The history of female prostitution in Australia (2)

Contagious Diseases Legislation

Other pressures also affected society's willingness to intervene in the lives of prostitutes. Health considerations, for instance, became increasingly important in the context of British imperial expansion in the latter half of the nineteenth century. While venereal disease was not a new phenomenon in that century, governments saw it as an increasingly serious problem, especially as it affected the fitness of the nation's military personnel. Prostitutes were targeted as the major carriers of VD and the most vulnerable to control. In Britain, the government enacted the controversial Contagious Diseases (CD) Acts of the 1860s which aimed to provide a pool of disease- free prostitutes for the use of troops in English garrison towns. The British military authorities also wanted similar legislation introduced in ports regularly visited by its troopships. Governments in New Zealand, India, Singapore, Canada and South Africa bowed to this pressure, as did the government in Tasmania in 1879 (Warren, 1993; Backhouse, 1985; Van Onselen, 1980; Macdonald, 1986; Arnot, 1987, 1988; Daniels and Murnane, 1979). Other colonies, notably Victoria and Queensland, introduced such CD Acts without any direct pressure from the military, their intention being more clearly designed for the protection of the civilian (male) population (Evans, 1984; Arnot, 1987). It is clear that many in the colonies saw the CD Acts not only, although primarily, as a health measure. They were also a way of controlling prostitutes' behaviour generally. As the editor of the Perth Sunday Times argued in 1909:

A CD Act is wanted in Western Australia for several reasons. It is wanted in the interests of morality and public decency; it is wanted for the protection of the prostitutes themselves; it is wanted because syphilis is becoming dangerously prevalent and because the only effective means of checking it is to put the women of the town under some restraint (Davidson, 1980, p.65).

Like the British legislation, the colonial laws provided for compulsory examination of prostitutes and their forcible detention in so-called lock hospitals if found to be suffering from a venereal disease. Unlike the British legislation, however, the colonial versions were not geographically specific but applied to women throughout the colony as well as in the ports. The laws were obviously discriminatory, applying only to women and not to the men who must have infected them. While some politicians conceded the injustice and illogicality of this, none was prepared to extend the Act to cover men. As the premier of Queensland, William Kidston, candidly admitted, 'In a Parliament, however, which was composed of 72 men, no seriously minded man would propose to introduce such an innovation' (Evans, 1984, p.142). Not all colonial governments were so insensitive to the civil rights of women. South Australia, for instance, prided itself on doing things differently from the former convict colonies, its Advocate General declaring that CD-style legislation was not in accordance 'with the sentiments of the Colony', representing as it did an infringement on the rights of women and official condoning of immorality (Horan, 1984, p.115). Western Australian legislators were likewise sensitive to lobbying from religious, feminist and civil rights groups and deleted sections from the 1911 Health Act which provided for compulsory notification and treatment of venereal disease, fearing that this was a version of the CD Act (Davidson, 1984, pp.178-181). Those colonies which did introduce and enforce the CD Acts were arguably influenced by their heritage of female convictism. As Kay Daniels says of Tasmania, the upper classes

... seem not to have had a finely developed sense of the rights of working-class women. Decades during which the mere accusation that a woman was a whore had been sufficient to deny her protection and civil rights had no doubt blunted colonial sensibilities and left a society more anxious than most to draw a dividing line between the prostitute and the 'respectable' woman (Daniels, 1984, p.79).

The issue of the control of venereal disease raises important questions about not just the legislation on a colony's statute books but also the ways in which it was administered. Different emphasis and interpretation could result in radically different implementation of essentially similar laws, with significantly different consequences for individual sex workers. In Queensland, for instance, the Act for the Suppression of Contagious Diseases of 1868 was not applied universally but only to particular centres of population, largely because of the cost, the limited facilities and the fear of a backlash of organised protest (Evans, 1984, p.142). However, within the gazetted areas women who found their names on the police list were subject to regular medical examinations and if diagnosed as having syphilis or gonorrhoea were incarcerated in special lock hospitals for periods of from three to six months. Inmates in these hospitals were treated more like prisoners than patients, subject to strict rules and regulations in the hope that such discipline would bring them 'to a sense of their past degradation' (Evans, 1984, p.143). Recalcitrant patients could be placed in solitary confinement, placed on a diet of bread and water or even removed to the lock-up and visitors were not permitted. Medical treatment was largely ineffective, given that there was no effective cure until the introduction of Salvarsan treatment in 1912 gave relief to some victims of the disease. (More effective treatment was not available until the use of penicillin from the 1940s.) For Queensland prostitutes, the legislation was enormously intrusive, forcing them to keep on the move to avoid police notice or to relocate outside the gazetted areas. Once caught in the web of official notice life could become a tedious series of imprisonments in the dreaded lock hospital.

By contrast to the Queensland situation the Victorian contagious diseases legislation, embodied in the Act for the Conservation of Public Health of 1878, was never brought into operation. According to Meg Arnot (1987, pp.10-20) this was primarily due to the activities of an organised and articulate lobby group galvanised by the Women's Christian Temperance Union. But, this did not mean that diseased prostitutes were free from official harassment. On the contrary, the Victorian police had ample flexibility under the vagrancy clauses of the Police Offences Act to cover this contingency. As plainclothes constable Albert Tucker explained to the 1906 Royal Commission on the Victorian Police Force: 'When we know that a woman is suffering from syphilis and is soliciting about the streets, we get hold of her and lock her up, charge her under the Vagrancy Act, and inform the magistrates in the morning, and they will send her to the gaol hospital' (Amot, 1987, p.15). A similar strategy was employed by the Western Australian police after the deletion of the compulsory VD clauses from the 1909 Health Bill (Davidson, 1984, pp.178-181).

Concerns about the spread of venereal disease became especially acute in times of war when authorities became alarmed at the effect on the fighting potential of the armed forces. In such circumstances, officials were prepared to take drastic action in the interests of national security. In Perth, for instance, several cases of syphilis amongst recruits at Blackboy Hill during late 1914 were attributed to prostitutes in Roe Street brothels. The police immediately instructed the Government Medical Officer, Dr Blanchard, to examine all the brothel inmates and report his findings. Any women found to be diseased were prosecuted as vagrants. This initial inspection was followed by regular fortnightly checks, paid for at the cost of a guinea a visit by the prostitutes. The police and medical authorities had in effect introduced a system of regulation of the Roe Street inmates without any legislative sanction whatsoever.

The Second World War saw even more drastic official harassment of professional sex workers and so-called 'good-time girls' who provided sex for servicemen on a less commercial basis. Under the National Security (Venereal Diseases and Contraceptives) Regulations of September 1942, the chief medical officer in each state was empowered to compel any person whom he had 'reasonable grounds' to suspect of suffering from a venereal infection to undergo a medical examination. If found to be infected the person could be detained in a stipulated hospital or other 'suitable place'. Although men were also technically covered by these regulations, in practice it was women who were its main targets. The regulations were applied with special enthusiasm in Queensland, where large numbers of Allied troops were either based or passing through during the war. Queensland women designated as 'common prostitutes' were already subject to regular medical surveillance and compulsory confinement and treatment under the 1937 Public Health Act; the National Security Regulations extended this medical surveillance to the rest of the female population. Information given by infected troops was used as the basis to 'contact and dispose of' any woman allegedly suffering from venereal disease (Saunders and Taylor, 1987, pp.157-61).

'Bludgers' and 'White Slavers'

Other aspects of the increasing State intervention in the prostitution industry had serious consequences for sex workers. Changes to the vagrancy laws across Australia in the early 1900s made living off the proceeds of prostitution an offence under the various Police Offences Acts. The targets of these laws were 'bludgers' or pimps, men constructed in the popular imagination as villains who debauched and enslaved innocent girls and young women, then lived off their immoral earnings. Concern about this practice was fuelled by sensationalist reports in the London press of an international 'white slave traffic' which lured innocent young girls to a life of shame in Continental and Oriental brothels. Similar reports appeared in the press across the English-speaking world throughout the 1890s and 1900s, prompting legislation to deal with the organisers of this 'trade in human flesh' . In most cases these stories had racist overtones, with the villains being portrayed as 'foreigners' of one sort or another, corrupting the wholesome morals of women of British origin and descent. Australia was no exception to this pattern. In Western Australia, for instance, the villains were usually French or Italian, with the occasional 'Afghan buck' thrown in for additional colour. A few sensational cases involving Italians added fuel to these beliefs (Davidson, 1980, pp.24-25). Ironically, the police were rarely successful in apprehending and convicting 'white slavers', although there is certainly historical evidence of the existence of syndicates who traded in prostitutes, with or without the full knowledge and consent of the women concerned (Davidson, 1980). Indeed, a deputation of concerned feminists who lobbied the 1914 Premiers' Conference in Melbourne regarding the international traffic in women and girls were refused admission and told that the premiers did not believe in the existence of such a trade (Davidson, 1980, p.71). The men who became the targets of this legislation were generally less villainous types - the husbands and relatives of prostitutes who willingly contributed their earnings to the upkeep of people they lived with and loved. Very often, too, the 'bludger' of popular imagination was in reality a necessary assistant to the prostitute, providing protection against violent clients and a less obvious way of soliciting custom. The legislation rebounded on these women, who could no longer support family members or use their help without fearing the prosecution of their menfolk (Golder and Allen, 1979-80; Arnot, 1988, p.54). One can see this attack on 'bludgers' as the most extreme form of a move throughout Australian society from the late nineteenth century to sharpen the definition of men as breadwinners and women as dependents

The Twentieth Century

All these State interventions in combination had profound effects on the ways in which prostitution could be practised in twentieth century Australia. The increasing illegality of so many aspects of prostitution and related activities meant that police had more control over what prostitutes did and where they worked. In Western Australia this power was used by the police, in collusion with magistrates, medical authorities and local governments, to establish red-light districts in major population centres such as Perth and Kalgoorlie. The breadth and flexibility provided for by the vagrancy laws meant that police could virtually dictate the behaviour of prostitutes and brothel-keepers on pain of imprisonment. While this policy meant severe infringements on the ability of sex workers to choose the location of their workplaces, it also had ramifications for the structure of the sex industry. Before the policy of localisation (ie: up to about 1915) it was possible to be a freelance prostitute, operating as a streetwalker or independently in a house or flat. With the advent of the Hay Street brothels in Kalgoorlie and those of Roe Street in Perth, it became increasingly difficult for women to operate outside the tolerated brothels. In order to escape police harassment women had to become either brothel inmates or keepers. While this meant big profits for the few who became keepers, for the majority of sex workers the change spelt a 'proletariatisation' of their occupation as they gave up self-employment for the position of brothel employees, handing over half their earnings to the madam (Davidson, 1980). Police ensured that organised criminals were kept away from the tolerated brothels by using the vagrancy provisions against 'bludgers' to deter any men other than customers from associating with the inmates.

A similar process of proletariatisation occurred in New South Wales over the same period, although it took a different form. Hilary Golder and Judith Allen (1979-80) describe how the increased police powers encouraged corruption in the police force, with individual officers accepting bribes to administer the law selectively. Organised criminal gangs, already in existence to control the gambling industry as well as the opium and illicit liquor traffic, seized this opportunity to extract protection money from freelance prostitutes, brothel-keepers and individual pimps, since they were the only ones with enough capital to pay either the police or the new heavy fines. Increasingly, sex-workers were forced to relinquish their former independence for the dubious protection of criminal networks. As Golder and Allen (1979-80, p.19) argue, this meant that

... the individual lost control over when, for how long, with whom and for what amount or kind of payment she worked. Her work could be deployed and incorporated into the service context of the drug, liquor or gambling traffic, whether she liked it or not. Increasingly she could be pushed into positions of risk, both as regards rival underworld gangs and the agents of the state. And where pimps survived, they tended to survive as employees of the criminal interests and acted in a managerial or supervisory capacity.

The changes to the New South Wales Summary Offences Act in 1908 thus provided the structural preconditions for the rise of the rival 'gang queens', Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, who dominated Sydney prostitution from the 1920s to the 1940s.

The changes which occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries set the framework for the operation of prostitution for most of the twentieth century. Only since the late 1970s have governments started experimenting with new ways of treating prostitution, generally moving towards less punitive models of legislation. These changes reflect changes in public attitudes towards sexual relations between consenting adults generally and a greater awareness of the deficiencies and injustices embodied in the previous approach. The evolution of new approaches is an ongoing process and the end of the twentieth century promises to be another crucial period in the history of Australian prostitution as state governments and local councils grapple with the various civil rights, health and planning issues associated with prostitution (Gerull and Halstead, 1992). What is certain is that we will continue to see 'the State' behaving in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. Different levels of government (federal, state, local) have different priorities and responsibilities and these are not always compatible. Likewise, different state agencies (eg: police, child welfare, health, prisons, military) have different agendas which sometimes coincide but at other times work in opposition to each other.

Resistance

Although State activities have been enormously important in influencing the nature and experience of prostitution in Australian cities, they are by no means the only factor explaining changes in the industry over time. For instance, the State does not simply apply its policies to a passive prostitution industry. Sex workers have been able in the past, and will no doubt continue in the future to resist and negotiate attempts to control them. Since the 1980s this has been expressed most effectively through organised groups such as the Australian Prostitutes Collective and the Scarlet Alliance, but even before this there is evidence that prostitutes acted individually and collectively to protect their rights and to shape their working lives. Roberta Perkins (1991) notes the way in which Sydney street prostitutes acted collectively to retain certain working conditions, such as the refusal of 'kinky' services to clients. Oral evidence from my own research on Kalgoorlie reveals a similar collective control of the services offered in Hay Street brothels until the late 1970s (Frances, 1993).

Individual acts of resistance are harder for the historian using written sources to uncover, but occasionally we get glimpses which suggest that prostitutes did not always accept the official view of their lives and behaviour. Prostitutes in Western Australia, for instance, complained to higher officials if they felt police officers were abusing their powers and these complaints appear to have been taken seriously and acted upon. Individual women also frequently abused arresting police in terms which reversed the supposed moral value of prostitute and policeman. Thus a Parramatta woman shouted at police who arrested her in a hotel in 1879: 'God bugger the police, they are a lot of bloody scoundrels' (Golder and Allen, 1979-80, p.21).

Other Factors

Popular attitudes and practices regarding sexuality and morality must also be recognised as a factor in the changing nature of prostitution. Different class and demographic patterns also affect the type of clientele seeking the services of prostitutes and hence the type of services demanded. Kalgoorlie sex workers, for instance, comment on the less complicated demands made by the miners and 'bushies' who form the bulk of their customers. Into 'good old fashioned sex', they make fewer demands on the women's time and ingenuity, in sharp contrast to the 'deviants' amongst the Perth businessmen who frequent prostitutes in that city (Cohen, 1994, p.17). But even Kalgoorlie has seen an expansion in the variety of its services over the last 20 years. Ex-prostitute Rita, talking to me in 1978, described how things had changed in the nine years since she began working in Hay Street: 'I did it nine years ago and it was just ordinary, straight, prostitution. But now, there's that many perversions, that many things ... they've got a whole big menu (laughing)' (Frances, 1993).

This transition reflects the changing nature of the demand for prostitutes' services. Essentially, prostitutes provide services which men cannot get easily elsewhere. Where there are large numbers of single men and few available women this tends to be simple sex, the kind they would expect to enjoy with girlfriends or wives. In the past, clients were also drawn from single men who could not expect their girlfriends to contravene prevailing sexual mores by engaging in sex outside marriage and from married men whose wives did not want to have sex for fear of pregnancy or because of ill health. A relaxation of social taboos concerning extra-marital sex and better contraception has meant that more men can find sexual partners without having to resort to prostitutes. Those who do still seek a prostitute's services are thus often temporarily away from their womenfolk (like miners or servicemen) or seeking sexual activities that their wives/girlfriends are unwilling to engage in. As non-prostitutes become more sexually adventurous, prostitutes are sought for increasingly bizarre kinds of services, a situation which is resisted and resented by many sex workers.

Other factors independent of legislation have affected the demand for and supply of prostitutes. Social and economic crises such as wars and depressions have had particular importance in this respect. In both the 1890s and 1930s depressions more women were drawn into prostitution, as both single and married women sought other ways to make money when they or their husbands were unable to find enough work at their regular occupations. The population of Perth's Roe Street brothels rose from 50 to 70 during 1930, as both single and married women took desperate measures to survive the economic downturn (Davidson, 1980, p.110). The increased numbers of women selling sexual services and the reduced spending power of men in the community meant that earnings for individual prostitutes and madams suffered considerably during this period.

The reverse happened during periods of economic boom, such as goldrushes and during wars, both of which brought large concentrations of men with money to spend. During wars especially the increased numbers of women, particularly young women, willing to engage in sex with soldiers was more than offset by the easy earnings available from men who were intent on having a good time before leaving for the battle zone. Many women took advantage of high wartime earnings to amass considerable amounts of capital which they used either to retire from prostitution or to expand their interests in the industry. Two notorious Roe Street madams of the interwar years, Mary Ann Collins and Josie de Bray, made their fortunes from brothels in Fremantle and Perth respectively during the First World War (Davidson, 1980, p.100). The Vietnam War was also a boom time for Sydney sex-workers, as Rita recalls: 'I had more money than I've ever had in me bloomin' life. I had trips all over Australia. Went everywhere. I had a ball. Money was no worry' (Frances, 1993).

Changing immigration policies were also important in influencing both the supply of prostitutes and customers. The female emigrant ships of the nineteenth century carried many single women who found their way on to the streets and brothels of Australia's young cities, inspiring the concern of reformers like Caroline Chisholm. Mass immigration of men from particular ethnic groups at different periods in our history has created special demands for the services of prostitutes, since racial prejudice amongst Anglo-Celtic Australians often prohibited their mixing with non-prostitute women. The Chinese and Pacific Island workers of the nineteenth century are the most obvious example, but later arrivals of Italian and Yugoslav workers in the twentieth century had a similar effect. Immigration restrictions could likewise restrict the supply of sex workers to meet these demands. While Japanese prostitutes played a large part in catering to non-white clients in the nineteenth century, especially in the north and on the Western Australian goldfields, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 meant that most returned home, along with their countrymen (Sissons, 1976-77). Certain immigrant groups could also operate successfully as entrepreneurs in the prostitution industry. The Japanese in northern Australia mentioned previously are one instance; the Maltese in the back lanes of East Sydney in the 1960s is another (see Perkins, 1992).

While factors such as these explain the changing dimensions of prostitution over time, other themes have retained a remarkable constancy or resilience. The gender bias of most of the laws about prostitution and their implementation is all too apparent from the preceding discussion. The class nature of prostitution and the enforcement of laws against it are also especially evident. The economic forces propelling women into prostitution have acted most strongly against working class women, but not exclusively. Prostitutes have been drawn from all sections of society and have operated in ways which have usually reflected their different social origins. Almost invariably, the targets of police harassment have been those least able to defend themselves: the streetwalkers and inmates of 'lower class' brothels who cater to a wide clientele. Middle class sex workers, operating as call girls, escorts or, in earlier times, in exclusive brothels, have had a much easier time of it, being able to work more discreetly and having more powerful friends to intervene on their behalf. Even when middle class women did come under official notice, as happened during the venereal disease surveillance of the Second World War, they were treated differently from their working class sisters. While the diseased street prostitute was sent to the lock hospital and treated as a prisoner, middle class sex workers contracting the disease were sent to private hospitals and treated as patients (Saunders and Taylor, 1987).

Racial and age biases have also been evident in the way the law has been administered. Older women have generally been more vulnerable to arrest, both because they are generally forced to solicit more frequently to maintain their earnings and because the public and the police regard their presence as more offensive than that of younger women. On the other hand, very young women were considered in need of protection and reclamation and were also more likely to receive official attention (Golder and Allen, 1979-80). Racial discrimination is a more vexed issue. In some situations prostitutes of non-Anglo-Celtic descent were less likely to be prosecuted. Japanese women, for instance, largely escaped prosecution in Queensland because they were seen to provide 'suitable outlets' for the sexual passions of 'coloured' male labourers. It was far preferable, in the eyes of the authorities, to have Asian women servicing this trade than European women (Evans, 1984, p.139). Japanese women in Western Australia also enjoyed a remarkably prosecution-free existence, probably for similar reasons, even though their customers were often white. The logic here still seems to have been that it was better for Japanese women to perform this 'degrading' work than it was for Australian women. The high profile of Japanese, French and Italian women in Western Australia also encouraged politicians in the mistaken belief that 'our social conditions' meant that the supply of Australian women for prostitution had given out (Davidson, 1980, p.137).

Conclusion

A final recurring theme refers both to the historiography and the history of prostitution in Australia. Because of its illegal, clandestine nature, prostitution presents particular challenges and opportunities to the historian. The frequent contacts between some classes of prostitutes and officialdom mean that historians often have more knowledge about the lives of prostitutes in the past than about their more 'respectable' sisters, about whom few written records survive. But such records present their own problems: they are a partial account only, in that not all sex workers are represented in the police record. And they present the picture from the official perspective rather than from the point of view of the woman herself. Occasionally historians are blessed with diaries or reminiscences of such women, but these are very rare indeed. The historian of prostitution needs to be especially imaginative in the use of the surviving written record, listening hard for the voices of women who do manage to get recorded. For the more recent past the task is made easier by the use of oral history, where prostitutes can speak their own stories in their own words. The work of Roberta Perkins (1989, 1992) on Sydney's 'working girls' from 1985 onward is an indication of how rewarding such research can be for the historian. Similar studies in other Australian cities would greatly enhance our knowledge of the history of prostitution in this country since the Second World War. Such studies would not just provide analysis of changing trends; they could literally restore the voice of prostitutes to history. Interviews of this kind could provide the raw material for 'playback' oral testimony as a feature of our hypothetical museum of prostitution.

References