" Origin of Assignation Houses, 568

" Panel Houses, 573

" Parlor Houses, 549

" Police and Judiciary Expenses, 605

" Poverty of Emigrants, 465

" private Prostitutes, 582

" Preponderance of Prostitutes from Northern States, 457

" Proportion of Children attending School, 471

" proposed Surveillance of Prostitution, 643

" proposed medical Visitation of Prostitutes, 645

" Prostitutes and Houses of Prostitution, 549

" " compared with Population, 585

" " exaggerated Estimates of, 577

" " Income of, 600

" " Length of Residence in New York City, 464

" " Length of Residence in New York State, 464

" " Length of Residence in United Sates, 463

" Recapitulation of Facts, 675

" Religion of Prostitutes, 545

" " Parents of Prostitutes, 545

" Remedial Measures, 627

" Sailors' Ball-rooms, 563

" " Brothels, 562

" Schedule of Questions, 450

" Seduction in, 492

" Statistics of, 450

" Syphilis in, 586

" " Number of Prostitutes infected, 487

" Theory of present Medical Institutions, 633

" Widowed Prostitutes, 477

New Zealand, 394

Norfolk, Va., Prostitution in, 610

Norman Rule in England, 288

North American Indians, 372

Northern Africa, 444

Norway, 277

" Illegitimacy in, 280

" Syphilis in, 281

Number of Prostitutes in Berlin, 233

" China, 433

" Copenhagen, 256

" Cork, 342

" Dublin, 341

" Leipzig, 253

Nursery, Randall's Island, New York, 500, 602, 605

Obscene Literature, 102

" France, 117

" London, 334

" New York, 521

Offenses of Prostitutes, 150

Open-air Prostitution, 74

Overcrowded Dwellings, 322

Ovid, 78

Panel Houses, New York, 573

_Parc aux Cerfs_, 128

Parent-Duchatelet, Laws of France, 121

" " for Repression of Prostitution, 153

Paris, Ages of Prostitutes, 140

" _Bon Pasteur_ Asylum, 152

" Brothels, 141

" Causes of Prostitution, 141

" Classes of Prostitutes, 148

" Dispensary, 138

" Education of Prostitutes, 140

" Hospital de Lourcine, 137

" Inscription of Prostitutes, 144

" Medical Visitation, 149

" Number of Prostitutes, 139

" Offenses of Prostitutes, 150

" Operation of remedial Measures, 632

" Prisons for Prostitutes, 151

" Procuresses, 143

" Prostitution in 1858, 661

" Punishment of Prostitutes, 149

" Radiation of Prostitutes, 147

" Statistics of Syphilis, 138

Parlor Houses, New York, 549

Penitentiary, Blackwell's Island, 587, 604

Pennsylvania, 458

Persia, 415

Persian Banquets, 42

Peru, 367

Peter the Great, of Russia, 262

Philadelphia, Pa., Prostitution in, 611

Philanthropic Labors, and Results, 631

Philosophy in France, Tendency of, 130

Philtres, 63

Phoenician Customs, 42

Phryne, 45, 59

Physiological Education, Importance of, 520

Piedmont, Laws of, 162

Pisistratidæ, 44

Pittsburgh, Pa., Prostitution in, 611

Police Regulations, Algiers, 182

" Berlin, 251

" France, 139

" Russia, 227

Police of New York, Captains of, 31

" Inspectors of, 580

Police and Judiciary Expenses, New York, 605

Political Circumstances, their Connection with Prostitution, 326

Polynesia, 397

Portugal, 178

" Laws of, 179

Poverty in England, 327

Preponderance of Prostitutes from Northern States in New York, 457

Preservation of female Honor, 23

Prisons for Prostitutes, 151

Private Interest connected with Prostitution, 23

Private Life in Berlin, Description of, 247

Private Prostitution in Hamburg, 210

" New York, 582

Procuresses in England, 308, 313

" France, 97, 101

" Hamburg, 205

" Paris, 143

Prohibition, Effects of, 627

" " in France, 95

Propriety of Investigation, 20

Prostitutes compared with Population, 585

" Converted by the early Christians, 88

" exaggerated estimates of, 577

" in Algiers, Nationality of, 184

" " Number of, 183

" in New York, Income of, 600

" kindly Feeling toward each other, 547

" Number of in Edinburgh, 341

" " Glasgow, 341

" " Leeds, 341

" " Liverpool, 341

" " London, 340

" " Manchester, 341

" " New York, 575

" " Paris, 139

" " the United States, 615

" recognized in Judæa, 38

Prostitution a State Monopoly, 43

" aggregate Cost of, 606

" augmented by Secrecy, 631

" Biblical Description of, 39

" coeval with Society, 35

" earliest Record of, 35

" Impossibility of Suppressing, 19, 628

" increased by present Regulations, 630

" Notoriety of, 17

" proposed Surveillance of, 643

" Traders in, 69

Prussia, 219

Prussian Laws on Prostitution, 219-225

" Police Regulations, 227

" royal Rescript on Prostitution, 223

Public Amusements, 330

Public Decency advanced by Surveillance, 652

Public Life in Berlin, Description of, 245

Public Morals affected by Police Surveillance, 651

Public Responsibility, 640

Punishment of Prostitutes, 149

Puritan Rule in England, 298

Pythionice, 60

" Tomb of, 61

Radiation of Prostitutes, Paris, 147

Reese (Dr. D. M.) on Infant Mortality, 482

Registration of Prostitutes, 144

Religion of Prostitutes, 545

" Parents of Prostitutes, 545

Religious Prostitution in Chaldea, 41

" Greece, 43

Remedial Measures in Paris, Operation of, 632

" proposed, 627

Report on Infant Mortality, by Dr. Reese, 482

Report of Medical Board, Bellevue Hospital, 665

Report of Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island, 29

Report of Resident Physician, Randall's Island, 673

Repression of Prostitution, Parent-Duchatelet's Law for, 153

Republican Legislation in France, 122

Resorts of Criminals, 22

Restoration of Charles II., Effect on Morality of, 298

Rhadopis, 41

Rhode Island, 457

Rio Janeiro, Foundling Hospitals in, 371

_Roi des Ribauds_, 96

Rome, 64

" Banquets, 81

" Baths, 73

" Brothels, 161

" _Commessationes_, 82

" Costume of Prostitutes, 75

" Drug Sellers, 85

" Emperors, 82

" Houses of Prostitution, 70

" Laws governing Prostitution, 64

" Physicians, 85

" Prostitutes, Classes of, 68

" " Habits of, 75

" " Number of, 68

" " Remuneration of, 76

" Republican Legislation, 67

" secret Diseases, 84

" Society, Demoralization of, 79

" Taverns, 74

Ruffiani, 169

Russia, 261

" Brides' Fair, 274

" Foundling Hospitals, 275

" Laws of, 261

" Marriage ceremonies, 274

" Morals of the present Day, 272

" Syphilis, 276

_Sabat des Sorciers_, 104

Sailors' Ball-rooms, New York, 563

" Brothels, New York, 562

Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, London, 357

Saint Petersburg Foundling Hospital, 275

Salpétrière, Hospital of, 134

Sanitary Regulations, Importance of, 632

Savannah, Ga., Prostitution in, 612

Schedule of Questions, New York, 450

Scotland, 460

Seaman's Retreat, Staten Island, 592, 602

Seamstress, the, in New York, 490

Secret Diseases among the Jews, 36

" at Rome, 84

Sectarian Aids to Prostitution, 105

Seduction, 320

" a Cause of Prostitution, 492

" a social Wrong, 495

Semicivilized Nations, 415

Seville, public Brothels at, 172

Sexual Desire, 320

Siberia, 445

Society, Prostitution coeval with, 35

Solomon's Temple, 38

Solon, Laws of, 43

Spain, 168

" Court of, 170

" Immorality of, 169

" public Brothels in, 172

Spanish and Roman Laws, Similarity of, 168

Spanish Laws, 172

" Women, Education of, 177

Sparta, 45

Statistics of New York, 450

Stockholm, Immorality of, 280

" Illegitimacy in, 278

_Succubes_, Belief in, 103

Sumatra, 411

Suttee, 424

Sweden, 277

" Brothels in, 279

" Foundling Hospitals in, 278

" Illegitimacy in, 278

" Syphilis in, 279

Switzerland, 259

Syphilis, Algiers, 186

" Belgium, 188

" Berlin, 248

" British Army, 357

" " Merchant Service, 357

" " Navy, 357

" Copenhagen, 257

" France, 131

" Great Britain, 354

" Hamburg, 214

" India, 424

" Italy, 157

" Japan, 439

" Kashmir, 421

" Leipzig, 255

" New York, 586

" " aggregate Expenses of, 603

" " Number of Prostitutes infected by, 487

" " treated by Drug Sellers, 595

" " treated by Advertisers, 596

" " treated by patent Medicines, 595

" " treated in private Practice, 592

" New Zealand, 395

" Norway, 281

" Paris, 138

" Portugal, 179

" Rome, 164

" Russia, 276

" Sandwich Islands, 404

" Spain, 174

" Sweden, 279

Syphilitic-Hospital in New York, Necessity of, 644

Syphilitic Infection, Danger of, 632

" Patients, Neglect of, 133

Tait (of Edinburgh) on Prostitution in New York, 615

Tartar Races, 440

Tax on Prostitutes, Algiers, 182

Templars, Depravity of, 97

Thargelia, 55

Theatricals, France, 118

" Great Britain, 300

Theodora, Empress of Rome, 92

" Attempts to reclaim Prostitutes by, 92

Toulouse, public Brothel at, 99

Troubadours, Profligacy of, 292

Turkey, 442

Ulm, Laws of, 189

Ultra-Gangetic Nations, 427

Underpaid Labor, 328

United States, Ages of Inhabitants, 619

" Births in, 620

" Crime in, 625

" Education in, 620

" Intemperance in, 625

" Number of Prostitutes in, 615

" Occupations of Inhabitants, 622

" Pauperism in, 624

" Prostitutes in various Cities of, 607

" Statistics of, 618

" Wages in, 623

Unnatural Crimes, 159

Vagrancy Commitments, 633

" moral Effects of, 635

" "on Confession", 634

" pecuniary Effects of, 635

Valencia, public Brothel at, 172

Vectigal, or Tax on Prostitutes, 92

Venice, Brothels in, 161

" Prostitutes in, 162

Venus, Worship of, 53

Vermont, 458

Virginia, 457

Wages influenced by Competition, 530

Wales, 460

West Indies, 406

Widowed Prostitutes, 477

Witches, Persecution of, 105

Women, average Wages of in N. Y., 529

" Capability of, 525

" Social Condition of, 525

Work-house, Blackwell's Island, 587-603

" Great Britain, 332

Yucatan, 365

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Since this introduction was written (1857) some changes have taken
place in the constitution of the Board of Governors. The election of Mr.
Tiemann to the Mayoralty caused a vacancy which is now filled by P.
McElroy, Esq., and the resignation and subsequent death of Mr. Taylor has
resulted in the election of William T. Pinkney, Esq.

[2] Now (1858) President of the Board.

[3] Now (1858) Secretary of the Board.

[4] To explain the apparent solecism of addressing a letter to President
Townsend, detailing actions in which he had taken so important a part, it
may be necessary to say that a standing order of the Board of Governors
requires all official correspondence with them to be addressed to their
President.

[5] See Chapter XXXII. for these questions.

[6] It is quite probable that the commercial and financial panic which
commenced about the time these pages were nearly ready for the press, and
continued throughout the winter of 1857-8, has added to the number of
prostitutes in New York City, very likely as many as five hundred, or
perhaps a thousand, but certainly not to the extent generally imagined.
Allusions have been made elsewhere to the exaggerated estimates of the
extent of this vice, and the opinions publicly expressed in regard to
accessions to the ranks of prostitutes during the last few months
generally seem to be of a similarly vague nature.

[7] Gen. xxxviii. 11.

[8] Lev. xix. 29; Deut. xxiii. 17.

[9] Ex. xxii. 19; Lev. xviii. 23.

[10] Ex. xxi. 17.

[11] Deut. xxii. 17.

[12] Lev. xv.

[13] Deut. xxiii. 18, etc.

[14] Ibid. xxiii. 18.

[15] Chron. xv. xvii. etc.

[16] Maccabees.

[17] Ch. vii. 6, etc.

[18] Ctesias, quoted by Athenæus, xiii. 10.

[19] Herodotus, ii. 60.

[20] Herodotus, ii. 64.

[21] Id. ii. 89.

[22] Id. ii. 89.

[23] Baruch, vi.

[24] Quintus Curtius, v. 1.

[25] Macrobius, Sat. Conv. vii. Athenæus, xii. _passim_; Plutarch, Vit.
Artaxerxes.

[26] Nicander, quoted by Athenæus, xiii. 25.

[27] Plutarch, Life of Solon: Lucian, Dialogues.

[28] Philemon, quoted by Athenæus, xiii. 25.

[29] Idomeneus, quoted by Athenæus, xii. 44.

[30] _Fainomerides._ See Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus.

[31] Politics, ii. 7.

[32] Athenæus, xiii. 59; Alciphron's Letters.

[33] Athenæus, xiii. 20, _et sed._; Suidas, Lex., Vo. Diagramma; Æschylus
c. Timarch. p. 134; St. Clement of Alexandria, Pædag. ii. 10; Becker,
Charicles i. 126; etc.

[34] Pollux, Onom. ii. 30; x. 170; St. Clement of Alex. _loc. cit._

[35] Philemon, quoted by Athenæus, xiii. 25.

[36] Xenarchus and Eubulus, quoted by Athenæus, xiii. 25.

[37] Demosthenes against Neæra.

[38] Alexis, quoted by Athenæus, xiii. 23.

[39] Athenæus xiii. 26.

[40] See Lucian. Dialogue of Courtesans, _passim_.

[41] Letters of Alciphron, 46.

[42] Lucian, _loc. cit._

[43] Anthology, ed. Jacobs, ii. 633.

[44] Athenæus, xiii. 86.

[45] Letters of Alciphron, 34.

[46] Athenæus, xiii. 86.

[47] Antiphanes, quoted in Athenæus, xiii. 51.

[48] Theopompus, Dicæarchus, etc. quoted by Athenæus, xiii. 67.

[49] Letters of Alciphron, 44.

[50] Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 16, 19, 24-27; Athenæus, xiii. 39.

[51] Demosthenes against Neræa, p. 1386; Becker, Charicles, ii. 215.

[52] St. Clement of Alex.; Hortat. Address, 97.

[53] Grote's History of Greece, vi. 100.

[54] Plutarch, Life of Pericles, 24, 32, etc.; Demosthenes against Neræa,
p. 1350; Aristophanes, Acharm. 497, etc.; Athenæus, xiii. 25-56.

[55] Diogenes Laert. vi. 96.

[56] Athenæus, xiii. 56, 66, etc.; Alciphron's Letters, 30.

[57] Athenæus, xiii. 39, etc.

[58] Id. xiii. 43, 47.

[59] Plato, De Rep. iii. p. 404; Aristoph. Plut. 149; Müller, Dor. ii. 10,
7; Strabo, viii. 6, 211.

[60] Diogenes Laert. ii. 84; St. Clement of Alex. Strom, iii. 47;
Pausanias, ii. 2, 4; Ausonius, Epig. 17; Athenæus, xiii. 26, 54, etc.

[61] Ælian, V. H. ix. 32; Alciphron's Letters, i. 31; Jacobs, Alt. Mus.
iii. 18, 36, etc.; Athenæus, xiii. 59, etc.

[62] Pausanias, i. 37, 5; Athenæus, xiii. 45, etc.; Diod. xvii. 108; Arr.
_ap. Phot._ 70.

[63] Diogenes Laert. x. 4; Athenæus, xiii. 29; Cicero, de Nat. Deor. i.
33.

[64] Lactant. i. 20.

[65] Martial, i. 1; Seneca, Epist. 96.

[66] Val. Max. ii. 10, 8.

[67] Annal. lib. ii. 85.

[68] Plautus, Pænulus.

[69] Nov. 5.

[70] See Tabl. Heracl. i. 123.

[71] Plutarch, Vita Catonis.

[72] Livy, xxxiv. 1, et seq.

[73] Livy, xxxix. 8-19. See also St. August. De Civ. Dei, vii. 21.

[74] Cicero, ad Fam. i. 9.

[75] Val. Max. ii. 1, 7; Cicero, de Off. 1, 35.

[76] Plutarch, Vit. Syllæ, 85.

[77] Lex Jul. et Pap. Popp.; Lex Jul. de Adult.; Dig. 35, tit. 1, § 63;
Gaius, ii. 113.

[78] See Dig. 48, tit. 5.

[79] Aulus Gell. quoting Ateius Capito.

[80] Pierrugues, Gloss. Erot. For the duties of the ædiles, see Schubert,
de Rom. Ædilibus, liv. 4.

[81] See Plautus, _passim_.

[82] Suetonius.

[83] Cicero.

[84] Ausonius.

[85] Plaut. Panulus.

[86] Cic. pro Cælio.

[87] Juvenal.

[88] Juvenal.

[89] Suidas.

[90] Plautus, Cistellaria.

[91] Suetonius.

[92] Martial.

[93] Plaut. Panulus. Juvenal says,

"_Ad terram tremulo descendant clune puellæ._"

[94] Horace, Od. iii. 6, 21.

[95] See Schubert, _loc. cit._

[96] Terenco, Adelph. 1; Catullus, etc.

[97] Rom. i. 26, 27, and all Latin poets, _passim_.

[98] See Bunsen, Beschreibung der Stadt Rome, 1830, i. 173.

[99] Plautus, _Asinaria_; Martial, Ep. _passim_.

[100] Petronius, Satyricon, i. 28.

[101] Hor. Sat. i. 2, 30; Juv. Sat. iii. 156; Suet. Jul. 49.

[102] Prudentius, in Agn; Boulenger, Cirque, etc.

[103] _Olenti in fornice_, Hor. _Redolet fuligmura fornicis_, Mart.

[104] Plautus.

[105] Id.

[106] Juvenal, ii. Sat. vi. 116.

[107] Cyprian, Ep. 103; Boulenger, De Circe Rom.; Arnob.; Tertullian.

[108] Seneca, Ep. 86; Val. Max. ii. 1, 7.

[109] Plin. H. N. 33, 54.

[110] "Callidus et cristæ digitos impressit aliptes."--Juvenal, ii. Sat.
vi.

[111] Spartianus, Hadrian, c. 1.

[112] See Ovid, Ars Amat.

[113] Ulpian, liv. xxiii. De rit. nupt.; Jul. Paulus, Dig.; Cicero.

[114] Martial, xvi. 222.

[115]

Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,
Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam,
Plus quam se atque suas amavit omnes,
Nunc in quadriviis et angiportis
Glubit magnanimos Remi nepotes.
CATULLUS, _Carm._ 58.

[116] Cicero in Cat.

[117] Lampridius, Script. Hist. Aug. _Elagabalus_.

[118] Martial, Ep. i. 36, 8; ii. 39; vi. 64, 4. See Becker's Gallus, i.
321.

[119] See also Seneca.

[120] Seneca, Ep. 80, 110; Suet. Jul. 43; Claud. 28; Domit. 8.

[121] Petron. Satyr. i. 26.

[122] Juvenal, Sat. vi.; Tertullian, De exhort. cast. 45.

[123] Juvenal, Sat. vi.

[124] Petronius, ii. 352.

[125] Plautus, Miles; Apuleius, ii. 27.

[126] Juvenal, Sat. vi.

[127] Propertius, ii. 6; Suet. Tib. 43, and Vit. Hor.; Pliny, xxxv. 37.

[128] See the collection at the Museo Borbonice at Naples, etc.

[129] Mutinus, cujus immanibus pudendis horrentique fascino vestras
inequitare matrones.... Arnobius, v. 132. See also St. Augustine and
Lactantius.

[130] August. De Civ. Dei.

[131] Catullus, Epithalam.; Arnobius, _loc. cit._

[132] Petron. Satyr. ii. 68.

[133] Petron. Satyr, ii. 70, etc.

[134] Juvenal, Sat. vi.

[135] Suetonius, Jul. 51.

[136] Videsne ut cinædus urbano digito temperat? Suet. Aug. 68, etc.

[137] Suetonius, Tiberius, 42.

[138] Suetonius, Caligula, 24.

[139] Id. Claudius, 26; Juvenal, Sat. vi.

[140] Tacitus, Ann. xv. 37-40.

[141] Scaliger.

[142] Horace, Sat. i. 2, I.

[143] Ovid, Remed. Amor.

[144] Dig. 27, 1, 6; Cod. Theodos. xiii. 3. De Medic, et profess.

[145] Ambrosius, De Virg. lib. i. Prudentius in Symmach.; Basil, Inter.
17, resp.

[146] Cyprian, De Pudici. etc.

[147] Clem. Pædag. ii. 10.

[148] Sueton. Vit. Tiber.

[149] Tertul. Apol.

[150] Basil, De vera Virgin. 52.

[151] Ambros. Epist. iv. ep. 34.

[152] Ambrose, Epist. iv. 34.

[153] See Ruinart, Actes ii. 196; also Palladius, Vit. Patr. cap. 148,
etc.

[154] August. contr. Jul. 1. iv.; id. ep. 122, and the other fathers.

[155] Reynaud, Act. Sanct.

[156] Ignat. Ep. ad Trall, et ad Philad.; Clement. Strom. 3; Epiphan. Hær.
27; Theodor. Hæret. i. 5.

[157] Letter to Innocent I.

[158] Calvin, Tr. Relig.

[159] Tr. Ord. lib. ii. c. 12.

[160] Ep. ad Furiam, ad Fabiolam. See also Lactantius, lib. vi. cap. 23.

[161] Can. 61, 77.

[162] Constit. lib. viii. c. 7.

[163] Canons 12, 44.

[164] Lib. de fid. et oper. c. xi.

[165] Const. Milan, tit. 65, de meret. et lenon.

[166] Justin, Apol. pro Christ.

[167] Evagrius, Hist. Eccl. liv. 3, c. 39.

[168] Id. ib.

[169] Cod. Theod. lib. xv. tit. 8, De lenon.

[170] Novel. 14, col. 1. tit. 1. De lenon.

[171] Ordonn. des Rois de France, vii. 327.

[172] Ibid. xiii. 75.

[173] Ann. de la Ville de Toulouse, par Lafaille, ii. 189, 199, 280.

[174] Astruc, _De morb. vener._

[175]

"Sur le pont d'Avignon
Tout le monde y passe."

The bridge was a haunt of prostitutes.

[176]

"Toutes estes, serez, ou fûtes,
De faict ou de volonté, putes."--_Roman de la Rose._

[177] St. August. _per cont._; St. John Chrysost. Hom. 22, sup. Gene.

[178] Bodin, Demonomanie.

[179] Recueil general des questions traictées es Conferences du Bureau
d'Adresse. Paris, 1656.

[180] Hist. Ecclesiast. Henry XVII. 53.

[181] Bodin, Demonomanie.

[182] Nicolas Renny.

[183] Pere Crespet, De la Haine de Satan.

[184] Boileau, Hist. des Flagellants; Pic de la Mirandole, Tr. contre les
Astrolopies, liv. iii. ch. 27.

[185] Bayle's Dictionary, Vo. _Picard_.

[186] Lenglet, Dufresnoy sur Marot, iii. 97; Richelet's Dict.

[187] Brantome, in his Dames Galantes, describing a marriage, says,
"_Chacun estoit a l'escontes, a l'accoustumée_."

[188] Vies des Hommes Illust.: Bonnivet.

[189] Sauval, Amours des rois de France; from which work many of the facts
in the text throughout this chapter are drawn.

[190] Le divorce Satirique.

[191] Bayle's Dictionary, Vo. Henry IV.

[192] De Matrimonio, Le Somme des Peches.

[193] Charles V. 17th Octob. 1367.

[194] A.D. 1365.

[195] Cabinet du Roi de France, Paris, 1581.

[196] Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, ii.
473.

[197] See Taylor's House of Orleans, vol. i. and Memoires de la Duchesse
d'Orleans, _passim_.

[198] Nicolas Leoniceno, De Morbo Gallico, and others.

[199] Ulrich de Hutton, De Morbi Gallici curatione.

[200] Roderic Dias, Contra las Bubas.

[201] W. Beckett, Phil. Trans. vol. xxx.

[202] Registres du Parlement de Paris, 1497.

[203] Jerome Fracastor, De Morb. Contag.

[204] Registres du Parlement de Paris, 1505.

[205] Cullerier: Report of Chirurgien Mareschal; Report of M. de Breteuil
to the Government; Parent-Duchatelet, ii. 180.

[206] Cullerier; Parent-Duchatelet, ii. 184.

[207] Parent-Duchatelet, ii. 186.

[208] Parent-Duchatelet, ii. 124.

[209] Parent-Duchatelet, ii. 130.

[210] Id. ii. 138.

[211] MSS. Reports quoted by Parent-Duchatelet, i. 30; Restif de la
Bretonne; _Pornographe_.

[212] Parent-Duchatelet, ii. 273.

[213] Id. ii. 398.

[214] Id. ii. 403.

[215] Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino; Ranke's History of the Popes; Gibbon's
Rome.

[216] Ranke, ii. Appendix.

[217] In 1849, when the Roman people opened the palace of the Inquisition,
there was found in the library a department styled "Summary of
Solicitations," being a record of cases in which women had been solicited
to acts of criminality by their confessors in the pontifical state, and
the summary is not brief.--Dwight's "Roman Republic in 1849," p. 115.

[218] Discorsi, i. 12.

[219] Life of Leo X. Appendix.

[220] Fabronius, Leo X. p. 287.

[221] Paris de Grassine, Memoirs of the Court of Julius II. p. 579.

[222] Jovius, lib. iii. p. 56.

[223] De Commines, v. ii. c. 6.

[224] The Roman Pontiffs, New York, 1845.

[225] After the occupation by the French in 1809, a collection of facts
was made by the French authorities, with a view to a census, but this we
have been unable to obtain.

[226] Medical and Chirurgical Review, April, 1854.

[227] Ibid.

[228] Harper's Magazine, February, 1855, p. 326; Italian Life and Morals.

[229] Rome, by a New Yorker, 1845.

[230] Sharpe's Letters from Italy, 1705.

[231] History of Italy: Family Library, vol. iii.

[232] Roman Republic, 1849; Rome, by a New Yorker.

[233] Valery.

[234] Prescott, History of Ferdinand and Isabella, i. 66.

[235] Prescott, i. 66, _et seq._

[236] Id. i. 227.

[237] Id. iii. 171.

[238] Voltaire says that these prurient questions were debated with a
gusto and a minuteness of detail not found elsewhere. He instances a
variety of these absurd theorems.

[239] It may be imagined, as was the case in Berlin, that this behest
flowed from the irregular manner and conduct of the clergy; but some of
the fathers of the Church entertained and avowed this opinion at a time
when the morals of the clergy were not open to impeachment.

[240] Prescott's History of Ferdinand and Isabella, ii. 502 (note). The
learned historian argues the subject at some length.

[241] Byron commemorates the beauty of the women of Cadiz, and, in his
description of the shipwreck, saves the mate from being eaten by his
starved companions on account of

"A small present made to him at Cadiz,
By general subscription of the ladies."

[242] Townsend: Travels in Spain in 1786 and 1787.

[243] Townsend.

[244] Attaché in Madrid: Appleton, 1856, p. 64.

[245] Duc de Chatelet's Travels in Portugal.

[246] Kingston, Sketches in Lusitania, 1845.

[247] De la Prostitution dans la Ville d'Alger depuis la conquête, par E.
A. Duchesne. Paris, Bailliere, 1853.

[248] Ib. p. 64, _et seq._

[249] Duchesne, p. 22, 171.

[250] Duchesne, p. 31.

[251] Id. p. 172.

[252] Id. p. 54, 56.

[253] Duchesne, p. 58.

[254] Id. p. 70, _et seq._

[255] Duchesne, p. 132.

[256] Id. p. 144.

[257] Id. p. 148.

[258] Duchesne, p. 152, _et seq._

[259] Id. p. 176.

[260] Id. p. 192.

[261] Id. p. 198.

[262] W. Trollope's Belgium. Scarcely a more liberal work toward the
Belgians than Mrs. Trollope's toward ourselves.

[263] Jäger's "Schwabischen Städtwesen des Mittelalters."

[264] Hamburg and Altona Journal, 1805, iii. 50.

[265] _Vorschriften die Bordelle und öffentlichen Madchen betreffend_:
Hamburg, 1834.

[266] This calculation is not very explicitly stated. It is intended to
show that syphilis is not dangerously prevalent among the general
population. The police arrive at this conclusion by deducting the cases
treated in the Charité (which they estimate at two thirds) from the total
population, and then divide the remaining cases among the bulk of the
people, to prove that only a very small proportion are exposed to venereal
influence. We transcribe the statement literally, but do not consider it
of much value.

[267] Laing's Denmark in 1851.

[268] Braestrup, Director of Police at Copenhagen, on Prostitution and
public Health.

[269] Report on Switzerland to the British Parliament, 1836, by Dr. (now
Sir John) Bowring. He was sent on a Continental tour of inquiry into the
condition of the working classes, in reference to the English Poor-laws.

[270] Mrs. Strutt's Switzerland, ii. 231.

[271] Karamsin.

[272] Villebois.

[273] Memoires Secrets de la Cour de Russia. Villebois.

[274] Karamsin.

[275] Karamsin, p. 424.

[276] Duchesse d'Abrantes, p. 34.

[277]

"... Miss Pratasoff then there
Named from her mystic office l'Eprouveuse,
A term inexplicable to the muse,
With her then, as in humble duty bound,
Juan retired."--_Byron._

[278] D'Abrantes, p. 294.

[279] Id. p. 297.

[280] Kohl.

[281] Golovin states that the whip is an article in frequent requisition
in the conjugal state.

[282] Von Tietz, p. 73.

[283] Kohl. There is some difficulty in estimating the ruble from the
difference in the currency of Russian silver coin. We believe this sum
would be upward of a million dollars.

[284] Von Tietz says that, as regards morality, the institution does not
work badly, for there are comparatively less illegitimate births at St.
Petersburgh than in most other cities, but he gives no figures to support
this assertion.

[285] Golovin.

[286] Swedish Registrar-General's Reports, 1838, 1839.

[287] Baron Gall's Reiser durch Schweden, Bremen, 1838; Laing's Tour
through Sweden; Baron Von Strombeck Durstellunger, 1840.

[288] Spelman.

[289] Bede, lib. i. cap. 27.

[290] Padre Paolo.

[291] Wallingford.

[292] Leges Saxonicæ.

[293] A popular ballad which narrates the particulars describes the blow
as having dyed Fair Rosamond's lips

"A coral red:
Hard was the heart that gave the blow,
Soft were the lips that bled."

[294] State Trials, i. 228.

[295] Evelyn. 4th February, 1684-5.

[296] For the prose writers of those days who give lively pictures of
manners and morals, the reader is referred to the pages of Fielding,
Smollett, and especially De Foe, who wrote much upon low life.

[297] "Pure, and above all reproach in her own domestic life, the queen
knew how to enforce at her court the virtues, or, at the very least, the
semblance of the virtues which she practiced. To no other woman, probably,
had the cause of good morals in England ever owed so deep an
obligation."--Lord Mahon's History of England, 1713-1782, vol. iv., p.
221, 222.

[298] It was asserted some years ago, and by many believed, that after his
death a large number of prurient French prints, which were in the
Custom-house of London, and designed for the private amusement of the
king, were burned. The story of the prints and their deflagration may be
true, but it is very questionable if they were for royal use. A number of
low class London papers always attacked George IV. personally, among which
the Weekly Dispatch (the "Sunday Flash" of Warren's novel of "Ten Thousand
a Year") took a prominent position from the coarseness of its language and
the acerbity of its animosity, assumed at a time when party feeling ran
high, as an attractive bait to its readers.

[299] Census of Great Britain, 1851.

[300] Dr. Ryan.

[301] The ineffectual provisions of the law have recently engaged the
attention of the inhabitants of London, and a meeting was held in January
of the present year (1858) to consider the evil, and decide what steps
should be taken in the premises. We shall notice in another part of this
work some of the suggestions made on that occasion.

[302] General secondary questions do not come within the scope of this
work, but the labors of these dwelling improvement associations are
intimately connected with the subject we have now under investigation. In
London, model lodging-houses for single men, single women, and married
couples with their children, have been tried and found eminently
successful, both as a moderate interest-paying investment, and as a very
admirable arrangement for promoting the comfort and health of the working
classes. The details given some two years ago, through the daily papers,
on the lodgings of the poor and the very poor of New York, were frightful
enough to excite the active sympathy of the benevolent capitalists of this
great city. The very best philanthropy is that which teaches and enables
the poor man to benefit his own condition. This principle is practically
in operation all over the United States: but in great cities, the freedom
of action, and the directly beneficial results of frugality and industry,
are not so immediate as in country places. The attempt by the poor to
improve their own dwellings in these large cities is almost hopeless,
because it does not depend upon individual exertions, but on combination
both of money and knowledge. The "how, when, and where" have to be found
out and carried through: very small difficulties these, and easily
overcome, if those who have the requisite means to carry out such a
reform, and thus lend their aid to the solution of an important social
problem, have an inclination commensurate with their resources.

[303] See, in particular, as regards London, Statistical Society's
Reports, vol. xiii.; Reports of Metropolitan Association for improving the
Habitations of the Poor; Board of Health Papers. And for the country
districts, Health of Towns Reports; Report on the Employment of Women and
Children in Agriculture, 1843.

[304] Mayhew's Letters to the (London) Morning Chronicle; Mayhew's London
Labor and the London Poor.

[305] Tait's Prostitution in Edinburgh.

[306] These conclusions are not always reliable. Other causes may operate.
If we recollect rightly, Edinburgh is a garrison town. In factory towns,
moreover, we should always expect to find a very large amount of
immorality, which would somewhat displace open and avowed prostitution for
hire.

[307] Mayhew's Letters to the London _Morning Chronicle_.

[308] When Mrs. Sydney Herbert instituted her Distressed Needlewoman's
Society, a great deal was thought to have been accomplished in one
particular branch of female labor--the millinery and dress-making
business--when the leading employers had been induced to promise that the
working-day should be restricted to twelve hours.--_Needlewoman's Society
Report_, 1848.

[309] It would be interesting to know whether this illicit intercourse is
by way of cohabitation or merely temporary. Instances are not rare of
people cohabiting who allege themselves too poor to pay the marriage fees.
In order to obviate this, it is customary for ministers in poor and
populous parishes in England, where the circumstances of individual
parishioners are not known to them, to invite all parties who are living
in concubinage to come and be married free of expense. Many avail
themselves of this offer.

[310] While this work was passing through the press, we met with a recent
publication by Wm. Acton, Esq., M.R.C.S. of London, entitled "Prostitution
considered in its Moral, Social, and Sanitary Aspects," which gives later
information on this point. The Metropolitan Police estimated the number of
prostitutes in London in 1841, and again in 1857, with the following
results:

+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| | 1841. | 1857. |
|---------------------------------------------|-------|-------|
|Well-dressed prostitutes in brothels | 2071 | 921 |
|Well-dressed prostitutes walking the streets | 199 | 2616 |
|Prostitutes infesting low neighborhoods | 5344 | 5063 |
| |-------|-------|
| Total | 9409 | 8600 |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

Mr. Acton says, "The return gives, after all, but a faint idea of the
grand total of prostitution. * * * * Were there any possibility of
reckoning all those in London who would come within the definition of
prostitutes, I am inclined to think that the estimates of the boldest who
have preceded me would be thrown into the shade."--P. 16-18.

[311] An estimate of Cork was made in 1847 for the _Medico-Chirurgical
Review_, which gave two hundred and fifty prostitutes living in eighty
brothels, besides one hundred clandestine prostitutes. Their ages were
stated as between sixteen and twenty years.

[312] This may be deemed a foregone conclusion, but it was based upon
previous inquiries in individual cases.

[313] We do not understand this figure. The sum of the sewing trades of
London is nearly twenty times this number. Perhaps Mr. Mayhew refers only
to slop-work, including the very commonest garments, both woolen and
cotton, or even to that portion of the trade that have their principal
abode in the particular localities visited.

[314] The reader will notice that neither Dr. Ryan, Mr. Tait, nor the
views as to the duration of life expressed in the portion of this work
devoted to New York, agree with those German authors who have asserted the
healthfulness of prostitution. See Chapter XVI., Hamburg.

[315] At the meeting in London to which allusion has been made, Mr. Acton
(late Surgeon to the Islington Dispensary and Fellow of the Royal Medical
Society) said that, "in his opinion, the subject under discussion was one
worth legislating for. As a surgeon, he had investigated the subject not
only in London, but in Paris and other Continental capitals, and he could
speak with some authority as to the statistics of prostitution, and the
manner in which the women became, as it were, absorbed in the population
by whom they were surrounded. _From calculations based upon the census
tables, it had come out that of all the unmarried women of full age in the
country one in every 13 or 14 were immoral._ This might appear a startling
announcement, but the calculation had been made upon returns, the truth of
which had not been questioned. It was a popular error to suppose that
these women died young, and made their exits from life in hospitals and
work-houses. The fact was not so. Women of that class were all picked
lives, and dissipation did not usually kill them. They led a life of
prostitution for two, three, or four years, and then either married or got
into some service or employment, and gradually became amalgamated with
society. It was estimated that in this manner about 25 per cent. of the
whole number amalgamated each year with the population."

From these remarks we may deduce the same continuance of a life of
prostitution as given in the text, namely, an average of four years; but
they advance another theory as to its termination, substituting
reformation for death. We should be slow to give an unqualified
endorsement to this opinion. That cases of reformation do take place, and
probably to a greater extent than is generally imagined, can not be
denied; but that one fourth of the total number of prostitutes abandon
their sinful life every year, and become virtuous members of society, is a
conclusion that American experience will not support. In England and on
the European continent there may be a class of men in the lower ranks of
life who do not regard virtue as a _sine qua non_ in the choice of a wife;
indeed, the notorious facility with which the cast-off mistresses of
noblemen or gentlemen can be married to a dependent sufficiently proves
this; but in this country public opinion sets strongly in the opposite
direction. Here, if a woman once errs, or is even suspected of error, she
is rigorously excluded from virtuous society, and, although her subsequent
life may be irreproachable, the lapse is seldom forgiven. The old Roman
law, "Once a prostitute, always a prostitute," is too sternly enforced on
this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Acton's speech is the first intimation we
have met of so very liberal a benevolence in England.

[316] We have calculated that there are upward of six hundred thousand
women in London between fifteen and forty-five years old. The proportion
of married women among these would be 370,000 and upward; unmarried women
over twenty years, and widows, about 314,000.

[317] A very singular fact in connection with the census is that there is
not a single individual returned as a prostitute. This is not that the
authorities do not take cognizance of crime, for there are 22,451 female
prisoners in Great Britain, all of whom, however, except 1274, are
returned as having some legal occupation. There are 7600 female vagrants,
sleeping in barns, tents, etc., of whom 2600 are under twenty years of
age.

[318] Thomas Fowell Ruxton, on Prison Discipline.

[319] Lord Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.

[320] _Rosa Anglica_, Pavia, 1492.

[321] A brief treatise touching the cure of the disease now usually called
Lues Venerea. By W. Clovves, one of her Majesty's Chirurgeons. 1569: p.
149.

[322] Madame Calderon de la Barca.

[323] Clavijero.

[324] Waddy Thompson, Mexico in 1846, p. 115.

[325] Madame Calderon de la Barca, p. 259.

[326] Norman, Yucatan.

[327] Stevens, Travels in Central America.

[328] Among the Napuals, a remnant of the ancient Aztec inhabitants,
marriage seems to have been under the direction of the chiefs, and
consisted in first submitting the parties to lustrations, such as washing
them in a river, and afterward tying them together in the bride's house,
whither the relations brought presents to the new couple.

It was customary for only the kindred to lament the death of ordinary
persons, but the decease of a cazique or war-chief was signalized by a
general mourning for four days. Rape was punished with death, adultery by
making the offender the slave of the injured husband, "unless pardoned by
the high-priest on account of past services in war." There were certain
degrees of relationship within which it was unlawful to marry, and sexual
intercourse in such limits was punished with death. Upon matters of this
kind there existed the greatest rigor, for, says Herrera, "he who courted
or made signs to a married woman was banished." Fornication was punished
by whipping.--_Squier's Notes on Central America_, p. 346.

[329] Squier, p. 50.

[330] Peru; Reiseskizzen in den Jahren 1838-1842. (Peru, Sketches of
Travel.) By J. J. Von Tschudi. 2 vols. St. Gallen, 1846.

[331] Horace St. John.

[332] Stewart's Brazil and La Plata: New York, 1856.

[333] Ewbank's Brazil, p. 135.

[334] Ib. p. 141.

[335] Lewis and Clarke's Expedition across the Rocky Mountains, vol. ii.
p. 144.

[336] Thatcher's Indian Traits, vol. i. p. 51.

[337] Lewis and Clarke's Expedition, i. 358.

[338] Ib. i. 166.

[339] Id. ib.

[340] Indian Traits, i. 104.

[341] Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, p. 148.

[342] Beckwourth, p. 201.

[343] Id. p. 401.

[344] Indian Traits, i. p. 114.

[345] Beckwourth, p. 169.

[346] Beckwourth, p. 212.

[347] Murray's British North America, vol. i. p. 115.

[348] Murray's British North America, vol. i. p. 94.

[349] Indian Traits, i. p. 136.

[350] Lewis and Clarke's Expedition, i. p. 135.

[351] Ib. i. p. 151.

[352] Beckwourth, p. 179.

[353] Murray's British America, i. p. 94.

[354] Indian Traits, i. p. 128.

[355] Murray's British America, i. 94.

[356] Beckwourth, p. 157.

[357] Beckwourth, p. 238.

[358] Lewis and Clarke's Expedition, i. 166.

[359] Id. ib.

[360] Murray's British America, i. 125.

[361] The principal facts in this and the following chapter are taken from
Mr. Horace St. John's article on Prostitution, in Mayhew's "London Labor
and the London Poor."

[362] Russell's History of Polynesia, p. 75.

[363] Their institution is ascribed to Oro, the god of war. The
resemblance between Areoi and [Greek: Aeês], the Greek god of war, is a
coincidence.

[364] South Sea Missions, p. 88.

[365] U. S. Exploring Expedition, vol. ii. p. 22.

[366] Missionary Voyage of Ship Duff, 1796, p. 336.

[367] U. S. Exploring Expedition, vol. ii. p. 80.

[368] Ib. 148.

[369] Wilkes, vol. iv. p. 77.

[370] Since the preceding paragraphs were written, the operations of the
Allied Powers against China, and the capture of Canton, have given some
farther insight into the domestic economy of this people. The special
correspondent of the London _Times_, writing from Hong Kong, February 22,
1858, thus describes Chinese holidays:

"During the _entrée acte_ all China has been exploding crackers, and Hong
Kong has been celebrating its 'Isthmian games.' Toward the close of the
three days of festivity the Chinese holiday became almost exciting. If
they had kept up half as sharp a fire at Canton on the 29th of December as
they did on the 14th of February, we should never have got over the walls
with a less loss than 500 men. The streets both of Canton and Hong Kong
were piled with myriads of exploded cracker carcasses. In Hong Kong, where
I passed the last day of these festivities, grave men and sedate children
were from morning till midnight hanging strings of these noisy things from
their balconies, and perpetually renewing them as they exploded. The
sing-song women, in their rich, handsome dresses, were screeching their
shrill songs, and twanging their two-stringed lutes on every veranda in
the Chinese quarter, while the lords of creation, assembled at a round
table, were cramming the day-long repast. The women--hired singing women
of not doubtful reputation--in the intervals of their music, take their
seats at the table opposite the men. They do not eat, but their business
being to promote the conviviality of the feast, they challenge the men to
the samshu cup, and drink with them. It is astonishing to see what a
quantity of diluted samshu these painted and brocaded she-Celestials can
drink without any apparent effect. Ever and anon one of the company
retires to a couch and takes an opium pipe, and then returns and
recommences his meal. I was invited to one of these feasts; the dishes
were excellent, but it lasted till I loathed the sight of food. I believe
the Chinese spend fabulous sums in these entertainments; the sing-song
women are often brought from distances, and are certainly chosen with some
discrimination. They are an imitation of the Chinese lady, and, as the
Chinese lady has no education and no duties, the difference between the
poor sing-song girl and the poor abject wife is probably not observable in
appearance or manner. The dress is particularly modest and becoming. They
all have great quantities of black hair. If they would let it fall
disheveled down their backs as the Manilla women do, they would be more
picturesque, but not formal and decent, as China is, even in its
wantonness. The Chinawoman's hair is gummed and built up into a structure
rather resembling a huge flat-iron, and the edifice is adorned with combs,
and jewels, and flowers, arranged with a certain taste. An embroidered
blue silk tunic reaches from her chin nearly to her ankles. Below the
tunic appear the gay trowsers, wrought with gold or silver thread; the
instep glancing through the thin, white silk stockings, and a very small
foot (when left to nature the Chinese have beautiful feet and hands) in a
rich slipper, with a tremendous white sole in form of an inverted pyramid.
In these sing-song girls you see the originals of the Chinese
pictures--the painted faces, the high-arched, penciled eyebrows, the
small, round mouth, the rather full and slightly sensual lip, naturally or
artificially of a deep vermilion, the long, slit-shaped, half closed eyes,
suggestive of indolence and slyness. What the voluble and jocose
conversation addressed to them by the men may mean I can not tell, but
their manners are quite decent, their replies are short and reserved, and
every gesture, or song, or cup of samshu seems to be regulated by a known
ceremonial."

[371] Golownin, vol. iii. p. 52.

[372] Perry's Expedition, p. 462.

[373] Arctic Explorations, vol. i. p. 373.

[374] Ibid. ii. 250.

[375] Ibid. ii. 115.

[376] Arctic Explorations, ii. 123.

[377] Ibid. ii. 125.

[378] Ibid. ii 109.

[379] Ibid. ii. 121.

[380] U. S. Census, 1850.

[381] Compendium of U. S. Census, 1850, p. 148.

[382] Compendium of United States Census, 1850, p. 142, etc.; Census of
the State of New York, 1855, p. 16; Report of the Board of Education of
New York City, 1857, p. 13, 18, 22, etc.

[383] New York City Inspector's Reports, 1854, 1855, 1856.

[384] New York State Census, 1855, p. 38.

[385] New York City Inspector's Reports, 1854, 1855, 1856.

[386] Report on Infant Mortality in large Cities, by D. Meredith Reese,
M.D., LL.D., p. 8.

[387] Ib. p. 13.

[388] Report on Infant Mortality in large Cities, by D. Meredith Reese,
M.D., LL.D., p. 9.

[389] Since these pages were prepared for the press, a work has been
reprinted in New York, called "A Woman's Thoughts upon Women, by the
Author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman,'" which contains many passages
pertinent to this inquiry. The high reputation of its author (Miss
Mulock), not only for literary ability, but for practical benevolence and
womanly charity, will be sufficient apology for submitting some of her
remarks to the reader in the shape of notes. It is satisfactory to know
that many sentiments advanced herein are such as Miss Mulock has advocated
on the other side of the Atlantic. On the subject of seduction, she
remarks:

"I think it can not be doubted that even the loss of personal chastity
does not indicate total corruption, or entail permanent degradation; that
after it, and in spite of it, many estimable and womanly qualities may be
found existing, not only in our picturesque _Nell Gwynnes_ and _Peg
Woffingtons_, but our poor every-day sinners: the servant obliged to be
dismissed without a character and with a baby; the seamstress quitting
starvation for elegant infamy; the illiterate village lass, who thinks it
so grand to be made a lady of--so much better to be a rich man's mistress
than a working man's ill-used wife, or, rather, slave.

"Till we allow that no one sin, not even this sin, necessarily corrupts
the entire character, we shall scarcely be able to judge it with that
fairness which gives hopes of our remedying it, or trying to lessen, in
ever so minute a degree, by our individual dealing with any individual
case that comes in our way, the enormous aggregate of misery that it
entails. This it behooves us to do, even on selfish grounds, for it
touches us closer than many of us are aware--ay, in our own hearths and
homes; in the sons and brothers that we have to send out to struggle in a
world of which we at the fireside know absolutely nothing: if we marry, in
the fathers we give to our innocent children, the servants we trust their
infancy to, and the influences to which we are obliged to expose them
daily and hourly, unless we were to bring them up in a sort of domestic
Happy Valley, which their first effort would be to get out of as fast as
ever they could. And supposing we are saved from all this; that our
position is one peculiarly exempt from evil; that if pollution in any form
comes nigh us, we sweep it hastily and noiselessly away from our doors,
and think we are right and safe--alas! we forget that a refuse-heap
outside her gate may breed a plague even in a queen's palace."--_A Woman's
Thoughts upon Women_ (New York ed.), p. 261.

[390] Miss Mulock remarks on female occupations: "Equality of sexes is not
in the nature of things. One only 'right' we have to assert in common with
mankind, and that is as much in our hands as theirs--the right of having
something to do."--_A Woman's Thoughts upon Women_ (New York ed.), p. 13.

"The Father of all has never put one man or one woman into this world
without giving each something to do there."--Ibid., p. 19.

"This fact remains patent to any person of common sense and experience,
that in the present day one half of our women are obliged to take care of
themselves, obliged to look solely to themselves for maintenance,
position, occupation, amusement, reputation, life."--Ibid., p. 29.

"Is society to draw up a code of regulations as to what is proper for us
to do, and what not?"--Ibid., p. 31.

"The world is slowly discovering that women are capable for far more
crafts than was supposed, if only they are properly educated for them;
that they are good accountants, shop-keepers, drapers' assistants,
telegraph clerks, watch-makers; and doubtless would be better if the
ordinary training which almost every young man has a chance of getting
were thought equally indispensable to young women."--Ibid., p. 76.

[391] Histoire Morale des Femmes. Par M. Ernest Legouvé. Paris, 1849.

[392] Westminster Review (London), July, 1850. American edition, vol. xxx.
No. 2.

[393] De la Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, vol. i. p. 96.

[394] "The root of all improvement must be the mistress's own conviction,
religious and sincere, of the truth that she and her servants share one
common womanhood, with aims, hopes, and interests distinctly defined, and
pursued with equal eagerness; with a life here meant as a school for the
next life; with an immortal soul."--_A Woman's Thoughts upon Women_ (New
York ed.), p. 130.

[395] "Neither labor nor material can possibly be got 'cheaply,' that is,
below its average acknowledged cost, without _somebody being cheated_:
consequently, these devotees to cheapness are, very frequently, little
better than genteel swindlers."--_A Woman's Thoughts upon Women_ (New York
ed.), p. 72.

[396] Mary Barton, by Mrs. Gaskell, vol. i., p. 258 (London edition.)

[397] Report of the Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island, to the
Governors of the Alms House, 1854, p. 26.

[398] On a former page the results of a police investigation of the number
of prostitutes in London in the year 1857 is given. It will be remembered
that only 8600 common women were reported, in a population of nearly
2,500,000. The inquiries in New York and London would alike lead to the
opinion that the extent of the vice is generally overrated.

[399] Report of Resident Physician, Blackwell's Island, to the Governors
of the Alms-house, New York, for 1856, p. 40.

[400] Ibid., 1857, p. 26.

[401] The list of questions inclosed was a printed copy of the
interrogatories used in New York, and already given in these pages.

[402] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 49.

[403] Ibid. p. 87.

[404] Ibid. p. 101.

[405] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 49.

[406] Ibid. p. 57.

[407] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 94.

[408] Ibid. p. 69.

[409] Ibid. p. 91.

[410] Ibid. p 104.

[411] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 141, 142.

[412] Ibid. p. 145.

[413] Ibid. p. 150.

[414] Ibid. p. 152.

[415] Ibid. p. 152, 153.

[416] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 128.

[417] Ibid. p. 130.

[418] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 164.

[419] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 180-184.

[420] Ibid. p. 163.

[421] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 162 (note).

[422] Ibid. p. 166.

[423] Ibid. p. 182.

[424] Compendium of Seventh Census, p. 61.

[425] Ibid. p. 79.

[426] "That for a single offense, however grave, a whole life should be
blasted, is a doctrine repugnant even to Nature's own dealings in the
visible world. There her voice clearly says, 'Let all these wonderful
powers of vital renewal have free play; let the foul flesh slough itself
away; lop off the gangrened limb; enter into life, maimed if it must be,'
but never until the last moment of total dissolution does she say, 'Thou
shalt not enter into life at all.'

"Therefore, once let a woman feel that 'while there is life there is
hope,' dependent on the only one condition that she shall _sin no more_,
and what a future you open to her! what a weight you lift off from her
poor miserable spirit, which might otherwise be crushed down to the lowest
deep, to that which is far worse than any bodily pollution, ineradicable
corruption of soul."--_A Woman's Thoughts upon Women_ (New York ed.), p.
269.

"It may often be noticed the less virtuous people are, the more they
shrink away from the slightest whiff of the odor of unsanctity. The good
are ever the most charitable, the pure are the most brave. I believe there
are hundreds and thousands of Englishwomen who would willingly throw the
shelter of their stainless repute around any poor creature who came to
them and said honestly, 'I have sinned, help me that I may sin no more.'
But the unfortunates will not believe this. They are like the poor
Indians, who think it necessary to pacify the evil principle by a greater
worship than that which they offer to the Good Spirit, because, they say,
the Bad Spirit is the stronger."--Ibid. p. 272.

[427] Captain Ingraham.

[428] "Surely the consciousness of lost innocence must be the most awful
punishment to any woman, and from it no kindness, no sympathy, no
concealment of shame, or even restoration to good repute, can entirely
free her. She must bear her burden, lighter or heavier as it may seem at
different times, and she must bear it to the day of her death. I think
this fact alone is enough to make a chaste woman's first feeling toward an
unchaste that of unqualified, unmitigated pity.

"Allowing the pity, what is the next thing to be done? Surely there must
be some light beyond that of mere compassion to guide her in her
after-conduct toward them. Where shall we find this light? In the world
and its ordinary code of social morality, suited to social conscience? I
fear not. The general opinion, even among good men, seems to be that this
great question is a very sad thing, but a sort of unconquerable necessity;
there is no use in talking about it, and, indeed, the less it is talked of
the better. Good women are much of the same mind. The laxer-principled of
both sexes treat the matter with philosophical indifference, or with the
kind of laugh that makes the blood boil in any truly virtuous heart.

"I believe there is no other light on this difficult question than that
given by the New Testament. There, clear and plain, and every where
repeated, shines the doctrine that for every crime, being repented of and
forsaken, there is forgiveness with Heaven, and if with Heaven there ought
to be with men.

"When you shut the door of hope on any human soul you may at once give up
all chance of its reformation. As well bid a man eat without food, see
without light, or breathe without air, as bid him mend his ways, while at
the same time you tell him that, however he amends, he will be in just the
same position, the same hopelessly degraded, unpardoned, miserable
sinner."--_A Woman's Thoughts upon Women_ (New York ed.), p. 266.

[429] "We have no right, mercifully constituted with less temptation to
evil than men, to shrink with sanctimonious ultra-delicacy from the barest
mention of things we must know to exist. If we do not know it, our
ignorance is at once both helpless and dangerous; narrows our judgment,
exposes us to a thousand painful mistakes, and greatly limits our powers
of usefulness."--_A Woman's Thoughts upon Women_ (New York edition), p.
255.

"No single woman who takes any thought of what is going on around her, no
mistress or mother who requires constantly servants for her house and
nursemaids for her children, can or dare blind herself to the fact. Better
face truth at once in all its bareness than be swaddled up forever in the
folds of a silken falsehood."--Ib., p. 259.

"Many of us will not investigate this subject because they are afraid:
afraid not so much of being, as being thought to be, especially by the
other sex, incorrect, indelicate, unfeminine; of being supposed to know
more than they ought to know, or than the present refinement of society--a
good and beautiful thing when real--concludes that they do know.

"Oh! women, women! why have you not more faith in yourselves, in that
strong, inner purity, which alone can make a woman brave! which, if she
knows herself to be clean in heart and desire, in body and soul, loving
cleanness for its own sake, and not for the credit that it brings, will
give her a freedom of action, and a fearlessness of consequences, which
are to her a greater safeguard than any external decorum. To be, and not
to seem, is the amulet of her innocence."--Ib., p. 261.

[430] "Reformatories, Magdalene Institutions, and the like, are admirable
in their way, but there are numberless cases in which individual judgment
and help alone are possible. It is this, the train of thought which shall
result in act, and which I desire to suggest to individual minds, in the
hope of arousing that imperceptibly small influence of the many, which
forms the strongest lever of universal opinion.

"All I can do--all, I fear, that any one can do by mere speech, is to
impress upon every woman, and chiefly upon those who, reared innocently in
safe homes, view the wicked world without somewhat like gazers at a show
or spectators at a battle, shocked, wondering, perhaps pitying a little,
but not understanding at all, that repentance is possible. Also, that once
having returned to a chaste life, a woman's former life should never be
'cast up' against her; that she should be allowed to resume, if not her
pristine position, at least one that is full of usefulness, pleasantness,
and respect, a respect the amount of which must be determined by her own
daily conduct. She should be judged solely by what she is now, and not by
what she has been. That judgment may be, ought to be stern and fixed as
justice itself with regard to her present, and even her past so far as
concerns the crime committed; but it ought never to take the law into its
own hands toward the criminal, who may long since have become less a
criminal than a sufferer. Virtue degrades herself, and loses every vestige
of her power, when her dealings with vice sink into a mere matter of
individual opinion, personal dislike, or selfish fear of harm. For all
offenses, punishment, retributive and inevitable, must come; but
punishment is one thing, revenge is another. One only, who is Omniscient
as well as Omnipotent, can declare, 'Vengeance is Mine.'"--_A Woman's
Thoughts upon Women_ (New York ed.), p. 275.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with
transliterations in this text version.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The History of Prostitution - Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World" ***

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