Prostitution

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.

In 1858 there were 7,194 prostitutes in London alone. "Given the unreliability of the statistics, one cannot say whether the incidence of prostitution was increasing or decreasing during the nineteenth century or compare that century with other periods. It nevertheless seems clear that the Victorians in the 1840's and 1850's thought that both prostitution and venereal disease were increasing" (Vicinus 79-80). There was increasing visibility of prostitution on the London streets and the Victorians were also conscious of the increasing demand of prostitutes (Vicinus 80). The compilation of the information led the era to become concerned with the "Great Social Evil" that was permeating many of the large cities. The concern over prostitution led to many actions, such as the Contagious Diseases Acts, which then led to the formation of the feminist group called the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts (Vicinus 96). Victorian society held many common beliefs relating to what kind of person constituted a prostitute, such as the prostitute comes from the lower social classes. The commonly held belief was that a main determinate for prostitution was the lack of money, so the women who fell prey to this situation were the lower class women. On this subject, Charlotte Bronte portrays many opposite situations and characters that do not fit the ideas of the Victorian period. The naiveté of a young girl from another city or country coming to London also leads to the vulnerability to the trade of prostitution. The belief was that a young girl just moving to a city would be susceptible to prostitution because they were ignorant to the lifestyle of the city and would be easily seduced into the trade.

The red-headed rabbi's pulse shot up—again. Try as he might to distance his flock from Hell's Half Acre, in the autumn of 1913 Rabbi G. George Fox overheard ranchers muttering remarks about "Jew whores." What's more, the Sisterhood at his synagogue of seventy families was scandalized at the gossip. The women—chief among them his wife Hortense, a third-generation American—wanted those tramps gone. The Jewish prostitutes were Eastern European women who had ventured to Fort Worth's red-light district by way of Galveston, a port of entry for 8,000 Jewish immigrants since 1907. Fox's colleague, the saintly Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston, was being lauded from Texas to New York for greeting each refugee at the dock. But as far as Fox was concerned, the refuse were riding the rails from the Gulf Coast to North Texas, bringing social disease and dishonor to Jews in Fort Worth. "As rabbi, I could not and would not escape the responsibility that was mine in this shameful business," the rabbi declared in his memoirs. With the police commissioner and the mayor, Fox arranged a raid on brothels within "the Acre," a seedy neighborhood of saloons, dance halls, cathouses, and gambling dens.

The changing physical environment of prostitution is an obvious starting point. One scene might depict the interior of an 1890s hessian tent (through which enterprising policemen could poke spyholes in their quest for conclusive evidence of commercial sex), equipped with a wooden box on top of which washbowls contain water costing almost as much as a 'short-time' with the tent's occupant. Next to the basin, a handful of metal tokens struck with the silhouette of a young woman on one side and a name and address on the other. The only other furniture is an iron bedstead, above which is pinned a medical certificate signed by the local doctor proclaiming the prostitute (a young French woman) free of venereal diseases. Draped across the end of the bed, a collection of lacy underwear, silk stockings, high-buttoned boots and brightly coloured clothing. Moving forward in time, the next scene might contain an interior of a weatherboard and iron house, 1920s. Cleanly but basically furnished, it has a basin with cold running water in the corner. Through the door a bathroom, with chip heater, is visible. On the dressing table lies an Italian newspaper left behind by the last client. The final scene shows a street view of the same room in the 1970s, framed by a car window. The top half of the door opens independently of the bottom (in the manner of a horse stabledoor) to reveal a scantily clad woman sitting inside, lit by coloured lights. In the background the watchful eye of an older woman, expensively dressed and bejewelled, surveys the prostitute and the onlooker.