London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

The number of strangers that come here, the mariners that commerce attracts, the luxury that reigns among the upper classes, the number of young men of good family, who are condemned to a life of celibacy by inadequate means, unite to relax the morals of the Dutch.

Even now the municipal authorities recoil before the difficulties thrown in their way by the independent spirit of the people, who do not like restrictions imposed by authority, however salutary they may be.

A curious book which appeared in 1648 relates an edict published in 1506, by virtue of which only agents of the municipal police were allowed to open and keep disorderly houses and in certain designated quarters.

In 1789 a commission of health was convoked, and strict precautions taken to guard against infection. It followed from this that 177 women were doctored in one year, a number nearly double that of the year before.

The author of a book about medicine, which appeared in Amsterdam in 1820, complained bitterly of the depravity of manners which led to the decrease of marriages, and of the great number of prostitutes who day and night frequented the streets and other public places to attract passengers by indecent gestures and immodest proposals: more than 800 were known to the police, of which about 200 lived in tolerated houses.

Coming back to modern times, during the year 1850 we find there were in Amsterdam 764 illegitimate births, among 21,365 unmarried inhabitants, between 16 and 30 years, of the male sex, and among 25,207 of the female sex. At the same time there were twenty disorderly houses and 400 prostitutes not inscribed, but simply known to the police.

There is a society in Amsterdam for rescuing fallen women who wish to lead a new life. It is called the Sternbeck Asylum, and is productive of great good.

To allude to the insignificant part played by the police is to avow the insufficiency of the hygienic department.

Although the girls in the tolerated houses are supposed to be compelled to submit to examination, any inspection, in reality, is voluntary on their part. Unfortunately there are a vast number of quacks in the city, who only prolong and aggravate disease, instead of curing it. There is a hospital for venereal affections, with two wards, one with 24 beds for the men, the other with 50 beds for the women, which are all at the service of those affected with syphilis. Besides this there is a syphilitic dispensary, where gratuitous attendance may be obtained.

Syphilis has increased very much lately among the soldiers in garrison. For instance take the subjoined figures, extending over five years:

All women must be inscribed, whether living in houses or by themselves. Disorderly houses are under the supervision of the police. The keeper of one of these houses may not change his residence, under penalty of a fine of 7 florins and the loss of his licence, without communicating with the authorities, and loose women must be provided with a license. The regulations are very much the same all over the country, at Utrecht, Haarlem, &c.

Belgium.

In the year 1856 the floating population of Brussels and its suburbs was 260,080, to which the garrison contributed 2414. In the same year the total registration of prostitutes, according to the law in their respect provided, numbered 638; these were divided into “filles de maison” and “éparses.” Although the police regulations are remarkably stringent, their effect upon public morality is absolutely nil, although it must be admitted that their surveillance has a beneficial effect upon the public health. Prostitutes in Brussels, disgusted by the exercise of municipal power, fly without the walls, and withdraw to St. Josse, which, with other extra-mural spots, is much infested with them. The same state of things is observable, more or less, in Antwerp, Bruges, Ostend, Ghent, Mons, Liege, and Namur. By the Belgian regulations the circulation of prostitutes in the streets after sundown is prohibited; women under twenty-one may not be inscribed, and the medical visitation takes place twice a week by the divisional surgeon, and whenever else he may please by the superintending officer. All the éparses and third-class filles de maison are seen at the dispensary, and the first and second classes of the latter order at their domiciles. The éparses may secure this privilege by payment of an extra franc per visit.

The tariff of duties payable by houses and women is as follows:—

Every first-class maison de passe pays 25 francs per month.

Every second-class maison de passe pays 15 francs per month.

Every third-class maison de passe pays 5 francs per month.

Every first class “maison de débauche” pays 60 to 78 francs monthly, according to the number of its authorized occupants—from 6 to 10—and 2 francs extra for each such additional person.

Every such second-class house pays 20 to 32 francs for from 3 to 7 women, and 1 franc extra for every additional.

Every such third-class house pays from 8 to 16 francs for from 2 to 7 women, and 1 franc extra for each additional.

Every first-class fille éparse pays on each inspection 40 centimes.

Every second-class fille éparse pays on each inspection 30 centimes.

Every third-class fille éparse pays on inspection 15 centimes.

Upon punctuality for four successive visits these payments are returned, for inexactitude they are doubled.

Directly a male military patient is taken into hospital he is minutely questioned by the surgeon who attends him as to the exact locality of the house wherein he thinks he was infected, and the appearance of the woman. She is soon arrested; and if the result of the medical examination should prove her diseased, she is placed on the police surgeon’s list and sent to hospital, where she is restrained for some time from spreading contagion.

Hamburg.

Hamburg, from its peculiar situation and the extent of its commerce, may be considered one of the great centres of trade at present existing in the world, and for that reason it deserves more than a cursory glance or a casual notice.

Documents drawn up during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries relating to public women are still in a state of preservation.

There is a Code Municipal for the city of Hamburg (1292), which contains the most ancient regulations of this description.

The 17th, 18th, 19th, and 30th of this code regulates in detail the costume of women of ill-fame and the districts where they are allowed to dwell. Their number is not chronicled, but it appears to have been considerable.

The contractors or speculators in women were by successive enactments heavily taxed in 1562: the sum fixed for each woman was from 75 talents to the extraordinary sum of 569; but this is explained by an urgent want on the part of the municipality.

The provisions of the ancient code were maintained up to 1603, when laws of unexampled rigour were passed. Brothels were closed, women and their paramours were publicly exposed, and, as far as possible, outlawed.

In order to describe the state of prostitution in the 19th century we must call the attention of our readers to an enactment of the year 1807: it is of some length, and we have only extracted briefly from it.

1. Every person who lodges women must send to the pretor’s office a list of the names of people living there, with their age, their birthplace, and the time of their entering the establishment.

2. When a new girl arrives she must be presented at the office.

3. When a woman leaves, the office must be informed of the fact in writing, and her new abode pointed out.

4. The landlord or landlady must particularly impress upon the lodgers not to have connection with men having a contagious malady.

5. When a woman discovers herself to be infected she must intimate the circumstance to her landlord, and abstain from practising her avocation, under pain of severe punishment.

6. The employer who makes the lodger infringe this regulation subjects himself to imprisonment and the pillory.

11. The landlord must look carefully after the health of his lodgers, who must submit to a surgical examination by the municipal physician every fifteen days, and follow his advice punctiliously.

17. Landlords are forbidden to attract foreign women by false promises who have not yet been debauched.

18. The same penalties are inflicted by the law upon a brothel-keeper who prevents a repentant woman from leaving her course of living.

19. Intoxicated men are not to be robbed, but to pay simply the charge put down in the general tariff.

A short time afterwards the French occupied the city, when this edict was repealed and another substituted in its place in the year 1811.

In 1834 the position of women and brothels was regulated, an account of which may be seen in the blue book.

It will be nothing new if we remark that marriage seems to be on the decrease in every populous city, and especially in Hamburg, as we had occasion to notice before.

In 1825 and 1826, among 208 marriages one can count no less than 108 women accouched three or four months after marriage.

We subjoin a table of illegitimate births in proportion to legitimate marriages:—

There are many foreign women in Hamburg, for among 512 women inscribed at the prefecture in 1846, 101 only were born in the city. Many girls are, in point of fact, known prostitutes, though not positively known as such to the authorities, for they must have the consent of their parents before they can be inscribed, which gives a larger number of strangers, who are fettered by no such restrictions.

Holstein, Prussia, and above all Brunswick and Hanover, contribute more than any other countries. Austria and France are unrepresented.

At Hamburg a woman who is in want of money may make more by a single act of indiscretion than by an entire week of labour.

It may be interesting to state the ages of the women inscribed in 1844 at the office of police:—

The police regulations to prevent young girls not yet twenty from abandoning themselves are, as these statistics prove, totally insufficient.

The Hamburg women are generally, thanks to their strong constitutions, healthy and robust. It is remarkable that the public women possess better teeth than the rest of the feminine population.

Syphilis is not so virulent as in former times or in some other cities, and is, as the annexed hospital returns evidence, upon the decline amongst men.

The way in which women of ill-fame at Hamburg end their career offers nothing remarkable: some marry, some adopt different professions, sufficiently lowly; they sell flowers, for instance, they keep cabarets, and not often houses of evil repute, a very small number become domestic servants, and some die in prison, where they have been sent to expiate an offence against the laws.

Registered women may accost persons of the male sex neither by day nor night, may show no light in their rooms unless behind drawn curtains, nor receive men under twenty years of age, nor be in the streets unaccompanied after 11 P.M., under penalties, both to herself and the landlord of the house she lives in, of from two to eight days’ imprisonment on bread and water diet. She is also strictly forbidden, when out of doors, by any speech or gesture to indicate her object.

The examination with the speculum, which takes place at home twice a week, is conducted by a staff of three medical officers and an inspector of police, who sign the bill of health or remit the individual to the hospital forthwith, as the case may be.

Marriage seems to be on the decline in Hamburg, for in 1840 there was only one marriage among every one hundred of the population.

Prussia—Germany.

Although education is almost compulsory in Prussia, it fails most egregiously to produce that which it ought to be the object of education and knowledge to obtain. Female chastity marks more closely than any other thing the moral condition of society. They may go through an entire course of scholastic discipline, but the regulation of the passions is more the result of home influence than of reading and writing, or Latin and Greek, inculcated and taught by educational sergeants or clergymen in primary schools and gymnasia. It is no uncommon event in the family of a respectable tradesman in Berlin to find upon his breakfast-table a young child, of which, whoever may be the father, he has no doubt at all about the maternal grandfather. Such accidents are so common that they are regarded, if not with indifference, as mere youthful indiscretions. In 1837 the number of females in the Prussian population between the beginning of their 16th year, and the end of their 45th year—that is within child-breeding age—was 2,983,146. The number of illegitimates born in the same year was 39,501, so that 1 in every 75 of the whole of the females of an age to bear children had been the mother of an illegitimate child. The unsettled military life of every Prussian on his entrance into the world as a man, inculcates habits of frivolity and thoughtlessness, and is peculiarly calculated to form the character of the young man for evil rather than for good.

Berlin.

Berlin, the richest and most important city in Germany, possesses a population of 300,000 inhabitants.

In a city like this, containing a far-famed and numerously attended university, a very large manufacturing business, and a numerous garrison, we may very justly expect to find prostitution in a flourishing condition; for money engenders habits of luxury, and luxury is the forerunner and the parent of vice.

At Berlin, during the middle ages, prostitution laboured under many restrictions. Documents bearing upon this epoch show us that prostitutes were confined to certain houses, in specified streets, and compelled, by command of the authorities, to wear a particular costume.

The first “maison de joie” was erected about the end of the 15th century, privileged by the corporation, and taxed to some extent.

Those prostitutes who infringed the rules imposed upon them were flogged and expelled from the city. But they were nevertheless under the protection of the authorities, who, in point of fact, looked upon them as belonging to the city, and forming a species of public property. Whosoever assaulted a courtezan was punished as a disturber of the public peace.

There were certain bath-houses at this time, which were much frequented by the richer part of the people and women of station, who gave themselves up to clandestine debauchery, which, if it was discovered by the police, subjected the participators in it to the severest punishment, of which banishment from the city formed the chief part. It is recounted in an old chronicle that, in 1322, an ambassador of the Archbishop of Mayence was killed by the common people for proposing to a bourgeoise to accompany him to one of these bathing establishments.

Concubinage was regarded as common prostitution, and absolutely forbidden. A law was passed, that people living together without having been united by the laws of the church, should be banished from Berlin.

Besides those prostitutes put under the protection of the authorities, and called “demoiselles de la ville,” there were others called nomad or wandering women. They were equally notorious, and were also under control. They went from market to market, and from fair to fair, to give themselves up to fornication.

The Reformation changed all this. Severe moral principles made way among the people. A religious fervour commenced a war against that which had always been regarded with toleration, or at least a certain degree of forbearance, up to this time. They went so far as to look upon celibacy as a vice, and did all they could to compel bachelors to marry, by banishing all accessories of, and temptations to, debauchery. A sort of proscription was organized against loose women, and, in a short time, the city was nearly cleared of them. This was very laudable, no doubt, and highly praiseworthy from a strictly puritanical point of view, but its professors soon discovered that such an artificial state of things could not long hold together. Adultery increased enormously, clandestine prostitution was the order of the day, and infants were exposed continually in the public streets. This caused the most austere to come round to more moderate views: not only was the ancient state of things re-established, but, as the number of prostitutes did not suffice to satisfy the wants of the population, it was considered necessary to augment it, and this was accordingly done.

Calvinistic ideas, that is, rigid Protestantism, and common sense, have always struggled together in Germany, and the authorities have had the greatest trouble to regulate a necessary evil—the one of which we are treating. The practical views of the administration were fought against up to 1855, when a fixed system was established.

During the whole of this time the public health was entirely neglected, which one can partially understand, for syphilis did not make many ravages during the 16th century. It was not until the 17th that the necessity for checking its progress made itself felt. The first regulation bearing upon this scourge appeared in 1700. A medical visit was ordered every fifteen days; women found to be tainted were at once sent to the hospital, and, when cured, sent to a prison or workhouse, where they laboured until they had paid off the cost of curing their illness.

The moral condition of Berlin in 1717 was sad in the extreme. The houses of correction were not sufficient to hold the prisoners committed to them, clandestine debauchery had reached its height, and, to remedy this deplorable state of things, it was found necessary to increase the number of tolerated houses, the number of which, in a very little time, increased to an alarming extent. At the end of the seven years’ war, more than a thousand houses of this nature might have been counted in the city, each containing on an average nine women. These houses were divided into three distinct classes, the lowest of which accommodated ruffians and blackguards of every description. The prostitutes were there dressed commonly, and like working people. The houses of the second category were devoted to the artizans and the middle classes. Those of the third class, were, of course, devoted to the rich, and contained women well dressed, and in every way qualified to seduce from the paths of virtue.

In 1796 another attempt was made to reduce the number of prostitutes, but like all former attempts of the same nature, it proved ineffectual on account of the augmentation of secret vice. This was at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century; and caused syphilis to increase very much, and the old regulations were put in force from 1815 to 1829.

In 1844 the respectable inhabitants of Berlin clamoured loudly for the suppression of houses of ill fame; and the government, in spite of the remonstrances of the police, listened to the petitioners, and, in 1845, all houses of this nature were closed, and the girls sent back to their homes, or some other place that they indicated outside the Prussian territory. This accomplished, the consequences very soon made themselves felt, and the Puritans, who were at the bottom of the measure, were compelled to confess that their precipitancy and ill-advised legislation were productive only of the worst effects. Clandestine prostitution developed enormously, syphilis extended its ramifications, and, after ten years, it was found necessary to re-establish tolerated houses.

The garrison suffered dreadfully from disease; so much so, indeed, that General Wrangel solicited the Minister of the Interior to put things on their old footing.

Illegitimate births terrified statisticians by their frequency.

Let us consider the number of natural births during three different periods. The first period shall indicate the births during the time that prostitution was tolerated and spread equally over the city. The second when it was confined to certain streets, and the third during the suppression.

The proportion of illegitimate births to legitimate, in the first period, is one to seven; in the second, one to five; in the third, one to six.

When prostitution was tolerated, the number of prostitutes did not vary very much; for instance:

of which 190 lived in 54 tolerated houses, and 67 in lodgings.

In 1808 there were 433 in lodgings; of which 230 were spread over 50 houses, and 203 lived in lodgings. Besides this there were about 467, who gave themselves up to clandestine prostitution. The population was at this time 150,000: it was during the occupation of the French.

In 1810 there were 165 prostitutes spread over 44 houses.

In 1819 there were 311 prostitutes, 198 in houses, and 113 in lodgings.

In 1837 there were 258 prostitutes spread over 34 houses.

In 1844 there were 287 prostitutes spread over 26 houses, and 18 in lodgings.

In 1849 the number of prostitutes of all classes in Berlin was estimated at 10,000.

There is a provision common to Berlin and some other towns, that the keeper of a licensed house must defray the cost of curing any person whose contraction of venereal disease in his house can be established.

Dr. Behrend is of opinion that besides the 10,000 prostitutes known to the authorities that we have before alluded to, there are 8000 clandestine ones.

It may be interesting to English readers to know that the price of admission to a certain class of tolerated houses in Berlin is 6d. for which a cup of coffee is given, the use of a private room for fifteen minutes 3s., for thirty minutes 5s., and those prices include the company of one of the women, who receives one-third for herself.

Austria.

In Austria public brothels are not tolerated by the police, and public women are sent into the houses of correction; but this legislative enactment will not convey a true idea to a foreigner of the actual state of morality throughout the country. Strangers, and those whom for want of a better designation we will term closet moralists, who draw their conclusions from primâ facie evidence, would be inclined to consider the territory governed by the house of Hapsburg almost, if not entirely, free from vice, because the streets of the capital and other towns are almost free from the spectacles that disfigure the pavé in other well-known places of cosmopolitan pilgrimage and resort. But we shall prove the reverse to be the case not only in Vienna, but throughout the kingdom.

Austria is an amalgamation of conquered countries which require an enormous standing army to keep in subjection, hence it very naturally follows that the moral sense is deadened in many districts to an alarming extent; and this is the invariable result of military despotism, for the sense of morality which is essentially the result of education, is never so acute as in free and well-governed countries.

The extent and population of the different states that comprise the Austrian empire is thus estimated in the official reports of 1851.

In the capital itself, the lowest and most moderate computation allows the number of prostitutes to be 15,000. These are under police supervision, although they are not licensed. The officers of justice have the power of making domiciliary visits, and enter their dwellings at any hour of the day or night. If they are discovered in the streets after a certain hour they may be apprehended, and this to a great extent prevents that parade and ostentation that is observable in most European cities of any size and note. We are informed on reliable authority (Wilde) that almost one in every two children born in Vienna is “illegitimate,” which evidences very clearly that the more restrictions you place upon public immorality, so much the more do you increase private vice; from 1830 to 1837, the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births was as ten to twelve in Vienna. In Austria registers of births, deaths, and marriages, are kept by each minister of the church for his parish, and also by the Jewish Rabbi for those of their own persuasion. The register of births records the year, month, and day of birth, the number of the house in which the birth occurred, the name of the child and its sex, and whether it be born in wedlock or illegitimate, the names and surnames of the parents, their religion and the names and surnames and condition of the sponsors. In the case of illegitimate children the name of the father cannot be entered unless he acknowledges the paternity. The register of marriages records the year, month, and day of the marriage, the place of solemnization, the names and surnames of the parties, their religion, age, and whether single or widowed, and the names, surnames, and condition of the witnesses.

If a woman makes an application to the lying-in hospital and states her poverty, she is simply asked are you legitimately or illegitimately with child. The success of her suit depends in a great measure upon her reply, for if she says I am pregnant illegitimately she is admitted on the spot, sometimes in the fifth or sixth month of her pregnancy, generally in the seventh. They present her with an imperial livery to wear, carefully preserving her old clothes until she departs. After delivery she has to nurse her own child, sometimes another’s, and when she goes away she gets a bonus of five shillings, thus actually receiving a premium for losing her virtue. For the two first months of its existence the child is nurtured by its mother, it is then sent into the country at the public expense; and if a male it is always welcome in an Austrian peasant’s family, for if they can rear it to eighteen years of age, it is rendered up to the conscription instead of the eldest son of its adopted father. Education is very general in Austria. The law of 1821 enacts that no male shall enter the marriage state who is not able to read, write, and understand casting up accounts. This is a serious restriction to connubial bliss amongst the industrial classes; but the law is still more arbitrary, it makes these qualifications as it were indispensable to a man’s existence. It further says, no master of any trade shall without paying a heavy penalty employ workmen who are not able to read and write, and that small books of moral tendency shall be published and distributed at the lowest possible price to all the Emperor’s subjects.

Mr. McGregor says, “The provisions of this law appear to me to be pretty generally put in force, for I have nowhere in Austria met with any one under thirty years of age who was not able to read and write, and I have found cheap publications, chiefly religious and moral tracts, almanacks, very much like ‘Poor Richard’s,’ containing, with tables of the month, moon’s age, sun’s rising and setting, the fasts, feasts, holidays, markets, and fairs in the Empire, and opposite to the page of each month appropriate advice relative to husbandry and rural economy, with moral sayings and suitable maxims. The spirit of elementary instruction, if not the most enlightened, inculcates at every step, morality, the advantage of a virtuous life, the evil of vice, and the misery consequent on crime.” Works of art are subjected like books to the censors, who are unremitting in the enforcement of their political, moral, and religious restrictions.

Modern Rome.

Mortification of the flesh is one of the first principles of the Romish faith, and a stranger would expect to find any laxity of morals amongst the inhabitants of the eternal city severely punished; but in point of fact prostitution is tolerated and regulated in Rome, although there does not exist any special act relating to it.

In the Middle Ages many vices stained the fame of Rome; but it is of the present day that we are about to write. The Romish system has produced the following results, according to M. Felix Jacquot, who lived at Rome for four years on purpose to study the morality and the health of Italy.

1st. Not being able to confine prostitution to certain houses, it has spread itself among families.

2nd. Clandestine prostitution, which is most prevalent at Rome, has there produced the evils that it always engenders, houses of accommodation, seduction at home, and the extension of syphilis.

It is extremely probable that, as there are no standing regulations relative to prostitution, perhaps a sort of arbitrary power is vested in the police which opens the door to innumerable evils.

There exist at Rome five forms of clandestine prostitution: let us begin with the street walkers.

Street walker is the only name that can be given to those ignoble creatures that prostitute themselves in the evening and during the night, at the corners of the streets and in the dark angles of the public squares near the cathedral of St. Peter, and under the colonnades of Bernin, where the French soldiery are so often infected. The street walker was not much known at Rome before the revolution of 1849. She is the result of disorder, and the occupation of Rome by the French gives vitality to her existence. Some of these wretches will infect ten or even twenty men in one night, who have recourse to them to satisfy their brutal cravings and bestial desires.

We have to treat, secondly, of houses of ill-fame; but there is little to be said about them; they do not differ in any respect from those to be found in other cities. The dangers of frequenting them are precisely the same. Syphilis acquires new virulence by being fostered by the inmates, who are recruited from amongst innocent and inexperienced girls belonging to families in the city.

Thirdly, there are houses where the girls neither live nor sleep, but where they are sure to be found during certain hours of the day. The women dine there, and only return to their families at night. These houses are not numerous, probably there are not more than six or seven in the whole city. To escape the watchfulness of the police, these change their locale; whilst one or two close others open, so that there is no diminution of the evil. They rather affect quiet localities: the steep hilly streets little frequented, such as the rampart of the capitol behind the church of St. Joseph des Menuisiers, or those quarters where strangers who come to pass a season at Rome instal themselves. There are not many women, as a rule, in these houses; generally six and seldom more than eight. They are frequented by young girls, and notoriously by married women. As so many men are obliged to remain bachelors when they take orders, a vast number of women are compelled, against their will, to embrace a life of celibacy. Then, in a country without industry and with very little agriculture, the lower classes have positively no resources to marry upon. There is a disinclination, also, amongst all classes in Rome to have children without possessing the means to educate them as they should be educated. There is quite a passion amongst the ladies in Rome to get married, and they put every art into requisition to effect their end. An irreproachable character is one of the means employed by young unmarried ladies. But once married everything is changed, and their reserve ceases. This change is to be attributed to too much exclusiveness and the restraint imposed on naturally strong and libidinous instincts; at any rate it is a well-established fact at Rome that marriage is productive of the worst passions and the most scandalous intrigues.

These houses are subject to no visits of the sanitary police. If the authorities are cognisant of their existence they take no notice unless the neighbours complain of such immodest residents in their immediate vicinity. Their existence depends in a great measure upon the lowest members of the police force, whose secrecy is often bought by large bribes. If money is refused them, these fellows complain to their superiors, and the extermination of the offending house of accommodation generally ensues.

It is no uncommon thing in England and France to hear the clamour of drunken men and women issuing from those houses—the noise of bacchanal lyrics mingled with oaths and curses, the immodesty of the women joining with the blasphemy of the men; but in Italy it is different. There is a sort of dignity amongst the Italians even in the midst of their debauchery. An anonymous denunciation before the clergy of the parish or the justices that a man was drunk, will often expose the denounced individual to punishment.

The hospital of San Giacomo is set apart for syphilitic maladies, and there the women are treated by the physicians, but unfortunately too late.

Gay women are to be placed in the fourth category. Under this name we include all those who make the sale of their charms a profession. Some are mistresses to foreigners and to natives, and transmit infection from one to the other; the others receive the first comer for a certain stipulated sum. There are a few, however, who only receive those that are known to them or who are well introduced. This is a measure of personal safety; by it they elude the danger of infection, and escape from the supervision of the police.

Syphilis is very prevalent in Rome, more so than in France; and the influence of the climate is much felt in accelerating the approach and increasing the virulence of the disease.

Fifthly. Prostitution in families is one of the most deplorable results of the non-toleration of open houses of ill fame.

This actually goes on under the eyes of the parents; the mother will introduce you to her daughter, and the little brothers will provide you with a ladder to enter the house with.

The love of the far niente is so strong amongst the Italians that labour, when it can be obtained, is odious to them. “La travailleuse,” says M. Jacquot, “chaude encore des baisers adultères sera bien reçue dans l’alcôve conjugale, si elle apporte un bon pécule au bout de la semaine;” and he adds with indignation, “for a long time I refused to believe in the existence of such ignominy, to-day I am only too well convinced.”

An honest woman will on no account be seen in the streets after dark, and a servant will not go into the city from the suburbs after the day has disappeared.

The city of Rome contains 150,000 people; and nourishes, lodges, and takes care of more than 4000 poor people, infirm people, old people, orphans, foundlings, etc., without reckoning assistance given at their own houses to those who require it. There are different hospitals too: the Trinity of the Pelerins, the deaf and dumb asylum, the madhouse, etc. Nearly 22,000 necessitous are relieved every year. The hospital of St. Roch gives admittance to women with child without asking their name or condition, without inquiring whether or not they are married. Women in a good position, who wish to conceal the fruits of a culpable amour, can receive every attention by paying 3 scudi (or about 4s. 6d. of our money) a month. The child is taken to the Pia casa di Santo-Spirito. Both men and women when discharged from hospital are so weak that they cannot pursue their avocations. When this is the case they are received into the refuge for convalescents, called the Trinity of the Pelerins, that we have had occasion to refer to before. This hospital has received six hundred thousand inmates since the year 1625.

As things are at present constituted at Rome there is little more to be said respecting it, but we cannot conclude without expressing our admiration of the numerous charitable establishments that one finds there. Every infirmity is cared for with no sparing hand, and the defenceless and the destitute are not deserted by the state and the charity of private individuals.

Turin.

Turin is as important in every way as Rome, and deserves considerable attention. Its population, if we include the floating inhabitants, is more than 150,000.

Almost up to the present day, that is, until very lately, the supervision of the police was very imperfectly exercised, and the propagation of disease was the inevitable result. In 1855, M. Ratazzi, Minister of the Interior, wishing to establish a better organization, asked Doctor Sperino, well known in the world of letters for his works upon syphilis, to conceive a project bearing upon this important department of the public health.

These new ordonnances established a reform not only in Turin, but throughout the kingdom.

The public women who were visited before 1856 were at Turin 180; since a scrupulous supervision has been established, the number is increased to 750. When we compare these figures, we shall see how much this department of the sanitary police was neglected, and how necessary and efficacious the measures suggested by M. Sperino were. This is proved in a better way still by the notable diminution of disease among the garrison. When the surveillance of prostitution is badly exercised the disastrous results can escape the notice of the government, but the registry kept of the soldiers who go into hospital is an index always to be relied on.

After a long time, a hospital specially devoted to venereal diseases has sprung up in Turin, called the Syphilocome. Tainted women are here treated gratuitously. They also receive women sent from the provinces. Married women not prostitutes, who are nursing their children, are received here in chambers set apart for them. In 1856 the number of admissions was 1661. A similar institution is about to be erected at Genoa.

Prostitutes are now inscribed on the registers, and they must renew their licence annually. The cost of the licence in the first instance, and the cost of renewal, is

The 88th article of the fifth section of the new regulations says, “The cost of the visits of the physicians made to independent prostitutes at their own houses is 1 f. 50 c., and those attached to different houses is fixed at—

In the third class we only include the destitute.”

Art. 89. All the taxes imposed upon prostitutes and upon the chiefs of houses of tolerance must be paid to the director of the sanitary office, and are devoted to paying the numerous expenses attendant upon the supervision of prostitution.

Article 40 of the third section.—The heads of houses of tolerance must not, in any case, oppose the visits of the agents of police, by day or night, when the said visits are deemed necessary for the interests of public security.

41. The number of prostitutes in each house is fixed by the police.

49. In houses of the first class, three-fourths of the fixed price goes to the master, the other fourth to the prostitute.

50. The masters of houses of all kinds must pay to the officer of inspection, besides the tax for sanitary visits made to prostitutes living in the house, an annual sum, fixed as follows:

For houses in the first category, that is, where prostitutes have a fixed abode,