CHAPTER I

PROSTITUTION: DEFINITION AND EXTENT

Scope of investigation.—General uniformity of phenomena.—Prostitution an urban problem.—Medieval and modern prostitution differ.—Prostitution defined.—Need of broad conception.—Immorality distinguished from prostitution.—Prevalence and significance of immorality.—Prostitution not necessarily a permanent status.—Mortality of prostitutes.—Number of prostitutes.—Forms taken by prostitution.—Influence of alcohol.—Homosexuality.—The pimp.—The Paris prostitute.—The cost of prostitution.

Prostitution will be studied in these pages from the standpoint of the practical experience of European countries. An effort will be made to ascertain its forms and extent, the sources from which it is recruited, the conditions that either cause or conduce to it, the procedure of different communities in dealing with it and with the conditions responsible for it, the measures which have been employed by way of combat or control, and the results which have been thus obtained. Material will be drawn from extended personal inquiry and observation in the larger cities of England, Scotland, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria-Hungary,[1]—from the countries, in a word, that may be grouped as Western Europe, because they are characterized by a considerable degree of similarity in all that pertains to social life, national ideals, and political institutions.

In the countries just specified, neither law nor opinion is strictly homogeneous: in consequence, the phenomena under consideration respond to differences of viewpoint or pressure by somewhat altering their external manifestations. The resulting divergencies are at times only superficial, at times important enough to affect, perhaps, the volume of vice itself. None the less at bottom the situation is sufficiently similar to support the generalized method of treatment which has been adopted in this book. Distinctions will not be ignored; but on the whole it will appear that they serve rather to emphasize fundamental agreement. Recent investigation, indeed, tends to show that such agreement is of far wider scope than is here assumed; for in prostitution, if nowhere else, the old adage holds—“There is nothing new under the sun.” The source-books of both ancient and medieval worlds disclose an amazing identity with modern times in this melancholy respect.[2]

Such differences as still persist—in regard to viewpoint, form, or public policy,—are, at least in the area here dealt with, in a fair way to disappear. The progress of democratic thought and government, increasingly easy and unobstructed trading, the advance of industrialism with the revision of the ethical code following in the wake of practical sex equality, finally, even deliberate imitation are rapidly developing decided homogeneity of attitude and effort in reference to many fundamental human concerns. The student of the particular subject with which we are occupied is, therefore, nowadays, more and more likely to be struck by the uniformity of phenomena rather than by local or national peculiarities, in the course of an inquiry that begins in Glasgow and concludes in Budapest.

At the outset it is important to observe that throughout Western Europe prostitution has in the last few centuries undergone essentially the same evolution. Prostitution is an urban problem, its precise character largely dependent on the size of the town. Now the medieval town in Western Europe was small. The really great cities of the middle ages were all Islamic: Constantinople, Bagdad, and Cairo numbered more than a million souls apiece, Seville and Cordova were each half as large. Beside these the main cities of Western Europe were in point of size insignificant: Paris had a dubious 200,000; Vienna, 50,000; London, 35,000; Cologne, 30,000; Hamburg, 18,000; Dresden, 5,000. Towns without water communication rarely reached 25,000; many important places did not exceed 5,000.[3] Size largely determined the character of urban life and therewith the nature of medieval European prostitution. The inhabitants of these hardly more than villages were well known to one another; the family was still an intact organization; the floating population—aside from organized movements like the crusades, pilgrimages, or armies,—was not voluminous; at any rate the stranger was known as such. Medieval prostitution was, in the main, of two varieties, resident or itinerant: the former more or less commonly living in regular houses of prostitution—the so-called bordells; the latter, either vagrant or informally attached like the camp-follower to the temporal or spiritual armies that swept to and fro across the continent, now waging war, now fulfilling religious vows. But whether resident or itinerant, the prostitute was a marked woman in the small medieval community. Even if her vocation was plied secretly, her true character inevitably and quickly became notorious; still more so, of course, if carried on professionally, for then she was visibly to be discriminated by garb, appearance, abode, and outward manner of living. The distinction between the vicious and the virtuous woman was thus in the middle ages uncommonly broad and clear.

Modern conditions contrast strongly with those that I have just sketched. The cities, themselves huge, are for practical purposes still further enlarged by the subsidiary communities that hang about their fringes. Berlin, for example, so late as 1816 a town of 197,000 inhabitants, contained in 1910, 2,071,257; Charlottenburg, to mention only one of the suburbs practically indistinguishable from it, adds 305,978. London numbers 7,252,963; Liverpool, 760,357; Glasgow, 784,496; Paris, 2,888,110; Lyons, 523,796; Vienna, 2,031,498; Budapest, 881,600; Munich, 596,467; Hamburg, 931,035; Dresden, 548,308; Amsterdam, 580,960; Stockholm, 346,599; Copenhagen, 476,806; Brussels itself, strictly speaking, a town of only 175,000, is increased to 659,000 by nine contiguous self-governing suburbs which, for all practical purposes, merge into it. The mere quantitative difference between the medieval town and the modern city qualitatively transforms the problem of prostitution. In these latter-day Babylons, the family is frequently shattered; thousands of detached, more or less friendless, more or less irresponsible, girls and boys pour into them to earn a livelihood under conditions that, so far from forming, actually disintegrate character and ambition. The situation is still further complicated by the continuous presence of a huge floating population, in Paris, Berlin, and London reaching into hundreds of thousands, restlessly surging in and out, in search of trade, excitement, or amusement. Within the more or less tightly closed circle, characteristic of a simple community, the members of which are known to one another, mutual demands in the matter of conduct uphold the accepted ideal and tradition; family and clan morality thus sustain the weaker members. Moreover, whatever individuals may be, they are known to one another as such. But in the modern Babylons of which I am speaking, one no longer knows one’s nearest neighbors. Temptation and inducement wax strongest, precisely where protection and restraint have become feeblest; the conditions favor not only irresponsibility but concealment. The mere numerical increase and the absolute impossibility of classifying women and men as virtuous or vicious on account of sheer ignorance of their life and character thus profoundly differentiate medieval from modern prostitution. The former was at once limited and definite; the latter is not only huge but vague.

From a practical point of view, these are facts of unmistakable importance. While thirty lewd women in a town of 3,000 inhabitants and 5,000 in a town of half a million represent precisely the same proportion—one percent in both cases—nevertheless the quantitative increase makes an enormous difference in the feasibility of measures designed to deal with one aspect or another of the situation. A device that might conceivably be effective on the smaller scale would probably break down completely if applied on the larger. Economically, administratively, hygienically, the problem thus changes its character, the moment the numbers involved pass beyond a certain point.

An additional difficulty is due to mere size; the prostitute can not be strictly discriminated in the huge modern city. Wherever professional prostitution has flourished, so-called clandestine prostitution has existed. But in the middle ages clandestine prostitutes were individually so notorious that, even when they avoided the bordell, they frequently lived in the bordell quarter. In any event, there was no doubt as to their business and character. In precisely the same way, there exists to-day in Europe the avowed professional prostitute and the equally notorious and unmistakable so-called clandestine prostitute,—both perfectly obvious to the police as well as to the casual observer. But a highly important distinction must be noted: of modern prostitution this known contingent, partly outright professional, partly so-called clandestine,[4] is the smaller and, from many points of view, the less significant fraction. Neither by garb, appearance, abode, or apparent manner of living are the majority of women subsisting wholly or partly on the proceeds of sexual irregularity any longer to be recognized. The frankly avowed prostitute is only one, and perhaps not the most important, of the types with which this account must deal; and this complication originates in the size of the modern city and in the industrial and other conditions to which city growth is due.

In the endeavor to arrive at an accurate definition of prostitution no little effort has been expended. Different conceptions are possible from different points of view. The continental police define prostitution from the standpoint of registration or inscription: as a rule they register or, where the system has been discontinued, used to register, only professional prostitutes,—women, that is, who have no other means of support than prostitution. From the police point of view the prostitute is therefore an inscribed woman, or a woman who, somehow eluding inscription, ought to be inscribed, or one who is at any rate liable to inscription, on the ground that she earns her livelihood through sexual promiscuity. Vast numbers, however, escape through the wide meshes of this net. Many prostitutes are actually engaged in some sort of remunerative work. The barmaids of the German “Animierkneipe,”[5] the singers and dancers of low grade Varietés are prostitutes who obtain their customers by means of their occupations; yet they are usually exempt from inscription as professional prostitutes because they are gainfully employed, and being exempt from inscription they fall outside the police definition of professional prostitution. The mere fact that partial or even pretended employment is a protection against police interference leads many prostitutes to keep up a more or less nominal connection with work. Of 1,177 venereally diseased women, undoubtedly prostitutes, treated in the municipal hospital of Zurich, only 7.9% owned to being prostitutes; 6.7% more confessed to no employment, but all the others—85.4%—claimed a vocation of some sort.[6] It is therefore obvious that the police definition fails to square with the facts. Parent-Duchatelet, following an official declaration, uses the term prostitution, where “several mercenary acts of immorality have been legally established, when the woman involved is publicly notorious, when she has been caught in the act by other witnesses than her accuser or the police agent.”[7] From this definition, however, all really clandestine prostitution is quite omitted; it suffices only for the most obvious and necessary police purposes. By way of contrast with the narrow conceptions above given, I shall, for reasons that will shortly appear, consider prostitution to be characterized by three elements variously combined: barter, promiscuity, emotional indifference. The barter need not involve the passing of money, though money is its usual medium; gifts or pleasures may be the equivalent inducement. Nor need promiscuity be utterly choiceless; a woman is not the less a prostitute because she is more or less selective in her associations. Emotional indifference may be fairly inferred from barter and promiscuity. In this sense, any person is a prostitute who habitually or intermittently has sexual relations more or less promiscuously for money or other mercenary consideration. Neither notoriety, arrest, nor lack of other occupation is an essential criterion. A woman may be a prostitute, even though not notorious, even though never arrested, even though simultaneously otherwise employed in a paid occupation.

The scope of the term is thus greatly, and, as I hope to show, justifiably, nay necessarily, extended. Barter, emotional indifference, and more or less promiscuity do not in modern cities characterize the sex relations of the avowed or professional prostitute alone. They are equally characteristic marks of the clandestine prostitute, using the term in its literal meaning to designate the numerous class of professional prostitutes whose real character is known only to their own clientele and their close female companions; of the occasional prostitute,—women who alternately emerge from and relapse into an irregular life; of the incidental prostitute,—those who carry on more or less prostitution without interrupting some honorable employment; of women who practise prostitution under cloak of other occupations; of women, who ceasing to be kept as mistresses practise prostitution as a stop-gap until a firmer footing is once more found; of women who reserve themselves by express arrangement for a small group, none of whom can alone afford their support; of women, who faithful to one individual at a time are still taken up by a succession of men paying for favors; finally of married women, by no means always of the lowest classes, who, perhaps irreproachable in the eyes of the world, are not above earning through ignominy the price of luxuries.[8] Here are eight different categories, falling outside the narrow conception of prostitution, but nevertheless belonging to prostitution, if prostitution is conceived to be characterized by barter, emotional indifference, and promiscuity.

For this broad construction there exist the most substantial of grounds. Why do we object to prostitution at all? Obviously, it is repugnant for one or more of several reasons: in the first place, because of the personal demoralization it entails; in the second, because of economic waste; again, because it is by far the main factor in the spread of venereal disease; finally, because of its intimate association with disorder or crime. Unquestionably the full-time notorious prostitutes who are the especial objects of police care exemplify all the counts in this indictment; they are themselves demoralized and they spread demoralization; they cause enormous waste; they inevitably and invariably spread disease; as a rule they have criminal or quasi-criminal connections. But there could be no greater mistake than to suppose that the other categories above specified are free from objection on these scores. Part-time prostitution, occasional prostitution, pretentious prostitution,—all the various kinds and grades above enumerated naturally and inevitably conduce to similar results. They may be less conspicuous or less offensive, but they are equally dangerous. If then prostitution is objectionable because of demoralization, waste, disease, or crime, then it is necessary so to define it as to include all the varieties to which one or more of the unfortunate results in questions is attributable. The lowest forms are most closely connected with crime and disorder, and as the police are mainly concerned with crime and disorder, they content themselves with a working conception of prostitution that goes no further. But the general concern of society must regard as hardly less serious menaces to its highest welfare the personal demoralization, the economic loss, the spread of disease equally associated with the less gross forms of the evil. For these are attended by personal degradation, even though some individuals, on the whole a considerable number, ultimately react vigorously enough to recover their self-respect; and they involve enormous economic waste, increasing rather than diminishing with the degree of dignity with which the business is surrounded, so that what externally least resembles commercial prostitution is perhaps from the economic standpoint most severely to be reprobated as such.

It is, however, in respect to disease that the wide definition can be most readily and fully justified. Venereal disease is the certain harvest of any degree of promiscuity in the sex relation. The diminution of venereal disease is one of the most pressing objects of hygienic effort; it can be accomplished only by some sort of interference with prostitution. It would therefore be absurd to define prostitution so narrowly that many of the regular foci of infection remain outside the definition and hence beyond the reach of any policy contrived for the purpose of dealing with them. How numerous the foci are which a narrow conception would thus ignore will be more fully shown in subsequent chapters;[9] but enough must be said in this connection to warrant the extension of the definition beyond the usual police lines. A statistical study of venereal disease at Mannheim covering nine years (1892–1901) showed that 63% of the infections were traceable to professional prostitutes in the narrow police sense of the term, no less than 37%, however, to the occasional, incidental, and other prostitutes here explicitly included in the term; among whom girls in active service as waitresses, servants, and shophands are the most important.[10] A subsequent investigation of 594 cases disclosed 278 professionals and 316—over 50%—girls serving in one capacity or another (waitress, seamstress, laundress, actress, etc.) as the sources of infection.[11] A similar statistic from Hanover proves in the same way that it is from the standpoint of sanitation absurd to limit prostitution to the absolutely indiscriminate, professional and notorious activity: of 330 women, to whom infections were traced, 42% (139) were outright professionals, though only partly inscribed, the remaining 58% being mainly girls who were simultaneously engaged in paid employments in shops, taverns, domestic service, theaters, etc.[12] Such conditions prevail generally on the Continent. The Munich police have lately made a most careful study of the callings in which 2,574 clandestine prostitutes well known to them are simultaneously engaged: 721 are servants, 608 are waitresses, 250 factory workers, 246 seamstresses, 60 are connected with the stage, 52 are laundresses, 40 dressmakers, 28 models, etc. Similar results can be cited from other sources. Of 100 venereal patients at Rouen, only 31 of the infections could be traced to inscribed prostitutes; 69 cases were attributed to clandestines, partials, etc.[13] Of 297 traceable infections in Stockholm, 146—practically one-half—were attributed to girls also engaged in work.[14] The police of Hamburg are at any rate logical, for there girls employed in bars and fish-shops may be registered as prostitutes; in certain smaller North German cities prostitution is so commonly associated with employment as barmaid that the latter is practically merged with the former. Under conditions in which barmaids, shop girls, servants, chorus-girls, etc.,[15] are either permanently or intermittently engaged in prostitution, and when so engaged bring about precisely the same sort of damage that is wrought by prostitutes who are nothing else, it is manifestly illogical to use the term so as to designate the latter class only. The fact that complication with disorder attaches only to the lower types is assuredly no reason for restricting the designation of prostitution to them, once we realize that, on the score of personal demoralization, economic waste, and the danger of disease, the more sophisticated or subtle forms of commercialized immorality are equally dangerous and destructive. Prostitution will therefore in these pages be construed to mean more or less promiscuity—even transient promiscuity,—of sex relationship for pay, or its equivalent.

The definition just given is intended to exclude both immorality and unconventionality in the sex relation, though, for reasons that will appear, they require incidental discussion in an account of prostitution. Of these unconventional or irregular sex relationships there are in Western Europe many varieties, more or less widespread. Most substantial is the informal union which serves as a substitute for marriage. In these combinations mutual fidelity is expected, as well as complete responsibility for such children as may be born. A combination of this sort is occasionally permanent; occasionally it is converted into marriage; oftener, perhaps, it binds only during mutual congeniality, being dissolved when congeniality ceases, or more frequently when one or the other member has already entered on the stages preliminary to another combination. In the city such informal mating of industrial workers of opposite sexes is common;[16] the shop girl contracts an alliance of this kind with a clerk of her own class, or not infrequently with a student or professional man, more or less above her in rank. Of the non-legalized cohabitation of the artisans of London, Booth remarks that at times “they behave best if not married to the women with whom they live”;[17] occasionally two parties to previous but unsuccessful matrimony pair off again without the intervention of the divorce court, and “as a rule, are faithful to each other.”[18] Somewhat similar is an informal relationship continued as such until a child is born—or shortly after—whereupon the neglected rites may be duly performed. The high percentage of illegitimacy is thus partly accounted for: In Berlin 20% of the births are outside of wedlock; in all Germany, almost 10%.[19] The incident is so common among the lower classes, especially in the rural districts, as hardly to carry any stigma at all. “Frequent illegitimacy,” writes Adele Schreiber, “may be the expression of wholesome monogamous conditions, as indeed is often the case in mountainous countries. Premarital relations are there common, are characterized by mutual fidelity and, with exceptions of course, look forward to marriage when a child is born and the parents are able to establish a home.”[20] These relations must be distinguished from the episodic connection that is a mere incident in the course of casual companionship. Mainly in this latter sense, “immoral relations before marriage among the lower classes are not unusual and are indulgently regarded,”[21] writes Charles Booth of London. Devon, describing Glasgow conditions, observes to the same effect that “girls do not seem to suffer in self-respect nor greatly in the esteem of others, if they yield themselves to the lad who is their sweetheart for the time. If decency is observed, morals are taken for granted.”[22] On the Continent these conditions also exist. “Extra-marital, especially premarital intercourse is everywhere in the country very frequent,”[23] declares Moll. Of certain communities in Saxony it has been deliberately asserted that “no girl over sixteen is still a virgin”; the German peasant is declared to have no conception of the meaning of chastity.[24] Welander dealing with 452 prostitutes who could give a clear account of their first lapse, found that 299 had erred while still living at home or before leaving the country to take a position in Stockholm.[25]

Episodic laxity unquestionably exposes the girl to dangers that readily result in prostitution, just as it develops in her comrade the appetite that leads him to consort with prostitutes. But in itself mere laxity is not to be confused with prostitution. The instances above given show indeed how widely immorality varies in ethical quality. An irregular sex relation may indicate only carelessness of the convention that restricts sexual congress to the married relation; it may, at the other extreme, indicate total indifference to the ethical standard that forbids sexual commerce unaccompanied by high emotional sanction, mutual respect, complete responsibility for the natural result. The former is a marriage in all but form; the latter is simple depravity; but neither involves prostitution. A lapse—one or several—does not imply prostitution; nor is the paid mistress a prostitute so long as her relations, emotionally indifferent and mercenary though they be, are free from promiscuity. It must be remembered, therefore, that irregular sex connection may not only lack barter or promiscuity, but on the woman’s side at least may possess high emotional coloring, whether she be mistress, unwedded wife, or compliant sweetheart.

In the designation of prostitute there is nothing final or irretrievable. It is indeed one of the peculiar earmarks of modern prostitution that thousands who flounder for a while eventually escape from the bog. The tendency is undoubtedly towards complete disintegration; women who drift into it may drift more and more deeply into the morass. But the numerically more powerful drift is nevertheless outwards; while some are overwhelmed, thousands emerge. Having apparently started on the descent, they somehow arrest their downward progress and clamber out,—sometimes from the very bottom, more frequently and more hopefully, before the lower depths have been reached.[26] Modern prostitution is therefore unprecedentedly fluctuating in character. Johansson’s admirable studies of the data contained in the Inspection-bureau of Stockholm “show that the same woman who one month is in domestic service or at other work will the next month register with the police and thus enter the ranks of professional prostitution; the third month she will have her position again and be freed from the requirement to undergo inspection; thus the thing shifts for years and years.”[27] During the first three years of registration a considerable number of the women leave Stockholm, give up prostitution and become domestic servants or factory hands.[28] This has been the case since modern urban conditions began: “Let us recollect,” wrote Parent-Duchatelet, “that for the majority of public women prostitution is a transitory estate; they quit for the most part after a year; very few indeed remain until death.”[29] The Munich barmaid who is sexually more or less indiscriminate inflicts upon society for the time being the same sort of damage as the notorious prostitute; she herself deteriorates, she exposes herself to disease, in the spread of which she is subsequently a factor; she is therefore a prostitute. But once she rehabilitates herself, her status changes. She is barmaid now, prostitute no longer. The prostitution of European cities to-day is characterized by the abundance of cases that oscillate in this way to and fro across the dividing line. Our definition must be capable of including these at one moment, even if they have to be omitted at another.

We are thus enabled to understand what has long figured as a mystery. What becomes of the ordinary prostitute? For the common notion that her expectation of life is some five or six years, there is no basis in fact whatsoever.[30] It is demonstrably untrue even of the avowed professional or registered continental harlot. Though her resistance is weakened, an early death need not and as a rule does not ensue. Of 3,517 women inscribed at Paris, Parent-Duchatelet[31] notes that 980—close to 28%—have been on the Paris list longer than seven years; and the Paris list is neither the beginning nor the end of the careers of most of the women inscribed. This is obvious from the further fact that of the 3,517 women in question, 1,269 admitted the practice of professional prostitution during more than five years.[32] Again, the average annual registration of professionals with the Paris police between 1888 and 1903 was 5,549; the average annual death rate among them was 19.[33] Johansson has made an elaborate comparison between the mortality of inscribed prostitutes and that of the corresponding age groups of the female population of Stockholm; the inscribed women show the higher rate, but by no means so large as is popularly supposed:[34]

1870–4 75–79 1880–4 85–9 90–4 95–99 1900–3 Percentage of mortality among inscribed prostitutes 17.1 13.6 14.7 10.9 8.4 9.0 7.8 Among corresponding age groups of Stockholm’s female population 12.0 9.1 7.6 6.4 5.7 4.8 4.7

The mortality among the registered prostitutes of Vienna in the years 1879–1882, inclusive, averaged less than of ½ of 1%; at Berlin for approximately the same period 1¼%;[35] for the years 1904–6, it was only ⅘ of 1%.[36] The mortality among the more cautious women, less exposed to wind and weather and alcohol, is probably lower still. The loss to the Paris registered list through death is negligible: of 3,582 inscribed women in 1880, 46 died in the course of the year; of 4,770 a decade later, 5 died; of 6,222 in 1900, 26 died. The total loss by death in twenty years was 485.[37] English statistics, though bearing less directly on the point, establish a similar presumption. Through the London Venereal Hospital[38] for women, some 400 patients annually pass; the average number of deaths during each of the last twenty years has been less than three. If there were 10,000 prostitutes in London—a low estimate,—there would be an annual death rate of 2,000, provided we assume a five year lease of life: yet out of 790,000 women between 18 and 35 resident in London, only 3,059 died in 1909. Finally, of the 11,823 women committed to Holloway Jail in 1908, many of them prostitutes of over five years’ standing, only six died in the course of the year.[39] The explanation is to be sought in the fluctuating constitution of the prostitute army already pointed out. Prostitutes disappear rather than die,—a fact of great practical significance as we shall discover; only a part—it is uncertain of what size—remain prostitutes: a small fraction marry, a much larger fraction return to work; those who stick to the business wind up as the servants of younger prostitutes, occasionally as brothel-keepers; a few of them are found as aged hags, offering themselves for a copper coin below the bridges of Berlin or in the dark corners of Whitechapel.

The considerations just dwelt on make anything approaching an accurate estimate of the number of prostitutes in a given city entirely impossible. In the first place, because of the general flux above described; in the second, because particular causes—the conditions of trade, the season of the year, the presence or absence of local festivities, such as the Wakes and Bank Holiday in Great Britain, the October Fest at Munich, the Carnival at Cologne,[40] finally, the varying pressure of local authorities, all operate to disturb for better or worse the general movement above indicated. Only the roughest approximations can therefore be made by way of obtaining an imperfect picture; and for the most part, the guesses are not to be trusted too far, even for that purpose. At Paris, Maxime du Camp assessed the number at 120,000,—an estimate that has by common consent been rejected as manifestly absurd; M. Lépine, the able and accomplished ex-Prefect of Police, inclines to a figure varying from one-half to two-thirds as large, say 60,000 to 80,000—itself generally viewed as much too high, even on a liberal interpretation of the terms; MM. Yves Guyot and Augagneur, distinguished publicists, estimate 30,000;[41] Turot, still more conservatively, 20,000;[42] Carlier, formerly chief of the municipal police, cuts even this moderate estimate down: he concedes only from 14,000 to 17,000. His logic is worth noting, for I shall recur to a similar method of calculation. He assumes that for every clandestine prostitute actually arrested for solicitation, intoxication, etc., “there are at least five or six more who ought to be.” Between 1872 and 1888, the non-registered prostitutes arrested averaged 2,797 annually; according as one employs as multiple five or six, the total would be 13,985 or 16,782. But the method is not reliable: in the first place, because in any case the multiple is probably too small; in the second because the fluctuation in arrests shows clearly that arrests do not increase “pari passu” with the increase in population, while clandestine prostitutes increase still faster.[43] There were, for instance, 1,932 arrests in 1888—the last of the years considered by Carlier—as against 3,769 in 1872, the first. Moreover, from 1888 to 1903, the average annual arrests numbered 2,762, a slightly smaller figure than in the former period. Were the method sound, one must conclude that clandestine prostitution had not increased between 1872[44] and 1903, despite the fact that population rose from 1,851,792 to 2,660,559.

An estimate of 80,000 was once current for London,—an unquestionable exaggeration. The Home Office reported in 1837 that the total number of prostitutes known to the police as living in houses of ill-fame, walking the streets and infesting low neighborhoods was 9,409;[45] twenty years later a similar return made by Sir Richard Mayne, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, based on detailed reports from the several districts yielded a total somewhat smaller, 8,600; a decade later the number similarly reached had fallen to 6,515.[46] An unofficial count recently made disclosed 8,000. If the figures for 1837 and 1857 are fairly representative, the later ones are certainly much too low. The probabilities are, however, that all these estimates include only notorious and unmistakable prostitutes, excluding the numerous clandestines and partials who figure in the continental calculations.

Equally uncertain calculations have from time to time been put forth respecting other great cities. Dufour estimated the clandestine prostitutes of Berlin at 50,000 in 1896, at a time when just above four thousand were enrolled, assuming, that is, 12 clandestine for every registered woman.[47] In three successive years, 1889, 1890, 1891, the morals police arrested for solicitation and similar offences 3,220, 3,537, and 4,019 women respectively; of these, 640, 735, and 792 respectively were registered by the police on the ground that they were incorrigible;[48] the rest were warned and released, despite the fact that with probably few exceptions they were at the moment practising professional prostitution.[49] It would appear, therefore, that, as the police register only 1–5 of those they arrest, clandestine prostitution is at least five times as extensive as professional; on this basis we must assume 20,000 clandestine prostitutes for the German capital—probably an underestimate, since, large numbers of clandestines never being arrested at all, five is too small a multiple to employ.

It is perhaps needless to quote similar estimates for other places, except by way of driving home the enormous extent of the evil, even if it can not be definitely appraised. The prostitutes of Vienna have been rated at 30,000, of Glasgow at 17,000,[50] of Cologne at 7,000, of Munich at 8,000. The police records of Rome show 5,000 women who have been in their hands latterly for some offence connected with prostitution;[51] a Dutch register in process of compilation at police headquarters, Amsterdam, already contains upwards of 7,000 names; in that city the police have the names and addresses of 968 women well known for this avocation;[52] in Rotterdam 1,206.[53] For the German Empire as a whole, a not unreasonable calculation of 330,000 has been ventured, side by side with a serious, though mistaken guess of one and one-half million.[54] But the only safe data refer to the number of registered women and the number of arrests; and though the former are confessedly only a small fraction, their sum total is itself not to be passed over lightly from whatever standpoint the matter is regarded: Paris with its 6,418 (1903), Berlin with 3,559, Hamburg with 935, Vienna with 1,689, Budapest with 2,000. If the evil is, on the average, only five times as extensive as these figures indicate, there is enough to be alarmed at, without a panic-stricken incursion into the realms of baseless fancy.

Left to itself or to unhampered exploitation prostitution seeks everywhere the same sort of outlets; the free professional, the clandestine, the occasional, the partial, hunt their prey, openly or furtively, according to circumstances, in the crowded thoroughfares of retail trade, or loiter in cafés and theater promenades. Having found their victim, they repair to their own rooms, to hotels, assignation houses, etc. A large number avoid publicity and obtain their clientele in the guise of friends through introduction or recommendation or through the keepers of _rendezvous_-houses, who arrange appointments by means of photographs and fill orders for patrons desiring a person of particular type. A small and steadily decreasing number of prostitutes suffer themselves to be immured in bordells, i. e., houses of prostitution licensed or authorized by the police in certain towns, e. g., in Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and in Geneva, and conducted by a proprietor or mistress who collects the entire income, paying the inmates a stipulated percentage. In places where bordells are forbidden as well as in places where they exist, a non-licensed and more or less similar establishment has sprung up,—the brothel, which commonly represents itself as a boarding-place, where a certain number of prostitutes have their own rooms, pay the keeper a fixed sum for their keep and retain whatever else they earn. Into such establishments the police of Hamburg, Bremen, Dresden, Cologne, having the right to designate the registered prostitute’s dwelling-place, yet being forbidden to license bordells, force as many of the women as they can lay hold of,—a violation of the statute in spirit, as we shall shortly perceive. In London and Berlin, the brothel takes a looser form, and amounts usually to nothing more than the casual combination of a few women who utilize their joint premises for carrying on their business. It is worth noting, as we pass, though we shall return to the point, that, whether the police favor the licensed bordell or, by stretching their authority, force women into barracks or brothels, a segregated district, into which the prostitutes of a city are confined, exists nowhere in Europe, and is nowhere supposed to be either desirable or feasible. A few streets—in Hamburg for example, are tenanted either only or almost entirely by prostitutes under police pressure; but they do not form a district, for they are widely separated, and they contain in any event only a fraction of the total number of local prostitutes,—not even all the registered women of the city. A single street in Bremen is inhabited altogether by prostitutes; but it is absurd to speak of segregation in reference to seventy-five women in a town containing hundreds of others living at large. Elsewhere, at Paris, Rome, Geneva, Vienna, Budapest, where the bordells are officially recognized and even favored,—they are scattered throughout the respective cities, no single street usually containing more than one or two.

Prostitution tends, further, to associate itself with the sale of alcohol; in consequence of which loose women congregate in low grade drinking and amusement-places, and are utilized wherever law and custom do not interfere, to assist in the sale of drink. I have already called attention to the low morality of the barmaid in certain portions of the Continent. In the German cities, outright prostitutes are employed to push the sale of drink, by drinking with and otherwise entertaining their already more or less intoxicated patrons; screened corners and a quick succession of new faces characterize the so-called Animierkneipe and American bars,[55] which are bitterly denounced as perhaps the most demoralizing form that prostitution has as yet assumed. Hardly more than a variation of Animierkneipe is the dance hall, varieté, or cabaret, where the “artiste” is a prostitute mingling freely with the audience at the conclusion of her turn and relying largely on alcohol to make her way quickly with her casual acquaintances. Finally, pretended employments,—cigar shops, massage-establishments, and employment agencies illustrate in one place or another at once the timidity and the stubbornness of the phenomenon; for though prostitution easily takes fright and abandons any one shape under the frown of unfavorable opinion or the pressure of the law, it tends to reappear in another guise. We shall subsequently consider these efforts to control or suppress particular aspects of the evil, and their consequences.[56]

One more word is required here by way of mere description. Prostitution in Europe as an organized business is by no means limited to the intercourse of persons of opposite sexes. A homosexual prostitution,—prostitution, that is, in which the parties belong to the same sex,—has developed on a considerable scale. Notorious resorts for those addicted to homosexuality are to be found not only in Paris but in smaller towns, like Hamburg. Berlin is, however, probably the main mart. In prominent thoroughfares, bars exist to which only women resort as well as bars to which no woman gets access; and at intervals, large homosexual balls are given, attended only by persons of a single sex. I witnessed one such affair, at which some 150 couples, all men, appeared. It is estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 male prostitutes live in Berlin; forty homosexual resorts are tolerated by the Berlin police; and it is reported that some 30,000 persons of marked homosexual inclination reside in the German capital.

The prostitute is everywhere attended by a complementary phenomenon—the pimp, who lives upon her earnings, in return for which she is as a rule treated with brutality.[57] The police estimate that something like 50% to 90% of the prostitutes of the large European cities support men in this fashion—not only the street-walkers and scattered prostitutes, but, not infrequently, bordell inmates, as well.[58] The tie is easy to describe, difficult to understand. No practical advantage accrues to the woman, for in Europe the pimp affords her absolutely no protection against the police; indeed, the reverse is apt to be the case, for the police, tolerant of an inoffensive prostitute though they be, are unrelenting in their hostility to the pimp whom they rightly regard as a criminal, either actual or in the making. The woman may be compromised by the association; she certainly can not be protected. One is thrown back for an adequate explanation on the fundamental fact of sex relation. The woman has no attachment whatsoever with her stream of casual customers; but the pimp belongs to her. A vestige of affection, a sense of property lies at the bottom of the connection; her blunted sense does not revolt from the price she pays for it. This view is strongly favored by the fact that the woman’s loyalty will endure every strain that her mate may put upon it,—abuse, deprivation, or what not,—every strain, except competition. The difficulties of obtaining a conviction are practically insuperable unless jealousy loosens the woman’s tongue.[59]

Despite the general similarity to which I have repeatedly adverted, there is a notion current that prostitution in Paris is subtly different from that in other great cities, that the women are less mercenary, the practice less odious or repulsive. Parisian prostitution enjoys indeed the glamour of a Bohemian background and a more picturesque tradition; but beyond this I saw no reason to think the notion well grounded. In my observation, prostitution is even more uniform internally than externally: it is everywhere purely mercenary, everywhere rapacious, everywhere perverse, diseased, sordid, vulgar, and almost always filthy. In her bloom, the Parisian cocotte possesses a bit of Gallic grace and verbal cleverness that is perhaps denied to English, German, or Scandinavian women of the same class. But it is soon brushed away by excess, drink and perversion. The refined courtesan of the books is practically as rare in Paris as in London and Berlin. Pretentious prostitution is indeed nowadays international; there is no distinction in type, origin, or bearing between the women of Monte Carlo, Ostende, the Ambassadeurs, or the Palais de Dance. At different times the same individuals may be found in all these resorts. At the lower level, all is equally sordid everywhere. The grisette of the Bal Tabarin is, like her English or German sister, a pathetic figure, whose livelier speech and simulated gaiety does not hide poverty, loneliness, vulgarity, or the ravages of overwork, irregular hours, disease, and absinthe. A day at St. Lazare or police headquarters—and thither those who remain prostitutes eventually come—quickly dispels any illusion one may entertain on this score: Holloway Jail and the Inspection bureaus of Hamburg, Vienna, and Stockholm have nothing more degraded or repulsive to show.

The cost of prostitution, near and remote, direct and indirect, outruns any calculation that one would dare to formulate. Payment for service varies from a few copper coins to several hundred marks or francs; incidental expense for accommodations, amusements, liquor, gratuities, gifts, may double the immediate outlay. The Berlin street girl of fair grade demands five or ten marks;[60] with her customer she takes a cab or taxi, for which he pays; they resort to a hotel or room of which she has the use and for which he pays perhaps six marks more; she demands pin-money for herself, the maid or concierge. Money is the sole object of her effort, the whole burden of her talk. “The Berlin street-walker,” writes Schneider, “immediately asks the stranger whom she accosts: ‘what will you give me?’ Once at home with her, the bargaining begins anew, for, now that she has him, she can raise her demands.”[61] Impossible as it is to be definite, one fact stands out: the prostitute living at large is swindled by every one who has dealings with her: her landlord, by way of recompense for the legal risk he may run,[62] the dressmaker, milliner, grocer, butcher, etc. The London street-walker pays three guineas in rental where an honest family pays one. Nor is her outlay limited to her own necessities, for she must earn enough to satisfy the rapacity of her pimp, besides. Her business interest and bad taste lead her to indulge in shoddy and relatively expensive luxuries, soon worn out or discarded. The price of all this, mere livelihood, extravagance, and rascality, her patrons pay; from them every sou is obtained.

A clearer picture can be obtained in the case of the bordell, where business methods prevail.[63] The more elaborate of these establishments represent large investments. The latest bordell of Budapest required an initial outlay of 500,000 crowns ($100,000), on which a very liberal return is expected. Fiaux cites a second-class establishment in Paris that yields an annual profit of 70,000 fr. and notes that the same proprietors often run a chain of houses.[64] In these places, a minimum price for service is usually fixed; entrance fee, tips, and alcohol are of course “extra.” In Paris, the entrance fee at pretentious establishments is 20 francs; from that it ranges downward as low as five. The inevitable bottle of wine at the former also costs 20 francs; at the latter, whatever can be wheedled or coaxed.[65] Rendezvous establishments, incurring greater risk, charge correspondingly; 40 francs, if modish; five, if utterly wretched. Those with a carefully guarded clientele sometimes exact as much as 100 francs! At Stockholm, the charge varies from a few pennies to twenty-five crowns (about $7.50).

In the long run, whatever the women earn, they rarely have anything to show for it. The bordell-keeper plies them hard and then manages to keep them in her debt. Despite the fact that they may entertain anywhere from five to fifty guests in twenty-four hours, they do not own the clothes on their back, when they make up their mind to leave! Schneider calculates the minimum payment of a girl for bare living in the better bordells of Hamburg, Leipzig, and Vienna at 300 to 600[66] marks a month—an underestimate, as he himself subsequently avers. Seventy-five wretched creatures are harbored in the barracks of Helenenstrasse, Bremen, independently of each other; several of them figured out for me the amount they must earn merely to live; from which it appeared that 10,000 marks a year each barely sufficed: the first charge for their support was therefore 750,000 marks! In the Roman brothels, the girls must average 10 to 12 men a night, in order to earn the high charges made for their keep; in the lowest resort of Altona, the wretched inmate pays 75 marks a week for her mere board and lodging; at Dresden, the bordell women are charged up with 100 marks a week for the same bare necessaries. Among the common prostitutes of Stockholm are found women who claim to earn—and to spend—sums ranging from 3,000 to 12,000 crowns annually. A careful study was made by Dr. Lindblad of 712 cases;[67] the number of customers ran from less than one on the average daily to as high as 20 when business was brisk; assuming 225 working days per year,[68] the women must have averaged incomes of $1,080 each annually. Of 569 from whom information could be obtained, 513 save absolutely nothing, and only seven claimed to have saved a tidy sum.[69]

I have spoken thus far only of the money immediately involved,—the sums paid to the prostitute for her service, the sums paid out by her for her keep. But the account is not so simple. We may not overlook the loss involved in the unproductiveness of this army of women; expenditure on alcohol, gifts and demoralizing amusements; the long score chargeable to venereal disease, including the loss in earnings, the outlay for treatment, both of the immediate victims and those still more unfortunate on whom, though innocent, some part of the curse and its cost not infrequently devolves. Upwards of 10,000 individuals are now annually treated for venereal complaints in the public hospitals of Berlin alone. These are essential items in the cost of prostitution. Of the total loss only the roughest guesses can be made; but it is worth noting that any estimate that endeavors to include all the factors, direct and indirect, soon reaches into the millions. Losch, for example, has reckoned the annual cost of prostitution to the German Empire at something between 300 and 500 million marks.[70] This outlay may be contrasted with that spent by the Prussian Government on its entire educational system: its universities, secondary schools, elementary school system, technical and professional institutions of all kinds involving a budget in 1909 of a little less than 200,000,000 marks.[71] Assuredly the economic burden imposed on society by prostitution is comparable with that due to standing armies, war, or pestilence.