We have inquired into the history of the female sex under the social laws of antiquity, under the rude codes of barbarian races, and under the Mohammedan and Hindu systems. It will now be interesting to trace it through the dusky period of modern civilization from the rise of Christianity to the middle ages. Many writers afford the materials for a view of the prostitute systems of Europe during that era, and M. Rabuteaux especially has combined their researches in one wide and broad view.
The Christian Emperors of Rome endeavoured to suppress prostitution, but with little success. Constantine, Constantius, Theodosius the Younger, Valentian, and Justinian took up the task by turns, denounced penalties against offenders—those who debauched others, and those who prostituted themselves; but though the world changed its aspect, it did not change its vices. Among the northern barbarians, indeed, austere principles ruled over the people, and women occupied a higher place than is accorded them now. They were companions of the men, not toys for their pleasure, or bagatelles for their amusement. Called, at a later age, to the functions of maternity, they previously learned the use of reason, and succeeded from a virtuous maidenhood to the dignity of matron. The chastity which Tacitus describes among the barbarians of Germany continued long to be their characteristic; but their penal customs became milder as they received better maxims of social policy. A woman who debauched herself was expelled from the city—a sufficient punishment. She had no more any family. Even the ties of paternity were broken. Gradually, however, the barbarian conquerors of Europe bent to the attractions of a corrupted society, and though the laws of the Visigoths forbade prostitution, men were found to encourage and females to pursue this infamous occupation.
The free woman who prostituted herself was, for the first offence, punished with 300 strokes, and for the second reduced to slavery, given to some poor man, and prohibited from entering a town. Parents who connived at the vice of their children were flogged. If the offender was already in bonds, she was whipped, shorn of her hair, and returned to her master. Should he himself be the accomplice of her sin, he lost her, and suffered an equal penalty of the rod. Prostitutes who walked the streets and fields were flung into prison, scourged, and fined. A decree of Theodoric, king of the Goths, declared death against all who gave an asylum or any encouragement to infamous persons.
The epithet of “lost woman” applied to one of honest character was an insult punishable by law—generally by fines. A maiden or a widow was especially protected against such imputation. In France the female who accused another of infamous habits was condemned to pay five sous, or to walk in penance, only clothed in a light shift, while a matron followed, and thrust a fine-pointed instrument above her thighs, more as a humiliation than an injury. The Spanish code also recognised this offence, as well as that of general defamation.
The church was the universal censor of public manners in the middle ages. No sin was more severely denounced by the Christian law than that of licentiousness; yet it inculcated no savage persecution of the fallen. Good men could never forget, that a courtezan had washed the feet of Christ, and accordingly a humanizing spirit presided over the social code of the early fathers. They received into their communion any woman who renounced her evil life, married, and was faithful to her husband, or remained single without prostituting herself again.
Everywhere, indeed, Christianity tolerated prostitution. It was impossible to eradicate vice, and it was better one class should make a profession of it than that all should follow it as a secret occupation. Suppress courtezans, said St. Augustine, and you confuse all society by the caprice of the passions. Nevertheless, efforts were made to check the evil, though the principal rules of this “police of manners” were applied to confine the prostitutes of every town in a separate quarter, and to force on them an uniform apparel, that their shame might not be concealed, and that other women might be safe from the address of brutal libertines.
But while the woman who lost herself was forgiven by the civil and religious law, no toleration was extended to the wretch who made her such—the pander who seduced young girls and sold them for profit. The Council of Elvira refused pardon, even on his deathbed, to the wretch who was guilty of leading the innocent to prostitution. “Miserable wretch; brand of hell!” exclaimed Merot to one of these, “dost thou believe that when thy accursed soul is lost in eternal pains, God will be content? No; he will augment thy punishment;” and he added, that the young females he had ruined should inflict his tortures. All the rigour of the law, every form of public infamy, every device of humiliation, was called in to brand with additional opprobrium the depraved trader in prostitution.
In France the punishment was in general arbitrary, according to the circumstances of each case. Nevertheless law and usage regulated the degree of it. In Paris an edict was published in 1367 forbidding persons to procure girls for prostitution on pain of being exposed in the pillory, marked with a hot iron, and expelled from the city. It was renewed in 1415, and we find an instance of its application in the next year, for in the public accounts Cassin La Botte is described as receiving money for the expenses of an execution of this kind, in which some wretches were led into a public place, branded, mutilated by the ears, and set in the pillory. Sometimes the procuress was mounted on an ass, with her face towards its tail, a straw hat on her head, and an inscription on her back. In this state she was paraded through the streets, whipped, and sent to prison, or exiled. These circumstances appear to have frequently occurred as lately as 1756. We find it applied in a provincial town to some prostitutes who had infringed the local rules:—“They were led through the place, with a drum beating before them, and exposed.” In England similar occurrences were common, and were accompanied by some peculiar details. The cart in which the culprit sat was preceded by two men playing music, while a crowd followed and showered filth and mud upon the offenders.
Sometimes, when the penalty was aggravated in severity, the culprit’s hair was burnt. Thus, in 1399, at Paris, several men and women suffered this punishment, being pilloried and deprived of all their possessions. At Toulouse, a prostitute was conducted to the town hall, where the executioner tied her hands, stripped her naked, placed a cap, made in the form of a sugar-loaf, ornamented with feathers, on her head, hung an inscription on her back, and then took her out to a rock in the middle of the river. There she was compelled to enter an iron cage, which was plunged three times into the water, while nearly the whole population was assembled to witness the scene. Afterwards she was led to the hospital, where she remained labouring for the rest of her days. A similar custom existed at Bourdeaux. Everywhere, indeed, the same rude devices were employed to terrify the people from profligacy.
The laws of Naples were extremely severe. Before the thirteenth century we find every procuress endeavouring to corrupt innocent females punished, like an adultress, by the mutilation of her nose. The mother who prostituted her daughter suffered this punishment, until King Frederic absolved such women as trafficked with their children under the pressure of want. The same prince, however, decreed against all who were found guilty of preparing drugs or inflammatory liquors—to aid in their designs upon virtuous females—death in case of injury resulting, and imprisonment when no serious harm was effected. These laws, however, proved insufficient for their purpose, and towards the end of the fifteenth century profligacy ran riot in Naples. Ruffiani multiplied in its streets, procuring by force or by corruption multitudes of victims to fill the taverns and brothels of the city. Penalties of extreme severity were proclaimed against them. The Ruffiani were ordered to quit the kingdom, and the prostitutes were prohibited from harbouring such persons among them. Any woman who disobeyed was condemned to be burnt on the forehead with a hot iron, whipped in the most humiliating manner, and exiled.
The code of Alphonso IX., King of Castile, which belonged to the second half of the twelfth century, included procurers among infamous persons, which condemned them to “civil death.” Five classes of these were enumerated:—I. Men who trafficked in debauch: these were expelled the country. II. Speculators who hired their houses to abandoned women for the exercise of their vocation: their houses were confiscated, and they were fined. III. Men or women who kept brothels and hired out prostitutes: if the females they sold were slaves, the law gave them liberty; if they were free, their corrupter was under pain of death, forced to endow and place them in a situation to marry. IV. Death was denounced against the husband who connived at the dishonour of his wife, and against every one who seduced an honest woman to infamy. V. Girls who supported Ruffiani were publicly whipped, and deprived of the clothes they wore when arrested. The men themselves were, for the first offence, flogged; for the second, expelled from the city; and for the third, sent to the galleys. Between 1552 and 1566 additional terrors were devised against this crime, and the Ruffiani once convicted were sentenced to ten years chained at the oar, while for a repetition of the offence they received two hundred blows, and were condemned for life to the galleys.
The incitement to vice has, indeed, been everywhere considered a crime deserving of the heaviest punishment; but prostitution itself has not been tolerated without interference. In France, especially, efforts were early made for its suppression. The laws, however, failed, on account of the number of offenders it would have been necessary to condemn, and a few examples only were made, to show that no licence was extended to debauch. The first edict published was an absolute prohibition by Charlemagne. He commanded strict search to be made throughout his dominions, in every habitation and place of resort, that every public woman, and all persons without known occupations or means of livelihood, might be exposed. Men who were found harbouring prostitutes were compelled to carry them on their shoulders to the place where they were to be whipped with rods. In case of refusal they suffered this infliction themselves. It is singular to find, that among the ancient Parisians no disgrace was equal to that of bearing on the back a debauched woman.
During three centuries and a half after Charlemagne, public immorality flowed in a tide over the country. Prostitutes multiplied in every town, and in the eleventh century Paris was as one general brothel. Everywhere harlots thronged the streets, soliciting the men who passed, dragging them by the arms into their dens, and if they resisted, abusing them in unmeasured terms. In the same house might be found a school on the upper floor and a brothel below. In 1254 an effort was made for the reformation of manners; but the only effect was, that vice dissimulated instead of bearing its title on its face. Clandestine succeeded to public debauch. At length, however, some real good resulted from a succession of rigorous edicts. At the commencement of the fifteenth century, the scourge of society had been lightened, but there broke out wars and troubles which gave new licence to immorality. A hundred years revived the pestilence in all its virulent shapes; and in 1503 a council was assembled at Paris to deliberate on the best means of abolishing the brothels which were crowded around them. Laws were passed, which we cannot describe in detail, especially as they are of no value to the legislators of this age, for in spite of them the moral malady of France extended, and public custom recognised what authority refused to allow.
In Paris the prostitutes resorted to places known as clapiers, or mole-holes, in allusion to the brutal subterranean life they led. They did not live in the houses where they received their temporary companions; there were localities common to many, where they assembled during the day, and which the magistrates ordered to be opened and closed at stated hours. They were not permitted to carry on their orgies at night, to prostitute themselves in their own homes, or publicly to shock the decent population; but they rebelled against all discipline, and evaded where they did not openly contradict the law. In 1307 an edict was published, assigning to prostitutes certain streets as places of abode—Rue de l’Abreuvorix Macon, la Boucherie, la Rue Froidmantel, de Glatigny, la Cour Robert de Paris, les rues Baillohé, Tyron, Charon, and Champ Fleury. It is remarkable that the infamy of these neighbourhoods has been hereditary; for after the lapse of 500 years, after all the alterations in the city of Paris which have been effected, after all the vicissitudes of its domestic history, the same places still exhibit the same spectacles, and are inhabited by the same population. The complaint of two neighbours was enough to cause a prosecution against the keeper of a brothel. Notwithstanding every exertion which the inefficient law and police of those ages enabled rulers to make, prostitution increased, spread into prohibited streets, and throughout France was a characteristic feature of society. Nor were the palaces whence issued decrees for the reformation of public manners, superior in many instances to the brothels they denounced.
In the eleventh century a brothel and a church stood side by side at Rome; and 500 years after, under the pontificate of Paul II., prostitutes were numerous. Numerous statutes were enacted, and many precautions taken, which prove the grossness of manners at that epoch. One convicted of selling a girl to infamy was heavily fined, and if he did not pay within ten days had one foot cut off. The nobility and common people indulged habitually in all kinds of excess. Tortures, flogging, branding, banishment, were inflicted in vain on some to terrify the others, but with very incomplete success. To carry off and detain a prostitute against her will was punishable by amputation of the right hand, imprisonment, flogging, or exile. The rich, however, invariably bought immunity for themselves. In Spain, although violence offered to a public woman was an offence, few women dared to complain of having been seduced. In Naples, also, under King Roger, such a charge was never taken; but William, the successor of that prince, punished with death the crime of rape; but the victim must prove that she shrieked aloud, and prefer her complaint within eight days, or show that she was detained by force. When once a woman had prostituted herself, however, she had no right to refuse to yield her person to any one. This legislation extended to the extreme north, and obtained in Sleswig.
Among the most extraordinary acts of legislation on this subject was the bull of Clement II., who desired to endow the church with the surplus gains of the brothel. Every person guilty of prostitution was forced, when disposing of her property, either at death or during life, to assign half of it to a convent. This regulation was easily eluded and utterly inefficacious. A tribunal was also established, having jurisdiction over brothels, upon which a tax was laid continuing in existence until the middle of the sixteenth century. Efforts were made to confine this class of dwellings to a particular quarter, but without success. In Naples the same failure attended the attempt. Prostitutes, in spite of the law, established themselves in the most beautiful streets of the city, in palatial buildings, and there, with incessant clamour, congregated a horde of thieves, profligates, and vagabonds of every kind, until the chief quarter became uninhabitable. In 1577 they were ordered to quit the street of Catalana within eight days, under pain of the scourge for the women, and the galleys for such of the proprietors as were commoners, while simple banishment was threatened against “nobles.”
One example of good legislation was the pragmatic law of 1470 to protect the unfortunates against the cupidity, the extortion, and the fraud of tavern keepers and others, who grew rich upon their infamy. Men went into their places of entertainment with some single girls, contracted a heavy debt, and then left their victims to pay. These were then given the choice of a disgraceful whipping or an engagement in the house. They often consented, and usually spent the remainder of their lives in dependence on their creditor, without ability to liberate themselves. By the new law masters of taverns were forbidden to give credit to prostitutes for more than a certain sum, and this only to supply her with food and clothing absolutely necessary. If he exceeded this amount he had no legal means of recovering it.
The most remarkable feature in the Neapolitan legislation on this subject was, the establishment, at an unknown but early date, of the Court of Prostitutes. This tribunal, which sat at Naples, had its peculiar constitution, and had jurisdiction over all cases connected with prostitution, blasphemy, and some other infamous offences. Towards the end of the sixteenth century it had risen to extraordinary power and was full of abuses. It practised all kinds of exaction and violence, every species of partiality and injustice, and even presumed to publish edicts of its own. The judges flung into prison numbers of young girls, whom they compelled to buy their liberty with money, and sometimes dared to seize women who, though of lax conduct, could not be included in the professional class. This was discovered, and led in 1589 to a reform of the court. Its powers were strictly defined, and its form of procedure placed under regulation, while the avenues to corruption were narrowed. The institution itself existed for nearly a hundred years after that period—until 1768, when a royal edict declared the ruler’s resolution to abolish the infamous calling altogether. Vice, however, when widely spread in a nation, does not vanish at the breath of authority. Denounced by the law, prostitution continued to flourish and society to feel its influence.
Passing from the south to regions with a less voluptuous climate, we find Strasburgh as overflowing with vice as perhaps any other city in the world. Prostitutes were in the fifteenth century so numerous there that, though a distinct quarter was assigned for their residences, they invaded every locality, and swarmed in the finest streets. Speculators were accustomed to travel abroad and bring home unfortunate girls, whom they kidnapped and reduced to a state of slavery. Officers were appointed to visit the brothels and collect the tax imposed on them. More than fifty-seven of these places existed in six streets only. One contained nineteen, while other neighbourhoods were infested in an equal degree. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, so far were public manners demoralized that prostitutes horded in the clock towers and aisles of the great cathedral as well as in several smaller churches. In 1521 an ordinance appeared directing the “cathedral girls,” who were called “swallows,” to quit the sacred places of their retreat within fifteen days. To those who persevered in their libertine mode of life, various residences were assigned—in the suburbs. Strasburgh was now in the depth of demoralization; but the Reformation soon visited the city, awakened its people from sensual pleasures to an intellectual battle, and a speedy change was apparent. In 1536 there were only two brothels there. In 1540 public prostitution was effectually suppressed. Ten years after it was proposed to establish a house of legal debauch; but the attempt was resisted, though renewed in the third and fourth year after this.
It was little matter to the prostitutes to inhabit houses especially dedicated to their vile traffic. They cared not to wait passively at home for visitors. Wherever men congregated for pleasure or for the business of life, wherever there was any chance of provoking their desires, they thronged, sometimes impelled by the love of excitement, sometimes by the pains of hunger. They thus transformed into so many brothels wine houses, barber’s shops, and students’ rooms, and the perseverance of government against them was by no means equalled by their own tenacity. An edict of 1420 forbade prostitutes to enter the cabarets; another of 1558 prohibited tavern-keepers from entertaining them. Another denounced gambling, and prostitutes were only allowed when desirous of refreshment to stand without and drink what was handed to them from within. In England similar regulations was established, and barbers especially were made the object of very severe restrictions. Sempstresses and butchers were forbidden to employ any females of bad character, and others were restrained by similar laws.
All these efforts, however, to render the sisterhood of prostitutes a homeless, desolate, hopeless class—to deprive them of shelter, of comforts, and the honest means of life—failed in purifying the manners of the age. The baths became a regular resort of women belonging to this order—in Paris, in Geneva, in Venice, in Rome, in Naples, in Milan, in Ferrara, in Bologna, in Lucca, and in every other city of the Peninsula—so that there was scarcely the keeper of a bath who was not at the same time a brothel keeper, employing numbers of Ruffiani to procure attendance at his house. There were other cities in which baths were publicly tolerated and recognised as places of prostitution. Among these were Avignon and London. A statute of the Church of Avignon, dated 1441, interdicted the use of certain baths, known to be brothels, to the priests and clergy. An offence committed by day was not punished half so severely as one committed by night. There is only one other instance of a punishment inflicted during that age on men who violated the public law of morals. It was that of certain citizens of Anvers in Flanders, who were condemned to make a pilgrimage to expiate an offence of this kind. On one occasion, indeed, of which the date is lost, the magistrates of Bourdeaux caused a man to be hanged for forcibly violating a prostitute.
In Avignon, however, the licence of prostitution was shortly taken away. The residence of the popes in that city had attracted a concourse of strangers from all parts of the globe, and brothels sprung up in profusion in the neighbourhood of churches, at the door of the Papal palace, and side by side with prelatical residences—a display of libertinism so gross that the public acts of encouragement at once ceased, and an edict drove all the prostitutes out of the city.
In London, as we have said, as at Avignon, prostitution took refuge in the public baths—a practice of very ancient date. These places were situated in the borough of Southwark, which was not included in the city until 1550. It was a miserable quarter, full of inhabited ruins, to which some public gardens, dedicated to dog and bear baiting, alone attracted the people of the neighbourhood. In this general preliminary sketch it is not necessary to say more of London.
In various parts of Europe a continual stream of edicts was poured out against the system of prostitution; but it was only persecuting the victims, instead of eradicating the causes. In some States, as in Lombardy, men were forbidden to give them an asylum; they were prohibited from appearing among honest citizens; they were prevented from purchasing food or clothes, or borrowing money by the hire of their persons; in fact, fines, prisons, whips, still continued to attempt the reform of morals.
Hitherto, however, we have seen prostitution in some places protected, but in all restrained, though everywhere freely exercised by those persons who would brave its perils and its disgrace. It was now sought, by the direct and continuous intervention of the law, to transform it into a public institution, organized, watched, disciplined, by particular officers, and subjected to special authority. In France, and especially in Languedoc, these principles were, during the middle ages, firmly established. Louis XI. proclaimed, that from the remotest antiquity it was the custom in Languedoc to have a house and asylum for public women. The most celebrated of these were at Toulouse and Montpellier. That at Toulouse was known to exist during the twelfth century, and by an abuse of terms, not uncommon at that period, was called the Great Abbey. The Commune and the University divided the expense, and were proprietors of the building, and a good revenue was derived from it for municipal purposes. But in 1424 the receipts diminished considerably, to the great regret of the governors. The turbulent youth of Toulouse behaved to the poor girls, whom they sacrificed to their lust, with the utmost violence and brutality—beating them and their children, breaking up the furniture, and wrenching off even the doors of the house. Many attempts were made to repress these outbreaks, but the prostitutes were at length compelled to take refuge in the interior of the city. Severe regulations were imposed upon them. All who were diseased were compelled to live in solitude until cured, and some were whipped for disobedience. On one occasion, when a famine prevented the inhabitants from indulging in their ordinary pleasures, the prostitutes emigrated, but returned to their post in 1560. The magistrates, shamed by public outcry, which accused them of purchasing their robes from the tax on debauched women, abandoned the money, at this time, to the hospitals; but the administrators of these afterwards made them some compensation. In 1566 a council was called to deliberate on the best means of ridding the city from the profligacy and wickedness which had grown up through the immense licensed brothels it contained. To increase the scandal, four prostitutes were discovered in a monastery of Augustine friars. Three of these unhappy girls were hung. Shortly afterwards three others were found in a convent, and they also were sent to the gallows.
It appears that in 1587 prostitution was almost eradicated from Toulouse, though it flourished in the rural districts around. Many of the girls were forced to labour at cleansing the streets as a punishment. Two decrees of Louis XI. and Charles VIII. indicate the history of prostitution at Montpellier in the fifteenth century. A man named Panais possessed and governed the place devoted to this purpose, and dying, left a dynasty of brothel keepers—two sons, who associated with a banker. They embellished the edifice, furnished it luxuriously, constructed beautiful baths, and obtained a legal monopoly in their infamous traffic, by engaging to pay a certain tax. However, in 1458, another individual was permitted to establish himself, which he did with éclat, and the women deserted their old quarters for the new “hotel.” A public cause was made of the quarrel, and it was decided that the original promoters should continue to enjoy their privilege. The two brothel keepers, who gained the titles of “Friends and faithful Councillors of the King of France,” grew wealthy, and their trade of prostitution became one of the most important branches of enterprise in the city.
The city of Rhodes appears to have been another city of Europe where a chartered brothel existed, for the bishop, in 1307, forbade the inhabitants to receive any of the public prostitutes into their houses, which supposes that some particular retreat was open to them. There was one also at Lisbon; but it was not until 1394 that the magistrates deliberated on the propriety of erecting a building at the public expense, expressly as a brothel. Ten years later we find the inhabitants lamenting that their wives and daughters were endangered by the want of such a place, and in 1424 it was established. A tax was levied on the women to assist in defraying the cost, and fines were imposed for misconduct.
In Italy licensed brothels were very numerous. There was one at Mantua, and Venice was the very sink of prostitution. In 1421 the government enlisted women to this service to guard the virtue of the other classes. A matron was placed over them, who governed them, received their gains, and made a monthly division of profits. The names of several women, the most notorious and beautiful of the Venetian courtezans, are preserved by Nicolo Daglioni. A very small sum was paid to them by their patrons.
In Valencia a public brothel, on a colossal scale, existed towards the end of the fifteenth century. It resembled a little town surrounded with walls, and had a single gate; in front of this stood a gibbet for criminals. Near this was an office, where a man stood who addressed all who entered, and said, that if they would deposit what valuables they had with him, he would return them safely as they came out; but if they refused and were robbed within, he was not responsible. The wall inclosed four or five streets of little houses, inhabited by girls dressed in brilliant habiliments of velvet and silk. Three or four hundred of them were usually in attendance. They received only a small sum for their favours. Whether this system was then general in Spain we know not, but it is certain that common prostitutes abounded. Servants appear to have been hired for this purpose, for Philippe II., in 1575, in order to check the ravages of immorality, ordered that no female domestics under forty years of age should be hired by men. A decree of 1623 required that in all cities throughout the kingdom public brothels should be abolished.
In Geneva there was a “Queen of the Prostitutes,” elected by the civic magistrates, who took an oath of office, and undertook to govern all the women engaged in her occupation. At Schelstadt a man was commissioned to a similar duty, and very strict rules were imposed on the population.
We have seen that in many places prostitution became a source of revenue, and might enlarge our details and multiply our examples; but it would be tedious to cite the laws of France, Spain, Italy, and Germany on the subject. They varied much in different times, but offer little interest.
The legislator, however, has not contented himself at all times with dividing the prostitute class from other classes of females, with shutting them up in separate quarters, or even confining them in houses of which he kept the key. In some cases he obliged them to assume a peculiar costume, or at least a conspicuous badge of infamy. They always endeavoured to resist or elude the restrictions laid upon them, and, feeling deeply the humiliation of such compulsion, sought by all means to evade it. The first regulation of this kind for the city of Paris is mentioned by the chronicler Geoffrey. He says, that the Queen of Louis VII. going one day to church, met a woman gorgeously attired, and, deceived by her appearance, gave her, “according to custom,” the kiss of peace. She was a court prostitute; and when the royal lady heard this, she complained to her husband, who ordered that no mantles should in future be worn by prostitutes. From time to time new edicts on this subject appeared. One of 1360 forbade them to wear any embroidery, any gold or silver buttons, any pearls, or any trimmings of gray fur. In 1415 and 1419 golden and gilded zones were prohibited to them, as well as silver buckles to their shoes. The very fashion of their dress was afterwards regulated. These devices to distinguish prostitutes from respectable females were speedily imitated. An aiguillette of a certain colour, hung from the shoulder, was most generally adopted in France. In some towns silk was prohibited to them.
The Bishop of Rhodes, in 1307, forbade them to wear mantles, veils, amber necklaces, or rings of gold, while the popes of Rome followed the example. The laws of Mantua obliged prostitutes when they appeared in the streets to cover the rest of their clothes with a short white cloak, and wear a badge on their breasts. At Bergamo the cloak was yellow; in Parma, white; in Milan, at first, black woollen, and then black silk. If disobedient, they might be fined, and, in case of a second offence, publicly exposed, and whipped. Any one might strip the garments off any girl he met in the streets illegally attired. In London a similar distinction was imposed on them, and at Strasburgh a sugar-loaf bonnet was invented for their use. In Spain, besides prohibitions concerning dress, they were forbidden the use of coaches and litters, as well as prayer-carpets or cushions in the churches; even a hackney-carriage was not allowed to be hired by them.
The acts of legislation in France were almost exclusively police regulations. Forced to tolerate the prostitute class, the law endeavoured, by watching, restraining, shaming, and insulting it, to render its occupation so infamous as to terrify persons from seeking it as a means of livelihood. It does not seem that in France, during the middle ages, legislation ever passed this limit or went beyond the action of police. In Italy, however, and in Spain, this was not the case. The Roman law had left many vestiges, which have never, in reality, disappeared; the ecclesiastical prerogative was powerful, and disposed to be active. Local statutes existed in great abundance, and the combination of these authorities gave rise to a jurisdiction full of details: profuse, sometimes strange, always subtle, in parts inconsistent, and laboriously commented upon by a numerous school of jurists—a jurisprudence which elevated itself above simple measures of security and municipal rules, and instituted for prostitutes a civil and social statute of their own.
Ulpian says that a woman is a prostitute not only when she frequents regular brothels, but when she visits cabarets, or any other places, where she is careless of her honour. She is a prostitute who yields herself for base purposes to all men; but she who has connection only with one or two is not. Octavenus, however, thinks, more justly, that she is a prostitute who gives up her person in common, whether she receive money or not.
The lawgivers of the middle ages were not accustomed to insist on perfect or precise definitions. They liked to subtilize over terms. Some held Ulpian’s limited view to be correct; others, with Octavenus, declared that any woman yielding to the solicitations of several men, even without being paid, was a prostitute. The Roman law defined prostitution to be the reception of numerous libertines. But how many? inquired St. Jerome. This threw divisions among the theorists. Some declared 40 men to be enough, some insisted on 60, others on 70; while a few, carrying extravagance to its utmost limits, asserted that no woman was a prostitute who had not delivered up her person to at least 3000 persons. While these ridiculous disputes engaged attention, the corruption of manners went on.
It is just to the wisdom of that age, however, to remark, that these discussions of the casuists appeared no less ridiculous to contemporary statesmen than to us; while the general public idea of prostitution was habitual debauch for vile purposes, whether mercenary or otherwise.
Some theorists, nevertheless, insisted that the nature of a hireling was inseparable from that of a prostitute. On this account the name meretrix had by the Latins been given to a woman of this class; but this view led to consequences which the wise legislator would not accept. If any female accepting a reward for her dishonour was to be publicly enumerated among professional harlots, many, from a single offence, must, under compulsion, follow a life of systematic vice. Others argued that two or three repetitions of this infamous sale would justify the title being applied; but this is a point on which writers have never agreed. Consequently, a long controversy arose upon the three conditions in dispute: what amount of publicity—what number of vicious connections—what kind of venality—was sufficient to stamp a woman with the name and character of a common prostitute.
Rabuteaux describes her as one who, under constraint, or by her own will, abandons herself, without choice, without passion, without even the impulse of the grossest lust, to an unchaste course of life. By want of choice he means the absence of a preference for the individual, by which, he adds, a forbearing judgment extenuates the offence of immorality. If, he insists, there be any choice of persons, there may be libertinism, there may be debauch, there may be scandal, there may be vice, but there is not prostitution in the true sense of the word. It applies to “sacred prostitution,” whether gratuitous or venal, which was an unblushing and indiscriminate sacrifice of chastity; to that which the barbarous hospitality of savages, whether on the rivers of Lapland or in the deserts of Africa, gave up a woman to every guest; and to that legal kind in civilized countries which sold itself promiscuously for hire.
Such is M. Rabuteaux’s idea. We differ from him. Prostitution appears to us the application to a vile purpose of that which was designed for honourable uses; and the mere satisfaction of animal lust is in itself the vilest object. There may exist in a woman’s mind, even when most debauched, a preference for some, an aversion to others; but she is no less a prostitute, if she abandon herself viciously, whether to one or many.
While these theories divided the opinions of lawgivers, legislation on the subject was extremely difficult. They were forced to be contented with what they thought imperfect proof; and, to fix the infamy of a woman, accepted evidence from witnesses, even those accomplices in sin who, of all others, have lost the right to accuse. A female who chose the night for the period of her orgies; who, as a wanderer, without a companion to protect her, entered house after house; who waited on revellers in a place of entertainment; might be registered among common prostitutes. A legitimate suspicion, also, attached to her who received the visits of many young men; and, above all, who, in light or darkness, frequented a public school.
These women, when once consigned legally to the prostitute class, gained, in the middle ages, a right which they could not otherwise assert. The Roman laws adopted by the jurisprudence of that period allowed her to have a legal claim to payment when she prostituted her body, and the reason assigned was founded on a strange and subtle distinction of terms. “The courtesan’s vocation,” said Ulpian, “is infamous, but the wages of it are not; the act is shameful, but not the reward which is in prospect when the act is committed.”
The Spanish law was still more favourable to her. When a man paid in advance, and she refused to submit according to her promise, he could not demand his money back. On one side she received a legitimate emolument; on the other, he was guilty of immoral turpitude which the law would not recognise. The code of Alphonso also permitted this interpretation; some commentators, however, allowing that the woman had a right to revoke the promise of yielding her person, but was bound to restore the amount of hire she had received. Long and vigorous controversies arose among the theologians when this was referred to them. It was also disputed in France, whether the prostitute could enforce payment when she had sold herself and an avaricious person refused to reward her. An imposing list of authorities is arrayed on either side.
Another question long debated was the use to which such gains could lawfully be applied. Alphonso the Wise, on the authority of Isaiah, forbade priests to receive offerings from such a source. Baldæus and others insisted that the church could not accept taxes from public women; but this by many was repudiated, as contrary to the principle that the wages of prostitution were lawfully acquired. The Spanish law allowed money of this kind to be given in alms, and the public opinion recognised the right to dispose of it by testament, though several popes attempted to decree a contrary usage. If, then, they could dispose of their gains as they pleased, could they inherit property? They could, but under limitations. In Savoy it appears that legacies to prostitutes made by soldiers who had not quitted service more than a year were null and void. In Spain no woman of this class could inherit to the disadvantage of the testator’s relatives in a direct or collateral line. Many authorities only admitted the brother of the deceased to this right; but an exception was made when it was a daughter who succeeded to such property, or when the woman was herself married. A mother, however, could disinherit her daughter for leading a vicious life, but lost this privilege if she had been the accomplice of her immorality. The father had equal authority, but with one curious limitation. When, said the law, a father has sought to marry his daughter, and endowed her sufficiently, if she, against his will, refuses to marry and becomes a prostitute, he may cut her off; but if he have opposed her marriage until she reached the age of 25, and become a libertine, he cannot refuse to bequeath her his property. In the duchy of Asota, in Piedmont, a similar regulation was established; but the age was fixed at 29, and the woman, on every opportunity to marry, was bound to present herself before her father and demand his consent. If he refused it, he was not allowed to punish her when, at 30, she became a harlot.
The church, in those ages, made it a pious act to marry a prostitute, and absolved from their sins all who did so. In France a woman of this class might, at a very ancient period, save a criminal from death, by inducing him to espouse her, and Farnacius relates an anecdote which shows this custom to have existed in Spain. In a city, which he does not name, a young man mounted on an ass was being conducted to the scaffold. A courtezan was struck by his beauty, offered him his life if he would become her husband. He refused. The temptation was not strong enough to induce him to accept such a wife. He merely answered, “Let us move on,” and reached the place of execution. Meanwhile, however, an account of the incident had reached the king, and he, admiring the youth’s courage, pardoned him. From this we may learn that though the church consecrated such a marriage with peculiar grace, public opinion considered it infamous.
The jurisprudence of the middle ages introduced new principles, and these unions became more rare. Many doctors of law announced that they were contrary to the sacred code.
In Spain, where concubinage was legally recognised, men of rank were forbidden to take as concubines slaves, whether born in actual bondage or emancipated, dancers, servants of taverns, go-betweens, or prostitutes. It was disputed whether the children of these women could be legitimatized by subsequent marriage. It was decided that they could, though with more difficulty than others, and their mothers became amenable to the laws against adultery.
Persecution in all barbarous ages and countries has endeavoured to perform the task of teaching and reclaiming mankind. The members of the venal sisterhood have, more than any others, experienced the harsh effects of this species of legislation. The law sought to withdraw them from vice by shutting from them every approach to virtue, to reform their minds by forbidding them the society of honest persons, to elevate them from their degradation by adding to their infamy. It refused to receive them as witnesses, even when violence was done upon their persons; though more liberal jurists cried out amid the clamour of intolerant bigotry, that the protection of justice should attend even the vilest prostitutes in the vilest dens of her resort; but the spirit of the times was vindictive, and because society was corrupt and base, it was most unsparing in its cruelty towards the victims of debasement and corruption.
In spite of every one of these rude devices of a rude society to banish immorality to habitations of its own, by badges, quarters, distinct costumes, and even separate laws, prostitutes swarmed in every city of Europe, and still more in its innumerable camps. Armies were then undisciplined bands of adventurers, and pillage was the soldier’s chief purpose. Xenophon tells that the nations of Persia, Asia Minor, and India, were accompanied on their marches by their women and their children, to defend whom they fought with more courage; and Athenæus describes Chareas, causing a band of beautiful courtezans to dance before his phalanxes to the tune of flutes and psalteries. Two thousand prostitutes were driven from the camp of Scipio Africanus; and so, in the middle ages, every army drew in its train numbers of public women. Three hundred were with the army which laid siege to St. Jean d’Acre in 1189, and during the whole of the crusades the Christian armies were followed by them. Many times the leaders endeavoured to check this debauchery. Some of the girls were flogged. Sometimes the man who was found with one of them was obliged to allow her to strip him to his shirt, and lead him with a rope through the camp. On the plains of Perretola, after the defeat of the Florentines, in 1325, public dances were executed by prostitutes for the amusement of the army. In all parts of Europe similar profligacy distinguished the camp; and long after we find Jeanne d’Arc, when reviewing the army, chastised with her sword several prostitutes whom she detected among the ranks. Marshal Strozzi, with a ferocity worthy of that period, drowned 800 of them in the Loire. When the Duke of Alva invaded Flanders, there accompanied his army “400 courtezans on horseback, beautiful and grand as princesses, and 800 others on foot.” These were for the pleasure of 10,000 men, all veterans.
Prostitution was authorized and disciplined, not only in the camps but in the palaces of those days. From the eleventh century to that of Francis I., a regular community of public women was attached to the court.
We have already noticed the Queen of Louis VII. kissing one of them on her way to church; and we find Charlemagne ordering his palace to be cleared of them. At the Council of Nantes, in 660, it was complained that the concubines of the nobility, instead of remaining at home, thronged to public assemblies; but the seraglios of these lords, in the ninth century, were places of prostitution. The German law imposed a fine of six sous on a man who committed violence on a female in the principal or royal “gynecées,” but only three in any other. It was formerly the custom to send to one of these retreats a woman convicted of adultery; but this was at length forbidden, lest it should simply allow her an opportunity to repeat the offence. Sometimes they were only the harems of the proprietor, sometimes brothels. William IX., of Poitou, established in the eleventh century an abbey for prostitutes, where he added to his profligacy the crime of sacrilege, giving the harlots the titles of abbess and prioress, and parodying every sacred rite. The orgies of his palace, and indeed of all others of that age, are indescribable.
The title of King of the Prostitutes was given to the officer who presided over the royal brothels. In Paris, in Normandy, and in Burgundy, we find this functionary. Under the kings of France he enjoyed a high rank and many privileges; and associated with him was a woman who governed the prostitutes, and punished them with whipping when they offended. In England, also, the palace and the mansions of the nobles contained small brothels. In Henry VIII.’s palace was a room, with an inscription over the door, “Chamber of the King’s Prostitutes.”
Thus, throughout the world, there was, in the middle ages, profligacy and corruption, which rose to its height at the period which preceded the Reformation. From their chief places of resort in royal palaces prostitutes spread over the whole of society, invading the church, the hearth, following the camp, dividing the privileges of the wife, and ever debauching both sexes by their companionship. Rods, prisons, gallows, chains, pillories, tortures, served in no way to prevent or even to discourage them; badges and restrictions proved equally futile; but it is agreeable to find some relief to this dark spectacle of demoralization. In the age of primitive Christianity religious men endeavoured to reclaim from vice those whom they found making a trade of it. We cannot stay to dwell on the sincere apostleship which laboured, especially in the East, and was followed by fathers and hermits from the desert. Stories of conversions of this kind fill the legends of the time, and earnest attempts were made to offer an asylum to the unhappy women who had abandoned themselves to profligacy. We have noticed Theodora, the imperial harlot of Rome, collecting 500 prostitutes in a palace on the Bosphorus; but her impure hand could not perform well the offices of charity, and she applied force to fill her asylum. Many of the girls, therefore, who were shut up in her magnificent and luxurious prison, found their confinement insupportable, and committed suicide to escape it. In 1198 two Parisian priests established a nunnery for repentant women, and thirty years afterwards the House of the “Daughters of God” was instituted, and these efforts were rewarded with much genuine success. Two centuries passed without many enterprises of the sort being undertaken; but in the fifteenth century an association of public women was formed to exchange their base gains for those of piety and virtue.
In 1489 all the prostitutes of Amiens, animated by a sudden awaking of remorse, applied for a place of retreat, where they might bury their shame, and renew their honesty. This was granted, and several others were established, the inmates of which wore white garments.
In several other parts of France, and generally in Europe, the religious orders made attempts to recall some of the abandoned class of females, to redeem the virtue of their sex, and, as they laboured with sincerity, many of their enterprises were successful. But, on the whole, prostitution still increased, and, the Reformation broke over a state of society demoralized to the very core[90].
Few nations have been described in more various ways and in more contradictory terms than the Spaniards. In the pages of one writer, we find them represented as in all things a great example of virtue, morality, and uncorrupted manners; in another, they are pictured as the very embodiment of vice and degradation. We have been at much pains to deduce from the history, from the achievements, and from the actual state of Spain, as these are set forth by innumerable authorities, a just opinion of its national characteristics, and the sketch we shall offer is the result.
In that country we have to divide class from class before we can fairly view its manners. On the one hand we have a peasantry ill-taught, and educated to servility; then a trading body, with another employed in professions; and thirdly, a large order of nobles, degenerated altogether from its ancient splendour, but preserving nevertheless all the pride, all the indolence, all the sensuality, which characterized it in the age of extended conquest and prosperous commerce. Upon all these classes time has left traces, and the influence of their history has been remarkably strong. A rich soil, a warm climate, an abundance of precious minerals—these circumstances have been by no means without their effect. The Roman Catholic religion, an army of priests, an arbitrary government, and the habit of respecting persons more than principles—these have a still more distinct impression on the national character. A literature once illustrious but now dead, an empire once splendid but now perished, a commerce once magnificent but now decayed, a wealth once gorgeous and now turned to poverty, arts once noble and now degraded—in these we find an index to the Spanish national character. There is nothing virgin in the country, there is nothing progressive, there is nothing with hope: all the glory of Spain belongs to the past. The present is a wreck, and the future is a blank.
The manners of Spain present none of that simple purity which we find in Switzerland. Every influence to which the people are subject tends to corrupt them. Young women who stand at their windows, and see with delight the flagellants go by, lashing themselves until the blood splashes under their whips, cannot possess much dignity of mind. Yet such are the spectacles which in Spain have been made familiar and favourite to the populace. There is throughout Spanish society an effort to appear better than they are, which in itself is an unfailing indication of impurity. Men dare not when in company take any improper liberties with women, even those whom they might be able privately to seduce. On the stage they hoot a piece, which in France, or even England, would not be regarded as in the slightest degree indelicate. Nevertheless, in their retired rooms, ladies who are thus prudish before the world, will suffer approaches gross enough, will amuse themselves with obscene pictures, will pardon readily equivocal jokes, and listen to songs of the worst indecency. Nor will they object to behold the fandango danced, though, whatever some tolerant travellers may say, it is proverbially obscene.
In many parts of the country, and especially in Seville, the ancient national customs are still preserved, and young girls are always when in the street accompanied by a duenna. In Madrid, where manners have undergone a change, this is no longer the case; but in the more primitive cities it is more prevalent. The guardianship of such a companion, however, by no means implies absolutely a respectable character, for common prostitutes, when they do walk abroad, are often accompanied by old women who attract notice to them, and frequently engage visitors to their places of resort.
The actual intercourse of the sexes in public is reserved, except with respect to conversation. The gossip at a Tertullia, described by some tourists as delightful, is characterized by English ladies not at all inclined to satirize Spanish manners as very far from that which women in good society among us are accustomed to hear. Children who appear fresh from the nursery indulge in remarks which to many appear positively obscene. The intellectual standard among them is low. Ladies have been known who, with all the pride of an hereditary title, could scarcely write their own names.
Good wives and good mothers are nevertheless very abundant in Spain. It has produced heroines of every kind, from the intriguers of the Camarilla to the defenders of a city. When “in love,” the Spanish woman is exceedingly full of passion, and, carrying a knife, she occasionally employs it to revenge a slight. These essential characteristics of female manners are, however, gradually yielding under what we may term the common law of society in Europe. Madrid is assimilating itself to Paris, and Paris to London; so that as time progresses the peculiar features wear off, and statistics alone may at some future period form the measure of a people’s morality.
In the rural parts women share with men the heaviest labours of the field. They may be observed as you pass along the highways, staggering under the weight of enormous burdens; but this is a circumstance attaching to poverty in all parts of the world, not to any nation in particular. It is among the upper and middle classes in Spain, though in many other countries the contrary is true, that women wear most strongly a national characteristic appearance. In Madrid and the other fashionable cities you are surprised by the vast number of women who crowd the streets. They have no domestic occupations; they trouble themselves little with the nurture or education of their children; they devolve on hirelings the management of their household affairs; and they relieve themselves from ennui by sauntering through the public places, dressed with the minutest elegance, carrying their fans, and bargaining on it, by every possible species of coquetry, for admiration from the passers by.
A Spanish woman is a natural coquette, and when married cannot abandon the habit familiarly known as flirtation. This gives rise to jealousy on the husband’s part, which produces infinite misery.
Marriage is held in law a solemn and irrevocable contract. It is under many legal regulations, and subject to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In the hands of the clergy, indeed, there is vested a prodigious arbitrary power, which they are careful to exercise, lest it should become obsolete by disuse. They may still be seen interfering in matrimonial affairs; and a glance at the manners of the Spaniards some centuries ago will show that the clerical power has not decreased.
Public morality was carefully guarded under the rule of the Visigoths, only to be tolerated during the Middle Ages, since which time it has been at one time lax, at another severely regulated: at the present day we find it in a strange state of confusion.
In the year 586-601, the king of the Visigoths of Spain forbade prostitution in a most absolute manner under pain of severe punishment.
The daughter and the wife born of free parents, convicted of having delivered themselves over to abandonment, received for the first offence three hundred blows with a stick and were ignominiously driven from the city; a relapse was punished with the same corporal punishment, after which the culprit was handed over to a poor person, who was obliged to employ her in performing the most menial offices. If the parents were convicted of being accomplices and of having participated in the gain derived by their daughter’s prostitution, each one received one hundred blows. The slave who gave herself up publicly to libertinage received three hundred blows, and when she was sent back to her master, her head was shaved, and she was banished from the city or sold in a place from whence she could not return. The master who refused to submit to these stipulations of the law received in public fifty blows with a stick or a whip, and the slave became the property of some poor man pointed out by the king or the judge, under condition of never being seen in the city again. If the master had participated in the debauchery of his slave, that is if he had reaped any profit, he received the same chastisement as the culprit.
This decree, made especially to repress prostitution in the cities, applied equally to women of ill fame who infested the boroughs, the villages, and the country at large.
This was at the commencement of the seventh century, and such were the severities of the laws passed by the king of the barbarians, Recard by name. The power of the Visigoths was broken a hundred years afterwards by the Arabs. The conquered fled to the hilly country, taking refuge in the mountains of the Asturias; but what laws were in force amongst them we do not know—we only know that the manners of the age were shameful. Perpetual wars, the capture and consequent pillage of villages, the license of the soldiery, helped to constitute a state of things not at all favourable for the developement of female chastity. The Christians and the Mussulmans held in captivity the women taken in battle and treated them as slaves.
The Arabs were soon in their turn conquered by the Moors, and, as the struggle was less bloody, the two people mingled and exercised a mutual influence over one another; but the influence of the Arabs was more direct. “The loose manners of the East,” says M. Guardia, “and the luxury ever prevalent amongst orientals, were impalpably engrafted on the austerer habits of the Christians. Chivalry was found to be perfectly compatible with debauchery.” The corruption of manners made rapid strides. Prostitution reappeared in all its forms; nor was it, as amongst the Arabs, hampered by municipal restrictions or fettered by arbitrary and severe legislation.
In the fifteenth century the old regulations were resuscitated, and immorality found itself once more compelled to bow to the dicta of priests. Nevertheless these rigorous measures proved that the remedy was worse than the evil. Secret debauchery took the place of public libertinage, and clandestine prostitution increased accordingly.
In the year 1552, Charles V. promulgated an edict against the keepers of houses of ill fame, considerably augmenting the existing punishments. Four years later this law was confirmed by Philip II.
The sequel, however, proves that laws were powerless against public corruption. Immorality is buoyant and contagious, and never so mischievous as when it is hidden.
The end of the fifteenth century witnessed a reform. Prostitution came to be regarded as a branch of the public administration, and placed under severe laws and precise regulations.
About 1623, the health of the community began to be considered, and hygienic measures were introduced. This was a great step, and one rendered the more necessary by reason of the terrible ravages committed by lues venerea, which at this epoch assumed the form of a terrible epidemic.
Three quarters of a century elapsed, and the subject was carefully studied, for in 1704 the council decided that the mayors of towns could arrest and imprison immodest women, who showed themselves in crowds upon the public promenades, and became an object of scandal and disorder. But these coercive measures often repeated were without effect. Soon the law was found to be powerless against corruption.
Since this epoch, public morality has been lax and openly disregarded. The provinces imitated the example of the capital. At the end of the eighteenth century an attempt was made to legislate, but nothing came of it. In 1822, the Cortes passed a Bill relating to public health, which, in point of fact, was nothing more or less than to establish houses of ill fame and recognise their existence. This fell to the ground through the opposition of a physician named Garcia.
In 1853, the population of Madrid was estimated at 270,000. These figures include the floating portion, which is not insignificant. Every woman who chooses to prostitute herself for money is perfectly at liberty to do so; she has to render no account of her conduct, no authorisation of any sort is necessary. The police give no passes nor is there any registry. Under these circumstances statistics are next to an impossibility. Not only does the law tolerate and acknowledge prostitution, but it actually appears to cherish and foster it, by permitting the grossest disorder, and by placing no obstacle in the way of the incessant progress of debauchery. Local authority confines itself to noticing only the most flagrant occurrences—such as a too great number of women in the promenades and public thoroughfares, or when a large number of men amongst the soldiers in garrison fall victims to the ravages of syphilis. It follows from such a state of things that the hospitals are gorged with sufferers, and frequently do not suffice to contain all those who wish to enter. The consequence is that this disease takes the most alarming forms, and does serious injury to the public health.
We cannot possibly make anything like a correct estimate of the number of women who live by prostitution in Madrid, although some manuscript notes furnished to M. Guardia, place it at about one thousand. This may only be an approximate calculation, and it is clearly putting it at its minimum rather than its maximum. Two hundred of these are kept women; though we are inclined to believe this much below the actual numbers, as manners are very loose in Madrid, and the habits of Spaniards incline in a singular degree to concubinage. Probably six hundred women live in houses of ill fame, the keepers of which exercise the most absolute authority over the unfortunates that come into their power. In every one of these houses one finds an indefinite number of young women, which varies from eight to ten. The woman who keeps the place lodges and dresses them. In many of these places there are only two or three resident women, for there are also houses of appointment and convenience. If the number of indoor pensioners is limited, those who walk about the streets are like locusts or the sand of the sea-shore, next to innumerable. They have their abode, perhaps, in their own families, or else they return to their lodgings. Most of these public women are either milliners, seamstresses, laundresses, and pastrycooks, or employed in the manufacture of tobacco. The people who keep houses of ill fame find it to their interest to preserve the health of their lodgers, which they are not, as a rule, negligent of, but yet it is a fact that syphilis is prevalent in Spain to a frightful extent. The authorities are at no pains to prevent its ramification, and the climate is only too favourable for its growth and extension. We divide the women who live by prostitution in Madrid into three classes: 1st, Those who are kept; 2nd, Those who live in houses of ill fame; and 3rdly, Those who are free, and merely make use of the above-mentioned houses for a short time. Within this latter category we must include about three hundred prostitutes, who constitute the lowest grade and infest the worst parts of the capital. These have been recruited perhaps from all classes, having sunk lower and lower, until every vestige of shame and modesty having totally disappeared, they traffic for the bare means of subsistence and submit to any and every degradation to obtain it. They even exercise their avocation in the streets and public places. On the other hand, prostitution has plenty of places of resort, such as cafés, public houses, and refreshment rooms.
The police are fully empowered to take into custody any woman guilty of an open breach of the law, although they may not interfere with her for plying her trade, or we might, with some justice, say her profession. Sometimes the magisterial authorities banish them from Madrid, thus getting rid of the most dangerous characters, who, however, like black sheep in the provincial flocks, only serve to carry corruption into districts hitherto uncontaminated.
There is in Madrid a hospital for foundlings, but the fecundity of Spanish prostitutes is not considerable. This is an asylum for every child found in the streets or brought by mothers who wish to get rid of their children. On an average it receives annually from 4500 to 5000 infants. It was founded in the sixteenth century by charitable people.
One is astonished—exclaim MM. Schneevooght (first physician at the hospital of Amsterdam), Van Frigt (assistant surgeon to the same hospital and the syphilitic dispensary), Van Oordt (student in the Parisian hospitals)—one is astonished that in a country where legislation adapts itself to the exigencies of modern times, among a people signalized by a practical genius, an enlightened administration has only very lately adopted the only measures to check the scourge of prostitution.
In Holland religious scruples have yielded before considerations of a higher nature. The Government of the Netherlands has at last decided to leave to the Communes the power of preventing by regulation the sad consequences of free and unrestrained prostitution. Supervision, independantly of the services which it renders to the public health, assists to prevent the extension of the evil of which we write.
It is easy to suppose that the capital of Holland offers peculiar facilities for the growth of this vice, which always flourishes in commercial and maritime cities, and more especially when the two are combined.