Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 17

[156]

Burchard, Diarium, vol. iii, p. 167. Thuasne quotes other authorities in confirmation.

[157]

The example of Holland, where some large cities have adopted the regulation of prost.i.tution and others have not, is instructive as regards the illusory nature of the advantages of regulation. In 1883 Dr. Despres brought forward figures, supplied by Dutch officials, showing that in Rotterdam, where prost.i.tution was regulated, both prost.i.tution and venereal diseases were more prevalent than in Amsterdam, a city without regulation (A. Despres, La Prost.i.tution en France, p. 122).

[158]

It was in 1802 that the medical inspection of prost.i.tutes in Paris brothels was introduced, though not until 1825 fully established and made general.

[159]

M. L. Heidingsfeld, "The Control of Prost.i.tution," Journal American Medical a.s.sociation, January 30, 1904.

[160]

See, e.g., G. Berault, La Maison de Tolerance, These de Paris, 1904.

[161]

Thus the circ.u.mstances of the English army in India are of a special character. A number of statements (from the reports of committees, official publications, etc.) regarding the good influence of regulation in reducing venereal diseases in India are brought together by Surgeon-Colonel F. H. Welch, "The Prevention of Syphilis," Lancet, August 12, 1899. The system has been abolished, but only as the result of a popular outcry and not on the question of its merits.

[162]

Thus Richard, who accepts regulation and was instructed to report on it for the Paris Munic.i.p.al Council, would not have girls inscribed as professional prost.i.tutes until they are of age and able to realize what they are binding themselves to (E. Richard, La Prost.i.tution a Paris, p. 147). But at that age a large proportion of prost.i.tutes have been practicing their profession for years.

[163]

In Germany, where the cure of infected prost.i.tutes under regulation is nearly everywhere compulsory, usually at the cost of the community, it is found that 18 is the average age at which they are affected by syphilis; the average age of prost.i.tutes in brothels is higher than that of those outside, and a much larger proportion have therefore become immune to disease (Blaschko, "Hygiene der Syphilis," in Weyl's Handbuch der Hygiene, Bd. ii, p. 62, 1900).

[164]

A. Sherwell, Life in West London, 1897, Ch. V.

[165]

Bonger brings together statistics ill.u.s.trating this point, op. cit., pp. 402-6.

[166]

The Nightless City, p. 125.

[167]

Strohmberg, as quoted by Aschaffenburg, Das Verbrechen, 1903, p. 77.

[168]

Monatsschrift fur Harnkrankheiten und s.e.xuelle Hygiene, 1906. Heft 10, p. 460. But this cause is undoubtedly effective in some cases of unmarried women in Germany unable to get work (see article by Sister Henrietta Arendt, Police-a.s.sistant at Stuttgart, s.e.xual-Probleme, December, 1908).

[169]

Thus, for instance, we find Irma von Troll-Borostyani saying in her book, Im Freien Reich (p. 176): "Go and ask these unfortunate creatures if they willingly and freely devoted themselves to vice. And nearly all of them will tell you a story of need and dest.i.tution, of hunger and lack of work, which compelled them to it, or else of love and seduction and the fear of the discovery of their false step which drove them out of their homes, helpless and forsaken, into the pool of vice from which there is hardly any salvation." It is, of course, quite true that the prost.i.tute is frequently ready to tell such stories to philanthropic persons who expect to hear them, and sometimes even put the words into her mouth.

[170]

C. Booth, Life and Labour, final volume, p. 125. Similarly in Sweden, Kullberg states that girls of thirteen to seventeen, living at home with their parents in comfortable circ.u.mstances, have often been found on the streets.

[171]

W. Acton, Prost.i.tution, 1870, pp. 39, 49.

[172]

In Lyons, according to Potton, of 3884 prost.i.tutes, 3194 abandoned, or apparently abandoned, their profession; in Paris a very large number became servants, dressmakers, or tailoresses, occupations which, in many cases, doubtless, they had exercised before (Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prost.i.tution, 1857, vol. i, p. 584; vol. ii, p. 451). Sloggett (quoted by Acton) stated that at Davenport, 250 of the 1775 prost.i.tutes there married. It is well known that prost.i.tutes occasionally marry extremely well. It was remarked nearly a century ago that marriages of prost.i.tutes to rich men were especially frequent in England, and usually turned out well; the same seems to be true still. In their own social rank they not infrequently marry cabmen and policemen, the two cla.s.ses of men with whom they are brought most closely in contact in the streets. As regards Germany, C. K. Schneider (Die Prost.i.tuirte und die Gesellschaft), states that young prost.i.tutes take up all sorts of occupations and situations, sometimes, if they have saved a little money, establishing a business, while old prost.i.tutes become procuresses, brothel-keepers, lavatory women, and so on. Not a few prost.i.tutes marry, he adds, but the proportion among inscribed German prost.i.tutes is very small, less than 2 per cent.

[173]

G. de Molinari, La Viriculture, 1897, p. 155.

[174]

Reuss and other writers have reproduced typical extracts from the private account books of prost.i.tutes, showing the high rate of their earnings. Even in the common brothels, in Philadelphia (according to Goodchild, "The Social Evil in Philadelphia," Arena, March, 1896), girls earn twenty dollars or more a week, which is far more than they could earn in any other occupation open to them.

[175]

A. Despres, La Prost.i.tution en France, 1883.

[176]

Bonger, Criminalite et Conditions Economiques, 1905, pp. 378-414.

[177]

La Donna Delinquente, p. 401.

[178]

Raciborski, Traite de l'Impuissance, p. 20. It may be added that Bergh, a leading authority on the anatomical peculiarities of the external female s.e.xual organs, who believe that strong development of the external genital organs accompanies libidinous tendencies, has not found such development to be common among prost.i.tutes.

[179]

Hammer, who has had much opportunity of studying the psychology of prost.i.tutes, remarks that he has seen no reason to suspect s.e.xual coldness (Monatsschrift fur Harnkrankheiten und s.e.xuelle Hygiene, 1906, Heft 2, p. 85), although, as he has elsewhere stated, he is of opinion that indolence, rather than excess of sensuality, is the chief cause of prost.i.tution.

[180]

See "The s.e.xual Impulse in Women," in the third volume of these Studies.

[181]

Tait stated that in Edinburgh many married women living with their husbands in comfortable circ.u.mstances, and having children, were found to be acting as prost.i.tutes, that is, in the regular habit of making a.s.signations with strangers (W. Tait, Magdalenism in Edinburgh, 1842, p. 16).

[182]

Janke brings together opinions to this effect, Die Willkurliche Hervorbringen des Geschlechts, p. 275. "If we compare a prost.i.tute of thirty-five with her respectable sister," Acton remarked (Prost.i.tution, 1870, p. 39), "we seldom find that the const.i.tutional ravages often thought to be necessary consequences of prost.i.tution exceed those attributable to the cares of a family and the heart-wearing struggles of virtuous labor."

[183]

Hirschfeld states (Wesen der Liebe, p. 35) that the desire for intercourse with a sympathetic person is heightened, and not decreased, by a professional act of coitus.

[184]

This has been clearly shown by Hans Ostwald (from whom I take the above-quoted observation of a prost.i.tute), one of the best authorities on prost.i.tute life and character; see, e.g., his article, "Die erotischen Beziehungen zwischen Dirne und Zuhalter," s.e.xual-Probleme, June, 1908. In the subsequent number of the same periodical (July, 1908, p. 393) Dr. Max Marcuse supports Ostwald's experiences, and says that the letters of prost.i.tutes and their bullies are love-letters exactly like those of respectable people of the same cla.s.s, and with the same elements of love and jealousy; these relationships, he remarks, often prove very enduring. The prost.i.tute author of the Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (p. 147) also has some remarks on the prost.i.tute's relations to her bully, stating that it is simply the natural relationship of a girl to her lover.

[185]

Thus Moraglia found that among 180 prost.i.tutes in North Italian brothels, and among 23 elegant Italian and foreign cocottes, every one admitted that she m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed, preferably by friction of the c.l.i.toris; 113 of them, the majority, declared that they preferred solitary or mutual masturbation to normal coitus. Hammer states (Zehn Lebenslaufe Berliner Kontrollmadchen in Ostwald's series of "Grosstadt Dok.u.mente," 1905) that when in hospital all but three or four of sixty prost.i.tutes m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, and those who do not are laughed at by the rest.

[186]

Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Jahrgang VII, 1905, p. 148; "s.e.xual Inversion," vol. ii of these Studies, Ch. IV. Hammer found that of twenty-five prost.i.tutes in a reformatory as many as twenty-three were h.o.m.os.e.xual, or, on good grounds, suspected to be such. Hirschfeld (Berlins Drittes Geschlecht, p. 65) mentions that prost.i.tutes sometimes accost better-cla.s.s women who, from their man-like air, they take to be h.o.m.os.e.xual; from persons of their own s.e.x prost.i.tutes will accept a smaller remuneration, and sometimes refuse payment altogether.

[187]

With prost.i.tution, as with criminality, it is of course difficult to disentangle the element of heredity from that of environment, even when we have good grounds for believing that the factor of heredity here, as throughout the whole of life, cannot fail to carry much weight. It is certain, in any case, that prost.i.tution frequently runs in families. "It has often been my experience," writes a former prost.i.tute (Hedwig Hard, Beichte einer Gefallenen, p. 156) "that when in a family a girl enters this path, her sister soon afterwards follows her: I have met with innumerable cases; sometimes three sisters will all be on the register, and I knew a case of four sisters, whose mother, a midwife, had been in prison, and the father drank. In this case, all four sisters, who were very beautiful, married, one at least very happily, to a rich doctor who took her out of the brothel at sixteen and educated her."

[188]

This fact is not contradicted by the undoubted fact that prost.i.tutes are by no means always contented with the life they choose.

[189]