THE
HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION:

ITS EXTENT, CAUSES, AND EFFECTS THROUGHOUT
THE WORLD.

[BEING AN OFFICIAL REPORT TO THE BOARD OF ALMS-HOUSE GOVERNORS
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.]

BY WILLIAM W. SANGER, M.D.,
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN, BLACKWELL’S ISLAND, NEW YORK CITY; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE; LATE ONE OF THE PHYSICIANS
TO THE MARINE HOSPITAL, QUARANTINE, NEW YORK, ETC., ETC., ETC.

“To such grievances as society can not readily cure, it usually forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.”—Currer Bell, Shirley.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
PEARL STREET, FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1858.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and fifty-eight, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

TO THE GOVERNORS OF THE ALMS-HOUSE OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK.

Sirs,—To your honorable Board I dedicate the following pages, the result of an investigation into the causes and extent of Prostitution.

Yours was the conception, mine has been the execution of the work; to you am I indebted for many valuable suggestions; to your kindness for much encouraging approbation; and now to your hands I confide my labors, in the conviction that they will not be futile; that your patriotism, your philanthropy, and your humanity will be at once enlisted in the cause.

In so noble an endeavor it will be a source of satisfaction to remember that I assisted you in those generous exertions which will add fresh laurels to your names; that I had some share in the effort which will induce future generations to remember with pride that the first blow struck in the Western World at the gigantic vice Prostitution was aimed by the Governors of the Alms-House of the City and County of New York.

I am your obliged fellow-citizen,
William W. Sanger, M.D.

Resident Physician’s Office, Blackwell’s Island,
New York City, August 10th, 1858.

The reader will perceive from the body of this work that the “History of Prostitution” was commenced in the year 1856. It was completed and ready for the press at the close of 1857. On the morning of February 13th, 1858, the Island Hospital on Blackwell’s Island was entirely consumed by fire, which spread so rapidly as to render it impossible to save any thing from the flames. Among the property destroyed, my library and manuscripts were included. Fortunately, the first draught of this work had been previously removed from my office, and was preserved, and from that the present volume has been prepared.

Advantage has been taken of the opportunity thus afforded carefully to revise the work and introduce some additional facts, bringing the history, of New York especially, to the present time.

The chapters describing foreign prostitution are not claimed to be entirely original. They are compilations and condensations from every available source. It is believed that the authorities have been named in most cases where the ideas of others have been used; but, owing to the loss of all the original works, it is highly probable that in some instances this has been overlooked. Should the reader discover any omissions of this nature, he will be kind enough to understand that accident alone prevents the usual acknowledgements.

W. W. S.

Resident Physician’s Office, Blackwell’s Island,
New York City, August 10th, 1858.

[Pg vii]

[Pg 15]

[Pg 16]

[Pg 17]

Arguments are unnecessary to prove the existence of prostitution. The evil is so notorious that none can possibly gainsay it. But when its extent, its causes, or its effects are questioned, a remarkable degree of ignorance or carelessness is manifested. Few care to know the secret springs from which prostitution emanates; few are anxious to know how wide the stream extends; few have any desire to know the devastation it causes. Society has formally laid a prohibition on the subject, and he who presumes to argue that what affects one may injure all; he who believes that the malady in his neighbor’s family to-day may visit his own to-morrow; he who dares to intimate that a vice which has blighted the happiness of one parent, and ruined the character of one daughter, may produce, must inevitably produce, the same sad results in another circle; in short, he who dares allude to the subject of prostitution in any other than a mysterious and whispered manner, must prepare to meet the frowns and censure of society.

Keen was the knowledge of human nature, acute the perception of worldly sentiment in the breast of an accomplished woman lately deceased, when she wrote, “To such grievances as society can not readily cure, it usually forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.” How true the idea, many a man who has attempted to unveil a hidden crime, or probe a secret sorrow, but too well knows.

Not then to prove that prostitution exists, for that is so glaringly palpable that all must perforce concede it, but to ascertain its origin, progress, and end, is the object of these pages. The finger of scorn may be pointed at the labor; the self-righteous world may wrap itself in a mantle of prudery, and close its ears against sickening details; the complacent public may demur at an approach to sin and misery; the self-satisfied community may object to view wretchedness drawn from the obscurity of its [Pg 18]hiding-place to the full light of investigation: nevertheless, there is now existing a moral pestilence which creeps insidiously into the privacy of the domestic circle, and draws thence the myriads of its victims, and which saps the foundation of that holy confidence, the first, the most beautiful attraction of home. There is an ever-present physical danger, so fatally destructive that the world would recoil, as from the spring of a serpent, could they but appreciate its malignity; a malignity which is daily and hourly threatening every man, woman, and child in the community; which for hundreds of years has been slowly but steadily making its way onward, leaving a track marked with broken hopes, ruined frames, and sad recollections of stricken friends; and which now, in the full force of an impetus acquired and aggravated by concealment, almost defies opposition. There is a social wrong which forces upon the community vast expenditures for an object of which they are ignorant; which swells the public taxes and increases individual outlay for a vice which has hitherto been studiously kept in concealment. These reasons were sufficiently powerful to induce the necessary researches for the accomplishment of this work, and they are considered sufficient to justify its publication.

An unseen evil, of which only the effects are visible, is more frightful than one whose dimensions are apparent. No statesman would grapple with a political question until he knew its “form and pressure;” no philanthropist can satisfactorily encounter an unknown misery. Both may judge, to some slight extent, of the evil they can not see, but the one can not venture to remove it, nor the other to modify its woes until its power is fully known. This has so far been the case with prostitution. The world has studiously drawn a screen before it, and when the sufferings of its victims became so apparent that the vice was palpable, an additional mystery was thrown around it, and the people of the nineteenth century know it but as a sin with which they can not interfere. It has all the imagined force of a monster, because of its obscurity; all the virulence of an avenging fiend, because its true powers are hidden; and even those who suffered from its poison have been led to believe that its mysteries were so inscrutable as to defy all approach.

Hitherto reticence has been the policy. This position has been held too long, for it is false in principle and injurious in tendency. The day has arrived when the shroud must be removed; when[Pg 19] the public safety imperiously demands an investigation into the matter; when those who regard it as a small wrong may have their attention directed to its real proportions; and when those who have viewed it as an unmanageable giant may be alike undeceived.

A small matter it decidedly is not: the eternal ruin of one misguided woman would effectually preclude such an opinion; the physical ruin of an impetuous man would prohibit such an estimate, and both these are among those daily consequences which call for an investigation. There is scarcely a person in the community who can not recall some circumstance he has known to support this assertion; for so wide-spread has been the baneful influence of prostitution, that there are comparatively few but have suffered, through friends or relatives, if not in their own persons.

Nor is it unmanageable, except when concealed. Stripped of the veil of secrecy which has enveloped it, there appears a vice arising from an inextinguishable natural impulse on the part of one sex, fostered by confiding weakness in the other; from social disabilities on one side, and social oppression on the other; from the wiles of the deceiver working upon unsuspecting credulity; and, finally, from the stern necessity to live.

It is a mere absurdity to assert that prostitution can ever be eradicated. Strenuous and well-directed efforts for this purpose have been made at different times. The whole power of the Church, where it possessed not merely a spiritual, but an actual secular arm, has been in vain directed against it. Nature defied the mandates of the clergy, and the threatened punishments of an after-life were futile to deter men from seeking, and women from granting, sinful pleasures in this world. Monarchs victorious in the field and unsurpassed in the council-chamber have bent all their energies of will, and brought all the aids of power to crush it out, but before these vice has not quailed. The guilty women have been banished, scourged, branded, executed; their partners have been subjected to the same punishment; held up to public opinion as immoral; denuded of their civil rights; have seen their offenses visited upon their families; have been led to the stake, the gibbet, and the block, and still prostitution exists. The teachings of morality and virtue have been powerless here. In some cases they restrain individuals; upon the aggregate they are inoperative. The researches of science have been unheeded. They have traced the[Pg 20] physical results of vice, and have foreshadowed its course. They have demonstrated that the suffering parents of this generation will bequeath to their posterity a heritage of ruined powers; that the malady which illicit pleasure communicates is destructive to the hopes of man; that the human frame is perceptibly and regularly depreciating by the operation of this poison, and have shown that even the desire for health and long life, one of the most powerful motives that ever influences a human being, has been of no avail to stem the torrent.

But if history proves that prostitution can not be suppressed, it also demonstrates that it can be regulated, and directed into channels where its most injurious results can be encountered, and its dangerous tendencies either entirely arrested or materially weakened. This is the policy to which civilized communities are tending, and to aid the movement it is needful that the subject be examined, even at the risk of the world’s contumely.

In some of the countries of Continental Europe the examination has been made, and the natural consequences of a searching and philosophical investigation are there seen in legislation, which aims not to dam a wild torrent, but to lead it where its rage may be harmlessly spent. When a mighty river overflows its banks, the uncontrollable flood works wide-spread ruin and devastation along its course; but the same river, confined to its natural channel, may be of immense service in carrying off a vast amount of filth and debris that otherwise would cause pestilence and death. In this Western hemisphere, and in the mother-country, Anglo-Saxon prudery has stood aloof from inquiring into a vice which every one admits to be offensive to the moral sense of the people, and has submitted to an accumulation of evils rather than seek to abate them, until the suffering and the wrong have become so boldly defined that they force themselves upon the public eye.

Assuredly it is high time to inaugurate a new line of action; to cast aside as unworthy those puerile doubts of propriety and expediency which have stood in the way of an onward progress. The very meaning of the word “propriety” supplies an argument in favor of the proposed course. Conventionally, it has been construed to mean an indefinite something which every person has moulded to suit his own predilections. Upon the same principle that a man who makes his living dishonestly would consider it a glaring impropriety to examine the laws of fraud, has the world decided it an outrage against propriety to inquire into a[Pg 21] vice which many secretly practice, but all publicly condemn. Reasoning like this has been too often applied, and with too great an effect. Can there possibly be an impropriety in investigating a vice which threatens the purity and peace of the community, because in so doing unpleasant facts will be disclosed? Is there not a far more striking inconsistency in supinely allowing the same vice to exist and increase, without hinderance or examination?

Again: it must be conceded that the demands of propriety are universal. They are not restricted to any person or place, but press with equal force upon every member of the community in every possible situation. The common welfare is involved in their general application, and he well merits the good opinion of his fellow-men who points them to a case where propriety is outraged, and asks their aid to apply the remedy. In a word, propriety demands an exposure of all acts of impropriety, and the application of the needful cure.

Then the question arises, In what form shall the exposure be made? Truth admits of but one reply. It must be so explicit as to leave no doubt of its meaning; it must be so guarded as not to offend in its application. If the first of these rules is not observed, any disclosure will be worthless; if the remarks are vague, indefinite, or generalized, no good result can accrue. Take a simple illustration. It conveys no determinate idea to a benevolent man to say, “There is distress in a certain city;” but point him to the particular locality, and give him the precise circumstances, and his sympathy is at once aroused and effectively exerted. The same rule is equally applicable to a monster vice and to an individual hardship, and upon this principle have the disclosures of the following pages been based. The idea has been to particularize sufficiently to draw attention, but not enough to gratify a prurient inclination; to exhibit the evil in a truthful aspect, but not in a fascinating form. None can doubt the truth of Pope’s well-known lines:

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

The endeavor should be to fulfill the imperative demands of propriety, without disturbing the conventional prejudices implied by the same word.

[Pg 22]Then, as to expediency, or the fitness to effect some good end. It must be admitted that the mere fact of proving prostitution capable of control is a good object, and it is apparent that such proof can not be afforded while the vice remains a myth. Something must be known of its haunts and its customs ere any one can decide in what shape a supervisory power can be best applied. This knowledge must be obtained in defiance of deep-rooted prejudices. Commonplace objections about the danger of touching impure objects are best met by the remark that to the pure all things are pure. Though benevolence may at times lead its devotees through scenes where moral purity is shocked, and to neighborhoods where filth and obscenity vitiate the very air they breathe, there is no contamination to those whose motives are good. Inexpediency has been urged as often and as falsely as impropriety. In their application to this subject, both are perverted from their legitimate meaning; both are made subservient to a false taste, or a mawkish sensibility which fears to encounter an imaginary danger.

The safety of the community, so far as its sanitary condition is concerned, imperatively demands an inquiry like this. It is no longer necessary to prove that syphilitic taint is propagated by the direct agency of prostitution. That fact has been demonstrated years ago, and, reasoning from it, we rightly infer that the ravages of that poison can be checked by compelling abandoned women to certain judicious observances. One thing is absolutely certain, that the public health can not be endangered by the interference, and there is a moral certainty that it may be materially benefited. The value of this investigation, so far as relates to purely physical questions, consists in not merely pointing out where the evil is, but in showing to what extent it exists, and then contrasting the state of venereal disease, its rapid increase and augmenting virulence in this country, with its condition in those nations where similar investigations have resulted in practical measures.

Public safety imperatively demands this investigation as a means of tracing the habitual resorts of criminals. It is not necessary to inform any man conversant with city life that houses of ill fame are the common resort of the most abandoned of the male part of the community. There the assassin, against whose hand no life is secure, has a safe retreat. The burglar, who commits his depredations under cover of the shade of night; the swindler,[Pg 23] who defrauds the honest trader by false representations; the counterfeiter, who earns a precarious living by his unholy trade—these hold there high carnival. There they meet to recount their exploits and divide the spoils; to devise new schemes of wickedness, or lay plans by which simple youths may be allured to vilest practices.

There is another phase of public safety which demands this investigation, namely, the preservation of female honor. Those who frequent these haunts of vice are forever employed in casting about snares to entrap the young, the unwary, or the friendless woman. They tempt her to minister to their libidinous desires, and swell the already overcrowded ranks of frailty. While these resorts are secret, there is every facility for such infamous conduct, with but slight probability of its detection, and still slighter opportunities for prevention. Thither, too, young men, and even boys, are inveigled by those who have grown old in vice, and there are they taught the horrid mysteries of unhallowed passion. Many a promising youth has left such haunts as these not only with a ruined constitution, but with loss of character and honor; many whose names swell the criminal records of the day date their first step in crime from the hour they entered a common brothel.

Again: Public safety demands this investigation because of the superior opportunities it will afford to reformatory measures. Start not at the supposition of reforming courtesans. There is hope even for them, for they are human beings, though depraved. Their hearts throb with the same sympathies that move the more favored of their sex. Their minds are susceptible to the same emotions as those of other females. Few of them become vile from natural instincts: poor victims of circumstances, many of them would gladly amend if the proper means were used at the proper time.

“There is in every human heart
Some not entirely barren part,
Where flowers of richest scent may blow,
And fruit in glorious sunlight grow.”

This consummation can be achieved only when the pseudo-virtue of the world shall yield to true benevolence, and charity be in deed what it professes in name.

If public safety is thus urgent, private interest also has arguments in favor of investigating prostitution. No one need be[Pg 24] told that public aid is required to give medical treatment to the unfortunate men and women tainted by this vice; nor need any one be assured that such aid, administered with every regard to economy, requires yearly a large portion of the taxes paid by individuals. It would be sheer folly to assert that any measures which can follow this inquiry will be efficacious in eradicating syphilis, but experience proves that an effective supervision would materially abate its influence, render it curable in a much shorter space of time, and reduce the expenses for each patient in a corresponding ratio.

Another large claim upon the public funds arises from the necessity of employing an extensive judicial and police organization to deal with the crime and the criminals generated and fostered in houses of ill fame. Nests of vice as they are now in their darkness and seclusion, it would be impossible to suppose a more fitting nursery for crime, or one whence more criminals would emanate. As with disease, so with crime. It can not be suppressed by placing its retreats under public notice, but it can be watched, and, once brought to the light of day, half its dangers and difficulties become surmountable.

Finally, private interest demands this investigation on mere private grounds—the individual and personal expenses caused by diseases contracted by debauchery. There is the money a working man must pay for his cure: this is his share of the loss. There is the unproductive time, and the loss of profits upon his labor: this is his employer’s sacrifice. There is the deprivation of comforts and necessaries experienced by his family and dependents: this is their penalty. Society is thus involved in a general loss on account of an act of folly, or passion, or crime (call it which you please), committed in a concealed and secret haunt, and such loss could be saved by the intervention of proper means.

Common sense asks for a full investigation of all the evils attending prostitution. In the every-day affairs of life, any man who feels the pressure of a particular evil looks at once for its cause. He may be neither a philosopher nor a logician, and may never have heard of or read any of the luminous treatises which professedly simplify science, yet he knows very well that for every effect there must be some adequate cause, and for this he generally searches diligently till he can find and remove it. But here, in the city of New York, is a population who claim to be as[Pg 25] intelligent as any on the Western continent, who have been for years suffering from the effects of a vice in purse and person; who have paid and are paying every year large sums of money on account of it; who witness every day some broken constitution or ruined character resulting from it, and who yet have never thought of seeking out the cause! Is it now too late to enlist your sympathies in the undertaking?

Hence we conclude that propriety, expediency, public safety, private interest, and common sense demand an investigation like this now submitted to the reader. And what is the argument brought forward to oppose it? The world’s scorn—“this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.” But is not this scorn powerless against the array of favoring motives? Will it stand the test of comparison with any one of them, much less of all? Is not its influence lost when its real character is known? The reckless carelessness which has suffered a growing vice to increase and multiply, which has permitted a deadly Upas-tree to take root and blossom in the community until its poisonous exhalations threaten universal infection; which has, by its actual indifference, fostered vice, promoted seduction, perpetuated disease, and entailed death; shall this deformed weakness now raise its trembling hands, and exhibit its tottering frame, and lift its puny voice to forbid an examination into the sources of the danger? Has not the finger of this scorn too long forbid the search for truth? Has not the hour arrived when truth will speak trumpet-tongued, and when her voice must be heard?

Now the question will arise, Has the world’s indifference produced these evils? Undoubtedly it has, and in the following manner: Laws have been placed upon the statute-book declaring prostitutes, and houses of prostitution, and all who live by such means, illegal and immoral. There the law yet stands. At uncertain intervals some poor and friendless woman is arrested as a vagrant, and, to appease the offended majesty of law, she is sent to prison, a scapegoat for five thousand of her class. It also sometimes happens that another woman equally guilty, but with money or influence, is arrested at the same time and for the same offense, and before she reaches the prison walls a legal quibble has been raised and she is free. Is there no culpable indifference in this? Houses of prostitution are proscribed by law. How many of them are ever indicted, or, if indicted, how many are suppressed? This, too, is owing to criminal neglect, and it is aggravated by the [Pg 26]injurious effects arising from the mere circumstance of allowing a law to exist, and making no efforts to enforce it. The character of a people is judged, not by the laws that are made, but by the strictness with which those that do exist are enforced and observed. In regard to the first, there may be exhibited an acute perception of an existing evil, and a desire to reform it by legislation; but a second glance may reveal no wish to make this legislation effective. In the special matter of prostitution, the opinion is expressed elsewhere that prohibitory laws are worse than useless, and in the experience of New York City there is nothing to shake that opinion, notwithstanding the fact that the efforts made to enforce them are so “few and far between.” Had existing laws been more vigorously enforced, their inefficiency would long since have been much better understood than it now is, and people would not have rested under the delusion that every thing necessary has been done.

There are yet other cases of culpable indifference. These same proscribed houses of prostitution are suffered to exist uncontrolled, and to spread disease and increase crime and vagrancy in all parts of the city. It has been generally conceded that they can not be suppressed. What effort has been made to hold in check their baneful influence? None—literally none. The statesman has looked on appalled at an evil of whose magnitude he could form no correct idea; the clergyman has hesitated to encounter those who he judged would not respectfully receive his admonitions; the masses of society have shrunk from considering a subject which was repugnant and distasteful. Is there no guilty indifference in this? There can be but one answer to this query; but one opinion as to the share this general apathy has had in fostering the evil.

To substitute for this apathy a healthy action is the object of this investigation. It is but the means to an end. In themselves, as mere matters of information, the facts and deductions presented in the following pages can do nothing but demonstrate the necessity of exertion; but of this necessity they do afford overwhelming demonstration.

Thus much for the general arguments as to the necessity of a work of this nature. There are other special and local causes which led to its accomplishment in the present form.

“The Governors of the Alms-House of the City and County of New York,” or, as they are more generally known, “The Ten[Pg 27] Governors,” is a body called into existence by an act of the State Legislature passed April 6, 1849, specially to take charge of the vagrant and pauper institutions of the city. The present members of the Board are the following well-known citizens:[1]

C. Godfrey Gunther, Esq., President.
Isaac J. Oliver, Esq., Secretary.
Washington Smith, Esq.[2]
Anthony Dugro, Esq.[3]
Cornelius V. Anderson, Esq.
Isaac Townsend, Esq.
Daniel F. Tiemann, Esq.
Joseph S. Taylor, Esq.
P. G. Moloney, Esq.
Benjamin F. Pinckney, Esq.

At the time these investigations commenced two other prominent men were also members of the organization, Hon. Edward C. West (now Surrogate of the city) and Simeon Draper, Esq. Both of these gentlemen had served as President of the Board of Governors with honor to themselves and satisfaction to their colleagues and the public; both took a lively interest in the projected inquiry, and to both am I indebted for much valuable assistance.

The act establishing the Board of Governors assigned to them, with their other duties, the medical care of all persons who had contracted infectious diseases in the practice of debauchery, and who required charitable aid to restore them to health. The result was that a very large number of persons, both male and female, chargeable to the citizens of New York through the medium of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island, came under their cognizance, and they became convinced that some measures were necessary in connection therewith.

Individual members had held this opinion for some time before any official action was taken, and foremost among such was Governor Isaac Townsend. This gentleman was one of the originally appointed Governors, and has been connected with the Board by re-election ever since—a circumstance which made him perfectly acquainted with all the workings of the present system, and to him the public is indebted for the conception of this undertaking. For years has he labored to bring about this result, with an indomitable[Pg 28] energy and perseverance equaled only by his known benevolence and honesty of purpose. He frequently made the practicability of such a measure the subject of conversation with the gentleman who preceded me as Resident Physician of Blackwell’s Island, and, on my appointment (1853), the subject was again urged by him; nor could I be unaware of its importance. No official action was taken until the commencement of the year 1855. At that time Mr. Townsend was President of the Board, and one of his first acts in that capacity was to submit a list of interrogatories on the subject, which were adopted and transmitted to me. I transcribe them from the Minutes of the Board:

To reply to these questions, especially to the fifth, I discovered that it would be requisite to extend my investigations beyond the limits of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island. This idea was communicated to President Townsend, who joined me in appreciating the necessity of such a movement. He also was the means of interesting Mayor Wood and other officers of the city in the investigation as subsequently carried on, while his continued exertions and earnest support aided me generally in the prosecution of the labor, and merit my most sincere and grateful acknowledgments.

[Pg 29]The steps thus taken are fully detailed in the following letter to the Board of Governors, that letter, or preliminary report, having been called for in connection with the reports from the Medical Board of Bellevue Hospital, and from the Resident Physician of Randall’s Island, which will be found, in extenso, in Chapter XXXVII. of this work:[4]

To aid the police officers in the duty of taking the census alluded to above, a schedule of questions was prepared.[5] This was submitted to the Board of Governors by Governor Townsend, and a resolution was adopted at their meeting of October 23d, 1855, sanctioning the plan adopted, and authorizing him to have a sufficient number of copies printed. The mayor, the district attorney, the chief of police, and the captains of the several districts, willingly and zealously co-operated with Governor Townsend and myself, and every possible exertion was used to obtain accurate and extensive information. It became my duty to assist the officers in the execution of their task, and I am thus enabled to speak with certainty as to the authenticity of the statistics given, which were mainly collected under my own observation.

I gladly avail myself of the present opportunity to record my obligations for services rendered by his honor Fernando Wood, Mayor of the city of New York; George W. Matsell, Esq., Chief of Police; and to the Captains of Police in the different wards of the city, namely,

[Pg 32]To Captains Halpin, Hopkins, Ditchett, Carpenter, Dowling, Letts, Turnbull, Kissner, and Dilks, in whose wards is found the greatest amount of prostitution, and upon whom fell the largest share of labor, I am more particularly indebted.

The necessary particulars were finally obtained, and are embodied in Chapters XXXII. to XXXVII. of this work, but there was still an important point to determine, namely, what had been done elsewhere, and what was the result of such action, to check prostitution and diminish the ravages of venereal disease. The Continent of Europe presented a field for this inquiry, and to it I turned for the information required, which is given in the various chapters devoted to the several countries in such a form as to show the measures which have been taken, the effect, and the causes which led to legislative interference, contrasted with those other parts of the world where, as yet, no remedial plans have been tried, notwithstanding the necessity which calls for them.

The reader is now in possession of the facts which led to this inquiry. Is it too much to ask his attention to the analysis and exhibition of prostitution as it is at the present time, he being well assured that no assertions will be made that are not supported by good authority, nor any conclusions drawn from doubtful premises?

So far as New York alone is concerned, the evil is known to a large portion of her citizens, although its ramifications are but very imperfectly understood; and the endeavor will be to present all possible information on the matter, and to give a truthful, unexaggerated picture of the depravity. Disagreeable as this must be from the nature of the task, it is hopeful from a belief that the result will tend to public good.

One of the most painfully interesting branches of the inquiry is that relating to the ages of the unfortunate women. Their number includes many who are but mere children; who but recently knelt at a mother’s side, and in infantile accents breathed a prayer to the Almighty; who but recently sprang with eager, joyous bound to the returning footsteps of a father; who, in a happy and innocent home, have but recently given promise of a bright and virtuous life. Therein are also included many who were deprived by death of their natural protectors, and who, thus left unwatched and uncared for, have fallen before the destroyer ere yet the age of womanhood was reached.

The places of their birth form an interesting subject for [Pg 33]consideration. In this land the frigid North and sunny South, the busy East and fertile West have each contributed their quota, while foreign countries have sent large numbers to swell the mournful aggregate.

The most useful portion of the subject will be found, it is imagined, in replies to the question, “What was the cause of your becoming a prostitute?” These tend to expose the concealed vices of mankind, and to prove that many of the unfortunate victims are “more sinned against than sinning.” Among the reasons assigned for a deviation from the paths of virtue are some which tell of man’s deceit; others, where the machinations employed to effect the purpose raise a blush for humanity; others, where a wife was sacrificed by the man who had sworn before God and in the presence of men to protect her through life; others, where parents have urged or commanded this course, and are now living on the proceeds of their children’s shame, or where an abuse of parental authority has produced the same effect; and others still, where women, already depraved, have been the means of leading their fellow-women to disgrace. A bare allusion to these wrongs is sickening; but, while the gangrene of prostitution is rapidly extending through society, it becomes an imperative duty to examine its causes completely and impartially.

Another prolific source of female depravity will be exhibited by the several tables showing the description of employment pursued, and the wages received by women previous to their fall, and it will be a question for the political economist to decide how far mere business considerations should be an apology on the part of employers for a reduction in their rates of remuneration, and whether the saving of a small percentage on wages is not more than counterbalanced by the enormous amount of taxation enforced on the public at large to defray the expenses incurred on account of a system of vice which is the direct result, in many cases, of insufficient compensation for honest labor.

In conclusion, it must not be assumed that the information collected from two thousand women in New York City relates to all the prostitutes therein. The many difficulties surrounding the investigation, and especially the secrecy to which prohibitory laws have driven this class of persons, rendered the task impossible; but, from the best information that could be obtained of those whose knowledge of the vice was derived from actual experience, it is imagined that the replies represent about two fifths of the[Pg 34] total number.[6] They are presented with full confidence in their general authenticity, and may be very reasonably concluded to offer a fair average of the whole. They unquestionably exhibit an appalling amount of depravity and consequent wretchedness, with but very few redeeming features, and present mournful subjects for reflection to all classes, with forcible arguments for remedial measures. Without this end in prospect it would have been scarcely justifiable, at least in a moral point of view, to institute this inquiry or make these disclosures; but it certainly may be reasonably inferred that many will feel sufficient interest in the advance of virtue to aid in the mitigation of this enormous vice which threatens all social relations; which has already introduced physical suffering into so many families; and the influence of which, increasing in a direct ratio to its existence, will very probably extend its malignant poison, mental and bodily, into all ranks and classes of the community. The necessity for action is apparent, but its successful consummation must rest with the public at large, who have the bane exhibited before them in its actual power, and the necessity of an antidote demonstrated from positive facts, and not deduced from a mere arbitrary theory.

If some antidote be applied, even though a partial one, it will be a satisfaction to reflect that the investigations have not been profitless, nor the labor in vain.

[Pg 35]

HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION.

[If the reader has not already perused the Introduction to this volume, he is advised to do so at once, as therein are stated the reasons which have called it forth, and extended it to the present dimensions.]

THE JEWS.

Our earliest acquaintance with the human race discloses some sort of society established. It also reveals the existence of a marriage tie, varying in stringency and incidental effects according to climate, morals, religion, or accident, but every where essentially subversive of a system of promiscuous intercourse. No nation, it is believed, has ever been reported by a trustworthy traveler, on sufficient evidence, to have held its women generally in common. Still there appear to have been in every age men who did not avail themselves of the marriage covenant, or who could not be bound by its stipulations, and their appetites created a demand for illegitimate pleasures, which female weakness supplied. This may be assumed to be the real origin of prostitution throughout the world, though in particular localities this first cause has been assisted by female avarice or passion, religious superstition, or a mistaken sense of hospitality.

Accordingly, prostitution is coeval with society. It stains the earliest mythological records. It is constantly assumed as an existing fact in Biblical history. We can trace it from the earliest twilight in which history dawns to the clear daylight of to-day, without a pause or a moment of obscurity.

Our most ancient historical record is believed to be the Books of Moses. According to them, it must be admitted that prostitutes were common among the Jews in the eighteenth century[Pg 36] before Christ. When Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, desired to defeat the cruel Jewish custom, and to bear children, notwithstanding her widowhood, she “put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place.... When Judah saw her he thought her a harlot, for she had covered her face.”[7] The Genesiacal account thus shows that prostitutes, with covered faces, must have been common at the time. It is the more valuable, as it furnishes the particulars of the transaction. To keep up her disguise, Tamar demands a kid as her recompense. Judah agrees, and leaves his “signet, and his bracelets, and his staff” as a pledge for the kid. It appears to have been regarded as no dishonor to have commerce with a prostitute, for Judah sends his friend the Adullamite, a man of standing, to deliver the kid; but to defraud the unfortunate woman of her ill-gotten gain must have been considered shameful, for, when Judah learns that she has disappeared, he expresses alarm “lest we be shamed” for not having paid the stipulated price. It may also be noticed, as an illustration of the connection between prostitution and pure domestic morals, that when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he instantly orders her to be burned for having “played the harlot.”

Four centuries afterward it fell to the lot of Moses to legislate on the Jewish morals, no doubt sadly corrupted by their sojourn in Egypt. His command is formal and emphatic: “Do not prostitute thy daughter, lest the land fall to whoredom.... There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel.”[8] He was equally decided in his condemnation of worse practices, to which it would appear the Jews were much addicted.[9] He laid penalties on uncleanness of every kind, and on fornication; but it would appear that he rather confirmed than abrogated the customary right of a Jewish father to sell his daughter as a concubine.[10] With the practical view of improving the physical condition of the race, Moses guarded, by elaborate laws, against improper and corrupt unions. Adultery and rape he punished with death. The bride was bound, under pain of death by stoning, to prove to the satisfaction not only of her husband, but of the tribe, that she had been chaste to the day of her marriage.[11] A long list of relatives were specified among whom it was illegal to intermarry. Furthermore, Moses endeavored, with marked zeal, to check the [Pg 37]progress of disease among both sexes. Whether the maladies mentioned in Leviticus[12] were syphilitic in their nature, it were difficult to say. Modern medical science admits that, in hot climates, want of cleanliness and frequent amorous indulgence will generate phenomena similar to the “issue” so frequently mentioned by Moses. However this be, it is certain that both Jews and Jewesses were subject to diseases apparently similar to the common gonorrhœa; that these diseases were infectious; and that Moses, in reiterated injunctions, forbade all sexual intercourse, and almost all association, with persons thus afflicted. So earnest was his desire to eradicate the evil from the people, that he extended his prohibition to women during the period of their menstrual visitation.

Having done this much for the Jews, Moses appears to have connived at the intercourse of their young men with foreign prostitutes. He took an Ethiopian concubine himself. Syrian women, Moabites, Midianites, and other neighbors of the Jews—many of them, as it appears, young and lovely, but with debauched and vicious principles—established themselves as prostitutes in the land of Israel. For many years, until the time of Solomon, they were excluded from Jerusalem and the large cities. Driven to the highways for refuge, they lived in booths and tents, where they combined the trade of a peddler with the calling of a harlot. Unlike Tamar, they did not veil the face. Reclining within the tent, with no more clothing than the heat of the climate suggested, these dissolute girls invited the complaisance of passengers who stopped to refresh their thirst or replenish their wardrobe at their booth. So long as their practices violated no law of nature, the prudent legislator pursued a tolerant policy. Before long, however, abominable rites in honor of Moloch, Baal, or Belphegor, were formally established by the “strange women” and their male accomplices. Moloch, whose disgusting exactions we find in Phœnicia, and at Carthage also, demanded male worship. The belly of the god’s statue was a furnace, in which a fierce fire was kindled and fed with animal sacrifice; around it the priests and their proselytes danced to the sound of music, sang wild songs, and debased themselves by practices of a disgusting and unnatural character. Nor was the worship of Baal less revolting. He too had his statues, in forms eminently calculated to excite the animal passions, and surrounded by cool groves in which the most shameless prostitution was carried on[Pg 38] by all who would deposit an offering on the altars of the idol. It would even seem, from several passages in the Bible,[13] that the participators in these infamies were not invariably human beings. Against such enormities the wrath of Moses and his successors was aroused, on hygienic as well as moral and religious grounds. Participation in the rites of Moloch was punished with death.[14] Aaron’s grandson did not hesitate to commit a double homicide to mark the Divine abhorrence of the daughters of Midian; and Moses himself, warned by the frightful progress of disease among the male Jews, struck at its roots by exterminating every female Midianite among his captives, save the virgins only.

An express command forbade the establishment of groves near the Jewish temples, evidently on account of the convenience such shady retreats afforded to prostitutes. Yet on various occasions in the history of Israel we find accounts of the destruction of such groves, and of the statues of the gods in whose honor human nature was defiled.[15] Solomon, whose wisdom was singularly alloyed with sensuality, not only set the example of inordinate lust, keeping, it is said, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, but repealed the wise restrictions of his predecessors in regard to prostitutes, allowing them to exercise their calling within the city of Jerusalem. They multiplied so fast that the prophets speak of them wandering on all the hills, and prostituting themselves under every tree, and at a later date they even invaded the Temple, and established their hideous rites in its courts. That noble edifice had become, in the time of Maccabees, a mere brothel plenum scortantium cum meretricibus.[16]

It is, however, apparent, notwithstanding the severe ordinances of the Jewish legislators, that prostitutes were a recognized class, laboring under no hopeless ban. Jephtha, the son of a prostitute, became none the less chief of Israel; and some commentators have contended that the retreat to which he condemned his daughter was simply the calling of her grandmother. Joshua’s spies slept openly in the house of the harlot Rahab, whose service to Israel was faithfully requited by the amnesty granted to her family, and the honorable residence allotted to her in Judæa. Samson chose the house of a harlot to be his residence at Gaza; his fatal acquaintance with another harlot, Delilah, is the leading trait of his story. Even Solomon did not disdain to hear the[Pg 39] rival wranglings of a pair of harlots, and to adjudicate between them. Prostitution was in fact legally domiciled in Judæa at a very early period, and never lost the foothold it had gained. Of the manner in which it was carried on, an idea may be formed from the very vivid picture in Proverbs:[17]

“For at the window of my house,
I looked through my casement,
And beheld among the simple ones,
I discerned among the youths,
A young man void of understanding,
Passing through the streets near her (the strange woman’s) corner;
And he went the way to her house,
In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night;
And, behold, there met him a woman
With the attire of a harlot, and subtile of heart.
She is loud and stubborn;
Her feet abide not in her house:
Now she is without, now in the streets,
And lieth in wait at every corner.
So she caught him, and kissed him,
And with an impudent face said unto him,
I have peace-offerings with me;
This day have I paid my vows.
Therefore came I forth to meet thee,
Diligently to seek thy face,
And I have found thee.
I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry,
With carved works, with linen of Egypt.
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
Aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning:
Let us solace ourselves with loves. * * *
With her much fair speech she caused him to yield,
With the flattering of her lips she forced him.
He goeth after her straightway,
As an ox goeth to the slaughter,
Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks.”

That prostitution continued to be practiced generally and openly until the destruction of the old Jewish nation, the language of the Biblical prophets does not permit us to doubt. It may be[Pg 40] questioned whether it ever assumed more revoltingly public forms in any other country. The Babylonish conquest must have changed the parts, without altering the performance. At Babylon, the Jewish maidens, whose large, expressive eyes, voluptuous mouth, slender and graceful figure, with well-developed bust and limbs, were frequently the theme of ancient poets, peopled the houses of prostitution, and ministered to the lusts of the nobles. Nor even after the return to Jerusalem was the evil extirpated. It was to a prostitute that Christ uttered the memorable sentence, “Her sins are forgiven because she loved much.”

EGYPT, SYRIA, AND ASIA MINOR.

Before passing to the subject of prostitution in Greece, a glance at Egypt, and those nations of Asia which seem to have preceded Greece in civilization, may not be out of place.

Egypt was famous for her courtesans before the time of Herodotus. Egyptian blood runs warm; girls are nubile at ten. Under the Pharaohs, if ancient writers are to be believed, there existed a general laxity of moral principle, especially among young females.[18] Their religion was only too suggestive. The deities Isis and Osiris were the types of the sexes. A statue of the latter, a male image, made of gold, was carried by the maidens at festivals, and worshiped by the whole people. Nor were the rites of Isis more modest. “At the festival at Bubastis,” says Herodotus, “men and women go thither in boats on the Nile, and when the boats approach a city they are run close to the shore. A frantic contest then begins between the women of the city and those in the boats, each abusing the other in the most opprobrious language, and the women in the boats conclude the performance by lascivious dances, in the most undisguised manner, in sight of the people, and to the sound of flutes and other musical instruments.”[19] There is little reason to doubt that the temples, like those of Baal, were houses of prostitution on an extensive scale. Herodotus [Pg 41]remarks significantly that a law in Egypt forbade sexual intercourse within the walls of a temple, and exacted of both sexes that intercourse should be followed by ablution before the temple was entered.[20]

Where piety required such sacrifices, it is not surprising that public morals were loose. It was not considered wholly shameful for an Egyptian to make his living by the hire of his daughter’s person, and a king is mentioned who resorted to this plan in order to discover a thief. Such was the astonishing appetite of the men, that young and beautiful women were never delivered to the embalmer until they had been dead some days, a miserable wretch having been detected in the act of defiling a recently-deceased virgin![21] Of course, in such a society, there was no disgrace in being a prostitute. The city of Naucratis owed its wealth and fame to the beauty of its courtesans, whose reputation spread throughout Europe, and was much celebrated in Greece. Rhadopis, a Thracian by birth, led the life of a prostitute in Egypt with such success, that she not only bought her own freedom from the slave-dealer who had taken her there on speculation, but, if the Egyptians are to be believed, built a pyramid with her savings. A large portion of her story is doubtless mythical, but enough remains to warrant the opinion that she was, though a prostitute, a wealthy and highly considered person.

In Chaldæa, too, religion at first connived at, and then commanded prostitution. Every Babylonian female was obliged by law to prostitute herself once in her life in the temple of the Chaldæan Venus, whose name was Mylitta.[22] Herodotus appears to have seen the park and grounds in which this singular sacrifice was made. They were constantly filled with women with strings bound round their hair. Once inside the place, no woman could leave it until she had paid her debt, and had deposited on the altar of the goddess the fee received from her lover. Some, who were plain, remained there as long as three years; but, as the grounds were always filled with a troop of voluptuaries in search of pleasure, the young, the beautiful, the high-born seldom needed to remain over a few minutes. This strange custom is mentioned by the prophet Baruch, who introduces one of the women reproaching her neighbor that she had not been deemed worthy of having her girdle of cord burst asunder by any man.[23] Similar statements are made by Strabo and other[Pg 42] ancient writers. At the time of Alexander the Great the demoralization had reached a climax. Babylonian banquets were scenes of unheard-of infamies. When the meal began, the women sat modestly enough in presence of their fathers and husbands; but, as the wine went round, they lost all restraint, threw off one garment after another, and enacted scenes of glaring immodesty. And these were the ladies of the best families.[24]

The Mylitta of Chaldæa became Astarte in Phœnicia, at Carthage, and in Syria. Nothing was changed but the name; the voluptuous rites were identical. In addition to the forced prostitution in the temples, however, the Phœnicians and most of their colonies maintained for many years the practice of requiring their maidens to bestow their favors on any strangers who visited the country. Commercial interest, no doubt, had some share in promoting so scandalous a custom. On the high shores of Phœnicia, as at Carthage and in the island of Cyprus, the traveler sailing past in his boat could see beautiful girls, arrayed in light garments, stretching inviting arms to him.

Originally the sum paid by the lover was offered to the goddess, but latterly the girls kept it, and it served to enhance their value in the matrimonial market. In some places the girl was free if she chose to abandon her hair to the goddess, but Lucian notes that this was an uncommonly rare occurrence.

Very similar were the customs of the Lydians and their successors in empire, the early Persians. Their Venus was named Mithra, in honor of whom festivals were given at which human nature was horribly outraged. Fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, husbands and wives sat together at the table, while voluptuous dances and music inflamed their senses, and when the wine had done its work, a promiscuous combat of sensuality began which lasted all night. Details of such scenes must be left to other works, and veiled in a learned tongue.[25]

[Pg 43]

GREECE.

The Greek mythology supposes obviously a relaxed state of public morals. What period in the history of the nation it may be assumed to reflect is, however, by no means certain. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Homeric poems were composed for immodest audiences, and it would perhaps be fairer to lay the blame of the mythological indecencies at the door of the age which polished and improved upon them, rather than of that which is entitled to the credit of their conception in the rough.

Our first reliable information regarding the morals of the Greek women, passing over, for the present, the legislation ascribed to Lycurgus, is found in the ordinances of Solon. Draco is supposed to have affixed the penalty of death indiscriminately to rape, seduction, and adultery. It has been conjectured that the safety-valve used at that time, ordinary prostitution being unknown, was a system of religious prostitution in the temples, borrowed from and analogous to the plan already described. This, however, is mere conjecture. Solon, while softening the rigors of the Draconian code, by law formally established houses of prostitution at Athens, and filled them with female slaves. They were called Dicteria, and the female tenants Dicteriades. Bought with the public money, and bound by law to satisfy the demands of all who visited them, they were in fact public servants, and their wretched gains were a legitimate source of revenue to the state. Prostitution became a state monopoly, and so profitable[Pg 44] that, even in Solon’s lifetime, a superb temple, dedicated to Venus the courtesan, was built out of the fund accruing from this source. The fee charged, however, appears to have been small.[26] In Solon’s time, the Dicteriades were kept widely apart from the Athenian women of repute. They were not allowed to mix in religious ceremonies or to enter the temples. When they appeared in the streets they were obliged to wear a particular costume as a badge of infamy. They forfeited what rights of citizenship they may have possessed in virtue of their birth. A procurer or procuress who had been instrumental in introducing a free-born Athenian girl to the Dicterion incurred the penalty of death. Nor was the law content with branding with infamy prostitutes and their accomplices alone. Their children were bastards; that is to say, they could not inherit property, they could not associate with other youths, they could not acquire the right of citizenship without performing some signal act of bravery, they could not address the people in the public assemblies. Finally, to complete their ignominy, they were exempt from the sacred duty of maintaining their parents in old age.[27]

These regulations, for which Solon obtained the praise of Athenian philosophers,[28] were not long maintained in force. Tradition imputed to the profligacy of the Pisistratidæ a relaxation of the laws concerning prostitutes. It was believed that the sons of Pisistratus not only gave to the Dicteriades the freedom of the city, but allotted to them seats at banquets beside the most respectable matrons, and, on certain days each year, turned them into their father’s beautiful gardens, and let loose upon them the whole petulance of the Athenian youth.[29] The law against procuresses was modified, a fine being substituted for death. “About the same time,” says the scandalous Greek chronicle, “the death-penalty for adultery was also commuted for scourging.”

Still, notwithstanding this falling off, it would appear that Athens was more moral than her neighbors, Corinth and Sparta. The former, then the most flourishing sea-port of Greece, was filled with a very low class of prostitutes. No laws regulated the subject. Any female who chose could open house for the accommodation of travelers and seamen, and, though Corinth was yet far[Pg 45] from the proverbial celebrity it afterward obtained for its prostitutes, there is no doubt they bore a fearful proportion to the aggregate population of the port. At Sparta the case was different. In the system of legislation which bears the name of Lycurgus, the individual was sacrificed to the state; the female to the male. Women were educated for the sole purpose of bearing robust children. Virgins were allowed to wrestle publicly with men. Girls were habited in a robe open at the skirts, which only partially concealed the person in walking, whence the Spartan women acquired an uncomplimentary name.[30] A Spartan husband was authorized to lend his wife to any handsome man for the purpose of begetting children. That these laws, the skillfully contrived appeals to the sensual appetites, and the constant spectacle of nude charms, must have led to a general profligacy among the female sex, is quite obvious. Aristotle affirms positively that the Spartan women openly committed the grossest acts of debauchery.[31] Hence it may be inferred that prostitutes by profession were unnecessary at Sparta, at all events until a late period of its history.

After the Persian wars, the subject of Athenian prostitution is revealed in a clearer light. As a reaction from the looseness of the age of the Pisistratidæ, the Solonian laws were reaffirmed and their severity heightened. It has been imagined, from certain obscure passages in Greek authors, that the courtesans formed several corporations, each of which was responsible for the acts of all its members. They were liable to vexatious prosecutions for such acts as inciting men to commit crime, ruining thoughtless youths, fomenting treason against the state, or committing impiety. Against such charges it was rarely possible to establish a sound defense. If the accuser was positive, the Areopagus, notoriously biased against courtesans, unhesitatingly condemned the culprit to death, or imposed on her corporation a heavy fine. In this way, says an old author, the state frequently contrived to get back from these women the money they obtained from their lovers. Before the famous case of Phryne, they were wholly at the mercy of their profligate associates. A man only needed to threaten an accusation of impiety or the like to obtain a receipt in full. Phryne, so long the favorite of the Athenians, was thus accused of various vague offenses by a common informer named Euthias. Her friend Bacchis fortunately persuaded Hyperides, the orator, to undertake her case, and he softened the judges by exhibiting her[Pg 46] marvelous beauty in a moment of affected passion. “Henceforth,” says the hetaira Bacchis to Myrrhina, “our profits are secured by law.”[32]

At this time, that is to say, at the height of Athenian prosperity, there were four classes of women who led dissolute lives at Athens. The highest in rank and repute were the Hetairæ, or kept women, who lived in the best part of the city, and exercised no small influence over the manners and even the politics of the state. Next came the Auletrides, or flute-players, who were dancers as well. They were usually foreigners, bearing some resemblance to the opera-dancers of the last century, and they combined the most unblushing debauchery with their special calling. The lowest class of prostitutes were the Dicteriades, already mentioned. They were originally bound to reside at the Piræus, the sea-port of Athens, some four miles from the city, and were forbidden to walk out by day, or to offend the eyes of the public by open indecency. Lastly came the Concubines, who were slaves owned by rich men with the knowledge and consent of their wives, serving equally the passions of their master and the caprices of their mistress. These all paid a tax to the state, called Pornikon Telos, which was farmed out to speculators, who levied it with proverbial harshness upon the unfortunate women. In the time of Pericles the revenue from this source was large.

All classes, too, wore garments of many colors. The law originally specified “flowered robes” as the costume of courtesans; but this leading to difficulties, a farther enactment prohibited prostitutes from wearing precious stuffs, such as scarlet or purple, or jewels. Thenceforth the custom, which appears to have been general throughout the Greek cities and colonies, prescribed cheap robes, with flowers or stripes of many colors embroidered or painted on them. To this a part of the women added garlands of roses. It was lawful in some cities for courtesans to wear light, transparent garments; but at Sparta, as may be imagined, the reverse was the rule, semi-nudity being the badge of virtuous women.[33]

Perhaps the most singular of the marks by which a Greek courtesan was known was her hair. It is said that no law prescribed the habit; if so, it must have been a sort of esprit de corps which[Pg 47] led all courtesans to dye their hair of a flaxen or blonde color. Allusions to this custom abound in the light literature of Greece. Frequently a flaxen wig was substituted for the dyed locks. At a very late period in the history of Greece, modest women followed the fashion of sporting golden hair. This forms one of the subjects of reprimand addressed to the women of Greece by the early Christian preachers.[34]

THE DICTERIADES, OR COMMON PROSTITUTES OF ATHENS.

This class approaches more nearly than any other to the prostitutes of our day, the main difference being that the former were bound by law to prostitute themselves when required to do so, on the payment of the fixed sum, and that they were not allowed to leave the state. Their home, as mentioned already, was properly at the port of Piræus. An open square in front of the citadel was their usual haunt. It was surrounded with booths, where petty trade or gambling was carried on by day. At nightfall the prostitutes swarmed into the square. Some were noisy and obscene; others quiet, and armed with affected modesty. When a man passed on his way from the port to the city, the troop assailed him. If he resisted, coarse abuse was lavished on him. If he yielded, there was the temple of Venus the Courtesan close by, and there was the wall of Themistocles, under the friendly shelter of either of which the bargain could be consummated. Were the customer nice, the great dicterion was not far distant, and a score or more of smaller rivals were even nearer at hand, as a well-known sign was there to testify.

The Dicteria were under the control of the municipal police. The door was open night and day, a bright curtain protecting the inmates from the eye of the passer-by; and in the better class of establishments, a fierce dog, chained in the vestibule, served as sentinel. At the curtain sat an old woman, often a Thessalian and a pretended witch, who received the money before admitting visitors. Originally the fee was an obolus[35]—about three cents; but this attempt to regulate the value of a variable merchandise was soon abandoned. Within, at night, the sounds of music, revelry, and dancing might be constantly heard. The visitor was not kept in suspense. The curtain passed, he was in full view of the dicteriades, standing, sitting, or lying about the room; some [Pg 48]engaged in smoothing their blonde hair, some in conversation, some anointing themselves with perfumery. The legal principle with regard to the dicteriades appears to have been that they should conceal nothing; no doubt in contrast to the irregular prostitutes, of whom something will be said presently. There was no rule, however, forbidding the wearing of garments in the dicterion, but the common practice appears to have been to dispense with them, or to wear a light scarf thrown over the person. This custom was observed by day as well as by night, and a visitor has described the girls in a large dicterion as standing in a row, in broad daylight, without any robes or covering.[36]

It seems that in later times any speculator had a right to set up a dicterion on paying the tax to the state. An Athenian forfeited his right of citizenship by so doing; but, as a popular establishment was very lucrative, avaricious men frequently embarked in the business under an assumed name. Comic writers have lashed these wretches severely. On paying the tax to the state regularly, the pornobosceion, or master of the house, acquired certain rights. The dicterion was an inviolable asylum, no husband being allowed to pursue his wife, or the wife her husband, or the creditor his debtor, within its walls. Public decency requires, says Demosthenes, that men shall not be exposed in houses of prostitution.[37] It was not, however, considered wholly shameful to frequent such places.

There appear to have been attached to these dicteria schools of prostitution, where young women were initiated into the most disgusting practices by females who had themselves acquired them in the same manner. Alexis vigorously describes the frauds taught in these places,[38] while there is a shocking significance in an expression of Athenæus—“You will be well satisfied with the performance of the women in the dicteria.”[39]

Besides these regular dicteriades, there were at Athens, as there have been in every large city, a number of women who exercised the calling of prostitutes, without properly belonging to any of the recognized classes. They were sometimes called free dicteriades, sometimes she-wolves, and also cheap hetairæ. Some were native Athenians who had been seduced and abandoned,[Pg 49] and who, led by stings of conscience and idleness to pursue their career, had still an invincible repugnance to adopt the flowered robe and yellow hair of the regular courtesan. They roamed the Piræus, and even the streets of Athens, after dark, eking out a miserable subsistence by the hardest of trades, and haunting the dark recesses of old houses or the shade of trees. Others, again, were old hetairæ whose charms had faded, and who sought a scanty subsistence where they were not known, and shrank from encountering the eye of a lover where the friendly shade of night would not hide the ravages of time. Others were the servants of hotels and taverns, who were always expected to serve the caprices of visitors.

All of these led a most miserable life. Now and then we hear of one or two of them meeting a rich and inexperienced traveler, after which the heroine of the exploit naturally ascended to the rank of hetaira; but, in general, their customers were the lowest of the port people—sailors, fishermen, farm-servants. Their price was a meal, a fish, a handful of fruit, or a bottle of wine. One poor creature, who belonged to no class in particular, but acquired some celebrity by being kept by the orator Ithatocles, was named Didrachma because she offered her favors to the public generally for two drachmas, about thirty-five cents.[40]

Perhaps the most curious fact in reference to these prostitutes is the singular predominance of old women among them. It appears to have been adopted as an invariable rule for this sort of courtesans to paint their faces with a thick ointment, and it is even said that the great painters of Greece did not disdain to beguile their leisure hours by thus improving upon nature.[41] Of course, under this disguise, it was impossible to distinguish a young face from an old one. An aged prostitute thus bedizened would place herself at an open window with a sprig of myrtle in her hand, with which she would beckon to people in the street. When a customer was found, a servant would open the door and conduct him in silence to the chamber of her mistress. Before entering he paid the sum demanded, when he found himself in a room lighted only by a feeble glimmer passing through the curtain, which now hung down over the window. In such a twilight the most venerable old woman could not be distinguished from a Venus.[42]

 [Pg 50]

THE AULETRIDES, OR FLUTE-PLAYERS.

Female flute-players were a common accompaniment to an Athenian banquet. The flute, which in modern times is played by men, was rarely seen in male hands in Greece. Though the fable ascribed its invention to the god Pan, and its development to the mythical king Midas, it was monopolized at a very early period by women, who consoled themselves for the ravages it wrought in their beauty by the power of fascination it imparted among a people intensely musical. Flute-playing soon became an essential rite in the service of certain deities. Ceres was invariably worshiped to the sound of the flute. And when the Athenians had once tried the experiment of listening to flute-players after dinner, they never would dine in company without them.

Thebes appears to have been the native city of the earliest famous flute-players,[43] but before long the superior beauty of the Asiatic girls—Ionians and Phrygians—drove their Theban rivals out of the field. Dancing was combined with flute-playing, and in this art the Asiatics bore the palm from the world. During the golden days of Greece, numbers of beautiful girls were every year imported into Athens from Miletus and the other Ionic ports in Asia Minor, just as in more modern times a similar trade was carried on between Trebizond and Constantinople.

An Athenian hired his flute-players as a modern European noble hires his band. They charged so much for their musical performances, reserving the right of accepting presents in the course of the evening. Some were singers as well as performers. At each course a new air was played, increasing in tenderness and expression as the wine circulated. It is stated that the sounds of a good flute-concert excited people to such a state of phrensy that they would take off their rings and jeweled ornaments to throw them to the performers: those who have witnessed a triumphant operatic soirée can readily believe the statement. But the fair artists did not wholly rely on their music for their success. The performer danced while she played, accompanying every note with a harmonious movement of the body. There is no doubt these dances were in the highest degree immoral and lascivious. Athenæus tells a story of an embassy from Arcadia waiting upon King Antigonus, and being invited to dinner. After the hunger[Pg 51] of the venerable guests was appeased, Phrygian flute-players were introduced. They were draped in semi-transparent veils, arranged with much coquetry. At the given signal they began to play and dance, balancing themselves alternately on each foot, and gradually increasing the rapidity of their movements. As the performance went on, the dancers uncovered their heads, then their busts; lastly, they threw the veils aside altogether, and stood before the wondering embassadors with only a short tunic around the loins. In this state they danced so indecently that the aged Arcadians, excited beyond control, forgot where they were, and rushed upon them. The king laughed; the courtiers were shocked at such ill-breeding, but the dancers discharged the sacred duty of hospitality.[44]

A flute-player who had achieved a success of this kind was enabled to conclude a lucrative bargain for other performances. We find allusions to fees as high as two talents (say $2500) and fifty pieces of gold,[45] though these were evidently unusual charges. Many of the most fashionable flute-players were slaves who had been brought to Greece by speculators. They were commonly sold by auction at the dinner-table, when their owner judged that the enthusiasm of the guests had attained the highest point. An anecdote is told of one of the most esteemed names in Greek philosophy in reference to this strange custom. He was dining with a party of young men, when a youthful flute-player was introduced. She crept to the philosopher’s feet, and seemed to shelter herself from insult under the shadow of his venerable beard; but he, a disciple of Zeno, spurned her, and burst forth into a strain of moralizing. Piqued by the affront, the girl rose, and played and danced with inimitable grace and pruriency. At the close of the performance her owner put her up to auction, and one of the first bidders was the philosopher. She was adjudged to another, however, and the white-haired sage so far forgot his principles as to engage in a fierce conflict with the victor for the possession of the prize.[46] Hand to hand battles on these occasions were common in the best society at Athens, and a flute-player in fashion made a boast of the riots she had caused.[47] Of the fortunes realized by successful artists in this line, an idea may be formed from the gorgeous presents made to the Delphian oracle by flute-players, and from the fact that the finest houses at [Pg 52]Alexandria were inscribed with the names of famous Greek auletrides.[48]

As might be inferred from the character of their dances, the auletrides were capable of every infamy. Constantly breathing an atmosphere of debauchery, and accustomed to the daily spectacle of nudities, they naturally attained a pitch of amorous exaltation of which we, at the present day, can hardly form an idea. They kept a cherished festival in honor of Venus Peribasia, which was originally established by Cypselus of Corinth. At that ceremony all the great flute-players of Greece assembled to celebrate their calling. Men were not usually allowed to be present, a regulation prompted perhaps by modesty, as the judgment of Paris was renewed at the festival, and prizes were awarded for every description of beauty. The ceremony was often mentioned as the Callipygian games; and a sketch of a scene which took place at one of these reunions, contained in a letter from a famous flute-player, justifies the appellation. The banquet lasted from dark till dawn, with wines, perfumes, delicate viands, songs, and music. An after-scene was a dispute between two of the guests as to their respective beauty. A trial was demanded by the company, and a long and graphic account is given of the exhibition, but modern tastes will not allow us to transcribe the details.[49]

A knowledge of these scandalous scenes, it may be briefly observed, would be worse than useless, were it not that they illustrate the life of Greek courtesans; and, being performed under the sanction of religion and the law, they throw no inconsiderable light on the real character of Greek society. Their value may be best apprehended by trying to realize what the effect would be if similar scenes occurred annually in some public edifice in our large cities, under the auspices of the police, with the approval of the clergy, and with the full knowledge of the best female society.

It has been suggested that these festivals were originated by, or gave rise to, those enormous aberrations of the Greek female mind known to the ancients as Lesbian love. There is, no doubt, grave reason to believe something of the kind. Indeed, Lucian affirms that, while avarice prompted common pleasures, taste and feeling inclined the flute-payers toward their own sex. On so repulsive a theme it is unnecessary to enlarge.

[Pg 53]Many flute-players seem to have been susceptible of lasting affections. In the remains we have of the erotic works of the Greeks, several names are mentioned as those of successful flute-players whose gains were consumed by exacting lovers. It does not appear that they often, or ever, married. The most famous of all the flute-players was Lamia, who, after being the delight of Alexandria and of King Ptolemy for some fifteen or twenty years, was taken with the city by Demetrius of Macedon, and raised to the rank of his mistress. She was forty years of age at this time, yet her skill was such that she ruled despotically her dissolute lover, and left a memorable name in Greek history. The ancients asserted that she owed her name, Lamia, which means a sort of vampire or bloodsucker, to the most loathsome depravities. Her power was so great that, when Demetrius levied a tax of some $250,000 on the city of Athens, he gave the whole to her, to buy her soap, as he said. The Athenians revenged themselves by saying that Lamia’s person must be very dirty, since she needed so much soap to wash it. But they soon found it to their interest to build a temple in her honor, and deify her under the name of Venus Lamia.[50]

THE HETAIRÆ, OR KEPT WOMEN.

The Hetairæ were by far the most important class of women in Greece. They filled so large a place in society that virtuous females were entirely thrown into the shade, and it must have been quite possible for a chaste Athenian girl, endowed with ambition, to look up to them, and covet their splendid infamy. An Athenian matron was expected to live at home. She was not allowed to be present at the games or the theatres; she was bound, when she appeared in public, to be veiled, and to hasten whither she was going without delay; she received no education, and could not share the elevated thoughts or ideas of her husband; she had no right to claim any warmth of affection from him, though he possessed entire control over her.[51]

Now, to judge of the position into which this social system thrust the female sex, one must glance at the mythology, or, to speak more correctly, at the religious faith of the Greek people. It has been conjectured that they derived their idea of Venus from the East. However this be, Venus was certainly one of the[Pg 54] earliest goddesses to whom their homage was paid. Solon erected opposite his dicterion a temple to Venus Pandemos, or the public Venus. In that temple were two statues: one of the goddess, the other of a nymph, Pitho, who presided over persuasion; and the attitudes and execution of the statues were such that they explained the character without inscription. At this temple a festival was held on the fourth of each month, to which all the men of Athens were invited. But Venus Pandemos soon made way for newer and more barefaced rivals. Twenty temples were raised in various cities of Greece to Venus the Courtesan. In one author we find allusion made to Venus Mucheia, or the Venus of houses of ill-fame. Another celebrates Venus Castnia, or the goddess of indecency. Others honor Venus Scotia, the patroness of darkness; and Venus Derceto, the guardian deity of street-walkers. More famous still was Venus Divaricatrix, whose surname, derived, it is said by a father of the Church, a divaricatis cruribus,[52] must be left in a learned tongue. And still more renowned was Venus Callipyge, whose statue is at this day one of the choice ornaments of one of the best European collections of antiquities. It owed its charm to the marvelous beauty of the limbs, and was understood to have been designed from two Syracusan sisters, whose extraordinary symmetry in this particular had been noticed by a countryman who surprised them while bathing. All these Venuses had temples, and sacrifices, and priestesses. Their worship was naturally analogous to their name, and consistent with their history. Their devotees were every man in Greece. Yet it was in this society, trained to such spectacles, and nurtured in such a creed, that matrons and maidens were taught to lead a life of purity, seclusion, and self-sacrifice.

The consequence was obvious. While ignorance and forcible restraint prevented the women from generally breaking loose, the men grew more and more addicted to the society of hetairæ, and more liable to regard their wives as mere articles of furniture. Nor was the anomaly without effect upon the kept women. They alone of their sex saw the plays of Alexander and Aristophanes; they alone had the entrée of the studio of Phidias and Apelles; they alone heard Socrates reason, and discussed politics with Pericles; they alone shared in the intellectual movement of Greece. No women but hetairæ drove through the streets with uncovered face and gorgeous apparel. None but they mingled in[Pg 55] the assemblages of great men at the Pnyx or the Stoa. None but they could gather round them of an evening the choicest spirits of the day, and elicit, in the freedom of unrestrained intercourse, wit and wisdom, flashing fancy and burning eloquence. What wonder that the Hetairæ should have filled so prominent a part in Greek society! And how small a compensation to virtuous women to know that their rivals could not stand by the altar when sacrifice was offered; could not give birth to a citizen!

There are many reasons besides these why the contest was unequal. Tradition reported several occasions on which hetairæ had rendered signal service to the state. Leæna, for instance, the mistress of Harmodius, had bitten off her tongue rather than reveal the names of her fellow-conspirators. Recollections like these more than nullified the nominal brand of the law. Again, every wise legislator saw the necessity of encouraging any form of rational intercourse, in order to arrest the startling progress which the most degrading of enormities was making in Greece. When Alcibiades was openly courted by the first philosophers and statesmen, it was virtue to applaud Aspasia. And besides, it can not be questioned, in view of the Greek memoirs we possess, that many of the leading hetairæ were women of remarkable mind, as well as unusual attractions. Indeed, the leading trait in their history is their intellectuality, as contrasted with other classes of dissolute women in antiquity.[53] That trait can be best illustrated by referring to the lives of a few of the more celebrated hetairæ.

A Milesian prostitute, named Thargelia, accompanied Xerxes on his invasion of Greece. Some idea may be formed of the position in society occupied by prostitutes from the fact that Xerxes employed this woman as negotiator with the court of Thessaly, just as in later times modern ministers have used duchesses. Thargelia married the King of Thessaly.

Fired by her success, another Milesian girl, named Aspasia, established herself at Athens. She set up a house of prostitution, and peopled it with the most lovely girls of the Ionic cities. But wherein she differed from her rivals and predecessors was the prominence she gave to intellect in her establishment. She lectured publicly, among her girls and their visitors, on rhetoric and philosophy, and with such marked ability that she counted among her patrons and lovers the first men of Greece, including Socrates,[Pg 56] Alcibiades, and Pericles. The last divorced his wife in order to marry her, and was accused of allowing her to govern Athens, then at the height of its power and prosperity. She is said to have incited the war against Samos; and the principal cause of that against Megara was believed to have been the rape, by citizens of Megara, of two of Aspasia’s girls. What a wonderful light these facts throw on Greek society!

Enraged beyond control at her success, the virtuous women of Athens rose against her. She was publicly insulted at the theatre; was attacked in the street; and, as a last resort, was accused of impiety before the Areopagus. Pericles, then in the decline of his power, and unable to save his friends Phidias and Anaxagoras, appeared as her advocate. But on such an occasion his eloquence failed him. He could only seize his beloved wife in his arms, press her to his breast, and burst into tears in presence of the court. The appeal succeeded; possibly the judges made allowance for popular prejudice; at all events, Aspasia was acquitted and restored to society. She lived to be the delight of a flour merchant, under whose roof her lectures on philosophy were continued with undiminished success to the day of her death.[54]

Her friend, and the inheritor of her mantle, Hipparchia, led an equally remarkable life. She was an Athenian by birth, and of good family, but, having heard the Cynic Crates speak, she declared to her parents that nothing would restrain her from yielding herself to him. She kept her word, and became the philosopher’s mistress, in spite of his dirt, his poverty, and his grossness. She is reported to have acquired great reputation as a practical professor of the cynic philosophy. Having engaged one day in a fierce discussion with a somewhat brutal philosopher of a rival sect, the latter, by way of answer to a question she put, violently exposed her person before the whole assembly. “Well,” said she, coolly, “what does that prove?” This woman was one of the most voluminous and esteemed authors of her day.[55]

Bacchis, the mistress of the orator Hyperides, illustrates the character of the Athenian kept woman from another point of view. She was extremely beautiful, and gifted with a sweet disposition. One of her early admirers had presented her with a necklace of enormous value. The first ladies of Athens, and even foreign[Pg 57] women of rank, coveted the precious trinket in vain. She was in the height of her fame and charms when she heard the orator Hyperides plead. Smitten on the spot, she became his mistress, and observed a fidelity toward him which was neither usual with her class, nor reciprocated by her lover. On one occasion, a rival announced that the price of her complaisance would be the possession of the necklace of Bacchis. The lover had the meanness to ask for it, and Bacchis gave it without a word. Again: when all Athens knew that she was the mistress of Hyperides, an officious friend came to tell her that her lover was at that moment making love to another woman. Bacchis received the announcement tranquilly. “What do you intend to do?” asked her visitor, with impetuosity. “To wait for him,” was the meek answer. She died very young, and her lover partially atoned for his ill treatment by pronouncing a splendid oration over her remains. Very few passages in Greek literature are marked by such eloquent tenderness and genuine feeling as this fragment of Hyperides.[56]

Gnathena, and her heir and successor, Gnathenion, were famous in their day as wits; the biography of the first was written in verse by the poet Machon.[57] She began life as the mistress of the comic poet Dyphiles, but soon abandoned him to keep a sort of table d’hôte for the wit and fashion of Athens. The “best society” gathered around her board, and at the close of the meal she sold herself by auction. Athenæus has chronicled a number of her witty and sarcastic sayings, adding that the grace of her elocution imparted a singular charm to every thing she said. Her protegée, Gnathenion, grew up in time to receive the mantle which age was wresting from the shoulders of Gnathena. An anecdote is preserved which throws some light upon the profits of the calling of hetairæ. At the temple of Venus, Gnathena and her protegée met an old Persian satrap, richly clothed in purple, who was struck with the beauty of the latter, and demanded her price. Gnathena answered, a thousand drachmas (about two hundred dollars). The satrap exclaimed at such extortion, and offered five hundred, observing that he would return again. “At your age,” maliciously retorted Gnathena, “once is too much,” and turned on her heel. In her old age it appears that Gnathena was reduced to the disgraceful calling which the Greeks termed hippopornos.[58]

[Pg 58]But the fame of these hetairæ is eclipsed by that of the only two kept women who can rank with Aspasia—Lais and Phryne.

Lais was a Sicilian by birth. Like the Empress Catharine of Russia, she was taken prisoner when her native city was captured, and sold as a slave. The painter Apelles saw her carrying water from a well, and, struck with the beauty of her figure, he bought her, and trained her in his own house. This, again, is a striking picture. Fancy a leading modern painter deliberately training a prostitute! It is to be presumed that Apelles gathered round him the best society in Greece. Lais, when her education was complete, was as remarkable for wit and information as for her matchless figure and lovely face. Her master freed her, and established her at Corinth, then in the height of its prosperity, and the largest commercial emporium of Greece.

Corinth and the Corinthian prostitutes deserve particular notice. It appears that almost every house in the place was, in fact, a house of prostitution. There were regular schools where the art of debauchery was taught, and frequent importations of young girls from Lesbos, Phœnicia, and the Ægean Islands supplied them with pupils. Ancient erotic writers are full of allusions to the danger of visiting Corinth; the proverb, Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum, which most moderns have erroneously conceived to refer to Lais alone, was, in fact, an adage justified by the experience of merchants and sailors. It would be incorrect, however, to compare Corinth with modern sea-ports, where the natural demands of sailors require a cheap supply of women. The first-class hetairæ of Corinth charged as high as a talent (say $1000) for a single night’s company, and $200 appears to have been no unusual fee. For the common sailors, the commercial shrewdness of the Corinthians had established a temple to Venus, containing a thousand young slaves, who were obliged to prostitute themselves for a single obolus (a cent).[59]

It was in this metropolis of prostitution that Lais commenced business. She soon rose to the first rank in her trade. Her capriciousness gave additional value to her charms. Even money could not purchase her when it was her whim not to yield. She refused $2000 from the orator Demosthenes, who had actually turned his property into money to lay it at her feet; but she yielded gratuitously to the muddy, ragged cynic Diogenes, and[Pg 59] graciously shared the patrimony of the philosopher Aristippus. To the latter, who occupied no mean rank in Greek society, a remark was made to the effect that he ought to debar his mistress from promiscuous intercourse for his own sake. He replied phlegmatically, “Would you object to live in a house or sail in a ship because others had just preceded you in the one or the other?” Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, resisted Lais successfully. She had made a wager that she would overcome his stoical coldness. Rushing into his house one evening in affected terror, she besought an asylum, as she said thieves had chased her. The philosopher sternly bade her fear nothing. She sat silent till Xenocrates went to bed; then, throwing off her dress, and revealing all her wonderful beauty, she placed herself at his side. He gruffly submitted to this encroachment. Growing bolder, she threw her arms round him, caressed him, and exhausted her arts of fascination, but Xenocrates remained unmoved. “I wagered,” she cried, “to rouse a man, not a statue;” and, springing from the couch, she resumed her dress and disappeared.

The people of Corinth desired to possess her statue, and, having spent her money in embellishing the city, perhaps she was entitled to this mark of respect. Myron, the sculptor, was deputed to model her charms. He was old and gray; but so fascinating was her beauty, that at his second visit he laid at her feet all the savings of his life. The haughty courtesan spurned him. He went away, placed himself in the hands of a skillful perfumer, had his hair and beard dyed, and his appearance rejuvenated. Then he renewed his suit. “My poor friend,” said Lais, with a bitter smile, “you are asking what I refused yesterday to your father.”

In old age Lais had leisure to repent of her caprices. She had spent her money as fast as she made it, and she retained her calling long after her charms had vanished. Epicrates has drawn a melancholy picture of a drunken old woman wandering over the quay at Corinth, and seeking to sell for three cents what had once been considered cheap at a thousand dollars. Such was the end of Lais.[60]

Phryne was more fortunate. She husbanded her attractions with judgment, and to the close of her long life retained her rank and her value. Her wealth was such that, when Alexander destroyed Thebes, she offered to rebuild the city at her own [Pg 60]expense, provided the Thebans would commemorate the fact by an inscription. They refused. She had counted among her lovers the most famous men of the day, among whom were the orator Hyperides, whose successful defense of his mistress has already been mentioned; the painter Apelles, and the sculptor Praxiteles. It was to her that the latter gave his crowning work—his Cupid. He and Apelles were both privileged to admire and reproduce her nude charms, a privilege rigorously denied even to the most opulent of her lovers.

Phryne was a prodigious favorite with the Athenian people. She played a conspicuous part in the festival of Neptune and Venus. At a certain point in the ceremony she appeared on the steps of the temple at the sea-side in her usual dress, and slowly disrobed herself in the presence of the crowd. She next advanced to the water-side, plunged into the waves, and offered sacrifice to Neptune. Returning like a sea-nymph, drying her hair from which the water dripped over her exquisite limbs, she paused for a moment before the crowd, which shouted in a phrensy of enthusiasm as the fair priestess vanished into a cell in the temple.[61]

Other famous hetairæ achieved political and literary distinction. When Alexander the Great undertook his Asiatic expedition, his treasurer, Harpalus, a sort of Crœsus in his way, accompanied him, surrounded by the most lovely women the court of Macedon could afford. Rewarded for his fidelity by the governorship of Babylon, and still farther enriched by the spoils of that lucrative office, Harpalus sent to Athens for the most skillful and lovely hetairæ of the day. Pythionice was sent him. She was not in the bloom of youth. Some years before she had been the familiar of young Athenians of fashion; she was now the staid mistress of two brothers, sons of an opulent corn-merchant. But her talents were undeniable. She arrived at Babylon, and was installed in the palace; began to rule over the province, and governed Harpalus, it is said, with sternness and vigor. In the midst of her glory she suddenly died; poisoned, no doubt, by some one of the hundred fair ones whom she had supplanted in the governor’s affections. Harpalus, inconsolable for her loss, expended a large portion of the contents of his treasury in burying her and commemorating her fame. No queen of Babylon was ever consigned to the grave with the pomp, or the show, or the ostentatious affliction[Pg 61] which did honor to the memory of the Athenian prostitute. Her tomb cost $50,000; and historians, admiring, in after ages, its splendor and its size, inquired, with mock wonder, whether the bones of a Miltiades, or a Cimon, or a Pericles lay under the pile!

Harpalus found consolation in the arms of a Greek garland-weaver named Glycera, for aught we know the poisoner of Pythionice. She, too, became Queen of Babylon, issued her decrees, held her court, submitted to be worshiped, and saw her statue of bronze, as large as life, erected in the Babylonian temples. She was a woman of a masculine mind in a feminine body. When Alexander returned from the East, breathing vengeance against faithless servants, she compelled her lover to fly with her to Attica, where she raised, by her eloquence, her money, and her address, an army of six thousand men to oppose the hero of Macedon. It is said that she purchased, at what price we know not, the silence of Demosthenes; she certainly bribed the Athenian people with large donations of corn. But she could not bribe or persuade her wretched lover to be sensible; his folly soon roused the Athenians against him, and he was exiled with his mistress. In this exile, one of his attendants cut the throat of the venerable lover, and Glycera, left a widow, returned to Athens to pursue her calling as a hetaira. She was no longer young, and needed the aid of the dealer in cosmetics; but her prestige as the ex-mistress of Babylon procured her a certain celebrity, and she soon obtained a position in the society of Athens. Out of a crowd of admirers who attached themselves to her court, she chose two to be, as the French would say, her amants de cœur. One was the painter Pausias; the other the comic poet Menander. The former achieved one of his most brilliant triumphs by painting the portrait of his mistress. But, whether his temper was not congenial to hers, or his rival inspired an exclusive affection, Glycera soon discarded Pausias, and became the mistress of the poet alone. Menander, we are led to believe, was a man of a harsh, crabbed disposition; the haughty Glycera was the only one whom his boutades never irritated, who bore with all his ill temper. When he was successful, she heightened his joy; when his plays were ill received, and he returned from the theatre in low spirits, she consoled him, and endured the keenest affronts without murmuring. Her amiability had its reward. From being one of the most dissolute men of Athens, Menander became solidly attached and faithful to Glycera, and, so soon was her Babylonish career forgotten, she descended[Pg 62] to posterity in the Athenian heart inseparably coupled with the dearest of their comic writers.[62]

Another famous hetaira was Leontium, who succeeded her mistress Philenis in the affections of the philosopher Epicurus. She is said to have borne him a daughter, who was born in the shade of a grove in his garden; but, whether she put her own construction upon the Epicurean philosophy, or did not really love the gray-headed teacher, she was far from practicing the fidelity which was due to so distinguished a lover. She figures in the letters of Alciphron as the tender friend of several younger fashionables; and she has been accused, with what truth it is hard to say, of attempting a compromise between the doctrines of Epicurus and those of Diogenes. However this be, Leontium was undoubtedly a woman of rare ability and remarkable taste. She composed several works; among others, one against Theophrastus, which excited the wonder and admiration of so good a judge as Cicero. She survived her old protector, and died in obscurity.[63]

Something more might be said of Archeanassa, to whose wrinkles Plato did not disdain to compose an amorous epigram; of Theoris, a beautiful girl, who preferred the glorious old age of Sophocles to the ardent youth of Demosthenes, and whom the vindictive orator punished by having her condemned to death; of Archippa, the last mistress and sole heir of Sophocles; of Theodote, the disciple of Socrates, under whose counsels she carried on her business as a courtesan, and whose death may be ascribed, in some part, to the spite caused by Theodote’s rejection of Aristophanes; and of others who figure largely in every reliable history of intellectual Greece. But we must stop.

In most of the nations to which reference must be made in the ensuing pages of this volume, prostitutes have figured as pariahs; in Greece they were an aristocracy, exercising a palpable influence over the national policy and social life, and mingling conspicuously in the great march of the Greek intellect. No less than eleven authors of repute have employed their talents as historiographers of courtesans at Athens. Their works have not reached us entire, having fallen victims to the chaste scruples of the clergy of the Middle Ages; but enough remains in the quotations of Athenæus, Alciphron’s Letters, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Aristophanes, Aristænetus, and others, to enable us to form a far more[Pg 63] accurate idea of the Athenian hetairæ than we can obtain of the prostitutes of the last generation.

Into the arts practiced by the graduates of the Corinthian academies it is hardly possible to enter, at least in a modern tongue. Even the Greeks were obliged to invent verbs to designate the monstrosities practiced by the Lesbian and Phœnician women. Demosthenes, pleading successfully against the courtesan Neæra, describes her as having seven young girls in her house, whom she knew well how to train for their calling, as was proved by the repeated sales of their virginity. One may form an idea of the shocking depravity of the reigning taste from the sneers which were lavished upon Phryne and Bacchis, who steadily adhered to natural pleasures.

The use of philtres, or charms (of which more will be said in the ensuing chapter on Roman prostitution), was common in Greece. Retired courtesans often combined the manufacture of these supposed charms with the business of a midwife. They made potions which excited love and potions which destroyed it; charms to turn love into hate, and others to convert hate into love. That the efficacy of the latter must have been a matter of pure faith need not be demonstrated, though the belief in them was general and profound. The former are well known in the pharmacopœia, and from the accounts given of their effects, there is no reason to doubt that they were successfully employed in Greece, as well by jealous husbands and suspicious fathers as by ardent lovers. A case is mentioned by no less an authority than Aristotle, of a woman who contrived to administer an amorous potion to her lover, who died of it. The woman was tried for murder; but, it being satisfactorily proved that her intention was not to cause death, but to revive an extinct love, she was acquitted. Other cases are mentioned in which the philtres produced madness instead of love. Similar accidents have attended the exhibition of cantharides in modern times.

[Pg 64]

ROME.

LAWS GOVERNING PROSTITUTION.

Our earliest acquaintance with the Roman laws governing prostitution dates from the reign of the Emperor Augustus, but there is abundant evidence to show that prostitutes were common in the city of Rome at the time when authentic history begins.

It does not appear that religious prostitution was ever domiciled in Italy, though in later times the festivals in honor of certain deities were scandalously loose, and, to judge from the Etruscan paintings, the morals of the indigenous Italians must have been disgustingly depraved.

In the comedies of Plautus, which are among the oldest works of Roman literature which have reached us, the prostitute (meretrix) and the bawd (leno) figure conspicuously. They were thus, evidently, in the third century before Christ, well-known characters in Roman society. When the Floralian Games were instituted we have no means of knowing (no credit whatever must be placed in the puerile stories of Lactantius about the courtesans Acca Laurentia and Flora[64]); but it is certain that the chief attraction of these infamous celebrations was the appearance of prostitutes on the stage in a state of nudity, and their lascivious dances in the presence of the people;[65] and there is evidence, in the story that the performance was suspended during the presence of the stern moralist Cato, that they had been long practiced before his time.[66] Indeed, it would not be presuming too far to decide, without[Pg 65] other evidence, that prostitution must have become a fixed fact at Rome very shortly after the Romans began to mix freely with the Greek colonists at Tarentum and the other Greek cities in Italy, that is to say, about the beginning of the third century before Christ.

We learn from Tacitus[67] that from time immemorial prostitutes had been required to register themselves in the office of the ædile. The ceremony appears to have been very similar to that now imposed by law on French prostitutes. The woman designing to become a prostitute presented herself before the ædile, gave her age, place of birth, and real name, with the one she assumed if she adopted a pseudonyme.[68] The public officer, if she was young or apparently respectable, did his best to combat her resolution. Failing in this, he issued to her a license—licentia stupri, ascertained the sum which she was to demand from her customers, and entered her name in his roll. It might be inferred from a law of Justinian[69] that a prostitute was bound to take an oath, on obtaining her license, to discharge the duties of her calling to the end of her life; for the law in question very properly decided that an oath so obviously at war with good morals was not binding. However this was, the prostitute once inscribed incurred the taint of infamy which nothing could wipe off. Repentance was impossible, even when she married and became the mother of legitimate children; the fatal inscription was still there to bear witness of her infamy.[70] In Rome, as in so many other countries, the principle of the law was to close the door to reform, and to render vice hopeless.

There is every reason to suppose that these regulations were in force at a very early period of the Republic. Of the further rules established under the imperial regime we shall speak presently. Meanwhile, it may be observed that there is ground for hoping that, at the best age of the Republic, the public morals were not generally corrupt. The old stories of Lucretia and Virginia would have had no point among a demoralized people. All who are familiar with Roman history will remember the fierce contest waged by Cato the Censor against the jewels, fine dresses, and carriages of the Roman ladies,[71] an indication that graver delinquencies did not call for official interference. This same Cato, after the death of his first wife, cohabited with a female slave; but,[Pg 66] though concubinage was recognized by the Roman law, and would seem to have involved no disgrace at a later period, the intrigue no sooner became known than the old censor married a second wife to avoid scandal.[72] A similar inference may be drawn from the strange story told by Livy of the Bacchanalian mysteries introduced into Rome by foreigners about the beginning of the second century before Christ. It is not easy, at this late day, to discover what is true and what false in the statement he gives; but there is no reasonable doubt that young persons of both sexes, under the impulse of sensuality, had established societies for the purpose, among others, of satisfying depraved instincts. To what extent the mania had extended it is not possible to judge; the numbers given by the Latin writers are not very trustworthy. But we may learn how strong was the moral sentiment of the Roman people from the very stringent decree which the senate issued on motion of the Consul Postumius, and from the indiscriminate executions of parties implicated in the mysterious rites.[73]

Other evidences of the purity of Roman morals might be found, if they were wanting, in the remarkable fidelity with which the Vestals observed their oaths; in the tone of the speeches of the statesmen of the time; in the high character sustained by such matrons as the mother of the Gracchi; and, finally, in the legislation of Augustus, which professed rather to affirm and improve the old laws than to introduce new principles.

As we approach the Christian era the picture gradually darkens. Civil wars are usually fatal to private virtue: it is not to be doubted that the age of Sylla and Clodius was by no means a moral one. Sylla, the dictator, openly led a life of scandalous debauchery; Clodius, the all-powerful tribune, is accused by Cicero of having seduced his three sisters.[74] Soldiers who had made a campaign in profligate Greece or voluptuous Asia naturally brought home with them a taste for the pleasures they had learned to enjoy abroad. Scipio’s baths were dark: through narrow apertures just light enough was admitted to spare the modesty of the bathers; but into the baths which were erected in the later years of the Republic the light shone as into a chamber.[75] Even Sylla, debauched as he was, did not think it safe to abdicate power[Pg 67] without legislative effort to purify the morals he had so largely contributed to corrupt by his example.[76]

Of the Augustan age, and the two or three centuries which followed, we are enabled to form a close and comprehensive idea. Our information ceases to be meagre; on some points, indeed, it is only too abundant.

The object of the Julian laws was to preserve the Roman blood from corruption, and still farther to degrade prostitutes. These aims were partially attained by prohibiting the intermarriage of citizens with the relatives or descendants of prostitutes; by exposing adulterers to severe penalties, and declaring the tolerant husband an accomplice; by laying penalties on bachelors and married men without children; by prohibiting the daughters of equestrians from becoming prostitutes.[77] Tiberius, from his infamous retreat at Capreæ, sanctioned a decree of the senate which enhanced the severity of the laws against adultery. By this decree it was made a penal offense for a matron of any class to play the harlot, and her lover, the owner of the house where they met, and all persons who connived at the adultery, were declared equally culpable. It seems to have been not uncommon for certain married women to inscribe themselves on the ædile’s list as prostitutes, and to occupy a room at the houses of ill fame. This was pronounced a penal offense; and every encouragement was held out, both to husbands and to common informers, to prosecute.[78]

In other respects the republican legislation is believed to have been unaltered by the emperors. The formality of inscription, its accompanying infamy, the consequences of the act remained the same. Prostitutes carried on their trade under the ædile’s eye. He patrolled the streets, and entered the houses of ill fame at all hours of the day and night. He saw that they were closed between daybreak and three in the afternoon. In case of brawls, he arrested and punished the disturbers of the peace. He punished by fine and scourging the omission of a brothel-keeper to inscribe every female in his house. He insisted on prostitutes wearing the garments prescribed by law, and dyeing their hair blue or yellow. On the other hand, he could not break into a house without being habited in the insignia of his office, and being[Pg 68] accompanied by his lictors. When the ædile Hostilius attempted to break open the door of the prostitute Mamilia, on his return from a gay dinner, the latter drove him off with stones, and was sustained by the courts.[79] The ædile was bound also, on complaint laid by a prostitute, to sentence any customer of hers to pay the sum due to her according to law.[80]

CLASSES OF PROSTITUTES.

It was the duty of the ædile to arrest, punish, and drive out of the city all loose prostitutes who were not inscribed on his book. This regulation was practically a dead letter. At no time in the history of the empire did there cease to be a large and well-known class of prostitutes who were not recorded. They were distinguished from the registered prostitutes (meretrices) by the name of prostibulæ.[81] They paid no tax to the state, while their registered rivals contributed largely to the municipal treasury; and, if they ran greater risks, and incurred more nominal infamy than the latter, they more frequently contrived to rise from their unhappy condition.

We have no means of judging of the number of prostitutes exercising their calling at Rome, Capua, and the other Italian cities during the first years of the Christian era. During Trajan’s reign the police were enabled to count thirty-two thousand in Rome alone, but this number obviously fell short of the truth. One is appalled at the great variety of classes into which the prostibulæ, or unregistered prostitutes were divided. Such were the Delicatæ, corresponding to the kept-women, or French lorettes, whose charms enabled them to exact large sums from their visitors;[82] the Famosæ, who belonged to respectable families, and took to evil courses through lust or avarice;[83] the Doris, who were remarkable for their beauty of form, and disdained the use of clothing;[84] the Lupæ, or she-wolves, who haunted the groves and commons, and were distinguished by a particular cry in imitation of a wolf;[85] the Ælicariæ, or bakers’ girls, who sold small cakes for sacrifice to Venus and Priapus, in the form of the male and female organs of generation;[86] the Bustuariæ, whose home was the burial-ground, and who occasionally officiated as mourners at funerals;[87][Pg 69] the Copæ, servant-girls at inns and taverns, who were invariably prostitutes;[88] the Noctiluæ, or night-walkers; the Blitidæ, a very low class of women, who derived the name from blitum, a cheap and unwholesome beverage drunk in the lowest holes;[89] the Diobolares, wretched outcasts, whose price was two oboli (say two cents);[90] the Forariæ, country girls who lurked about country roads; the Gallinæ, who were thieves as well as prostitutes; the Quadrantariæ, seemingly the lowest class of all, whose fee was less than any copper coin now current.[91] In contradistinction to these, the meretrices assumed an air of respectability, and were often called bonæ meretrices.[92]

Another and a distinct class of prostitutes were the female dancers, who were eagerly sought after, and more numerous than at Athens. They were Ionians, Lesbians, Syrians, Egyptians, Nubians (negresses), Indians, but the most famous were Spaniards. Their dances were of the same character as those of the Greek flute-players; the erotic poets of Rome have not shrunk from celebrating the astonishing depravity of their performances.[93]

Horace faintly deplored the progress which the Ionic dances—Ionice motus—were making even among the Roman virgins.[94] These prostitutes carried on their calling in defiance of law. If detected, they were liable to be whipped and driven out of the city;[95] but as their customers belonged to the wealthier classes, they rarely suffered the penalty of their conduct.

Apart, again, from all these was the large class of persons who traded in prostitutes. The proper name for these wretches was Leno (bawd), which was of both sexes, though usually represented on the stage as a beardless man with shaven head. Under this name quite a number of varieties were included, such as the Lupanarii, or keepers of regular houses of ill fame; the Adductores and Perductores, pimps; Conciliatrices and Ancillulæ, women who negotiated immoral transactions, and others. Then, as almost every baker, tavern-keeper, bath-house-keeper, barber, and perfumer combined the lenocinium, or trade in prostitutes, with his other calling, their various names, tonsor, unguentarius, balnearius, &c., became synonymous with leno. This miserable class was regarded with the greatest loathing at Rome.[96]

[Pg 70]This hasty classification of the Roman prostitutes would be incomplete without some notice, however brief, of male prostitutes. Fortunately, the progress of good morals has divested this repulsive theme of its importance; the object of this work can be obtained without entering into details on a branch of the subject which in this country is not likely to require fresh legislative notice. But the reader would form an imperfect idea of the state of morals at Rome were he left in ignorance of the fact that the number of male prostitutes was probably full as large as that of females; that, as in Greece, the degrading phenomenon involved very little disgrace; that all the Roman authors allude to it as a matter of course; that the leading men of the empire were known to be addicted to such habits; that the ædile abstained from interference, save where a Roman youth suffered violence; and that, to judge from the language of the writers of the first, second, and third centuries of the Christian era, the Romans, like some Asiatic races, appeared to give the preference to unnatural lusts.[97]

HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION.

Having examined the laws which governed prostitution at Rome, and the classes into which prostitutes were divided, it is now requisite to glance at the establishments in which prostitution was carried on.

M. Dufour and others have followed Publius Victor and Sextus Rufus in supposing that during the Augustine age there were forty-six first-class houses of ill fame at Rome, and a much larger number of establishments where prostitution was carried on without the supervision of the ædile. As it is now generally admitted that the works bearing the name of Publius Victor and Sextus Rufus are forgeries of comparatively recent date, the statement loses all claim to credit, and we are left without statistical information as to the number of houses of prostitution at Rome.[98]

Registered prostitutes were to be found in the establishments called Lupanaria. These differed from the Greek Dicteria in being of various classes, from the well-provided house of the Peace ward to the filthy dens of the Esquiline and Suburran wards; and farther, in the wide range of prices exacted by the keepers of the various houses. It is inferred from the results of the excavations[Pg 71] at Pompeii, and some meagre hints thrown out by Latin authors, that the lupanaria at Rome were small in size. The most prosperous were built like good Roman houses, with a square court-yard, sometimes with a fountain playing in the middle. Upon this yard opened the cells of the prostitutes. In smaller establishments the cells opened upon a hall or porch, which seemingly was used as a reception-room. The cells were dark closets, illuminated at night by a small bronze lamp. Sometimes they contained a bed, but as often a few cushions, or a mere mat, with a dirty counterpane, constituted their whole furniture. Over the door of each cell hung a tablet, with the name of the prostitute who occupied it, and the price she set on her favors; on the other side with the word occupata. When a prostitute received a visitor in her cell, she turned the tablet round to warn intruders that she was engaged.[99] Over the door of the house a suggestive image was either painted, or represented in stone or marble: one of these signs may be seen to this day in Pompeii. Within, similar indecent sculptures abounded. Bronze ornaments of this style hung round the necks of the courtesans; the lamps were in the same shape, and so were a variety of other utensils. The walls were covered with appropriate frescoes. In the best-ordered establishments, it is understood that scenes from the mythology were the usual subjects of these artistic decorations; but we have evidence enough at Pompeii to show that gross indecency, not poetical effect, was the main object sought by painters in these works.

Regular houses of prostitution, lupanaria, were of two kinds: establishments owned and managed by a bawd, who supplied the cells with slaves or hired prostitutes, and establishments where the bawd merely let his cells to prostitutes for a given sum. In the former case the bawd was the principal, in the latter the women. There is reason to suppose that the former were the more respectable. Petronius alludes to a house where so much was paid for the use of a cell, and the sum was an as, less than two cents.[100] Messalina evidently betook herself to one of these establishments, which, for clearness’ sake, we may call assignation houses; and as it appears she was paid in copper (æra poposcit), it is safe to infer that the house was of slender respectability.

The best houses were abundantly supplied with servants and luxuries. A swarm of pimps and runners sought custom for them[Pg 72] in every part of the city. Women—ancillæ ornatrices—were in readiness to repair with skill the ravages which amorous conflicts caused in the toilets of the prostitutes. Boys—bacariones—attended at the door of the cell with water for ablution. Servants, who bore the inconsistent title of aquarii, were ready to supply wine and other refreshments to customers. And not a few of the lupinaria kept a cashier, called villicus, whose business it was to discuss bargains with visitors, and to receive the money before turning the tablet.

Under many public and some of the best private houses at Rome were arches, the tops of which were only a few feet above the level of the street. These arches, dark and deserted, became a refuge for prostitutes. Their name, fornices, at last became synonymous with lupanar, and we have borrowed from it our generic word fornication.[101] There is reason to believe that there were several score of arches of this character, and used for this purpose, under the great circus and other theatres at Rome,[102] besides those under dwelling-houses and stores. The want of fresh air was severely felt in these vile abodes. Frequent allusions to the stench exhaled from the mouth of a fornix are made in the Roman authors.[103]

Establishments of a lower character still were the pergulæ, in which the girls occupied a balcony above the street; the stabula, where no cells were used, and promiscuous intercourse took place openly;[104] the turturilla, or pigeon-houses;[105] the casauria, or suburb houses of the very lowest stamp.

The clearest picture of a Roman house of ill fame is that given in the famous passage of Juvenal, which may be allowed to remain in the original. The female, it need hardly be added, was Messalina:

“Dormire virum quum senserat uxor,
Ausa Palatino tegetem præferre cubili,
Sumere nocturnas meretrix Augusta cucullos,
Linquebat comite ancilla non amplius una,
Sed nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero,
Intravit calidum veteri centone lupanar,
Et cellam vacuam atque suam. Tune nuda capillis
[Pg 73]Constitit auratis, titulum mentita Lyciscæ,
Ostendit que tuum, generose Britannice, ventrem.
Excepit blanda intrantes, atque æra poposcit,
Et resupina jacens multorum absorbuit ictus.
Mox lenone suas jam dimittente puellas,
Tristris abit, et quod potuit, tamen ultima cellam
Clausit, adhuc ardens rigidæ tentigine vulvæ,
Et lassata viris necdum satiata recessit;
Obscurrisque genis turpis fumoque lucernæ
Fœda lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar adorem.”[106]

The passages in italics contain useful information; we shall allude to some of them hereafter. Meanwhile, it is evident from the line mox lenone, etc., that, at a certain hour of the night, the keepers of houses of ill fame were in the habit of closing their establishments and sending their girls home. The law required them to close at daybreak, but probably a much earlier hour may have suited their interest.

Allusion has already been made to the fornices under the circus. It is well understood that prostitutes were great frequenters of the spectacles, and that in the arched fornices underneath the seats and the stage they were always ready to satisfy the passions which the comedies and pantomimes only too frequently aroused.[107] This was one formidable rival to the regular lupinaria.

The baths were another. In the early Roman baths, darkness, or, at best, a faint twilight reigned; and, besides, not only were the sexes separated, but old and young men were not allowed to bathe together.[108] But after Sylla’s wars, though there were separate sudaria and tepidaria for the sexes, they could meet freely in the corridors and chambers, and any immorality short of actual prostitution could take place.[109] Men and women, girls and boys, mixed together in a state of perfect nudity, and in such close proximity that contact could hardly be avoided. Such an assemblage would obviously be a place of resort for dealers in prostitutes in search of merchandise. At a later period, cells were attached to the bath-houses, and young men and women kept on the premises, partly as bath attendants and partly as prostitutes. After the bath, the bathers, male and female, were rubbed down, kneaded, and anointed by these attendants. It would appear that women submitted to have this indecent service performed for them by[Pg 74] men, and that health was not always the object sought, even by the Roman matrons.[110] Several emperors endeavored to remedy these frightful immoralities. Hadrian forbade the intermixture of men and women in the public baths.[111] Similar enactments were made by Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus; but Heliogabalus is said to have delighted in uniting the sexes, even in the wash-room. As early as the Augustan era, however, the baths were regarded as little better than houses of prostitution under a respectable name.[112]

Taverns or houses of entertainment were also in some measure brothels. The law regarded all servants waiting upon travelers at inns or taverns as prostitutes.[113] It would appear, also, that butchers’, bakers’, and barbers’ shops were open to a suspicion of being used for purposes of prostitution. The plebeian ædiles constantly made it their business to visit these in search of unregistered prostitutes, though, as might be expected from the number of delinquents and the very incomplete municipal police system of Rome, with very little success. The bakers’ establishments, which generally included a flour-mill, were haunted by a low class of prostitutes to whom allusion has already been made. In the cellar where the mill stood cells were often constructed, and the ædiles knew well that all who entered there did not go to buy bread.[114]

Finally, prostitution to a very large extent was carried on in the open air. The shades of certain statues and temples, such as those of Marsyas, Pan, Priapus, Venus, etc., were common resorts for prostitutes. It is said that Julia, the daughter of the Emperor Augustus, prostituted herself under the shade of a statue of Marsyas. Similar haunts of abandoned women were the arches of aqueducts, the porticoes of temples, the cavities in walls, etc. Even the streets in the poorer wards of the city appear to have been infested by the very lowest class of prostitutes, whose natural favors had long ceased to be merchantable.[115] It must be borne in mind[Pg 75] that the streets of Rome were not lighted, and that profound darkness reigned when the moon was clouded over.

HABITS AND MANNERS OF PROSTITUTES.

A grand distinction between Roman and Greek prostitution lies in the manner in which commerce with prostitutes was viewed in the two communities. At Athens there was nothing disgraceful in frequenting the dicterion or keeping an hetaira. At Rome, on the contrary, a married man who visited a house of ill fame was an adulter, and liable to the penalties of adultery. An habitual frequenter of such places was a mœchus or scortator, both of which were terms of scathing reproach. When Cicero wishes to overwhelm Catiline, he says his followers are scortatores.[116] Until the lowest age of Roman degradation, moreover, no man of any character entered a house of ill fame without hiding his face with the skirt of his dress. Even Caligula and Heliogabalus concealed their faces when they visited the women of the town.[117]

The law prescribed with care the dress of Roman prostitutes, on the principle that they were to be distinguished in all things from honest women. Thus they were not allowed to wear the chaste stola which concealed the form, or the vitta or fillet with which Roman ladies bound their hair, or to wear shoes (soccus), or jewels, or purple robes. These were the insignia of virtue. Prostitutes wore the toga like men; their hair, dyed yellow or red, or filled with golden spangles, was dressed in some Asiatic fashion. They wore sandals with gilt thongs tying over the instep, and their dress was directed to be of flowered material. In practice, however, these rules were not strictly observed. Courtesans wore jewels and purple robes,[118] and not a few boldly concealed their profligacy under the stola. Others, seeking rather to avoid than to court misapprehension as to their calling, wore the green toga proudly, and over it the sort of jacket called amiculum, which, like the white sheet of baronial times, was the badge of adultery. Others, again, preferred the silk and gauze dresses of the East (sericæ vestes), which, according to the expression of a classical writer, “seemed invented to exhibit more conspicuously what they were intended to hide.”[119] Robes of Tyre were likewise[Pg 76] in use, whose texture may be inferred from the name of “textile vapor” (ventus textilis) which they received.

The law strictly prohibited the use of vehicles of any kind to courtesans. This also was frequently infringed. Under several emperors prostitutes were seen in open litters in the most public parts of Rome, and others in litters which closed with curtains, and served the purpose of a bed-chamber.[120] A law of Domitian imposed heavy penalties on a courtesan who was seen in a litter.

In the lupanar, of course, rules regarding costume were unheeded. Prostitutes retained their hair black, but as to the rest of their person they were governed by their own taste. Nudity appears to have been quite common, if not the rule. Petronius describes his hero walking in the street, and seeing from thence naked prostitutes at the doors of the lupanaria.[121] Some covered their busts with golden stuffs, others veiled their faces.

It has already been mentioned that the rate of remuneration exacted by the prostitutes was fixed by themselves, though apparently announced to the ædile. It is impossible to form any idea of the average amount of this charge. The lowest classes, as has been mentioned, sold their miserable favors for about two tenths of a cent; another large class were satisfied with two cents. The only direct light that is thrown on this branch of the subject flows from an obscure passage in the strange romance entitled “Apollonius of Tyre,” which is supposed to have been written by a Christian named Symposius. In that work the capture of a virgin named Tarsia by a bawd is described. The bawd orders a sign or advertisement to be hung out, inscribed, “He who deflours Tarsia shall pay half a pound, afterward she shall be at the public service for a gold piece.” The half pound has been assumed by commentators to mean half a Roman pound of silver, and to have been worth $30; the gold piece, according to the best computation, was about equivalent to $4. But whether these figures can be regarded as an average admits of doubt, even supposing our estimate of the value of the sums mentioned in the ancient work to be accurate.

The allusion to Tarsia suggests some notice of the practice of the Roman bawds when they had secured a virgin. It will be found faithfully described in that old English play, “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” which is sometimes bound up with Shakspeare’s[Pg 77] works. When a bawd had purchased a virgin as a slave, or when, as sometimes happened under the later emperors, a virgin was handed to him to be prostituted as a punishment for crime, the door of his house was adorned with twigs of laurel; a lamp of unusual size was hung out at night, and a tablet exhibited somewhat similar to the one quoted above, stating that a virgin had been received, and enumerating her charms with cruel grossness.[122] When a purchaser had been found and a bargain struck, the unfortunate girl, often a mere child, was surrendered to his brutality, and the wretch issued from the cell afterward, to be himself crowned with laurel by the slaves of the establishment.

Thus far of common prostitutes. Though the Romans had no loose women who could compare in point of standing, influence, or intellect with the Greek hetairæ, their highest class of prostitutes, the famosæ or delicatæ, were very far above the unfortunate creatures just described. They were not inscribed in the ædile’s rolls; they haunted no lupanar, or tavern, or baker’s stall; they were not seen lurking about shady spots at night; they wore no distinguishing costume. It was in broad daylight, at the theatre, in the streets, in the Via Sacra, which was the favorite resort of fashionable Rome, that they were to be found, and there they were only to be distinguished from virtuous matrons by the superior elegance of their dress, and the swarm of admirers by whom they were surrounded. Indeed, under the later emperors, the distinction, outward or inward, between these prostitutes and the Roman matrons appears to have been very slight indeed.[123] They were surrounded or followed by slaves of either sex, a favorite waiting-maid being the most usual attendant.[124] Their meaning glances are frequently the subject of caustic allusions in the Roman poets.[125] Many of them were foreigners, and expressed themselves by signs from ignorance of the Latin tongue.

These women were usually the mistresses of rich men, though not necessarily faithful to their lovers. We possess no such biographies of them as we have of the Greek hetairæ, nor is there any reason to suppose that their lives ever formed the theme of serious works, though the Roman erotic library was rich. What little we know of them we glean mostly from the verses of Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, Propertius, Catullus, Martial, and from such works[Pg 78] as the Satyricon of Petronius, and the novel of Apuleius, and that little is hardly worth the knowing.

The first five poets mentioned—Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and Tibullus—devoted no small portion of their time and talent to the celebration of their mistresses. But beyond their names, Lydia, Chloe, Lalage, Lesbia, Cynthia, Delia, Neæra, Corinna, &c., we are taught nothing about them but what might have been taken for granted, that they were occasionally beautiful, lascivious, extravagant, often faithless and heartless. From passages in Ovid, and also in one or two of the others, it may be inferred that it was not uncommon for these great prostitutes to have a nominal husband, who undertook the duty of negotiating their immoral bargains (leno maritus).

The only really useful information we derive from these erotic effusions relates to the poets themselves. All the five we have mentioned moved in the best society at Rome. Some of them, like Horace, saw their fame culminate during their lifetime; others filled important stations under government. Ovid was intimate with the Emperor Augustus, and his exile is supposed to have been caused by some improper discoveries he made with regard to the emperor’s relations with his daughter. Yet it is quite evident that all these persons habitually lived with prostitutes, felt no shame on that account, and recorded unblushingly the charms and exploits of their mistresses in verses intended to be read indiscriminately by the Roman youths.

Between Ovid and Martial the distance is immense. Half a century divided them in point of time; whole ages in tone. During the Augustan era, the language of poets, though much freer than would be tolerated to-day, was not invariably coarse. No gross expressions are used by the poets of that day in addressing their mistresses, and even common prostitutes are addressed with epithets which a modern lover might apply to his betrothed. But Martial knows no decency. It may safely be said that his epigrams ought never again to be translated into a modern tongue. Expressions designating the most loathsome depravities, and which, happily, have no equivalent, and need none, in our language, abound in his pages. Pictures of the most revolting pruriency succeed each other rapidly. In a word, such language is used and such scenes depicted as would involve the expulsion of their utterer from any house of ill fame in modern times. Yet Martial enjoyed high favor under government. He[Pg 79] was enabled to procure the naturalization of many of his Spanish friends. He possessed a country and a town house, both probably gifts from the emperor. His works, even in his lifetime, were carefully sought after, not only in Rome, but in Gaul, Spain, and the other provinces. Upon the character and life of courtesans in his day he throws but little light. The women whose hideous depravity he celebrates must have been well known at Rome; their names must have been familiar to the ears of Roman society. But this feature of Roman civilization, the notoriety of prostitutes and of their vile arts, properly belongs to another division of the subject.

ROMAN SOCIETY.

It was often said by the ancients that the more prostitutes there were, the safer would be virtuous women. “Well done,” said the moralist to a youth entering a house of ill fame; “so shalt thou spare matrons and maidens.” As this idea rests upon a slender substratum of plausibility, it may be as well to expose its fallacy, which can be done very completely by a glance at Roman society under the emperors.

Even allowing for poetical exaggeration, it may safely be said that there is no modern society, perhaps there has never existed any since the fall of Rome, to which Juvenal’s famous satire on women can be applied.[126] Independently of the unnatural lusts which were so unblushingly avowed, the picture drawn by the Roman surpasses modern credibility. That it was faithful to nature and fact, there is, unhappily, too much reason to believe. The causes must be sought in various directions.

Two marked distinctions between modern and ancient society may at once be noticed. In no modern civilized society is it allowable to present immodest images to the eye, or to utter immodest words in the ear of females or youth. At Rome the contrary was the rule. The walls of respectable houses were covered with paintings, of which one hardly dares in our times to mention the subjects. Lascivious frescoes and lewd sculptures, such as would be seized in any modern country by the police, filled the halls of the most virtuous Roman citizens and nobles.[127] Ingenuity had been taxed to the utmost to reproduce certain indecent objects under new forms.[128] Nor was common indecency adequate[Pg 80] to supply the depraved taste of the Romans. Such groups as satyrs and nymphs, Leda and the swan, Pasiphæ and the bull, satyrs and she-goats, were abundant. Some of them have been found, and exhibit a wonderful artistic skill. All of these were daily exposed to the eyes of children and young girls, who, as Propertius says, were not allowed to remain novices in any infamy.

Again, though a Horace would use polite expressions in addressing Tyndaris or Lalage, the Latin tongue was much freer than any modern one. There is not a Latin author of the best age in whose writings the coarsest words can not be found. The comedies were frightfully obscene, both in ideas and expressions. A youth or a maiden could not begin to acquire instruction without meeting words of the grossest meaning. The convenient adage, Charta non erubescit, was invented to hide the pruriency of authors, and one of the worst puts in the wretched plea that, “though his page is lewd, his life is pure.” It is quite certain that, whatever might have been the effect on the poet, his readers could not but be demoralized by the lewdness of his verses.

Add to these causes of immorality the baths, and a fair case in support of Juvenal will be already made out. A young Roman girl, with warm southern blood in her veins, who could gaze on the unveiled pictures of the loves of Venus, read the shameful epigrams of Martial, or the burning love-songs of Catullus, go to the baths and see the nudity of scores of men and women, be touched herself by a hundred lewd hands, as well as those of the bathers who rubbed her dry and kneaded her limbs—a young girl who could withstand such experiences and remain virtuous would need, indeed, to be a miracle of principle and strength of mind.

But even then religion and law remained to assail her. She could not walk through the streets of Rome without seeing temples raised to the honor of Venus, that Venus who was the mother of Rome, as the patroness of illicit pleasures. In every field and in many a square, statues of Priapus, whose enormous indecency was his chief characteristic, presented themselves to view, often surrounded by pious matrons in quest of favor from the god. Once a year, at the Lupercalia, she saw young men running naked through the streets, armed with thongs with which they struck every woman they saw; and she noticed that matrons courted this flagellation as a means of becoming prolific. What[Pg 81] she may have known of the Dionysia or Saturnalia, the wild games in honor of Bacchus, and of those other dissolute festivals known as the eves of Venus, which were kept in April, it is not easy to say, but there is no reason to believe that these lewd scenes were intended only for the vicious, or that they were kept a secret.

When her marriage approached the remains of her modesty were effectually destroyed. Before marriage she was led to the statue of Mutinus, a nude sitting figure, and made to sit on his knee,[129] ut ejus pudicitiam prius deus delibasse videtur. This usage was so deeply rooted among the Romans that, when Augustus destroyed the temple of Mutinus in the Velian ward in consequence of the immoralities to which it gave rise, a dozen others soon rose to take its place. On the marriage night, statuettes of the deities Subiqus and Prema hung over the nuptial bed—ut subacta a sponso viro non se commoveat quum premitur;[130] and in the morning the jealous husband exacted, by measuring the neck of his bride, proof to his superstitious mind that she had yielded him her virginity.[131]

In the older age of the republic it was not considered decent for women to recline on couches at table as men did. This, however soon became quite common. Men and women lay together on the same couch so close that hardly room for eating was left. And this was the custom not only with women of loose morals, but with the most respectable matrons. At the feast of Trimalchio, which is the best recital of a Roman dinner we have, the wife of the host and the wife of Habinus both appeared before the guests. Habinus amused them by seizing his host’s wife by the feet and throwing her forward so that her dress flew up and exposed her knees, and Trimalchio himself did not blush to show his preference for a giton in the presence of the company, and to throw a cup at his wife’s head when her jealousy led her to remonstrate.[132] The voyage of the hero of the Satyricon furnishes other pictures of the intensely depraved feeling which pervaded Roman society. The author does not seem to admit the possibility of virtue’s existence; all his men and women are equally vicious and shameless. The open spectacle of the most hideous[Pg 82] debauchery only provokes a laugh. If a man declines to accede to the propositions which the women are the first to make, it must be because he is a disciple of the aversa Venus, and whole cities are depicted as joining in the hue and cry after the lost frater of a noted debauchee.

The commessationes, which Cicero enumerates among the symptoms of corruption in his time, had become of universal usage. It was for them that the cooks of Rome exhausted their art in devising the dishes which have puzzled modern gastronomists; for them that the rare old wines of Italy were stowed away in cellars; for them that Egyptian and Ionian dancing-girls stripped themselves, or donned the nebula linea.[133] No English words can picture the monstrosities which are calmly narrated in the pages of Petronius and Martial. Well might Juvenal cry, “Vice has culminated.”[134]

It is perhaps difficult to conceive how it could have been otherwise, considering the examples set by the emperors. It requires no small research to discover a single character in the long list that was not stained by the grossest habits. Julius Cæsar, “the bald adulterer,” was commonly said to be “husband of all men’s wives.”[135] Augustus, whose youth had been so dissolute as to suggest a most contemptuous epigram, employed men in his old age to procure matrons and maidens, whom these purveyors of imperial lust examined as though they had been horses at a public sale.[136] The amours of Tiberius in his retreat at Capreæ can not be described. It will suffice to say there was no invention of infamy which he did not patronise; that no young person of any charms was safe from his lust. More than one senator felt that safety required he should remove his handsome wife or pretty daughter from Rome, for Tiberius was ever ready to avenge obstacles with death. The sad fate of the beautiful Mallonia, who stabbed herself during a lawsuit which the emperor had instituted against her because she refused to comply with his beastly demands, gives a picture of the age.[137] Caligula, who made some changes in the tax levied on prostitutes, and established a brothel in the palace, commenced life by debauching his sisters, and ended it by giving grand dinners, during which he would remove from the room any lady he pleased, and, after spending a few minutes with her in private,[Pg 83] return and give an account of the interview for the amusement of the company.[138] Messalina so far eclipsed Claudius in depravity that the “profuse debauches” of the former appear, by contrast, almost moderate and virtuous.[139]

Nero surpassed his predecessors in cynic recklessness. He was an habitual frequenter of houses of prostitution. He dined in public at the great circus among a crowd of prostitutes. He founded, on the shore of the Gulf of Naples, houses of prostitution, and filled them with females, whose dissolute habits were their recommendation to his notice. The brief sketch of his journeys given by Tacitus, and the allusions to his minister of pleasures, Tigellinus, leave no room for doubting that he was a monster of depravity.[140]

Passing over a coarse Galba, a profligate Otho, a beastly Vitellius, a mean Vespasian, and a dissolute Titus, Domitian revived the age of Nero. He seduced his brother’s daughter, and carried her away from her husband, bathed habitually in company with a band of prostitutes, and set an example of hideous vice while enacting severe laws against debauchery. After another interval, Commodus converted the palace into a house of prostitution. He kept in his pay three hundred girls of great beauty, and as many youths, and revived his dull senses by the sight of pleasures he could no longer share. Like Nero, he violated his sisters; like him, he assumed the dress and functions of a female, and gratified the court with the spectacle of his marriage to one of his freedmen. Finally, Elagabalus, whom the historian could only compare to a wild beast, surpassed even the most audacious infamies of his predecessors. It was his pride to have been able to teach even the most expert courtesans of Rome something more than they knew; his pleasure to wallow among them naked, and to pull down into the sink of bestiality in which he lived the first officers of the empire.

When such was the example set by men in high places, there is no need of inquiring farther into the condition of the public morals. A censor like Tacitus might indignantly reprove, but a Martial—and he was, no doubt, a better exponent of public and social life than the stern historian—would only laugh, and copy the model before him. It may safely be asserted that there does not exist in any modern language a piece of writing which indicates[Pg 84] so hopelessly depraved a state of morals as Martial’s epigram on his wife.

SECRET DISEASES AT ROME.

At what period, and where, venereal diseases first made their appearance, is a matter of doubt. It was long the opinion of the faculty that they were of modern origin, and that Europe had derived them from America, where the sailors of Columbus had first contracted them. This opinion does not appear to rest on any solid basis, and is now generally rejected. The fact is, that the venereal disease prevailed extensively in Europe in the fifteenth century; but the presumption, from an imposing mass of circumstantial evidence, is that it has afflicted humanity from the beginning of history.

Still, it is strange that Greek and Latin authors do not mention it. There is a passage in Juvenal in which allusion is made to a disgusting disease, which appears to bear resemblance to venereal disease. Epigrams of Martial hint at something of the same kind. Celsus describes several diseases of the generative organs, but none of these authors ascribe the diseases they mention to venereal intercourse.

Celsus prefaces what he says on the subject of this class of maladies with an apology. Nothing but a sense of duty has led him to allude to matters so delicate; but he feels that he ought not to allow his country to lose the benefit of his experience, and he conceives it to be “desirable to disseminate among the people some medical principles with regard to a class of diseases which are never revealed to any one.”

After this apology, he proceeds to speak of a disease which he calls inflammatio colis, which seems to have borne a striking analogy to the modern Phymosis. It has been supposed that the Elephantiasis, which he describes at length, was also of a syphilitic character; and the symptoms detailed by Aretous, who wrote in the latter half of the first century, certainly remind the reader of secondary syphilis; but the best opinion of to-day appears to be that the diseases are distinct and unconnected.

Women afflicted with secret diseases were called aucunnuentæ, which explains itself. They prayed to Juno Fluonia for relief, and used the aster atticus by way of medicine. The Greek term for this herb being Bonbornion, which the Romans converted into Bubonium, that word came to be applied to the disease for which[Pg 85] it was given, whether in the case of females or males. Modern science has obtained thence the term Bubo. The Romans said of a female who communicated a disease to a man, Hæc te imbubinat.[141]

We find, moreover, in the later writers, allusions to the morbus campanus, the clazomenæ, the rubigo, etc., which were all secret diseases of a type, if not syphilitic, strongly resembling it. It must be admitted, however, that no passage in the ancient writers directly ascribes these diseases to commerce with prostitutes.

Roman doctors declined to treat secret diseases. They were called by the generic term morbus indecens, and it was considered unbecoming to confess to them or to treat them. Rich men owned a slave doctor who was in the confidence of the family, and to whom such delicate secrets would naturally be confided. But the mass of the people were restrained by shame from communicating their misfortunes; as was the case among the Jews, the unhappy patient was driven to seclusion as the only remedy. However cruel and senseless this practice may have been as regarded the sufferer, it was of service to the people, as it prevented, in some degree, the spread of contagion.

Up to the period of the civil wars, and perhaps as late as the Christian era, the only physicians at Rome were drug-sellers, enchanters, and midwives. The standing of the former may be inferred from a passage in Horace, where he classes them with the lowest outcasts of Roman society.[142] The enchanters (sagæ) made philtres to produce or impede the sensual appetite. They were execrated, and even so amorous a poet as Ovid felt bound to warn young girls against the evil effects of the aphrodisiacs they concocted.[143] Midwives also made philtres, and are often confounded with the sagæ. The healing science of the three classes must have been small.

About the reign of Augustus, Greek physicians began to settle at Rome. They possessed much theory, and some practical experience, as the Treatise of Celsus shows, and soon became an important class in Roman society. It was not, however, till the reign of Nero, that an office of public physician was created. Under that emperor, a Greek named Andromachus was appointed archiater, or court physician, and archiatii populares were soon afterward appointed for the people. They were allowed to receive money from the rich, but they were bound, in consideration[Pg 86] of various privileges bestowed on their office, to treat the poor gratuitously. They were stationed in every city in the empire. Rome had fourteen, besides those attached to the Vestals, the Gymnasia, and the court; other large cities had ten, and so on, down to the small towns which had one or two.[144] From the duties and privileges of the archiatii, it would appear they were subject to the ædiles.

It may seem almost superfluous to add that no careful medical reader of the history of Rome under the empire can doubt but the archiatii filled no sinecure, and that a large proportion of the diseases they treated were directly traceable to prostitution.

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ERA.

Perhaps the most marked originality of the Christian doctrine was the stress it laid on chastity. It has been well remarked that even the most austere of the pagan moralists recommended chastity on economical grounds alone. The apostles exacted it as a moral and religious duty. They preached against lewdness as fervently as against heathenism. Not one of the epistles contained in the New Testament but inveighs, in the strongest language, against the vices classed under the generic head of luxury. Nor can it be doubted that, under divine Providence, the obvious merit of this feature in the new religion exercised a large influence in rallying the better class of minds to its support.

From the first, the Christian communities made a just boast of the purity of their morals. Their adversaries met them on this ground at great disadvantage. It was notorious that the college of Vestals had been sustained with great difficulty. Latterly, it had been found necessary to supply vacancies with children, and even under these circumstances, the number of Vestals buried alive bore but a very small proportion to the number who had incurred this dread penalty. Nor could it be denied that the chastity[Pg 87] of the Roman virgins was, at best, but partial, the purest among them being accustomed to unchaste language and unchaste sights. The Christian congregations, on the contrary, contained numbers of virgins who had devoted themselves to celibacy for the love of Christ. They were modest in their dress, decorous in their manners, chaste in their speech.[145] They refused to attend the theatres; lived frugally and temperately; allowed no dancers at their banquets; used no perfumes, and abstained generally from every practice which could endanger their rigorous continence.[146] Marriage among the Christians was a holy institution, whose sole end was the procreation of children. It was not to be used, as was the case too often among the heathen, as a cloak for immoralities. Christ, they said, permitted marriage, but did not permit luxury.[147] The early fathers imposed severe penitences on fornication, adultery, and other varieties of sensuality.

Persecution aided the Church in the great work of purifying public morals, by forcing it to keep in view the Christian distinction between moral and physical guilt. At what time it became usual to condemn Christian virgins to the brothel it is difficult to discover. The practice may have arisen from the hideous custom which enjoined the violation of Roman maidens before execution, if the existence of such a custom can be assumed on the authority of so loose a chronicler as Suetonius.[148] However this be, this horrible refinement of brutality was in use in the time of Marcus Aurelius.[149] Virgins were seized and required to sacrifice to idols. Refusing, they were dragged, often naked, through the streets to a brothel, and there abandoned to the lubricity of the populace. The piety of the early Christians prompted the belief that on many conspicuous occasions the Almighty had interfered to protect his chosen children in this dire calamity.[150] St. Agnes, having refused to sacrifice to Vesta, was said to have been stripped naked by the order of the prefect; but, no sooner had her garments fallen, than her hair grew miraculously, and enveloped her as in a shroud. Dragged to the brothel, a wonderful light shone from her body, and the by-standers, appalled at the sight, instead of offering her violence, fell at her knees, till, at last, the prefect’s son, bolder and more reckless than the others, advanced to consummate her sentence, and was struck dead at her feet by a thunderbolt.[151] [Pg 88]Theodora, a noble lady of Alexandria, was equally undaunted and equally faithful to her creed. The judge allowed her three days to deliberate, warning her of the consequences of obstinacy. She was firm, and was led into a house of prostitution. There, in the midst of debauched persons of both sexes, she prayed to God for help, and the sight of the half-naked virgin bent in fervent prayer struck awe into the minds of the people. At last a soldier declared that he would fulfill the judgment. Thrust into a cell with Theodora, he confessed that he was a Christian, dressed her in his clothes, and enabled her to escape. He was seized and executed; but the Christian virgin, refusing to purchase her safety at such a price, gave herself up, and died with him.[152] Similar stories are contained in several of the Christian fathers.[153]

There is, unhappily, no reason to doubt that in many instances the brutal mandate of the pagan judges was rigorously executed, and that the faith of many Christian virgins was assailed through the channel of their virtue. This appears to have been frequently the case during the persecution of Diocletian, when we hear of Christian women being suspended naked by one foot, and tortured in other savage and infernal ways. The practice led to the clear enunciation of the important doctrine of moral chastity, already stated by Christ himself in the Gospel. The Romans could not conceive a chaste soul in a body that had endured pollution, and hence for Lucretia there was no resource but the poniard. It was left for St. Augustin, St. Jerome, and the other fathers, to assert boldly that the crime lay in the intention and not in the act; that a chaste heart might inhabit a body which brutal force had soiled; and that the Christian virgins whom an infamous judge had sentenced to the brothel were none the less acceptable servants of God.[154]

The only retaliation attempted by the early Christians was the conversion of prostitutes. The works of the fathers contain many narratives of remarkable conversions of this character, and a learned Jesuit once compiled a voluminous work on the subject. The Egyptian Mary was the type of the class. She confessed to Zosimus that she had spent seventeen years in the practice of prostitution at Alexandria. Her heart being opened, she took ship for Jerusalem, paid her passage by exercising her calling on board, and expiated her sins by a life of penitence in the woods of [Pg 89]Judæa. She lived, the legend said, forty-seven years in the woods, naked and alone, without seeing a man. A chapel was built at Paris during the Middle Ages in her honor. The painted windows, representing her in the exercise of her calling on shipboard, were in existence at a very late period.[155]

In revenge for the victories of the Christians, the pagans accused them of committing the grossest immoralities. For many centuries the early Christian congregations met under circumstances of great difficulty, in secret hiding-places, in catacombs. Their religious rites were performed mysteriously. Lights were often extinguished to foil the object of spies and informers. These peculiarities served as the pretext for many obvious calumnies. It was commonly believed, even by men of the calibre of Tacitus, that the Christian rites bore strong resemblances to those rites of Isis which, at an early period of Roman history, had created such alarm and horror at Rome. Nor were these calumnies confined to the heathen. In the third and fourth centuries, when sectarian rivalries menaced the destruction of the Church, similar accusations were freely bandied. That they were wholly unfounded in every case seems difficult to believe, in the face of the clear statements of such writers as Epiphanes. What the precise doctrines of the various sects called Adamites, Cainites, Nicolaites, and some subdivisions of Gnostics, may have been, it were perhaps superfluous now to inquire; but it seems not unreasonable to suppose that, in some instances, men of depraved instincts may have availed themselves of the cloak of Christianity to conceal the gratification of sensual habits; or, on the other hand, that minds in a state of religious exaltation may have stumbled upon impurities in the search for the state of nature. In comparatively late times we have seen, in America as well as Savoy, a few persons of weak minds give way to religious enthusiasm in a manner that warred with public decency. Similar aberrations may have been more frequent during the seething era which preceded the establishment of Christianity, and prostitution, in some shape or other, may have again become a religious rite in certain deluded or knavish sects. Nor was it unnatural, unjust though it certainly was, for the heathen to charge Christianity at large with the vices of those of its followers who worshiped in a state of nudity, and accompanied prayer with promiscuous intercourse.[156]

[Pg 90]Even in the bosom of the true Church practices would break out from time to time which jarred sadly with the moral theory of the Apostles. Many persons of both sexes, under the influence of religious enthusiasm, sought relief for their troubled souls in solitude, and unwisely attempted to mortify the flesh by practices which too often sharpened the appetites. One only needs to read the eloquent effusions of St. Jerome to become satisfied that the course of life adopted by many early Christian recluses, of both sexes, must have led unwittingly to moral aberrations. Young men and young women, devoting themselves to a life of seclusion in the woods, living like wild beasts, without clothing and without shame, would naturally revive the system of religious prostitution in a more or less modified shape. On the other hand, in many parts of Europe, Christian churches thought it not unsafe to accept the legacies of the heathen religions in the shapes of idols, forms, and ceremonies. Saints succeeded to the honors of gods; dances in honor of Venus became dances in honor of the Virgin; statues which were originally intended to represent heathen deities were saved from destruction by being adopted as fair representations of Christian saints. Until very recent times there existed, in various parts of Europe, statues of Priapus, under the name of some saint, retaining the indecency of the idol, and associated with the belief of some simple women that the image possessed the power assigned it in mythology. In processions, during the third and fourth centuries, sacred virgins were seen to wear round their necks the obscene symbol of the old worship, and in places the holy bread retained the shape of the Roman coliphia and siligines. St. John Chrysostom complains that in places he designates, women were baptized in a state of nature, without even being permitted to veil their sex.[157] A majority of Christian teachers, unwilling to deprive the masses of a superstitious convenience afforded them by paganism, allowed them to pray to certain saints not only for fertility, but for the removal of impotence from husbands and lovers.[158]

To these immoral features must be added occasional instances of looseness in conventual life. The preamble of various edicts in France and elsewhere leaves no room to doubt that, in several instances, immoral persons had assumed the religious garb, and collected themselves together in religious communities for the purpose of gratifying sensuality.

[Pg 91]These were the aids Christianity afforded to prostitution in its various forms. They are a mere trifle in comparison with the obstacles it threw in its way. Independently of the effect produced by the moral teaching of St. Paul and the Apostles, the rising power of the Church was vigorously exerted to modify the legislation both of the Eastern and Western empires on the subject of sexual depravities.

The fathers did not uniformly proscribe prostitution. Saint Augustin said, “Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society.”[159] Jerome recognized prostitution, and argued that, as Mary Magdalene had been saved, so might any prostitute who repented.[160] The canons of the apostles excluded from the ministry all persons who were convicted of having commerce with prostitutes, and excommunicated those who were guilty of rape, but they passed no general sentence on prostitutes.[161] But the apostolic constitution branded as sinful any sexual intercourse quæ non adhibetur ad generationem filiorum sed tota ad voluptatem spectat.[162] The same principle is asserted in various passages of the work; wine being denounced as a provocation to impurity, and the faithful are warned against the society of lewd persons (scortatores). The Council of Elvira pronounced the penalty of excommunication against bawds and prostitutes, but it expressly commanded priests to receive at the communion-table prostitutes who had married Christians.[163] St. Augustin conceived that no church should admit prostitutes to the altar till they had abandoned the calling.[164] A similar doctrine was expressed by the Council of Toledo. At a later period, as we advance in mediæval history, we find the councils recognizing prostitution, and prostitutes as a class. In 1431, at the Council of Basle, a holy father presented a paper on the subject of prostitution, in which it was implied to be the only safeguard of good morals. A century later, the Council of Milan took especial pains to identify prostitutes as a class. They were to wear a distinctive dress, with no ornaments of gold, silver, or silk; to reside in places expressly designated by the bishops, at a distance from cathedrals; to avoid taverns and hostelries. The execution of the decree was intrusted to the bishops and the civil magistrates.[165]

[Pg 92]The vectigal or tax paid by all persons subsisting by prostitution was exacted by the emperors, from Caligula to Theodosius. It was usually collected every five years. Zosimus accuses Constantine of having enlarged and remodeled the tax, but apparently without foundation. The early Christians made it a subject of reproach to the emperors.[166] In consequence of their assaults, Theodosius abandoned that portion of the law which laid a tax on bawds, leaving the tax on prostitutes. The latter was levied as rigorously as ever. A contemporary writer describes the imperial agents hunting for prostitutes in taverns and houses of prostitution, and forcing them to purchase, by payment of the tax, the right of pursuing their calling.[167] At length, in the fifth century, prostitution and the tax on prostitutes, or chrysarguron, were formally abolished by the Emperor Anastasius I., and the records and rolls of the collectors burned. It is said that some time afterward, the emperor gave out that he had repented of what he had done, and desired to see the chrysarguron re-established. The announcement gave great joy to the debauchees, and numbers of persons prepared to avail themselves of the re-enactment of the law. The emperor let it be known that he desired to have matters placed, so far as could be, on their old footing, and would therefore desire to collect as many as possible of the old rolls and records. They were gathered together at all parts, and laid at the imperial feet. Notice was then given to the people to meet at the circus on a given day; when they were all assembled, the whole collection of documents was burned, amid the frantic applause of the populace.[168]

It has been asserted, however, that the chrysarguron was revived subsequently, and was levied under Justinian. That legislator altered the old Roman laws regarding prostitution, and relieved prostitutes from the ineffaceable ban of infamy which the republican jurisprudence had laid on them. He permitted the marriage of citizens with prostitutes, and encouraged it by his example. His own wife, the Empress Theodora, had been a ballet-dancer and a prostitute. When she attained the imperial dignity, her first thought was of her old companions. She built a magnificent palace-prison on the south shore of the Bosphorus, and in one night caused five hundred prostitutes in Constantinople to be seized and conveyed thither. They were kindly treated; their every wish was gratified; but no man entered their asylum. The [Pg 93]experiment was a complete failure. Most of the girls committed suicide in their despair, and the remainder soon died of ennui and vexation.

Theodosius had laid heavy penalties on brothel-keepers;[169] Justinian reiterated them, and increased their weight. The seizure and prostitution of a girl he punished with death. He who connived at the prostitution of females was to be expelled from the city where he lived, and any person harboring him was to be fined one hundred gold pieces. Whatever legislation could effect to uproot the system of procurers and public prostitution, Justinian did;[170] but his laws contain no trace of any harsh policy toward prostitutes. Those unfortunate creatures he regarded with an indulgent humanity, which, for the sake of human nature, one may perhaps ascribe to the kindly sympathy of the empress.

FRANCE.—HISTORY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

The Roman accounts of the Gauls represent them as leading virtuous lives. Severa matrimonia is the expression of the historian. This would appear to apply more particularly to the women than the men. As is usually the case among semi-civilized nations, the Gauls, Germans, Franks, and most of the aboriginal nations of Northern Europe imposed upon the women obligations of chastity which they did not always accept for themselves. Adultery, and, in certain cases, fornication, they punished capitally; but, if the early ecclesiastical writers are to be believed, these rude warriors were addicted to coarse debaucheries, in which intoxicating liquors and promiscuous intercourse with females played a prominent part. The feasts which followed victories in the field, or commemorated national anniversaries, bore some resemblance to the Roman commessationes, though, of course, they lacked[Pg 94] the refinement and the wit which occasionally strove to redeem those disgraceful banquets. So far as the females were concerned, there is no doubt the Roman writers judged correctly. Whether the severity of the climate tempered the ardor of northern sensuality, or the harshness of the law kept the passions in check, the female population of Gaul, from the time of the Roman conquest for at least two or three centuries, was undoubtedly virtuous. Prostitution was comparatively unknown. An old law or usage directed that prostitutes should be stoned, but we do not hear of this law being carried into effect.

Simultaneously with the consolidation of the kingdom of the Franks, we note that concubinage was an established institution, recognized by the law and sanctioned by the Church. All the Frank chiefs who could afford the luxury kept harems, or, as they were called in that day, gynecea, peopled by young girls who ministered to their pleasures. The plan, as it appears, bore some resemblance to that which is at present in use in Turkey and some other Mohammedan countries. The chief had one lawful and proper wife, a sort of sultana valide, and other wives whose matrimonial rights were less clearly defined, but still whose condition was not necessarily disreputable. How the people lived we are not so well qualified to say, but no doubt prostitution prevailed to some extent among them, though in all probability the public morals were purer than they became toward the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Perhaps the first authentic legislative notice of prostitution in France is to be found in the Capitularies of Charlemagne. That monarch, who seems to have seen no mischief in the system of gynecea, was severe upon common prostitution. He directed vulgar prostitutes to be scourged, and a like penalty to be inflicted on all who harbored them, kept houses of debauch, or lent their assistance to prostitutes or debauchees. In other words, Charlemagne treated the same act as a crime among the poor, and as an excusable habit among the rich.

Our information regarding society in the Middle Ages is necessarily obscure and scanty, but we have enough to learn that immorality prevailed to an alarming degree during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Probably the rich men who had their gynecea were the most virtuous class in the nation. Most of the kings set an example of loose intercourse with the ladies of the court. The armies of the time were noted for the[Pg 95] ravages they committed among the female population of the countries where they were quartered. Both of these classes seem to have yielded the palm of debauchery to the clergy. It is a fact well known to antiquaries, though visual evidence of it is becoming scarce, that most of the great works of Gothic architecture which date from this period were profusely adorned with lewd sculptures whose subjects were taken from the religious orders. In one place a monk was represented in carnal connection with a female devotee. In others were seen an abbot engaged with nuns, a naked nun worried by monkeys, youthful penitents undergoing flagellation at the hands of their confessor, lady abbesses offering hospitality to well-proportioned strangers, etc., etc. These obscene works of art formerly encumbered the doors, windows, arches, and niches of many of the finest Gothic cathedrals in France. Modesty has lately insisted on their removal, but many of the works themselves have been rescued from destruction by the zeal of antiquaries, and it is believed some have still escaped the iconoclastic hand of the modern Church. When such was the condition of the clergy, and such the notoriety of that condition, it would be unjustifiable to expect purity of morals among the people.

Louis VIII. made an effort to regulate prostitution. It proved fruitless, and it was left to the next king of the same name, Louis IX., to make the first serious endeavor to check the progress of the evil in France. His edict, which dates from 1254, directed that all prostitutes, and persons making a living indirectly out of prostitution, such as brothel-keepers and procurers, should be forthwith exiled from the kingdom. It was partially put in force. A large number of unfortunate females were seized, and imprisoned or sent across the frontier. Severe punishments were inflicted on those who returned to the city of Paris after their expulsion. A panic seized the customers of brothels, and for a few months public decency was restored. But the inevitable consequences of the arbitrary decree of the king soon began to be felt. Though the officers of justice had forcibly confined in establishments resembling Magdalen hospitals a large proportion of the most notorious prostitutes, and exiled many more, others arose to take their places. A clandestine traffic succeeded to the former open debauchery, and in the dark the evils of the disease were necessarily aggravated. More than that, as has usually been the case when prostitution has been violently and suddenly suppressed,[Pg 96] the number of virtuous women became less, and corruption invaded the family circle. Tradesmen complained that since the passage of the ordinance they found it impossible to guard the virtue of their wives and daughters against the enterprises of the military and the students.

At last, complaints of the evil effects of the ordinance became so general and so pressing that, after a lapse of two years, it was repealed. A new royal decree re-established prostitution under rules which, though not particularly enlightened or humane, still placed it on a sounder footing than it had occupied before the royal attention had been directed to the subject. Prostitutes were forbidden to live in certain parts of the city of Paris, were not allowed to wear jewelry or fine stuffs, and were placed under the direct supervision of a police magistrate, whose official or popular title was Le roi des ribauds (the king of ribaldry). The duties of this officer appear to have been analogous to those of the Roman ædiles who had charge of prostitution. He was empowered to arrest and confine females who infringed the law, either in their dress, their domicil, or their behavior. It was afterward urged against the maintenance of the office of Roi des ribauds that it was usually filled by reckless, depraved men, who discharged its duties more in view of their private interests and the gratification of their sensuality than from regard to the public morals. Instances of gross tyranny were proved against them, and, in the absence of evidence to show that their appointment had been beneficial to the public, but little regret was felt when the office was abolished by Francis I.

To return to Louis IX. In his old age he repented of what he had done, and returned to the spirit of his early ordinance. In his instructions to his son and successor, he adjured him to remove from his country the shameful stain of prostitution, and indicated plainly enough that the best mode of attaining that end would be by re-enacting the ordinance of 1254. Philip dutifully fulfilled his father’s request. Prostitution was again declared a legal misdemeanor, and a formidable array of penalties was again brought to bear against offending females and their accomplices. But, like many a legislative act in more modern times, Philip’s ordinance was too obviously at variance with public policy and popular sentiment to be carried into effect. It was quietly allowed to remain a dead letter, and, with probably few exceptions, the prostitutes of Paris pursued their calling unmolested.

[Pg 97]A few years afterward, its nullification was authoritatively sanctioned by fresh sumptuary laws. A royal edict directed courtesans to wear a shoulder-knot of a particular color as a badge of their calling. The whole force of the government was rallied to enforce this rule, and also those which had been enacted by Louis IX. The records of the court contain innumerable reports of the arrests of prostitutes for violating these enactments. When they had taken up their abode in a prohibited street, they were imprisoned and dislodged; when their offense was wearing unlawful garments or jewelry, the forbidden objects were seized and sold, the constable apparently sharing the proceeds of the sale. Pimps and procurers were dealt with more severely. As usual, the statute-book contained a variety of conflicting enactments on this subject, and menaced them with all kinds of penalties, from burning alive to fine and imprisonment. It appears beyond a doubt that, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, several notorious procuresses were burned alive at Paris. Others were put in the pillory; were scourged, and had their ears cropped; while many of the richer class escaped with a fine. There are records of cases in which the procuress was exposed naked to the insults of the mob for a whole day, and toward evening the hair on her body was burned off with a flaming torch. Others again were chased through the city in a state of nudity, and pelted with stones. These barbarous penalties appear to have been very much to the taste of the people. Procuresses have always been an odious class, and it is not surprising to find that the punishment of a notorious wretch of the class was observed as a joyous holiday by the populace of the French capital. On the other hand, the prostitutes themselves were often subjects of public sympathy.

Peculiar reasons operated at this period to produce a favorable sentiment with regard to prostitutes. The horrible depravities of the Templars were becoming known. Society was horror-struck at the symptom of a revival of the worst vice of the ancients. There have been, as is known, ingenious and eloquent efforts made, in comparatively recent times, to throw a veil over the corruptions of the Templars, and to prove that they fell victims to royal jealousy, but the argument is not sustained by the facts. Documents on whose authenticity and credibility no possible suspicion can be cast, establish incontrovertibly that the sect of the Templars was tainted with unnatural vices, and that one of the chief secrets of its maintenance was the facility it afforded to [Pg 98]debased men for the gratification of monstrous propensities. That this was the opinion which prevailed in Paris at the time of the outburst which finally led to the suppression of the order, there is no room to question. It is easy to understand how the horror such discoveries must have awakened would lead men to entertain more lenient views with regard to a vice which had at least the merit of being in conformity with natural instinct.

Thus far of Paris only. During the Middle Ages, as is well known, most of the provinces of France were self-governing communities, which administered their own affairs, and received no police regulations from the crown. A complete examination of the subject throughout France would therefore involve as many histories as there were provinces. Our space, of course, forbids any thing of the kind, and we can only glance at leading divisions.

Most of the northern people had adopted, partly from the old Germanic constitutions and partly from the Roman law, severe provisions against prostitution, but they were nowhere, apparently, put in force. Occasionally a notorious brothel-keeper or professional procuress was severely punished, but prostitutes were rarely molested. In the north and west of France, indeed, toleration was obviously the natural policy, for we are not led to believe that in that section of country the evil was ever carried to great excess. In Normandy, Brittany, Picardy, and the great northern and western provinces, a virtuous simplicity was the rule of life among the peasants, and even the cities did not present any striking contrast. In many provinces, usage, not fortified by the text of any custom, allowed the seigneur to levy toll upon prostitutes exercising their calling within the limits of his jurisdiction. Some old titles and records refer to this practice. One sets down the tax paid by each prostitute at four deniers to the seigneur. Others intimate that the tax may be paid in money or in kind, at the option of the seigneur. In many seigniories this singular tax was regarded with the contempt it deserved.

In the south of France we meet with a different spectacle. There prostitution had long been a deeply-seated feature of society. The warm passions of the southerners required a vent, and, in the absence of some safety-valve, it was obvious to all that the ungovernable lusts of the men would soon kindle the inflammable passions of the dark southern women. Public houses of[Pg 99] prostitution were therefore established in three of the largest cities of the south—Toulouse, Avignon, and Montpellier.

That of Toulouse was established by royal charter, which declared that the profits of the enterprise should be shared equally by the city and the University. The building appropriated for the purpose was large and commodious, bearing the name of the Grand Abbaye. In it were lodged not only the resident prostitutes of the city, but any loose women who traveled that way, and desired to exercise their impure calling. It would appear that they received a salary from the city, and that the fees exacted from the customers were divided between the two public bodies to which the enterprise was granted. They were obliged to wear white scarfs and white ribbons or cords on one of their arms, as a badge of their calling.

When the unfortunate monarch Charles VI. visited Toulouse, the prostitutes of the Abbaye met him in a body, and presented an address. The king received them graciously, and promised to grant them whatever largess they should request. They begged to be released from the duty of wearing the white badges, and the king, faithful to his promise, granted the boon. A royal declaration specially exempted them from the old rule.[171] But the people of Toulouse, no doubt irritated by the want of some distinguishing mark between their wives and daughters and the “foolish women,” by common consent mobbed the prostitutes who availed themselves of the king’s ordinance. None of them could venture to appear in public without being liable to insult, and even bodily injury. Resolutely bent on carrying their point, the women shut themselves up in the Abbaye, and did their best to keep customers at a distance. Their calculation was just; the city and the University soon felt the effects of the diminution of visitors at the Abbaye. The corporation appealed to the king; and when, during the disorders which distracted France at that time, Charles VII. visited Toulouse, a formal petition was presented to him by the capitones, praying that he would take such steps as his wisdom might seem fit to mediate between the prostitutes and the people, and restore to the Abbaye its former prosperity. The king acted with energy. He denounced the assailants of the prostitutes in the severest language, and planted his own royal fleurs de lis over the door of the Abbaye as a protection to the occupants.[172] But the people did not respect the royal arms any more than they did[Pg 100] the “foolish women.” On the contrary, assaults on the Abbaye became more numerous than ever. The prostitutes complained incessantly of having suffered violence at the hands of wild youths who refused to pay for their pleasures; and the civic authorities proving incompetent to check the disorder, the prostitutes found themselves compelled to seek refuge in a new part of the city, where, it is to be presumed, they enlisted adequate support among their own individual acquaintances. For a hundred years they inhabited their new domicil in peace and quiet. The University then dislodging them in order to occupy the spot, the city built them a new abbaye beyond the precincts of the respectable wards. It was called the Chateau vert, and its fame and profits equaled that of the old abbaye.

About the middle of the sixteenth century the city yielded to the scruples of some moralists of the day, and ceded the revenues of the Chateau vert to the hospitals; but the grant being made on condition that the hospitals should receive and cure all females attacked by venereal disease, it was found, after six years’ trial, that it cost more than it yielded. The hospitals surrendered the chateau to the city. It happened, just at this time, that many eminent philosophers and economists were advocating a return to the old ecclesiastical policy of suppressing prostitution altogether. After a discussion which lasted several years, the city of Toulouse adopted these views, and closed the Chateau vert. A magistrate, high in authority, left on record his protest against this course, founded on the scenes of immorality he had himself witnessed in the suburbs, and the country in the neighborhood of Toulouse; but the city authorities adhered to their opinion, and contented themselves with arresting some of the most shameless of the free prostitutes.[173] From that time forth, prostitution at Toulouse was subject to the same rules as in the rest of France.

The history of prostitution at Montpellier was analogous. At an early period, the monopoly which the crown had granted to the city being farmed out to individuals, fell into the hands of two bankers, in whose family it remained for several generations. During their tenure, a brothel was established in the city by a speculator of the day, but the holders of the monopoly prosecuted him, and obtained a perpetual injunction restraining him from lodging or harboring prostitutes.

At Avignon prostitution was legalized by Jane of Naples just[Pg 101] before the cession of the city to the Pope. The ordinance establishing a public brothel seems to have been drawn with care, and, though doubts have lately been thrown on its authenticity, they are not so well founded as to justify its rejection. Prostitutes were ordered to live in the brothel. They were bound to wear a red shoulder-knot as a badge of their calling. The brothel was to be visited weekly by the bailli and a “barber,” the latter of whom was to examine the girls, and confine separately all who seemed infected. No Jew was allowed to enter the brothel on any pretext. Its doors were to be closed on saints’ days, and special regulations guarded against the prevalence of scenes of riot and disorder.[174]

This ordinance seems to have remained in force during the whole occupation of Avignon by the Popes, and its penalties were occasionally inflicted on offenders. But if Petrarch and other contemporary writers are to be believed, the city was none the less a refuge for debauchees, and a scandal to Christendom. Petrarch complains that it was far more depraved than old Rome, and a popular proverb confirms, at least in part, his opinion.[175]

There were, however, in some southern provinces, severe laws against prostitution, although some of the penalties seem to have been framed as much with the view of stimulating as of repressing the passions. In one or two cities we find accounts of prostitutes and their customers being forced to walk naked through the streets by way of expiation. In others, the punishment of the iron cage was inflicted on pimps and procuresses. When a procuress had rendered herself particularly obnoxious, she was seized, stripped naked, and dragged in the midst of a great crowd to the water’s side. There she was thrust into an iron cage, in which she was forced to kneel. When the cage door was closed, she was thrown into the river, and allowed to remain under water long enough to produce temporary suffocation. This shocking punishment was repeated several times.

A potent influence over the morals of the southern people, the higher classes at least, was exercised by the institution of chivalry. It was of the essence of that institution to promote spiritual at the expense of sensual gratification. The chevalier adored his [Pg 102]mistress in secret for years, without even venturing to breathe her name. For years he carried a scarf or a ribbon in her honor through battle-scenes and dangers of every kind, happy when, after a lustrum spent in sighs and hopes, the charmer condescended to reward his fidelity with a gracious smile. It is evident that sexual intercourse must have been rare among people who set so high a value on the merest compliments and slightest tokens of affection; nor can there be any question but the effect of chivalry was to impart a high tone to the feelings and language of society, and to soften the manners of all who came within its influence.

If, on the other hand, we glance at the literature which flourished in France during the period of the revival of learning, we can not but infer that the morals of the people at large were not pure. During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, the standard reading of the educated classes among the French was the celebrated Roman de la Rose, a work of remarkable talent, but, at the same time, distinguished by a cynic vein of philosophy and a singular obscenity of language. No portion of that work was wholly free from lewd expressions, and it would be impossible to quote fifty lines of it to-day in a modern language. The doctrine of the author with regard to women was insulting and cynical.[176] They were uniformly depicted as being restrained only by legal difficulties from giving way to the loosest passions; and all men, in like manner, were painted as seducers, adulterers, and violators of young girls. Such was the reading of the best society in France. The Roman de la Rose was to them what Shakspeare is to us.

Nor was it alone of its kind. Of the works which that age has bequeathed to us, nearly all are tainted with the same grossness of language and pruriency of idea. All, or nearly all, breathe the air of the brothel. It was rather a matter of boasting than of shame with the authors. Villon and Regnier seem to plume themselves on their familiarity with scenes of debauch, and their extensive acquaintance among the prostitute class. The best of their works are descriptions of episodes of dissipation; their most lively sketches have prostitutes, or their fortunes, or their diseases, for the themes. They seemed to fancy they were imitating Horace when they borrowed his most odious blemishes. Some of them were actors as well as poets, and used the machinery of the[Pg 103] stage to disseminate their lewd compositions. Though it was still unusual, or even unlawful, for women to appear on the stage in their time, the boys who played female parts were well drilled to the business, and the performances which delighted the towns and villages of France fell but little short, in point of grossness, of the theatrical enormities of the imperial era at Rome.

One may form some idea of the popularity of erotic literature at this period in France from the amazing vocabulary of erotic terms which is gathered from the works of Rabelais, Beroald de Verville, Regnier, Brantome, and their contemporaries. There was not a form of lewdness for which an appropriate name had not been invented; and as to the ordinary acts and instruments of prostitution, a dictionary of synonyms might have been compiled without embracing all of them. Monsieur Dufour, in his conscientious work, fills a couple of pages with the mere words that were employed to express the act of fornication.

Many events likewise indicate a loose state of morals. The history of the incubes and succubes, filling some space in every treatise on demonology, is a most curious feature of the morals of the day. The existence of demons who made a practice of assailing the virtue of girls and boys was admitted by some of the fathers of the Church,[177] who quoted the words of Genesis in support of the singular doctrine. They were of two kinds: incubi, from the Latin incubare, male demons who assailed the chastity of girls; and succubæ, female demons who robbed boys of their innocence. The old chronicles are full of accounts of the mischievous deeds of these evil spirits. As might be expected, the incubi were more numerous and more enterprising than the succubæ. For one boy who confessed that a female demon had attacked him in his sleep, and compelled him to minister to her sensuality, there were a score of girls who furnished very tolerable evidence of having yielded their virginity to creatures of the male gender, who, they were satisfied, could be none other than devils. The ecclesiastical writers of the period have preserved a number of scandalous stories of the kind, which were so well credited that Pope Innocent VIII. felt impelled to issue a bull on the subject, and provide the faithful with an efficacious formula of exorcism.

Females, most of whom appeared to be nuns, confessed that they had been subject to the scandalous visits of the demons for long periods of time, and that neither fasting, nor prayer, nor[Pg 104] spiritual exercise could release them from the hated plague. Some girls were brought to admit a similar intercourse, and were burnt at the stake as partakers of the nature of sorceresses.[178] Married women made similar confessions. They stated that they were able to affirm that intercourse with demons was extremely painful; that their frigid nature, combined with their monstrous proportions, rendered their society a severe affliction, independently of the sin. It was noticed that the women, married or single, who applied to the ecclesiastical authorities for relief from this curious form of torment were almost invariably young and pretty.

In the year 1637 a public discussion took place at Paris on the question, Whether there exist succubæ and incubi, and whether they can procreate their species? The discussion was long and elaborate. It was conducted by a body of learned doctors, in presence of a large audience, composed partly of ladies; and while the judgment of the tribunal appeared to be in the negative, it was not so emphatic as to settle the question.[179] Even a century later, when one of the royal physicians undertook to explode the theory of lewd demons, and to prove that girls had endeavored to conceal their intercourse with lovers by attributing to them a devilish character, the public was not convinced, and the incubi were not left without believers. The laws still pronounced the penalty of death against all persons, male or female, who had commerce with demons.

Another practice which was brought to a close about the same time was entitled “Le sabat des sorciers,” the witches’ vigil. It appears that, at the earliest times of which we have any record, the inhabitants of France and Germany were in the habit of frequenting nocturnal assemblies in which witchcraft was believed or pretended to occupy a prominent place. In the thirteenth century they were denounced by Pope Gregory IX.,[180] who was satisfied that the devil had to do with them, and that their prime object was the gratification of sensuality. His bull did not attain its object. The witches’ meetings were still held, or believed to have been held throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and part of the sixteenth centuries. The popular belief was that the persons in league with witches anointed their bodies with magical [Pg 105]ointment, bestrode a broom, and were forthwith carried through the air to the place of meeting; that Satan was present at the ceremony in the form of a huge he-goat, and received the homage of the witches and their proselytes; that songs and dances followed next in order, and that the whole performance was closed with a scene of promiscuous debauchery.[181] The Inquisition took the matter in hand, and obtained affidavits from several females averring that they had had commerce with demons on these occasions, and relating with singular crudity the peculiar sensations they experienced.[182] On the strength of this evidence prosecutions were instituted, and many persons were condemned and executed.

It has been usual in modern times to regard the persecution of the witches as a proof of the barbarous intolerance of the ancient Church; but, in truth, a careful examination of the evidence leaves no room for doubting that witchcraft was only the cloak of real vices. Most of the persons who were burned in France as sorcerers had really used the popular belief in magic to hide their own debaucheries, and had succeeded in depraving large numbers of youth of both sexes. It was stated by a theological writer of the time of Francis I., that in his day there were one hundred thousand persons sold to Satan in France.[183] Allowing for some exaggeration, it must still be inferred from this statement that this form of prostitution had assumed alarming proportions. Nor is there any good reason for doubting but priests and other persons of lewd propensities turned the simplicity of the village girls to account in very many instances, and richly earned the severe penalty that was inflicted upon them by the arm of the Church. The vigil, or sabat, disappears from history during the sixteenth century. That it had been for some time before its extinction a haunt of debauchees and a fertile source of prostitution, the writers on demonology and the old chroniclers establish incontrovertibly.

Other aids to prostitution were obtained from the very ranks of the Church. During the Middle Ages numbers of strange sects appeared, many of which relied for success on the favor they allowed to sensuality. At the present day it is not easy to determine what proportion of the stories that are in print respecting many of these sects were the fruit of sectarian jealousy on the part of their rivals; some of them were doubtless calumniated, but there[Pg 106] are others about whose character and practices there is no room for controversy. The Flagellants, for instance, who counted eight hundred thousand proselytes in France in the fourteenth century, were unquestionably depraved. They marched in procession, men and women together, through the cities of France, each member of the society using the whip freely on the bare back of the person before him; and at night they assembled in country places, and proceeded to more serious flagellations. The opinion of learned persons ascribed erotic effects to these flagellations, it being said, apparently with truth, that when the flagellants had excited their senses by their discipline, they gave way to frantic debauchery. However this be, it is plain that the spectacle of naked men and women marching in procession and scourging one another can not but have been provocative of prostitution.[184]

Another similar sect was the Adamites, who argued that nudity was the law of nature, and that clothes were an abomination in the sight of God. It is said that, at first, the Adamites insisted on nudity only during their religious exercises, and that their proselytes stripped themselves within the place of worship; but one, Picard, who became a leading authority in the sect, took the ground that their principles should be carried out boldly in the face of the world. He and his followers, male and female, accordingly appeared in the streets in the costume in which they were born. The Inquisition very properly laid hands on them, punished some, and exiled the others.[185]

Again: if we pass from individual accidents to the state of society at large, we shall find many features that can not have been aids to virtue. Allusion has already been made to the obscene character of much of the early poetry of France, and to the excessive grossness of those works especially which obtained, and perhaps deserved, the widest popularity. Many of the customs of the day were equally adverse to sound morals. To cite one by way of example: On the Jour des Innocents, which fell on the 28th of December, men were allowed to invade the bed-chambers of girls, and, if they could find them in bed, to administer the chastisement which used to be common in schools. Hence arose the proverbial expression, Donner les innocents à quelqu’un, which meant to birch a person on the bare skin. No doubt the old chroniclers were justified in saying that when the girl was worth[Pg 107] the trouble, the invader of the chamber was not satisfied with inflicting a chastisement.[186]

Marriages were attended with ceremonies far grosser than any that were practiced in Rome. It was not only decorous, it was fashionable, both for men and women, to spy out the bed-chamber of the newly-wedded couple, and the fortunate man or girl who had contrived to see the interior of the room through a chink in the wall or a hole in the door was loudly applauded when the result of his or her discoveries was made known.[187] The invention of bridal chambers is therefore not original in America, as some have supposed.

Strange to say, neither the lewdness of the poets nor the grossness of the social habits of the times strikes one as more singular than the tone of the sermons which were delivered in Paris at the same period. One of the most famous preachers of the day was Maillard, who rose to eminence under Louis XI. His sermons on the luxury and corruptions of the times were very popular. We find him cursing the “burgesses” who, for the sake of gain, let their houses to prostitutes: “Vultis vivere de posterioribus meretricum,” he cries, indignantly. He denounces with extraordinary virulence the “crimes of impudicity which are committed in churches,” and which “the pillars and nave would denounce, if they had eyes and a voice.” He did not spare his congregation. Turning fiercely to the women who sat before him, he apostrophized them: “Dicatis, vos, mulieres, posuistis, posuistis filias ad peccandum? vos, mulieres, per vestros traitus impudiæ, provocastis alios ad peccandum? Et vos, maquerellæ, quid dicitis?” He thunders against this latter class, the procuresses, who ought, he says, to be burned at the stake, especially when, as is often the case, they are both the mothers and the venders of their daughters. Words fail him to denounce the intercourse of abandoned women with ecclesiastics; he invokes the divine wrath upon those of his congregation quæ dant corpus curialibus, monachis, presbyteris. Both he and other famous preachers of the day pronounced maledictions upon lewd convents, which some of them say are mere seraglios for the bishops and monks, where every abomination is practiced.

It was estimated that at this time, say the fifteenth century,[Pg 108] when Paris was comparatively a small city, it contained five to six thousand prostitutes, who were said by an Italian to be far more beautiful and attractive than any prostitutes he had seen elsewhere.

FRANCE.—HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO LOUIS XIII.

The memoranda we have already given will enable the reader to form an idea of the state of society at large. It remains to say something of the court, which, in some respects, was France.

From Louis IX. to Charles V. inclusive, it is said that the kings of France set no example of debauchery, and that the court rather encouraged virtue than vice. When the sisters-in-law of Philip the Handsome scandalized Paris by their loose life in the Tour de Nesle, into which they were said to make a practice of inveigling students, whom they assassinated when their lubricity was satiated, the king had them brought to punishment and dealt with as though the popular scandal was well founded in fact. When Charles VI. ascended the throne the scene changed. This unfortunate monarch was not only himself weak and depraved, but his wife, Isabel of Bavaria, was more vicious still. The pair encouraged every practice that could shock modesty or outrage decency. The queen lived almost openly with her lover, the Duke of Orleans. The king, so long as he retained his reason, was a leading actor in the scandalous masquerades of the court, and narrowly escaped losing his life on one occasion when he disguised himself as a devil, and danced immodestly before the ladies of the court. Round his loins, as round those of his fellow-demons, a sort of girdle of tow had been fastened, and all the masqueraders were chained together. In the midst of their dances, some foolish person threw a lighted torch at them. Their girdles took fire, and all were burned to death except the king, whom the Duchess of Berri saved by courageously raising her skirts and throwing them over the burning monarch.

[Pg 109]Charles had had many mistresses in his youth. When he went mad, the physicians directed the queen to refuse to discharge her conjugal duty. Charles had enough of his former nature left to resent this privation. He even employed force, and succeeded at last in compelling his wife to resume her place in the royal couch. She contrived, however, to defraud him by hiring a pretty girl to take her place. It is said Charles never detected the fraud. His wife, meanwhile, gave the reins to her loose passions, and was known to have had at least a score of lovers.

A very striking picture of the manners of the time is afforded by the story of Agnes Sorel. She was, as is known, the mistress of Charles VII., a lady of good family, and, otherwise than as the king’s mistress, of spotless reputation. Her influence over the king she used for the best of purposes. It was she who roused him to make the efforts which eventually expelled the foreigner from France. Her private character was laudable: she was amiable, generous, kind, and true; yet when she visited Paris in company with the king, the crowd followed her whenever she appeared in the streets, insulting her, and calling her a prostitute in the grossest terms. The king lived with her eighteen years, but never ventured to acknowledge her publicly as his mistress. Of the four daughters she bore him, three only were legitimated by his successor.

Louis XI. had a seraglio and a colony of bastards before he became king, nor did he alter his mode of life when he assumed control of the kingdom. His favorites were usually chosen from the lowest class of his subjects, many of whom had gone through an apprenticeship for the king’s service in the houses of prostitution of the capital. Louis never pretended to bear them any affection; he used them as he used the men of letters who composed for his diversion the lewd tales which have reached us.

Charles VIII. appears to have been more virtuous than his predecessors, though, of course, he did not pique himself upon any conjugal fidelity. A story is told which reflects credit upon his character. It is said that during his campaign in Italy, when he retired to his chamber one evening, he found there a young girl of marvelous beauty in a state of complete déshabillé. She was kneeling and in tears when the king entered. On Charles inquiring the cause of her sorrow, she confessed that her parents had sold her to the king’s valet for the use of his majesty, and conjured Charles to spare her. The king was touched by her [Pg 110]distress. He inquired into the facts, and, finding that they were as she stated, and, farther, that she was betrothed to a youth of the neighborhood, he sent for him and married the young couple forthwith.

It appears certain that Charles’s death was caused by his indiscreet commerce with the sex. All the chroniclers state that he fell a victim to the indulgence of his passions, being frail of body and of feeble constitution.

The court of Louis XII. was purer than that of his predecessors, owing to the austere virtue of the queen. Louis himself had shared the profligacies of his family in his youth, but, on becoming king, he allowed his wife to regulate his household according to her principles. For the first time for many years, say the old chroniclers, prostitution was banished from court.

We shall have something to say of Francis I. in connection with syphilis, of which he was a conspicuous and an early victim. At the age of eighteen his mother stated that he had been punished where he sinned. The misfortune did not operate as a warning. His life was notoriously dissolute at a time when profligacy was so much the rule that it was hardly likely to be noticed. Brantome asserts positively[188] that his expedition to Italy was prompted by the desire to make acquaintance with a courtesan of Milan whose charms Admiral Bonnivet had extolled. Previous to his time, it seems, there had always been attached to the court a body of prostitutes for the use of the courtiers. Francis suppressed this body, and actually invited the ladies of the court to take their place. Brantome reviews this policy, and while he praises it in view of the “joyous pastimes” to which it led, he is bound to acknowledge that it produced the greatest immorality ever known in France. The ladies of the town followed the example of those of the court, and but little was wanting but that every woman in France became a prostitute.

It was the custom during this reign for the king to invite all his courtiers and their wives and daughters to lodge at the royal palaces from time to time. The ladies had apartments by themselves, and to each room the king had a key. We are assured that the husbands, fathers, and brothers of ladies who refused to submit to the royal demands had but little chance of retaining their offices. If they had been guilty of maladministration or peculation, as was the case with most of them, they could hope[Pg 111] for pardon only through the complaisance of their female relatives. The story of M. de St. Vallier, who was reprieved on the scaffold in payment for the favors which his daughter, the beautiful Diana of Poictiers, had granted to the king, is too well known to need repetition here.

It was the boast of Francis that he had always respected the honor of the ladies of the court, and the boast was just, from his point of view. His visits to his mistresses were always made in a mysterious manner, and at night. Even to the Duchess of Etampes, who was his acknowledged mistress and procuress for a period of nearly twenty years, he never behaved in public in a manner to compromise her reputation. In private he was not so scrupulous. When this lady’s husband disturbed the king one evening, Francis drew his sword on him, and threatened to kill him instantly if he dared to reveal what every one knew, or to punish the wife at whose adultery he had connived for years. His idea seems to have been that words alone constituted the sin of debauchery. On one occasion he took all the ladies of the court to see the royal deer in the rutting season; but when a gentleman ventured a very obvious pleasantry on the scene, he exiled him from court for life.

His death has been frequently described. Some writers imply, by their silence, doubts of the authenticity of the story of La Belle Ferronnière; but it rests on very tolerable evidence. This lady, who was uncommonly beautiful, was the wife of a lawyer or a merchant (the authorities do not agree on the point). The king solicited her favors, but, strange to say, was met with a positive refusal. On consultation with the court lawyers, however, Francis was informed that he could, by the exercise of his royal prerogative, enjoy the company of any woman he pleased, and the Ferronnière was accordingly notified that the king commanded her to yield to his desires. She confided the order to her husband, who, on reflection, counseled her to submit. Meanwhile Ferronnière himself used his best endeavors to catch a syphilitic disease, which he communicated to his wife. She gave it to the king, who died of it after much suffering.

Henry II. had the merit of fidelity, not to his wife, but to his mistress. The latter was the famous Diana de Poictiers, whose successful intercession with Francis I. on her father’s behalf has been already noticed. Brantome asserts that she did not emulate the constancy of her royal lover, saying that in her youth she had[Pg 112] “obliged many persons.” He tells a story which, if true, reflects credit on the temper of the king. Visiting his mistress one day, he surprised her in the company of a courtier named Brissac, who had only time to hide himself under the bed. After spending some moments with Diana, the king asked for some refreshments. Some boxes of confectionery were brought him, and in the midst of his meal he took a box and threw it under the bed, saying, “Halloo, Brissac, every body must live!” Diana lost no portion of her lover’s heart in consequence of her infidelities. This she owed in some degree to her extraordinary beauty, which she preserved so late in life that it was commonly reported she was in the habit of using soap made of liquid gold. Henry was proud of his mistress, and never concealed their liaison. He had his arms interwoven with hers on many public buildings and pieces of plate. He used constantly to ride through the streets with the beautiful Diana on his crupper; and he showed her so marked a preference over his wife that judicious courtiers never made the mistake of courting the latter.

But the orderly life of the king was not imitated by the court. According to Brantome and Sauval, the excesses of the age of Francis were aggravated under Henry. It was rare, says the former, that ladies presented their virginity to their husbands; and husbands who objected to the intimacy of their wives with “kings, princes, noblemen, and others of the court,” were eschewed from society. A woman was held to be virtuous because she begged her lover to wait till she was married to gratify his desires; married women who retained their love for the same galant for several years were considered models of purity. Brantome intimates distinctly that ordinary debauchery fell short of the desires of the courtiers; incest, sodomy, and similar enormities could alone satiate the passions of the old debauchees of the day.

The same writer partially explains the spread of vice by saying that within the last half century the ladies of France had acquired the arts of Italy; nor is it doubtful that with the Medicis many of the monstrous vices which have been peculiar to Italy ever since the age of Imperial Rome were imported into France. We hear of all kinds of instruments of debauchery; of lewd books and lewd pictures; of indecent sculptures and bronzes being sold without let or hinderance in the stores of Paris. It was the age of Aretino; and besides that famous or infamous writer, a number of other Italians had competed for the prize of lewdness in [Pg 113]composition. Poets, painters, sculptors, seemed to try how far art could be prostituted. Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Giulio Romano, Nicollo dell’ Abate, and, indeed, almost all their contemporaries, debased their genius by the execution of indecent works. Many of these found their way to Paris. When Pope Clement VII. undertook to prosecute the authors of indecent works, whether in letters or art, most of the compositions that were endangered by his bull were transported to France. Brantome alludes to many of them as being quite common in his time. He describes, for instance, a silver goblet on which the most indecent scenes were graven, and which a nobleman of the court always obliged the ladies who visited him to use at table. Other noblemen had their rooms painted in fresco in similar taste. It is stated that Anne of Austria caused three hundred thousand écus worth of frescoes of this kind to be removed from the ceilings of the palace at Fontainebleau.[189] But in the reign of Henry II. it does not appear that any one was ever prosecuted for dealing in this kind of merchandise.

During the three following reigns, it was Catharine of Medicis who gave the tone to the court, and really ruled the kingdom. All historians concur in stating that she used prostitution as the mainspring of her policy. She had a court of sometimes two to three hundred ladies of honor, whom she employed to worm out the secrets of the politicians of the day. They were known as the Queen’s Flying Squadron, and it appears they performed their duties successfully; of course, at the cost of whatever virtue or decency the court still retained. Brantome is still our authority for asserting that they introduced a new feature of debauchery; they took the initiative in affairs of this kind, and instead of yielding to the entreaties of lovers, it was they who pressed their lovers to meet them half way. He likewise informs us that they aided the establishment in France of other vices which had hitherto been peculiar to Southern and Eastern climates, by the revival of practices which had been common among the hetairæ of Athens.

It has been asserted that Catharine willfully tutored her children in habits of debauchery, in order to divert their minds from politics, and retain control over the kingdom, but this scandal does not appear to rest on authentic evidence. It is unquestionable, however, that Charles IX., the author of the massacre of St. [Pg 114]Bartholomew, lived in incestuous intercourse with his sister Margaret, and there seems no reason to doubt the truth of the story that Catharine more than once entertained the king and court at a banquet at which nude females served as waiters.

Perhaps the best idea of the morals of the time can be obtained from the adventures of the Margaret just mentioned, who married Henry IV., King of Navarre, and afterward King of France. It is said that at the age of eleven she had two lovers, both of whom claimed to have robbed her of her virtue. Marrying the King of Navarre, she found means to leave her husband and reside at Paris, whose air suited her better than the country. Here her debaucheries were a common theme of scandal, her lovers being counted by the score. Happening at last to give birth to a child which mysteriously disappeared, her brother Henry III. sent her to her husband in a quasi-disgrace. Henry of Navarre refused to cohabit with her. The king vainly endeavored to reconcile the couple. With more zeal than tact, he used as an argument with his cousin that the mother of the King of Navarre had not herself led an irreproachable life. At this Henry burst into a laugh, and remarked to the envoy that the king was very complimentary in his letters, his majesty having in the first described the vices of the wife, and in the second alluded to the frailties of the mother.

He persisted in refusing to receive Margaret, and she took refuge in the little town of Agen, but no sooner began to lead her usual life there than the people rose and expelled her. She found a second refuge in the fortress of Usson, and there she lived twenty years in a sort of prison which she converted into a brothel. She was debarred from the society of men of fashion and courtiers, but for her purposes, servants, secretaries, musicians, and even the peasants of the neighborhood answered as well, and of these there was no lack. Returning to Paris in her old age, she did not alter her course of life. She became outwardly devout, and established a nunnery and monastery near her hotel; the latter, the people said, in order to have monks always at hand; but the list of her lovers remained undiminished to the very verge of her death.[190]

Nor did her husband present any striking contrast to his wife, though he reflected so severely upon her in the work published under the title Le divorce Satirique. Bayle remarks that, had he[Pg 115] not expended so large a portion of his energy in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, he would have been one of the greatest heroes of history.[191] He was profuse and indiscriminate in his attachments; duchess or farmer’s daughter, it was all the same to him. He changed his mistress once a month at least. As an exception to this rule, his affection for Gabrielle d’Estrées, a very lovely creature, whom he shared with the Marquis of Bellegarde, and who bore him, or them, three children, lasted several years. He was not faithful to her, and made no secret of his infidelities, but he loved her passionately. On one occasion he left his army in the midst of a campaign, disguised himself as a peasant, and traveled through the enemy’s country to meet her. He once went to see her, but was stopped at the door with the announcement that Bellegarde was with her. His first impulse was one of rage. Drawing his sword, he rushed toward the door, but stopped half way, and saying, “No, it would make her angry,” he returned home. Gabrielle was a very beautiful and charming person. She was in the habit of having herself painted in a state of perfect nudity, with her children playing around her.

When she died, Henry proposed to replace her by Mademoiselle D’Entragues, whose beauty had made some sensation at court. Negotiations were opened with the lady, who dutifully placed the matter in the hands of her family, and father, mother, and brothers began to treat with the king for the prostitution of their daughter and sister. They asked a hundred thousand crowns. The king thought the sum large, and offered fifty thousand, but the family refusing to give way, he acceded to their demands. They then added that they would like to have a promise of marriage, conditioned upon the lady’s bearing a male child within a year. To this likewise Henry agreed, in spite of Sully’s remonstrances; and Mdlle. D’Entragues became the acknowledged mistress of the king. It need not be added that the promise of marriage was never fulfilled.

Some time afterward Henry fell in love with a young lady who was betrothed to Marshal Bassompierre. As ardent as ever, he sent for the marshal, explained his feelings, and ordered Bassompierre to renounce his claims. The marshal obeyed, and Henry married the lady (who was a Montmorency) to the Prince of Condé. The marriage was hardly over before the king opened negotiations with the bride. It will be scarcely credited that the[Pg 116] emissary he employed was the mother of the Prince of Condé, who left no means untried to effect the dishonor of her son. The prince, of less complacent temper than most other courtiers, refused to allow his wife to become the king’s mistress. He removed her from France, and, just as Henry was about to send after her, the assassin Ravaillac freed Condé from the danger.

The disorders of Henry III., the predecessor of the King of Navarre, are shamefully notorious. There was a time during his reign when, for the same reason which induced the establishment of Dicteria at Athens, prostitution almost seemed a desirable institution at Paris. In his youth he had been a famous seducer of the ladies of honor. An anecdote of his life at this period not only reveals the tone of the court, but happily shows that depravity was not so universal as might be imagined. When Henry was chosen King of Poland, he was anxious to settle his mistress, Mdlle. de Chateauneuf, by finding her a husband. He applied to a courtier, the Provost of Paris, M. de Nantonillet, but received the scathing reply that “M. de Nantonillet would not marry a prostitute till the king had established brothels in the Louvre.”

It is best, perhaps, to throw a veil over the later stories of Henry III., his mignons, and the frightful infamies that were practiced in Paris in his time. They may be divined from the fact that Brantome mentions some orgies in which the king and a party of friends, male and female, stripped themselves naked, and tried to place themselves on a level with the brute creation, as rather redeeming instances of his sensuality.

We shall take occasion hereafter to follow the history of the court from Louis XIII. to modern times. Meanwhile, some features of society bearing on prostitution in the age we have sketched must be briefly noted.

It is asserted by all the chroniclers that the influence of the League (Ligue) was most pernicious. A sort of religious enthusiasm seems to have been kindled by the sectarian strife of the period, and practices which purported to be religious, but were only immoral, were encouraged by the highest authorities. Religious fanaticism ruled throughout France. Men and women walked naked in processions which were led by the curates. As was natural at an age of civil war, violence was freely used toward females by both of the contending armies. At every city that was taken, either by the Leaguers or the Huguenots, all the women,[Pg 117] married and single, were violated by the soldiery; such, at least, is the statement of a contemporary historian. Moreover, in the general confusion, no proper police was enforced either at Paris or elsewhere, and the windows of print-shops teemed with lewd pictures, which no one, says the historian, thought of having seized. It was, in fact, a period of anarchy. The Moyen de parvenir, by Beroalde de Venille, which has reached us, affords some criterion of the popular literature of the day. Aretino, text and plates, was much in vogue; and Sanchez and Benedicti left their lay rivals far behind in the composition of works which may contend for the palm of lewdness with Martial or Petronius.[192]

Throughout the Middle Ages, and, indeed, up to the middle of the seventeenth century, great complaint was made by the clergy of the indecency of the dress of the people of France. About the thirteenth century it became fashionable to adorn the toe of the shoe or boot with an ornament in metal; either a lion’s claw, or an eagle’s beak, or something of that kind. Some immodest person ventured to substitute a sexual image in bronze for the usual appendage, and the fashion soon became general. Women even adopted it, and all the best society of Paris soon exhibited the indecency on their feet. The king forbade their use by royal edicts,[193] and a special bull was fulminated against them by Pope Urban V.,[194] but the monstrous shoes held their ground against both, and were only disused when fashion set in a different direction. The Braguette was another enormity of the same character. Originally, it is said, the working-classes invented the idea of a small bag hanging between the knees in which a knife or other utensil could be carried. The fashion was adopted about the beginning of the fifteenth century by men of rank, and became immediately of an immodest nature. All the arts of fashion were called into requisition to give the braguettes the most novel and remarkable appearance, and every possible means was used to render them at once disgustingly indecent and extravagantly rich. They were attached to the dress with gay-colored ribbons, and, when the wearer was a rich man, were adorned with jewels and lace. At the time Montaigne wrote, braguettes had almost gone out of vogue: they were worn only by old men, who, in the language of the essayist, “make public parade of what can not decently be mentioned.” Women, on their side, invented hoops, bustles, and low-necked[Pg 118] dresses. The libraries contain a large collection of works written by moralists and preachers of the time against these “indecent abuses” of the ladies. As they are all in use at the present time, we may perhaps conclude that the old French moralists were unnecessarily alarmed; but it is likely that the form of the bustle was by no means as modest as that of modern crinoline skirts, and that the fashion of ladies’ drawers had not yet come in. Such, at least, is the inference from some of the criticisms they provoked. The exposure of the breasts was checked for a time under Louis XIV., but the reform was evanescent, and the custom against which churchmen thundered in the sixteenth century survives to-day.

Some allusion has already been made to the theatre. Theatricals were forbidden by the early French kings, at the instigation of the Church, but the prohibition was evaded by the performance of scenes from the Gospel dramatized. From the remains of these Moralities it would appear that they were always coarse and often immoral. The devil always played a prominent part, and would have been inconsistent had he not outraged decency. Under Henry III. women began to appear on the stage, and farces very broad in ideas and language began to be played instead of the old Moralities. We are led to believe that nothing was too scandalous to be represented on the stage; in fact, the idea seems to have been to crowd as much sensuality and vice into the farces as possible. Scarcely any incident of life was too indecent to be either portrayed or described, and if the latter, the description was given in the most undisguised language. It is altogether impossible to transcribe scenes of this nature. Enough to say that women were made to go through the pains of childbirth on the stage; husband and wife went to bed in presence of the public; and when modesty prompted the retirement of actors for causes still more indecent, a colleague rarely failed to explain why they had retired and what they were doing behind the curtain. Many of La Fontaine’s most grivois stories were taken from farces which were once acted with copious pantomime before the ladies of Paris. Even as late as the reign of Henry IV., plays of this character were commonly acted at Paris at the Hotel de Bourgogne. It was usual for the star actor to speak a prologue or an interlude, which was invariably recommended by its indecency. We have some of the titles of these prologues, and they were generally of the same character as the one on the question, Uter vir an mulier se magis delectet in copulatione.

[Pg 119]Of the number of regular prostitutes exercising their calling in France during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries no correct estimate can be made. It was undoubtedly large. During the religious wars, a writer on the side of Protestantism undertook to draw up a statement of the number of prostitutes and lewd women whose vices were chargeable to the clergy. His estimate is, of course, open to suspicion, as being a sectarian performance; but, allowing for great exaggeration, it will still appear alarming. He calculates that there were at that time one million of women, more or less, who led habitually lewd lives, and ministered to the passions of the clergy. These were independent of the married women who were led into adultery, and of the pimps and procuresses who were in clerical pay.[195]

To return to the laws regulating prostitution, it appears that a serious effort was made to put it down under the sovereignty of Catharine of Medicis. An ordinance of Charles IX., dated 1560, prohibited the opening or keeping of any brothel or house of reception for prostitutes in Paris. For a short period it seems that the practice was actually suppressed, and the consequence is said to have been a large increase of secret debauchery. A few years after the passage of the ordinance, a Huguenot clergyman named Cayet proposed to re-establish public brothels in the interest of the public morals, but the authorities of his Church assailed him so vehemently that his scheme fell to the ground without having had the benefit of a public discussion, and he was himself driven to join the Romanists. In 1588 an ordinance of Henry III. reaffirmed the ordinance of 1560, and alleged that the magistrates of the city had connived at the establishment of brothels. Ordinances of the provost followed in the same strain, and all prostitutes were required to leave Paris within twenty-four hours. An ordinance dated 1635 was still more rigorous. It condemned all men concerned in the “traffic of prostitution” to the galleys for life, and all women and girls to be “whipped, shaved, and banished for life, without any formal trial.” As might be imagined, this ordinance was alternately disregarded and made to serve the purposes of private malice. Men who wished to revenge themselves on their mistresses accused them of being prostitutes; but it does not appear that the actual supply was ever seriously diminished.

[Pg 120]

FRANCE.—HISTORY FROM LOUIS XIII. TO THE PRESENT DAY.

We have thus sketched the history of prostitution in France from the commencement of the French nation to the reign of Louis XIII. This chapter will complete the subject to the present day.

The ordinance of 1560, prohibiting prostitution in any shape, and granting twenty-four hours only to prostitutes and their accomplices to evacuate Paris, remained in force till late in the eighteenth century. Though, so far as the general traffic went, it was a dead letter, it enabled the police authorities to imprison or exile unruly prostitutes from time to time, and was the basis of the high-handed measure by which the colonists of Canada were first supplied with wives direct from the Paris stews. It also enabled noblemen and officials connected with government to avenge themselves upon unfaithful mistresses, and to exercise a convenient sort of tyranny over the pretty lingères and sewing-girls of the metropolis.

In 1684 Louis XIV. made some alteration in the laws governing prostitution. He provided prisons for the detention of prostitutes, and armed the lieutenant of police with authority to correct them; and he drew a broad line of distinction between dissolute women who were not actually upon the town and the class of prostitutes proper.

A farther police regulation on the subject was made in 1713. By that measure a sort of regularity was introduced into the procedure against courtesans and lewd women. They were definitely divided into two classes: women who led dissolute lives without being precisely prostitutes, and prostitutes proper. The police were authorized to interfere against both on complaint of any [Pg 121]person who charged them with outraging public decency. In the case of prostitutes the proceeding was summary. The culprit was summoned, condemned on slight evidence, and sentenced either to exile, imprisonment, or, more rarely, to a whipping or the loss of her hair. With regard to dissolute women who were not regular prostitutes, the authorities proceeded more cautiously. They were entitled to all the privileges of other accused persons, sentences rendered against them being subject to appeal; and, when found guilty, the penalty inflicted was usually a fine. Occasionally, the houses where they had carried on their calling were closed, the furniture was thrown out of the window, and a crier proclaimed their disgrace throughout the city.

Monsieur Parent-Duchatelet, who had the patience to read all the records of proceedings against prostitutes in the city of Paris from 1724 to 1788, infers the law from these instances of its application, and concludes: (1.) That, notwithstanding the ordinance of 1560, brothels were licensed by the police. (2.) That prostitutes were never troubled except on complaint of a responsible person. (3.) That brothels were disorderly; that riots, rows, and murders not unfrequently occurred within their walls or in their neighborhood. (4.) That the punishment was left to the discretion of the magistrate. (5.) That the penalties inflicted were lighter toward the close of the period examined. (6.) That certain streets in Paris were wholly occupied by prostitutes.[196]

Probably with a view to enlarge the discretion of the magistrates, a new ordinance was passed in 1778, renewing, in peremptory language, the prohibitive provisions of the enactment of 1560. This ordinance, which bears the name, and probably emanated from the office of Lenoir, the police magistrate, declares that no public woman shall hereafter try to catch (raccrocher) men on the wharves or boulevards, or in the streets or squares of Paris, under penalty of being shaved, whipped, and imprisoned; that no householder shall let his house, or any part thereof, to prostitutes, under penalty of five hundred francs fine, and that boarding-house keepers shall allow no men and women to sleep together without seeing their marriage contract.

The most curious feature in connection with this ordinance was the fact that it was not intended or held to interfere with established brothels, which the government continued to license as before. It was intended to affect private prostitutes only. We[Pg 122] may judge of its success from the general statement that, soon after its passage, the streets and squares were thronged with prostitutes. No woman or modest person could walk the garden of the Tuileries at night. Lewd women showed themselves at their windows in a state of nudity, and shocked public decency still more glaringly by their postures in the streets. It was, in fact, so complete a failure, that two years after its establishment it was practically repealed by a new police regulation.

In 1791, the whole body of the legislation of the monarchy was abolished, and in its stead the republican Legislature enacted a code which was the only law in force in France. That code making no reference to prostitution, it was inferred by lawyers that women had a natural right to prostitute their bodies if they chose, and accordingly the traffic became open and free. The consequence of this was a tremendous development of the vice. Prostitutes established themselves in every street, and monopolized every public place. Paris became scarcely habitable for modest women. An outcry against this monstrous state of things reached the Executive Directory in 1796, and that body sent a message to the Council of Five Hundred, begging them to legislate on the subject. The message was clear and able, calling upon the council to define “prostitute,” and suggesting that “reiterated offenses legally proved, public notoriety, or arrest in the act,” appeared to constitute proof of prostitution. It seemed to call for penalties, in the shape of imprisonment, on women exercising this calling. But neither this suggestion, nor a subsequent project of the same character was ever carried into effect. Napoleon swept the Palais Royal of the prostitutes who had made it their head-quarters, and broke up some of the greatest brothels by harassing their inmates in various ways, but he made no law on the subject.

In 1811, M. Pasquier, Prefect of Police, drafted a bill for the regulation of prostitutes, but it never went into effect, and the imperial ordinance drawn by the prefect has been lost. Five years later, M. Anglis, Prefect of Police under Louis XVIII., attempted the same thing with no better success, the law officers of the crown seeming to have supposed that the general provisions of the articles of the code on public decency and “outrages upon public morality” covered the particular case of prostitution. The last efforts that were made in France to obtain a law for the regulation of prostitution were in 1819 and 1822, when the ministry seriously thought of settling the whole matter by a royal [Pg 123]declaration. These endeavors had the same fate as the former ones, leading to no result.

A general impression has prevailed of late years that the moral sense of the public would be shocked by any legislative act licensing so great a sin as prostitution; and as the government has assumed, without constitutional warrant, the control and regulation of prostitutes, and has exercised as full authority as it could have done had there been a law on the subject, the deficiency has hardly been felt. A conscientious official has occasionally experienced qualms of conscience at acting without legal warrant; the government has sometimes been frightened by a menace of resistance from some bold lawyer, but no trouble has ever actually arisen, and custom now gives to the police regulations the force of law.

We shall review these regulations in another place; meanwhile a glance must be cast upon the progress of morality in France during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

The gallantry which distinguished the court of Henry IV. became more refined, though not less criminal, under Louis XIII. Adultery and seduction were every-day matters in the circles which educated Mary, Queen of Scots, and developed the wit of the author of Grammont’s Memoirs. Every lady was presumed to have a lover; every man of fashion more than one mistress. Richelieu boasted that no lady could reject him when he chose to throw the handkerchief, and Mazarin was accused of intrigues with the queen herself. Louis did not blush to visit his mistresses at the head of his guards, and in all the pomp of royalty; and, as an instance of their influence over him, it has been stated that it was at the request of Mademoiselle de la Fayette that he consented to visit his wife nine months before the birth of Louis XIV.

A race of women had sprung up, under the teaching of the Medicis, who combined political skill with licentious propensities, and conducted state and amorous intrigues with equal ardor and success. The ladies who surrounded Anne of Austria and Mary of Medicis, and that brilliant circle which has been described in the Memoirs of Madame de Longueville and Madame de Sablé, were undoubtedly as dissipated as they were refined; their virtues were in inverse proportion to their wit. Paris no longer witnessed the Louvre converted into a royal preserve, or detestable debauchees haunting its dark passages; but there reigned throughout the[Pg 124] court an air of polished sensuality, which, in point of fact, must have been at least equally prejudicial to good morals.

Louis XIV. imbibed the spirit of the age during his minority. Royal mistresses had become a recognized institution, fathers and husbands rather courting than dreading dishonor at the hands of the king. After having dispensed his favors with some impartiality among the ladies of the court, he discovered, apparently to his surprise, that one of them, a charming girl, named Louise de la Vallière, really loved him. The only person who showed much annoyance at the warmth with which the king entered upon this new liaison was the Duchess of Orleans, Henrietta of England, the king’s sister-in-law, who seems to have expected that she would be the fortunate recipient of whatever crumbs might fall from the royal table. She was unable, however, to divert Louis from his purpose; La Vallière became his mistress, and bore him two children. When he grew tired of her, as he did soon after the birth of her second child, she retired into a convent, and expiated her fault by thirty years’ austere penitence.

The king then turned his attention to a lady of noble rank, the wife of the Marquis of Montespan, and in a business manner exiled the marquis to his estate, and lived with his wife. A woman otherwise virtuous, proud, and queenly, she lived with the king for fourteen years, and bore him eight children. These children were openly legitimated by Louis, and were married by him to members of the royal family. He even contemplated securing the throne to them, though they were thus doubly adulterine.

The last mistress of Louis XIV. was the famous Madame de Maintenon, the widow of the poet Scarron; a person of remarkable abilities, and old enough to have recovered from the passions which were said to have disturbed her youth. She was introduced to the king as the governess of his illegitimate children, and by her arts contrived not only to wean the king’s heart from his mistress, but even to alienate the children from their mother. For thirty-five years she wielded supreme control over Louis’s mind; and whatever may be said of her early life, and however harsh a judgment must be formed of her political measures, it must be allowed that, in general, her influence was exercised for the good of religion and morality. Under her direction the court became positively devout. Intrigues were concealed, not ostentatiously paraded before the public eye; and the ladies by whom she was surrounded were obliged to lead at least outwardly [Pg 125]decorous lives. She might not be able to check the monstrous practices of the Duke of Orleans; but much of the looseness of the court she could, and really did bring to an end. Her royal lover, who at first piqued himself upon rising as far above obligations of fidelity to his mistresses as he considered himself superior to political obligations to his people, resigned himself to the spiritual direction of the marquise, and allowed old age to assert its rights in condemning him to virtue. All things considered, the last twenty years of Louis XIV.’s reign was perhaps the most moral in the whole history of the monarchy.

This is well illustrated in the history of the literature of the day. The leading philosophers, writers, and poets of the age of Louis XIV. forbore to shock decency, and may be read to-day as safely as any modern work. Preachers—Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue—exercised a potent influence over the tone of letters and society. Corneille, Racine, and their contemporaries provided the stage with a repertory that could never bring a blush to the cheek. Even Molière, who did occasionally let slip a joke of questionable propriety, for the pit’s sake, seems a daring innovator when he is contrasted with his predecessors. Decency is, in fact, one of the most striking characteristics of the literature of the age.

We may also date from the reign of Louis XIV. the final extinction of many of the old feudal rights which were at war with morality. Horrible as it may seem, there were parts of France where the custom allowed the seigneur to debauch the daughter of his vassal without obstacle or penalty. In some provinces it is said to have been customary for the seigneur to enjoy the first night of every girl married within his manor. In others, the peculiar authority of the seigneur over the serfs who were attached to the glebe was held to endow him with the right of using the bodies of their wives and daughters as he saw fit. No written custom justified these monstrous privileges, but frequent allusions to them in the old French writers show that in certain parts they were sanctioned by usage. Louis XIV. made it his especial business to break down the privileges of the nobility, and it was no doubt to the general police regulations he made for the government of the kingdom at large that the extinction of these rights was mainly due.

With the Regency the scene changes. The Duke of Orleans had long been one of the most depraved men in France. So long as Louis XIV. lived he had perforce observed a certain outward[Pg 126] decorum; but the death of the monarch, and the duke’s high-handed seizure of the regency, enabled him to give free scope to his propensities. He resided in the Palais Royal, and gave suppers there almost every evening to a select circle of roués and fast women, among whom Madame de Parabère long held the place of honor. The company not unfrequently varied the entertainment by the performance of charades and tableaux, among which the judgment of Paris was a favorite of the regent. The conversation of the guests was so gross as to shock all but the initiated, and when they separated they were generally all intoxicated.[197]

The most startling and horrible feature of these entertainments was the fact that the regent’s daughter, the Duchess of Berri, was almost always present. Her life was a romance. Married while a child to the Due de Berri, by her passionate temper and her levities she was the bane of her husband’s life. She embraced the infidel and licentious doctrines of the age in company with her father, and the pair were so fond of each other that the most horrible suspicions began to gain ground. They were dispelled for a time by the discovery of an intrigue between the duchess and her chamberlain, which so provoked the duke that he seized his wife by the hair and beat her. On his death, which occurred soon afterward, she gave the reins to her passion, and set an example of scandal. At the Luxembourg, where she had apartments, she exhibited the state of a queen, and lover succeeded lover with startling rapidity. At last she seems to have fallen in love with an officer of her guards, named Riom, whose only merit was youth. He subdued her. She became as docile and submissive to him as she had been intractable and haughty with her former lovers, and all Paris was talking of the transformation. After about a year of this liaison, she gave birth to a child. During the pains of childbirth she was not expected to live, and the curate of St. Sulpice was sent for in all haste to administer the extreme unction. The ecclesiastic happened to be a rigid champion of morality, and he refused to administer the rite till Riom had been dismissed from the Luxembourg. The duchess would not consent to part with her lover, and for many hours this strange conflict went on by the bedside of the failing woman. The curate was obstinate, however, and no sacrament was administered; but the duchess recovering, the regent used his authority, and sent Riom to join[Pg 127] his regiment. It killed his daughter. She invited her father to sup with her, and used all her eloquence to persuade him to let her marry Riom; but the regent remaining firm, she withdrew to her chamber, took to her bed, and died two days afterward.

In alluding to the regent’s mistresses, a word should be said of the famous Claudine du Tencin, whose adventures shed a flood of light on the morals of the day. She was a pretty girl, of respectable, if not noble family, living in a distant province. To escape from a marriage that was forced on her, she took refuge in a convent. Instead, however, of suiting her habits to her place of residence, she contrived to alter the mode of life at the convent so as to meet her desires, and it became famous for the gayety of its social entertainments and the liveliness of its inmates. One of the gentlemen who were allowed to share its hospitality was the poet Destouches. He was smitten with the pretty Claudine, who acknowledged the charm of his accomplishments, and, after a few months’ intimacy, gave birth to a male child, who became the mathematician and philosopher D’Alembert.

Claudine had a brother, an abbé, a man of considerable cunning, and no principle whatever. He persuaded his sister to go to Paris and seek her fortune. He obtained an introduction for her to the regent, and Claudine contrived to produce such an impression that she was soon installed as titular mistress. This did not last long, however. One day, venturing to remonstrate with the regent on his loose mode of life, his habitual drunkenness, etc., her lover lost patience with her, and suddenly summoned a crowd of his courtiers from the ante-chamber to witness the déshabillé and listen to the sermons of madame. In revenge, Claudine rushed out and became the mistress of the prime minister, Cardinal Dubois. Her brother, the abbé, got a bishopric for his share in the transaction.

At the death of Dubois, Madame du Tencin gave him as successor the Duke of Richelieu, the most famous lady-killer of the court. But she was growing old, and ambition had more attractions for her than love. She became an authoress, wrote religious works and novels, patronized letters, and brought out Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws. Her salons became the most fashionable in Paris. It was not a little singular that she should have been the head of one literary clique, and her son, D’Alembert, the chief of another—neither positively jealous of the other, yet living on terms of cold reserve.

Louis XV. trod in the steps of his great-grandfather and the[Pg 128] regent. His amours attracted no attention, being evanescent and trifling, till he quarreled with the queen, and bestowed the title of mistress on the Countess of Mailly. This lady had four sisters, three of whom had reached womanhood. They were jealous of their sister’s success, and solicited a share of the royal favor. The monarch graciously granted their prayer, and admitted all four into an associate liaison. He was much hurt when the fifth, at the age of sixteen, declined an interest in this delectable partnership. Falling ill soon afterward, he allowed his confessor to frighten him into parting with the sisters, and when he got well replaced them by the wife of the subfarmer of the finances, Madame le Normand d’Etoiles. He created her Marquise de Pompadour, and compelled the court to recognize her. Happily for him, she was a person of moderate taste and habits. She patronized letters, was the friend of Voltaire, and seems to have employed her influence over the king for his advantage and that of the public. It is recorded, as an instance of the heartlessness of the king, that when she died he stood at a window to watch her funeral pass, and noticing that it was a rainy day, observed, with a smile, “that the marquise had bad weather for her long journey.”

Her successor was Madame Dubarry, a common prostitute, fished out of the Paris stews in consequence of her skill in debauchery. Her real name was Vanbernier; but, in order to present her at court, a nobleman of the name of Dubarry was persuaded to marry her. It was under her reign that the Parc aux Cerfs (in which Madame de Pompadour was said to have had a hand), reached its highest point of celebrity and eclat. This was a royal seraglio filled with the most beautiful girls that could be bought or stolen. The monstrous old debauchee who filled the throne of France had a weakness for very young girls, fifteen being the age at which he preferred his mistresses. Under the skillful directions of Dubarry, a host of pimps and purveyors searched France for young girls to suit the king’s fancy. Where negotiations could not be effected, the prerogative was stretched, and the police authorities judiciously blinded; but we are led to believe that it was seldom necessary to resort to these violent measures, and that French fathers of that day seldom made difficulties except about the sum to be paid. That the king was liberal may be inferred from the sum which this seraglio cost him—not less than one hundred millions of francs. It was a large, handsomely furnished building at Versailles, giving every woman her separate[Pg 129] apartments. The king rarely visited each one more than three or four times; but, on the occasion of his first visit, he prided himself on observing the etiquette of a husband. He insisted on the poor child whom he was about to ruin kneeling down by the bedside, and saying her prayers in his presence. It need hardly be observed that the Parc aux Cerfs was the great reservoir from whence the brothels of the time derived their supply of recruits. After a residence of a few weeks or months, in case they became pregnant, the poor children were thrown out upon the world, and ruin was a necessity.

The last monarch of the old French line, the unfortunate Louis XVI., forms a bright contrast to his predecessors. His education had been severe, his principles were naturally strict. Placed upon the throne after the Revolution had become inevitable, his whole attention was devoted to the business of reigning, and attempting reforms which came quite too late. Neither he nor his wife ever gave rise to merited scandal.

The profligate character of the court was, however, sustained by the Orleans family and their connections. Philippe Egalité was a true descendant of the regent. On the very eve of the Revolution he indulged in orgies that were closely imitated from those of the Palais Royal.

Our sketch of the immoralities of the French court naturally ends here. Though the period of the Directory was marked by a general looseness in the best French society, and both Napoleon and Louis XVIII. set no example of conjugal fidelity to their subjects, yet vice was not exhibited so openly under them as it had been under former kings, and the laws of decency were not actually set at defiance. Their frailties were private matters, into which it is scarcely the duty of the historian to intrude. The same may be said of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. The former had, in his youth, been a sharer of many of the excesses of the Orleans family, but at the time he became king he was an old man, and could afford to lead a decent life. Louis Philippe had never afforded a theme for scandal, and as king he set an example of rigorous morality.

If we turn back now to the period of the Regency, we shall find letters sympathizing in the most marked manner with the court. Under the regime of severe etiquette and decency established by Louis XIV., authors respected the ear of innocence; under the brutal sway of the regent, and the lewd influence of the satyr Louis[Pg 130] XV., the old prostitution of literature was revived. Thus we find that the most successful authors of the day, such as Voltaire, handled themes grossly immoral in themselves, and rendered still more offensive by their mode of treatment. The most popular novel of the eighteenth century—Manon Lescant—the work, by the way, of an abbé, is the narrative of the adventures of a prostitute. Of all the romance writers of that age, no one was more widely popular or more generally read than Crebillon fils, whose works would almost fall into the hands of the police at the present time. Diderot, Mirabeau, Montesquieu, and, with few exceptions, all the most eminent men of France, prostituted their genius to the composition of erotic works which were widely read by women as well as men. Of the light poetry of the eighteenth century very little is fit for modern reading, the poets being, as a general rule, either dull or depraved. Nor were the arts behindhand. Frescoes differing but little from those which had adorned Fontainebleau under Francis I. again covered the walls of rich men’s houses; and the most fortunate painters of the day were those who could best outrage decency without positively suggesting the brothel. Lewd books and pictures were freely sold in Paris during the Regency, the reign of Louis XV., and the Revolutionary period. Napoleon burned all he could find, but there still remained enough to supply the demand almost ever since.

It should be noticed in connection with the state of morals in France during the second half of the eighteenth century, that the tendency of the philosophical doctrines which were then current was to undermine the respect paid to marriage and chastity. The former, being a sacrament, was assailed as part of the ecclesiastical system; the latter was conceived to be at war with the natural, and, therefore, the proper passions of mankind. Several of the philosophers left it to be inferred from their writings, or stated broadly, that promiscuous intercourse, or, at all events, unlimited facilities of divorce, were the natural destiny of the human race, and that the restrictions which have been imposed on sensual gratification had no warrant in reason or sound ethics. These foolish notions brought forth fruits after their kind. Under the Directory, prostitutes were received into certain societies, and ladies of fashion became prostitutes. Even under the Empire it was not unusual for a lady to request her husband to pay her a visit, as it was well, perhaps, to avoid questions of legitimacy arising at any future period.

[Pg 131]There was one branch of society in which morality had made great progress during the century: that was the Church. It still contained cardinals like Dubois, and bishops and abbés like Du Tencin, but the vast body of the country clergy led pure moral lives. This point is placed beyond a doubt by the silence of the parties opposed to the hierarchy when the Revolution broke out, and they were so disposed to assail the priesthood on every vulnerable point. It may be broadly stated that the vices which had infected the whole body of the clergy during the sixteenth century had disappeared by the eighteenth; despite the law of celibacy, the country curates were, as a rule, moral, austere, virtuous men.

FRANCE.—SYPHILIS.

It properly belongs to this chapter to allude to the rise and progress of the diseases termed syphilitic.

Whether they were of ancient date—whether the “shameful diseases” which have been mentioned in the chapter devoted to prostitution at Rome were the same as the modern syphilis—may be decided by the reader. It will suffice here to say that, throughout the Middle Ages, a species of disease, termed sometimes leprosy, sometimes pudendagra, appears to have prevailed in France as in other European countries, and to have chosen for its chief seat the organs of generation. It was not, however, till the close of the fifteenth century that public attention began to be generally directed to the subject of sexual disease.

We shall briefly enumerate the earliest notices of its appearance. When Charles VIII. entered Naples in 1495, he found the city suffering from a plague (syphilis) to which the prejudice of the natives gave the name of “French malady.” Italy, said the writers of the day, was attacked simultaneously by the French army and this new disease.[198] Most of the Italian writers accuse[Pg 132] the French of its introduction. Benevenis, however, says they got it from the Spaniards, and Guicciardini candidly admits that his countrymen were the real propagators of the malady. German physicians likewise traced its origin to Naples, and placed it about the year 1493,[199] ascribing it to an untoward planetary conjunction. The disease appeared at Barcelona in 1493, and in other parts of Spain in the following year.[200] But sixty years before, in 1430, public regulations had been made in London to prevent the admission of persons attacked with a disease very similar to syphilis into houses of prostitution, and requiring the police to keep constant watch over such as should show symptoms of this infirmitas nefanda.[201] The first authentic allusion to the disease in France is the ordinance of the Parliament of Paris, dated 1497, ordering all persons attacked by the “large pox” to vacate the city within twenty-four hours, and not to return till they were cured; providing a sort of hospital for those who can not move; and appointing agents to bestow four sols parisis on the exiles to pay for their journey.[202] This ordinance alludes to the disease having been prevalent for two years.

It may therefore be taken for granted that, whether syphilitic diseases had existed before or not, they prevailed to a very alarming extent throughout Europe at the close of the fifteenth century.

To prevent misconception, it may be as well to give the diagnostic signs of the “French malady” as furnished by Fracastor: “The patients were in low spirits, and broken down; their faces were pale. Most of them had chancres upon the organs of generation. These chancres were obstinate; when cured in one place they reappeared in another, and the work was never ended. Pustules with a hard surface appeared upon the skin, generally on the head first. On first appearing they were small, but gradually increased to the size of an acorn, which they resembled in shape. In some cases they were dry, in others humid; some were livid, others white and pale, others again hard and reddish. They burst after a few days, and discharged an incredible quantity of vile fetid humor. When they began to suppurate they became true phagedænic ulcers, consuming both flesh and bone. When they attacked the upper part of the body they gave rise to malign fluxions, which gnawed away the palate, or the windpipe, or the[Pg 133] throat, or the tonsils. Some patients lost their lips, others the nose, others the eyes, others the whole organs of generation. Many were troubled with moist tumors on the limbs, which grew as large as eggs or small loaves. When they burst, a white and mucilaginous liquor exuded from them. They were usually found on the legs and arms. Some were ulcerated, others again remained callous to the last. And, as if this was not enough, the patients suffered terrible pains, especially at night, not only in the articulations, but in the limbs and nerves. Some sufferers, however, had pustules without pains, others pains without pustules; but, in most cases, both occurred together. The patients were languid, had no appetite, desired to remain constantly in bed. The face and legs swelled. Some had a slight fever, but this was rare; others had severe headaches for which no remedy could be found.”[203]

At first, it seems, the faculty, strangely misapprehending its duties, refused to treat patients assailed by this new plague. As at Rome, they were left to the tender mercies of quacks, barbers, and old women. About the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, the extent of the mischief provoked sympathy from the physicians, and one or two treatises appeared on the subject. Sudorifics seem to have been the chief agent employed. Large use was made of holy wood (the wood of the lignum-vitæ-tree), which was imported from America for the purpose. It was doses of holy wood, in decoction, which are said to have saved the life of the great Erasmus.

After the passage of the law of 1497, a house in the Faubourg St. Germain was appropriated to the reception of the victims of syphilis; but there is no reason to believe that any attempt was made to treat them there. They were left to die, or to quack themselves. Eighteen years after, in 1505, the house in question being too small for the numbers of the sick, and it being clearly shown that syphilis was not contagious except by sexual intercourse or positive peculiar contact with the person afflicted, a new decree of Parliament appropriated funds for the construction of “a hospital for persons attacked by the large pox (les grands vérolés),” and directed that they should be properly cared for.[204] This decree was never carried into effect. Thirty years afterward the condition of the sick was far worse than it had ever been, they being left to die in the streets. A new decree, in 1535, appointed commissioners to choose a locality for a hospital; and, notwithstanding some [Pg 134]opposition from the religious authorities, they performed their task. A small hospital was appropriated to syphilitic patients, and persons suffering from itch, epilepsy, and St. Vitus’s dance. It was soon filled, and several patients were thrust into the same bed. Owing to mismanagement on the part of the directors, it was short of linen, lint, and medicine. The Parliament interfered, but without success; and, in despair, the unfortunate sufferers contrived to effect an entrance into the hospital general, the Hotel Dieu. They were soon admitted on the same terms as other sufferers; but, as the establishment was far too small to accommodate all who sought refuge there, they were thrust four and five together into the same bed, and persons with syphilitic diseases lay by the side of men in contagious fevers, and others with broken legs and arms.

The Parliament interfered a second time. The municipal officers of Paris were assembled, and called upon to provide a hospital for venereal cases; but for many years the strenuous opposition of the Hotel Dieu neutralized all the efforts that were made. It was not till 1614 that the project of the Parliament was realized, and a syphilitic hospital actually opened.

Up to this time, that is to say, for a period of a century and a quarter, persons attacked by venereal disease were left to the care of Providence. Males could, with some exertion, occasionally obtain admission to the Hotel Dieu, where they often contracted new diseases without getting rid of the old; but of females, not a word had yet been spoken. No one in that hundred and twenty-five years had ever raised a voice to plead on behalf of the prostitutes; it never seems to have occurred, even to the Parliament which had so much sympathy for the pauvres vérolés, that the women likewise deserved pity and attention.

We possess no information with regard to the treatment used in this new hospital. It is certain, however, that, in obedience to the law of its foundation, patients were soundly whipped when they entered and when they left it, by way of punishing them for having contracted the disease. In 1675 the managers of the hospital declared that this practice deterred many sick persons from coming forward and confessing their condition; but it prevailed, apparently, for a quarter of a century afterward.

About the middle of the seventeenth century, under the reign of Louis XIV., a hospital prison, named the Salpétrière, was established for the reception of prostitutes; but, by a strange inconsistency, in 1658 it was closed to women suffering from syphilis[Pg 135] (femmes gatées), and physicians were directed to examine all women “who showed symptoms of syphilis on the face.” A few years’ experience showed the fallacy of this system. Diseased women were confined in the place; should they not be treated there? The physicians thought they should, and accordingly, though in violation of the rules of the establishment, a small room was appropriated to this class of patients. It appears that at this time a prostitute found some difficulty in obtaining admission to the Salpétrière; it being not unusual for unfortunate creatures to have themselves arrested for vagabondage, and to submit voluntarily to the whipping which the ethics of the day required in the case of females as well as males, in order to obtain medical treatment. It will be seen that our New York system can not claim the merit of originality. Prostitutes, in fact, flocked to the Salpétrière in such numbers that the room furnished by the connivance of the authorities was soon far too small to accommodate them. The hospital managers declared to the royal government that medical treatment was out of the question in so crowded an apartment, and that a putrid fever might be expected if better accommodations were not provided. In reply, the government placed at their disposal a ward in the hospital of Bicêtre.

This was in 1691. For nearly a hundred years afterward the severe cases of venereal disease were sent to Bicêtre, the milder ones kept at Salpétrière. Both establishments were a disgrace to humanity. The patients were cheated of the food allowed them, and supplied with cheap broth and cheese in its stead. No baths, and but few medicines were at their command. Their ward was filthy, close, and in ruin. Patients were often obliged to wait so long for medical attendance that their maladies became incurable. The air in which they lived was pestiferous, and no one could visit the hospital without being shocked at its aspect.[205] Medical men who saw the place expressed amazement that so many persons should exist in so small a room. Eight women slept in a bed, and in the room appropriated to those whose turn for treatment had not come, the patients slept by gangs, one half sleeping from 8 P.M. to 1 A.M., and the remainder from 1 A.M. to 7 A.M. The floor was covered with dirt and filth, and the windows were nailed down, for fear of their being broken if opened. There was but little linen, and that was in rags, and abominably dirty. One[Pg 136] hundred persons only were treated at a time, fifty men and fifty women. A new batch was admitted to treatment every two months, and, as the hospital always contained from three to four hundred sufferers, some cases remained six or eight months without any treatment whatever. Many died before they reached the hands of the doctors. The diet was the same for all. Those who had not been admitted to treatment were supplied with coarse bread, cheese, rancid butter, and (very seldom) a little meat. The surgeons of Bicêtre usually made fortunes in a short time.[206]

If any thing farther were needed to characterize the hospital of Bicêtre in the eighteenth century, it would be the rules in virtue of which no diseased person could claim admission until a complete year had elapsed from the time of their first application, and every diseased person was turned out, whether ill or well, after six weeks’ treatment. It was stated to M. Parent-Duchatelet that the average mortality was one hundred women and sixty men per annum.[207]

In 1787, Dr. Cullerier was appointed surgeon in charge of syphilitic cases at Bicêtre. He commenced his administration by denouncing the state of things he found there, and it is mainly from the memoires he addressed to the government that the preceding facts have been obtained. His representations seem to have met with but little success. In 1789, however, the bulk of the prisoners at Bicêtre were set free, and he immediately availed himself of the increased room to accommodate his patients.

The reform was so slight, or rather so vast a reform was needed, that the moment the attention of the republican government was drawn to the subject, it removed the syphilitic cases from the hospital of Bicêtre to the hospital of the Capuchins. That establishment was enlarged, and named the Hospital of the South (l’Hôpital du Midi). Gardens and baths were provided; ample wards permitted the classification of diseases; the food was of the best kind, and sufficient in quantity. This immense step was the work of the republican authorities.

It was, however, only the first of a series of reforms. Originally, men and women of all grades were admitted promiscuously. This led to grave inconveniences. The decorum of the hospital was frequently disturbed by the conduct of some of the men with regard to the prostitutes in the adjoining wards. To obviate this, a new hospital was set apart, under the reign of Charles X., for[Pg 137] the reception of male patients only. It is the Hospital de Lourcine.

A still more serious trouble arose from the mixture of prostitutes with other women who, from the infidelity of their husbands, hereditary disease, or other causes, found themselves infected with syphilis. For some time complaints had been made on this head, but an accident, which occurred in 1828, compelled the authorities to act. The daughter of a professional nurse, residing in the vicinity of Paris, caught syphilis from a child her mother was nursing, who had inherited the disease. It took the shape of a virulent chancre on the palate, and the girl was sent to the Hospital du Midi for treatment. She found herself thrust among the vilest prostitutes, whose language and sentiments shocked her so terribly that she insisted on leaving the hospital at once. The physician on duty declined to grant her request, whereupon the poor girl contrived to get into the yard, and threw herself into a well. She was drowned, and on an autopsy of her corpse it appeared that she was a virgin. This dreadful incident aroused the public mind. Hitherto the disposal of the prostitutes had been a subject of dispute between the administration of the hospital and that of the city, each wishing to thrust them upon the other. The government now interfered, and special accommodation was provided for prostitutes at the prison of Saint Lazare. The Hospital du Midi was devoted exclusively to such women as were not inscribed on the rolls of the police.

Before these distributions took place, when men and women were indiscriminately received at the Hospital du Midi, the average annual admissions, from 1804 to 1814, were 2700; from 1822 to 1828 it exceeded an average of 3100. Twenty years ago the mortality was said to be less than two per cent.; it was ten per cent. at Bicêtre.

At the Hospital du Midi, diseased persons who do not desire admission to the hospital are treated outside, all the medicines they require being furnished them free of charge.

It would appear, from stray allusions in various old ordinances, that some sort of medical office had been established in the eighteenth century by the government, for the purpose of affording gratuitous advice to prostitutes, and denouncing those who were diseased; but there exists no positive evidence of any such establishment or office. It was not till 1803 that a regulation was made by the prefect of police, requiring all public women to [Pg 138]submit to be visited by a physician appointed by him. The plan was a bad one, as the physician was paid by fees which he was authorized to exact; and it was rendered worse in practice by the dishonesty of the man chosen for the office, one Coulon. This individual made money and neglected his duties. The system was altered in 1810, and a dispensary established, with a strong medical staff, who were directed to visit all the prostitutes in Paris. This institution is still in existence; it will be further noticed in the next chapter.

When the dispensary was established, its medical officers were directed to offer to prostitutes the choice of being treated at home or going to the hospital. Almost all chose the former. The physicians then undertook to decide themselves which should go to the hospital and which remain in their houses. The results of their experience, and the policy it compelled them to adopt, are shown in the following table, which was compiled by Parent-Duchatelet:

The system of treating prostitutes at home was, in fact, given up. It was found they could not be compelled to take the medicines given them; and that, though laboring under the most severe disease, they would not abstain from the exercise of their calling.

The tables prepared by the sanitary office, or dispensary, at Paris, afford a clear view of the extent and progress of disease in that city. Of those which are furnished by M. Parent-Duchatelet, we shall take a few of the most striking. The following gives the aggregate disease for a period of twenty years:

[Pg 139]Other tables, apparently drawn with care, show that the proportion of disease to prostitutes varies widely in different years. In 1828 it was six per cent., that is to say, six out of every hundred prostitutes were diseased; but in 1832 it was barely three per cent. Four or five per cent. would seem a tolerably fair average.[209]

From another table compiled by the same author we gather that, during a period of eighteen years, January was found the most fatal month for prostitutes; next came August and September; while February, April, May, and July seemed seasons less favorable to disease. M. Duchatelet, however, candidly admits that he can trace the operation of no law here, and inclines to the belief that the variation is wholly due to chance.[210]

FRANCE.—PRESENT REGULATIONS.

It remains to describe the state and system of prostitution at Paris at the present day. The vast importance of the subject will doubtless justify the length at which it must be treated.

It was usual, during the last century, to estimate the number of prostitutes in Paris at twenty-five or thirty thousand. Even as late as 1810, the number was said by good authority to be not less than eighteen thousand.[211] The police rolls show that these calculations were wide of the mark. According to them, the average number of prostitutes inscribed had risen, from about 1900 in 1814, to 3558 in 1832, the last year of which we have any record. Assuming that the number at present is 4500, or thereabouts, which would suppose an increase equal to that noted before 1832, the[Pg 140] prostitutes are one to every two hundred and fifty of the total population. Of these the city of Paris furnishes rather more than one third. The remainder come from the departments; those bordering on Paris being the most fruitful of prostitutes, and the north being largely in excess of production over the south.

The vast majority of these prostitutes are the children of operatives and mechanics. Of 828 fathers, there were

Whereas there were only

The inference drawn by M. Parent-Duchatelet from this is, that brothels are supplied from the classes of domestics and factory-girls; and that girls not bred to work rarely find their way into them. Rather more than one third of the fathers of these prostitutes were unable to sign their names.

Of the prostitutes born at Paris, about one fourth were illegitimate; of those born in the departments, one eighth were illegitimate.

Rather more than half the Paris prostitutes could not write their names; a degree of ignorance which argues very remarkable neglect on the part of parents, for at Paris every one may learn to write gratuitously, and a person who can not write will always experience difficulty in obtaining employment.

Nearly half the prostitutes were between the ages of twenty and twenty-six inclusive. One declared herself, or was proved to be, only twelve years old; thirty-four were over fifty; two were over sixty. On reference to the rolls of inscription, it appeared that the bulk of the prostitutes registered themselves between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two; but thirty-four were inscribed before the age of fourteen, which may be assumed to be the period of puberty in France, and a few after passing fifty.

[Pg 141]The following table shows the number of years during which the Paris prostitutes had exercised their calling at the time the inquiry was made:

M. Duchatelet made careful inquiries into the causes of prostitution. He admits that, the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy information on this head being very great, many errors may have found their way into his calculations. He gives them, however, for what they may be worth.

It appears that there were in Paris, in 1832, two hundred and twenty “tolerated houses”—that is to say, brothels. The rules regarding these are numerous. They can not be established in certain localities, such as the Boulevards, or other great thoroughfares. They must not be within one hundred yards of a church, or within fifty or sixty yards of a school, whether for boys or girls; of a palace or other public building, or of a large boarding-house. The proprietor of the house must have given his consent before the house can be used as a brothel. Two houses can not be established side by side, much less can they have the same entry. As a general rule, a preference is given to small, narrow streets, especially culs de sac, and to places where brothels have been established before.

With regard to the interior of these houses, they must contain a room for each girl; on no account are two prostitutes allowed[Pg 142] to occupy the same room, much less the same bed. Each room must, moreover, be amply provided with utensils, soap, and water, for ablution. No house of prostitution can have back or side doors, or in any way communicate with the adjoining buildings. No house can contain dark closets, or dark passages, or concealed hiding-places. In none of them can any trade or traffic be carried on.

With regard to the class of houses called maisons de passe (assignation houses), the police authorities require that in every such house two regular prostitutes, inscribed on the police rolls, shall live permanently. The object of this rule is to obtain a control and supervision over these houses. Before it was adopted the police was often embarrassed by denials of its authority to invade them. It is found that the prostitutes, being naturally hostile to the mistresses of the houses, will act as agents of the police in the event of any scandalous proceedings.

The windows of houses of prostitution must be roughed, as also must those of rooms where individual prostitutes live. They can only be partially opened. These regulations were made in consequence of the shocking scenes that were witnessed at the windows of brothels after the Revolution, naked women being the least of the scandals that used to be exposed.

No one can keep a house of prostitution in Paris without an authorization from the police. Men are never permitted to keep establishments of the kind. A woman who desires to open a house must apply in writing to the Prefect of Police. On receipt of her application, reference is made to the Commissary of Police of the ward to ascertain her character. If she has been condemned for crime or misdemeanor, her request is rarely granted. If she stands in the police books as a woman requiring supervision, she can not succeed. Nor can she obtain a license, under ordinary circumstances, unless she has been a prostitute herself. The reason of this regulation is obvious; no one but a prostitute understands the business thoroughly; and as the position of brothel-keeper is found to be the most demoralizing station in the world, it has been the policy of the Paris police to throw impediments in the way of persons not wholly depraved devoting themselves to so dangerous a calling. Furthermore, the applicant must have reached a certain age. She must also be of sober habits, and apparently possessed of sufficient force of character to be able to command a house full of prostitutes. She must possess a sum of[Pg 143] money sufficient to guarantee her against immediate failure, and she must own the furniture in the house she wishes to keep.

When all these conditions are fulfilled, the applicant receives a pass-book, in which the number of girls she is allowed to keep is specified. In this book she is bound to enter the name of every prostitute she receives, whether as a boarder or a transient lodger; her age, the date of her entry into her house, the date of her inspection by a physician, and the date of her departure from the house. A printed form in the beginning of the pass-book reminds the mistress of the house that she is bound, under heavy penalties, to inscribe on the police rolls every girl she receives within twenty-four hours of her arrival.

In the event of the neglect of these rules by the keepers of houses of prostitution, the license is revoked. It is understood that the police enforce this regulation with due rigor.

Much has been said and written about the manner in which the keepers of houses of prostitution obtain recruits. M. Parent-Duchatelet, whose sources of information were the best, gives it as his opinion that most of the prostitutes are obtained from the hospitals, especially the Hospital du Midi, where female venereal diseases are treated. It appears that this hospital and others are haunted by old women who have been prostitutes, and who, in their old age, eke out a livelihood by enticing others into the same calling. They soon discover the antecedents and disposition of every young girl they find in hospitals; and if she be pretty or engaging, she must either have much principle or careful friends to rescue her from the clutches of the old hags. While she lies ill on a bed of pain, the latter are constantly with her, and gain her friendship. They know the devices that are needed to impose on her simplicity, and not unfrequently are enabled to strengthen their promises by small donations in money, or a weekly stipend during her convalescence. For a pretty girl as much as fifty francs will be paid by a brothel-keeper. As the girls in France, with few exceptions, come to Paris to be cured when they have contracted disease from association with lovers, it seems quite likely that, as M. Parent-Duchatelet supposes, these hospitals are a fruitful source of prostitutes.

Other brothel-keepers have female agents in the country towns, who send them girls. One well-known woman, who kept for many years one of the largest establishments in France, employed a traveling clerk with a large salary. Some obtain boarders from[Pg 144] their own province or native city; others, who have followed a trade, get recruits from the acquaintances they made at the workshop. Latterly, it would seem, pimps have carried on their trade with unusual boldness and success. Some time since it was noticed that an uncommon number of girls arrived at Paris from Rheims. They all came provided with the name and address of the houses to which they were destined, and drove there from the stage-office. Information was sent to the police authorities of Rheims, and on their arrival the girls were sent back again. The design of the authorities was baffled for a while by the cunning of the pimps, who sent their recruits round by other roads; but the police finally triumphed by refusing, for a year or two, to inscribe any prostitutes from Rheims.

It is notorious, however, that the same traffic is carried on at the present day to an alarming extent between London and Paris, London and Brussels, and other large cities in the neighborhood. Several societies have been formed, and the police have made great exertions to suppress the trade, but without any particular success.

It is understood that the prostitutes of Paris receive nothing for their “labors” but their board, lodging, and dress. The latter is often expensive. In first-class houses it will exceed five hundred francs, which in female attire will go as far at Paris as five hundred dollars will in New York. The whole of the fees exacted from visitors goes to the mistress, and the girls are reluctantly permitted to retain the presents they sometimes receive from their lovers. They are usually in debt to the mistress, who, having no other means of retaining them under her control, hastens to advance them money for jewelry, carriages, fine eating, and expensive wines. No written contract binds them to remain where they are; they may leave when they please, if they can pay their debts; and the obligation they incur for the latter is one of honor only, and can not be enforced in the courts.

Houses of prostitution, when well conducted, are very profitable in Paris. It is estimated that the net profits accruing from each girl ought to be ten francs or more per day. Many keepers of houses have retired with from ten to twenty-five thousand francs a year, and have married their daughters well. The good-will of a popular house has been sold for sixty thousand francs (twelve thousand dollars).

We now come to the great feature of the Paris system: the [Pg 145]inscription of prostitutes in a department of the Prefecture of Police, called the Bureau des Mœurs. It seems that some sort of inscription was in use before the Revolution, but no law referring to it, or records of the rolls, can be found. Various systems were employed during the Republic and the Empire. The one now in use was adopted in 1816, and amended by a police regulation of 1828.

Prostitutes are inscribed either

When a girl appears before the bureau under any of these circumstances, she is asked the following questions, the answers being taken down in writing:

The answers to these inquiries suggest others, which are put at the discretion of the officials. Their practice is so great that they are rarely deceived by the women; M. Parent-Duchatelet affirms that they could tell an old prostitute merely by the way she sat down.

The interrogatory over, the girl is taken by an inspector to the Dispensary and examined, and the physician on duty reports the result, which is added to the inquiry. Meanwhile, the police registers have been consulted, and if the girl has been an old offender, or is known to the police, she is now identified.

If the girl has her baptismal certificate (extrait de naissance) with[Pg 146] her, she is forthwith inscribed, and registered among the public women of Paris. As prostitutes rarely possess this document, however, a provisional inscription is usually effected, and a direct application is made to the mayor of the city or commune where she was born for the certificate. This application varies according to the age of the girl. If she is of age it is simply a demand for the “extrait de naissance of —— ——, who says she is a native of your city or commune.” If, on the contrary, she is a minor, the application states that “a girl who calls herself ————, and says she was born at ——, has applied for inscription in this office. I desire you to ascertain the position of her family, and what means they propose to take in case they desire to secure the return of this young girl.”

It often happens that the family implore the intervention of the police; in that case the girl is sent back to the place whence she came. In many cases the family decline to interfere, and then the girl is duly inscribed on the register. She signs a document, in which she states that, “being duly acquainted with the sanitary regulations established by the Prefecture for Public Women, she declares that she will submit to them, will allow herself to be visited periodically by the physicians of the Dispensary, and will conform in all respects to the rules in force.”

Of course this procedure is occasionally delayed by falsehoods uttered by the women. It often used to happen that the mayors would report that no person of the name given had been born at the time fixed in their city or commune. In that case the girl was recalled, and made to understand that truth was better policy than falsehood. Girls rarely held out longer than a fortnight or so, and, at the present time, the number of false declarations is very small indeed. They seem satisfied that the police are an omniscient machine which can not be deceived.

When the girl is brought to the office either by a brothel-keeper or an inspector, the proceeding is slightly varied. In the latter case she has been arrested for indulging in clandestine prostitution, but she almost invariably denies the fact, and pleads her innocence. The rule, in this case, is to admonish her and let her go. It is not till the third or fourth offense has been committed that she is inscribed. When the mistress of a house brings a girl to the office, interrogatories similar to the above are put to her. If she has relations or friends at Paris, they are sent for and consulted. When the girl appears evidently lost, she is duly [Pg 147]inscribed; but if she shows any signs of shame or contrition, she is often sent home by the office at the public expense. It need hardly be said that when a girl is found diseased she is sent to hospital and her inscription held over. It occasionally happens that virgins present themselves at the office and desire to be inscribed; in their case the officials use compulsion to rescue them from infamy.

In a word, the Paris system with regard to inscriptions is to inscribe no girl with regard to whom it is not manifest that she will carry on the calling of a prostitute whether she be inscribed or not.

From the following table, prepared by M. Parent-Duchatelet from the records of a series of years, it appears that the mistresses of houses inscribe over one third of the total prostitutes:

The age at which girls can be inscribed has varied under different administrators. Under one it was seventeen, under his successor eighteen, under the next twenty-one years; but now the general rule is that no girl should be inscribed under the age of sixteen. Exceptions to this rule are made in the case of younger girls—of thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen, who lead a life of prostitution, and are frequently attacked by disease. From a regard to public health, they are inscribed notwithstanding their age.

Only second in importance to the subject of inscription is that of “radiation,” the obliteration of an inscription. This is the process by which a prostitute takes leave of her calling, throws off the control of the police, and regains her civil rights. At Rome, as has been shown already, no such formality as radiation was known to the law; once a prostitute, always a prostitute, was the Roman rule. This system did not long sustain the test of a Christian examination.

The policy of the French Bureau des Mœurs on this head is governed by two very simple maxims: 1st. The amendment of prostitutes ought to be encouraged as much as possible; 2d. But no prostitute should be released from the supervision of the police and the visits of the Dispensary physicians until there is reasonable ground for believing that her repentance and alteration of life are sincere and likely to be permanent.

A person desiring to have her name struck from the rolls of[Pg 148] public women must make a written application, specifying her reasons for desiring to change her mode of life, and indicating the means of support on which she is henceforth to rely. In three cases the demand is granted forthwith: 1st. When the girl proves that she is about to marry; 2d. When she produces the certificate of a physician that she is attacked by an organic disease which renders it impossible for her to continue the calling of a prostitute; and, 3d. When she has gone to live with her relations, and produces evidence of her late good behavior.

In all other cases the office awards a “provisional radiation.” For a period of time, which varies, according to circumstances, from three months to a year, the girl is still under the supervision of the police, such supervision being obviously secret and discreet. When the girl passes triumphantly through this period of probation, her name is definitely struck from the roll of prostitutes.

When a girl, after having her name thus struck out, desires to be inscribed afresh, her request is granted without delay or inquiry, it being wisely supposed that she has repented of her decision. A re-inscription also takes place when a girl, after radiation, is found in a house of prostitution even as a servant.

A prostitute is struck from the rolls by authority of the office when she has disappeared, and no trace of her has been found for three months.

M. Parent-Duchatelet gives the following table of radiations, which, taken in connection with the table already given of the number of prostitutes registered, shows the movement of reform:

Once inscribed, prostitutes are divided into three classes:

1st. Those who live in a licensed or “tolerated” brothel.

2d. Those who live alone in furnished rooms.

3d. Those who live in rooms which they furnish, and outwardly bear no mark of infamy.

[Pg 149]In the eye of the law there is no difference between the three classes; all are equally subject to police and medical supervision. Every girl that is inscribed receives a card bearing her name, and the number of her page in the register; a blank column of this card is left to be filled by a memorandum of the date of each visit by the physicians of the Dispensary.

But the three classes differ in respect of the place where they are visited. The Dispensary physicians visit the inmates of brothels in the houses where they live; all other prostitutes visit them at the Dispensary. Yet another visit is made by the Dispensary physicians to the Dépôt, or Lock-up, at the Prefecture of Police; as there are always a certain number of prostitutes arrested for drunkenness or disorderly conduct every night, it was thought well to seize the opportunity of their confinement to inquire into the state of their health.

All houses of prostitution are visited by the Dispensary physicians once a week; the hour of the visit is known beforehand, and every girl must be present and pass inspection. The examination is private; the result is noted in a “folio” kept by the physician, and a corresponding memorandum is made in the pass-book of the house and on the card of the prostitute. When disease is detected, the mistress of the house is notified, and cautioned not to allow the girl diseased to receive any visitors. That afternoon, or the next morning, she comes or is brought to the Dispensary, where she undergoes a second examination, and, if the result is the same as at the first, she is forthwith sent to Saint Lazare for treatment.

Free prostitutes, that is to say, those who live in lodgings or rooms furnished by themselves, are bound to visit the Dispensary, and submit to examination once a fortnight. They choose the time and day themselves, but more than a fortnight must not elapse between the visits.

It appears, from tables published by M. Parent-Duchatelet, that these rules are strictly enforced. Free prostitutes are visited nearly thirty times a year, and prostitutes in tolerated houses more than fifty times. We have alluded elsewhere to the results of the visits.

Experience has proved that the only safe method of punishment for prostitutes is imprisonment. Formerly they were whipped, and at a later date their hair was cut off; but the humane spirit of modern legislation has rejected both these punishments as unduly cruel. At the present day, offenses against the rules [Pg 150]concerning prostitution (delits de prostitution) are punished by imprisonment; misdemeanors and crimes provided against by the code being within the cognizance of the ordinary courts in the case of prostitutes as well as other persons.

Delits de prostitution have been divided by the Bureau des Mœurs into two classes, slight offenses and grave offenses; slight offenses are:

This class of offenses is punished by imprisonment for not less than a fortnight or more than three months. One month is the usual term.

A prostitute is held to be guilty of grave offenses when she

These offenses are punished by imprisonment for not less than three months, and not more than a year, rarely more than six months. The time is fixed in these cases with reference to the former character of the prostitute.

When a prostitute is arrested she is taken to the Prefecture of Police, where there is a room specially appropriated to her class. She is tried within forty-eight, usually within twenty-four hours[Pg 151] of her arrival. When condemned, she is conveyed in a close carriage or van to the prison.

The prison at Paris usually contains from four hundred and fifty to six hundred inmates. They are all obliged to work. A few are generally found incapable, either from idiocy, blindness, or incorrigible obstinacy, of performing even the simplest work. These are lodged in a department called “the ward of the imbeciles.” The others are allowed to choose their work; the bulk naturally take to sewing. They are paid a small sum for what they do, partly as they proceed with the work, and the balance when they leave the prison. Industrious girls receive, from the money coming to them, from five to eight sous daily. That this, added to the ample food supplied by the prison, suffices for their wants, is proved by the frequent purchases they make of flowers and other superfluities. Formerly, prostitutes in prison were not expected to work, and at this period fights and disturbances were of constant occurrence. Now the discipline is excellent and the prisoners orderly. The only penalty for disobedience of rules or misconduct is close confinement in the cachot.

M. Parent-Duchatelet admits that the prison discipline is so gentle that the punishment has no terrors for prostitutes. It is quite common to find girls who have been thirty times condemned to imprisonment. He recommends the use of the tread-mill as a corrective.

His experience led him to question the utility of nuns and priests in the prostitutes’ prison. He does not think they do any good, and inclines to the belief that the counsels and visits of married women, who look rather to the moral than religious reform of the women, would be productive of more benefit.

The old practice in France was to admit visitors to the prostitutes’ prison at certain hours and in a certain room, but this was found to be productive of great evils. The scenes in the visitors’ room were outrageous, and a new system was accordingly adopted. No one was allowed to visit a prostitute but a bona fide relation, and even such a one was required to obtain a written permit from the Prefecture of Police.

A certain number of prostitutes are sent every year to the prison of St. Denis. These are those who, from physical or mental infirmities, such as recto-vaginal fistula, cancer, incurable organic disease, idiocy, etc., are incapacitated from pursuing their calling, and run risk of starvation. Not more than eight or ten of these[Pg 152] are sent to St. Denis in the course of the year. The mortality among them there is not less than twenty-five per cent. per annum.[212]

Until a few years ago, a tax was levied on the Paris prostitutes for the support of the Dispensary. Each mistress of a house paid twelve francs per month; each girl living alone, three francs per month. A fine of two francs was also laid on all prostitutes who were behind their time in visiting the Dispensary. The product of these various taxes amounted to from seventy-five to ninety thousand francs per annum. The system was abolished on the ground of its immorality. A popular notion is said to have prevailed that the police received half a million or more from the tax on prostitution, and attacks on the administration in consequence were incessant. The police authorities gave way at last, and the municipal council of the city undertook to defray the cost of the Dispensary for the future. Similar taxes appear to have existed at Lyons, Strasbourg, and other cities.[213]

Allusion has been made to inspectors. At the time M. Parent-Duchatelet wrote there were ten inspectors, who had each charge of one tenth of the city. Their business was to see that the regulations governing prostitutes were carried out. They arrested offending women, and transferred them to the Prefecture of Police. In case of resistance, they summoned the aid of the ordinary police of the ward. They were not allowed themselves to use violence either to arrest or drag a girl to prison. They were usually picked men of good character. Their salary was twelve hundred francs a year, besides handsome presents.[214]

In conclusion, a word must be said of the establishment called the Bon Pasteur. It is a Magdalen Asylum established many years ago by some benevolent ladies, and now mainly supported by an annual vote from the city of Paris, and an allowance from the hospitals. It receives prostitutes who desire to reform; feeds, clothes, and instructs them; provides them with places when they desire to leave, or with work when they wish to remain in the establishment. The rule is that no prostitute can be received under eighteen or over twenty-five years of age. Beyond these limits it has been found that the humane efforts of the directresses of the establishment have rarely led to any result. No compulsion is used in any case by the managers. Girls are free to leave as they are free to come. So long as they remain, however, they must conform to the rules of the establishment, which are strict[Pg 153] without being monastic. The average admissions to the asylum for the first twelve years of its existence were twenty per annum. The mortality among the residents was very large, being equal to twenty per cent. on the total number during the twelve years. Of the whole number (two hundred and forty-five), forty were dismissed for insubordination; twenty-seven left of their own accord, and probably returned to their old courses, and fifteen were returned to the police. The remainder were either restored to their families, or placed in situations in the hospitals or elsewhere.

Small as these numbers appear in comparison with the large army of prostitutes exercising their calling at Paris, it is not at all doubtful but the establishment is a useful one. No one can help but concur with M. Parent-Duchatelet when he observes that, “did it not exist, it would be necessary to create it.”

ITALY.

Birth-place of modern art and literature, dowered with the fatal heritage of beauty, Italy, in the varied passages of her career among the nations, has been as remarkable for the vice and sensuality of her children as she has been eminent for their talents and acquirements.

The heart of the historical student thrills with respectful sympathy over the sorrows and ennobling virtues of her patriots in all ages, or his intellect is captivated with enthusiastic admiration and reverence in considering the monuments of resplendent genius given to mankind by her sons. Let him turn the page, and his soul recoils in disgust and deepest horror from the narrative of corruption the most abandoned, ambition the most unscrupulous, lust the most abominable, crime the most tremendous, to which the history of the world scarcely offers a parallel, and which brands the perpetrators with the execration of all succeeding generations.

The most glorious era of the Italian republics immediately preceded their downfall. Like shining lights, they perished by their own effulgence. The mutual jealousies of Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Lucca, and the numerous independent cities and states, stirred up in them a “noble and emulous rage” to excel each other in the[Pg 155] encouragement they gave to art and letters, and the mighty works produced by their respective citizens. But the same sentiment also roused them to deadlier feuds, and the common field of national patriotism being shut up, they exhausted themselves and each other by desperately-protracted struggles and incredible sacrifices of blood and treasure. Thus they paved the way to the introduction of the foreigner and the mercenary, who completed their ruin; until, in place of the small but illustrious republics which formed a diadem of brightest gems, arose a system of petty tyrants, who plunged the country into misery and degradation. These, in turn, were swept away by the strong arm of a despotism which has never since relaxed its grasp of this loveliest country of the earth.

No influence played a more important part in bringing about this catastrophe than that of the court of Rome. By the intrigues of the Roman pontiffs the mutual jealousies of the states were exacerbated and their quarrels fomented. While these results were caused by the political actions of the popes and their advisers, the worst effects were produced upon public manners and morals by their example. The abuses which had established themselves among the Roman hierarchy were the natural consequences of long and undisturbed enjoyment by the clergy of their vast immunities and privileges. The demoralization and dissoluteness which thus existed, and which spread its poison throughout the civilized world, but especially throughout Italy, are attested to posterity by all contemporary writers.

The enormous iniquity which distinguished such men as John XXII., Sextus IV., or Alexander VI., is notorious to all. Although the character of communities is not to be inferred from the actions of exceptional prodigies, either of virtue or vice, it is evident that the system which could place monsters like these in the august positions they filled must have been rotten to the core. The worth of a Leo X. or a Clement VII. consisted in the absence of the grosser vices rather than in any positive excellence, and the encouragement given by such men to objectionable practices did more to confirm a laxity of morals than the odious and unpardonable offenses of their predecessors.

Some of the political profligacy of the court of Rome, and, through its example, of the other Italian courts, was owing to the system which had sprung up of each pope providing for his family. The term nepote (nephew) was in common use as expressing[Pg 156] the relationship which existed between the pope and the individuals selected for advancement. The priests of all denominations had nephews and nieces to provide for, and the abuses covered by the term were objects of the keenest satire. In fact, Innocent VIII. thus provided for eight openly avowed sons and daughters.[215] The pseudo-avuncular obligations of Sextus IV. were also well known. Other popes, whose sins were not in this particular direction, having no sons, adopted a bona fide nephew, and one or two, feeling the want of ties of kindred or family relationship, actually adopted strangers. In one instance, the Donna Olimpia, a niece by marriage, and “a lady of ability and a manly spirit,” took the place of a nephew in the court of Innocent X., without any imputation on the character of either pope or niece.[216]

The effect produced by this example in high places, particularly upon the clergy, and through them on the community, can be imagined. By a decree of the Church in the eleventh session of the Lateran Council it appears that the clergy were accustomed to live in a state of public concubinage, nay, more, to allow others to do so for money paid to them by permission. Dante, in one of his daring flights, compares the papal court to Babylon, and declares it a place deprived of virtue and shame. In the nineteenth canto of the Inferno, Dante, visiting hell, finds Nicholas III. there waiting the arrival of Boniface, who again is to be succeeded by Clement.

The Reformation compelled some attention to morals among the clergy, and for a time an earnest endeavor was made at a purification of the Church. This was one of the chief labors of the famous Council of Trent. That council certainly did repress the abuses among the general clergy, but the law-makers were law-breakers. They could not touch the cardinals, archbishops, or the Pope himself, and thus little radical change was effected among the chief dignitaries.[217]

There are not wanting writers who acquit the Italian national character of blame in the matter, attributing the general corruption partly to the frightful example of foreign invaders. The [Pg 157]invasion of Charles VIII., himself a dissolute monarch, with the universal licentiousness of the French troops, did undoubtedly contribute largely to ruin the morals of the people at large, but, to use the words of Machiavelli, “If the papal court were removed to Switzerland, the simplest and most religious people of Europe would, in an incredibly short time, have become utterly depraved by the vicious example of the Italian priesthood.”[218]

The ecclesiastics did not confine themselves to licentiousness of conduct. The clerical writers are charged with a taste for that lowest practice of debased minds, obscenity, in which particular they exceed the lay writers. Roscoe, an accomplished Italian scholar and a man not given to railing, maintains this allegation.[219] This reminds us of Pope’s lines:

“Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of decency is want of sense.”

For the limited range of our present subject, history, so profuse of illustration of war, bloodshed, and the personal adventures of men noteworthy by their position or character, is exceedingly chary of materials. In the case of Italy the testimony as to the morals of men in high places is superabundant, and these and the legislative enactments of the period will furnish some of the information of which we are in search.

In the fifteenth century, Charles VIII., in his wars to gain Naples from the Spaniards, drew down unspeakable miseries upon the wretched Italians. His armies are reputed to have indulged in every excess of unbridled license and rapine; and it was during the siege of Naples that the venereal disease is said to have first made its appearance, although the particulars given of this malady in Chapter IX., under the head of France, show that syphilis existed in Naples two or three years before the siege. As generally happens with new diseases, whether from fear or ignorance of the means to control them, it was represented that the affliction was of a malignity never since known. Its frightful ravages and disgusting character impressed the minds of men with a belief that it was a new scourge, sent specially as a punishment for the debauchery and prostitution of the period, each party retorting on the other the charge of having introduced it, and styling it Morbo-Gallico or Mal de Naples, according to the nation to which they belonged. No class seems to have been exempt from it. Sextus[Pg 158] della Rovere, nephew of Sextus IV., one of the wealthiest and most dissolute ecclesiastics of the age, was “rotten from his middle to the soles of his feet.”[220] Even the haughty and majestic Julius II. would not expose his feet to the obeisance of the faithful, because they were discolored by the Morbus Gallicus:[221] Leo, his accomplished and munificent successor, was said to have owed his elevation to the fact that he was in such a depraved state of body as to render necessary a surgical operation in the Consistorium while the election was proceeding, the cardinals selecting the most sickly candidate for the papal tiara.[222] An unequivocal allusion to the pontiff’s pursuits is found in an honorary inscription to Leo X. on his entrance into Florence, of which he was a native.

Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora: tempora Mavos
Olim habuit; nunc sua tempora Pallas habet:
Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypra semper erit.
Formerly Venus reigned supreme, then Mars, now Pallas:
Mars was, Pallas now is, Venus shall always be.

Cardinals were not ashamed to contend openly for the favors of celebrated courtesans, and Charles VIII., when on his march to Naples, was provided by Ludovico Sforza and his wife Beatrice, his liberal entertainers, with the most beautiful women that could be procured.[223] Charles, indeed, is by some authors asserted to have been actually the first who introduced the venereal disease into Italy.

An eccentric trophy of public license is to be found in the poem of Fracastoro, a physician and accomplished writer—a really elegant production under the title of Syphilis. The argument of it is drawn from the sufferings of Syphilus, a shepherd who has been punished by Apollo with a malignant disease for impiety. In this work the author introduces the reader to the inner regions of the earth; to the mines, minerals, and attendant sprites, and explains the discovery of mercury, and its beneficent and healing influences on the invalid, who, once cured, is enjoined to pay his vows to Diana.

In 1520, that turbulent and reprobate artist Benvenuto Cellini, in his autobiography (one of the most spirited representations of national manners extant) gives an account of a syphilitic disease which he contracted from a courtesan. He says little of the mode[Pg 159] of cure, but it is evident from the above that the use of mercury was known at a very early period after public attention was generally directed to the disorder.

The excesses of this iron age were not limited to ordinary licentiousness; crimes against nature seem to have been prevalent, and are even alleged to have been a source of revenue. In a collection of papal lives which has fallen under our notice, but which is not very particular in giving its authorities,[224] we find it stated that a memorial was presented to Sextus IV. by certain individuals of the family of the Cardinal of St. Lucia for an indulgence to commit sodomy, and that the Pope wrote at the bottom of it the usual “Fiat.”

The case of Beatrice Cenci is better attested. Every one recollects the accumulated horrors of the story. The father, hating his children, his wife, all mankind, introduces prostitutes to his house, and debauches his daughter Beatrice by force. Through the instrumentality of a bishop she procures him to be murdered, and, with her step-mother, was executed for the crime, the Pope refusing to show any mercy. The Count Cenci had been addicted to unnatural offenses, and had thrice compounded with the papal government for his crimes by paying an enormous sum of money, and the narrator says that the acrimony of the Pope toward the wretched daughter was for having cut off a profitable source of revenue.

In Naples, the laws on the subject of prostitution were extremely severe. Previous to the thirteenth century, every procuress endeavoring to corrupt innocent females was punished, like an adulteress, by mutilation of her nose. The mother who prostituted her daughter suffered this punishment until King Frederick absolved such women as trafficked with their children from 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 injuries resulting from their acts, and imprisonment when no serious harm was effected. These laws proved insufficient for their purpose, and toward the end of the fifteenth century profligacy ran riot in Naples. Ruffiani multiplied in its streets, procuring by force or 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[Pg 160] kingdom, and prostitutes were prohibited from harboring such persons among them. Any woman who disobeyed was condemned to be burned in the forehead with an iron, whipped in the most humiliating manner, and exiled.

Under King Roger a charge of seduction was never taken, but William, the successor of that prince, punished with death the crime of rape. The victim, however, was required to prove that she had shrieked aloud, and that she had preferred her complaint within eight days, or that she had been detained by force. When once a woman had prostituted herself, she had no right to refuse to yield her person to any one.

In Naples, prostitutes, in spite of the law passed to confine brothels to particular quarters, established themselves in the most beautiful streets of the city in palatial buildings, and there, with incessant clamor, 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, the galleys for such of the proprietors as were commoners, while simple banishment was declared against the nobles.

One example of good legislation was the pragmatic law of 1470, to protect unfortunate women against the cupidity, the extortions, and the frauds of tavern-keepers and others. Men were in the habit of going into places of amusement with single girls, contracting a heavy debt, and then leaving their victims to pay. These were then given the choice of a disgraceful whipping or an engagement in the house. They often consented, and spent the remainder of their days in dependence on their creditors, 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 them with food and clothing absolutely necessary. If they exceeded this amount they had no means of legal recovery.

The most remarkable feature in 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 offenses. Toward the end of the sixteenth century it had risen to extraordinary power, and was prolific of abuses. It practiced all kinds of exaction and violence, every species of partiality and [Pg 161]injustice, and even presumed to promulgate edicts of its own. The judges flung into prison numbers of young girls, whom they compelled to buy their liberty with money, and sometimes even dared to seize women who, though of lax conduct, could not be included in the professional class. This was discovered, and led to a reform of the court in 1589. Its powers were strictly defined, and its form of procedure placed under regulation, while the avenues to corruption were narrowed. The institution existed for nearly a hundred years after this.

In Rome, in the eleventh century, a brothel and a church stood side by side, and five hundred years after, under the pontificate of Paul II., prostitutes were 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 alike indulged habitually in all kinds of excess. Tortures, floggings, brandings, banishment, were inflicted on some to terrify others, but with very incomplete success. To carry off and detain a prostitute against her will was punished by amputation of the right hand, imprisonment, flogging, or exile. The rich, however, invariably bought immunity for themselves.

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 proved 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 some of the Italian states, as in Lombardy, men were forbidden to give prostitutes an asylum. They were prohibited from appearing among honest citizens, and were prevented from purchasing clothes or food, and from borrowing money by the hire of their persons.

After a time, however, a system of licensed brothels, in imitation of the institutions founded at Toulouse and Montpellier, was introduced into parts of Italy, and the brothels became very numerous. There was one at Mantua, and Venice was a very sink[Pg 162] of prostitution. In 1421, the government enlisted women in 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 profit. The names of several women, the most notorious and beautiful of the Venetian courtesans, are preserved by Nicolo Daglioni. A very small sum was paid them by their patrons.

The laws regulating prostitution and prostitutes seem to have had a wonderful similarity throughout Europe. Among other enactments were those regulating clothing, which were at one time promulgated in every state. Some of these were sumptuary, and merely prohibited the wearing of fashionable attire. Others directed particular costumes as a badge of the prostitute’s calling, and to distinguish them in public from well-conducted women. At Mantua, prostitutes, when they appeared in the streets, were ordered to cover the rest of their clothes with a short white cloak, and wear a badge on their breast. At Bergamo the cloak was yellow; in Parma, white; in Milan, at first black woolen cloth, and then black silk. If disobedient, they might be fined; and in case of a second offense, whipped; and any one might strip off the garment of a girl illegally attired.

In the Duchy of Asola, in Piedmont, a regulation was established that a mother could disinherit her daughter for leading a vicious life, but she lost this privilege if it was proved that she had connived at her immorality. The father had equal authority, but with one curious limitation. When, says the law, a father has sought to marry his daughter, and has endowed her sufficiently, if she refuses to marry and becomes a prostitute, he may cut her off; but if he have opposed her marriage until she has reached the age of twenty-five, and she then become a libertine, he can not refuse to bequeath her his property; and the woman, on every opportunity to marry, is bound to present herself before her father and demand his consent. If he refused it, he was not allowed to punish her in cases where, at the age of thirty, she became a harlot.

The efforts to root out prostitution from houses and neighborhoods in Italy had, as elsewhere, the result of driving loose women to places of public resort. The baths were regularly frequented in every city in the Peninsula (hence the use of the word bagnio, as expressive of a disreputable place), so that there was scarcely a bath-keeper who was not also a brothel-keeper.

In Avignon, which, in consequence of the schism of the popes,[Pg 163] may be considered a second Rome, a statute of the Church, in 1441, interdicted to the priests and clergy the use of certain baths, notorious as brothels. The license of prostitution was soon taken away in Avignon. The residence of the popes in that city had attracted a concourse of strangers from all parts of the globe, and brothels sprung up at the doors of the churches, and close to the papal residence and bishops’ palaces. They brought so much scandal on the community that an edict was passed driving prostitutes out of the city.

In endeavoring to investigate the condition of prostitution in modern Italy, our inquiries and researches have been almost profitless, from the dearth of reliable statistical information as to any part of that most interesting country. In the fine arts, and in certain departments of abstract science, the republic of letters can show numerous records of Italy’s state and progress. In all that tells of the people, their condition, their relations to each other, and their rulers, the statements of writers, both native and foreign, are so contradictory, so imbued with party passions and prejudices, or so flippantly careless and inaccurate, that we must peruse them with constant suspicion. At the same time, official documents are so sparingly given to the world that it is hopeless to fall back upon them.[225]

It is customary to think and speak of Italy, like Germany, as a whole. In reality, however, a wide difference prevails among the inhabitants of Piedmont, Tuscany, and Austrian Italy, the Papal States, and Naples. Rome, though not the political capital of Italy, must be considered the capital, in virtue of her papal court, her past traditions, and her large concourse of foreigners. But even her manners scarcely give the tone to the remainder of the country.

In Rome, prostitution is tolerated, though not legally permitted. There are no statistics from which the number of prostitutes can be calculated. At one time there were said to be five thousand of these unfortunates in the city; but this estimate is only another sample of the carelessness which is to be observed in writers on this subject. Under Paul IV. there were only fifty thousand inhabitants; forty years after they had increased to one hundred thousand. Public prostitutes are now as rarely seen in[Pg 164] the streets of Rome as in those of other Italian cities. It is said, also, that there are scarcely any public brothels.[226] There is a law that a woman guilty of adultery shall be imprisoned for three months, but Italian usages are averse to legal proceedings; the scandal is offensive to society; besides, the courts require positive proof of the offense. With regard to seduction, the laws are equally stringent; but such cases, when brought to notice, are usually compromised by permission of the authorities, either by payment of a sum of money, or by marriage. Syphilis is always of considerable extent in Rome, and the venereal ward in San Jacomo is always full.[227] After the siege of Rome by the French in 1849, the disease was frightfully prevalent.

In 1798 there were thirty thousand poor, or about one fifth of the population of Rome, upon the lists of the curates of the several parishes. Under the administration of the French, up to 1814, the proportion had been diminished to one ninth. Since that period it has been on the increase.

There are in Rome nineteen hospitals for the treatment of the sick. In eight public hospitals the average number of patients daily is about fourteen hundred, who cost nineteen cents each per day. There are fourteen semi-convents where young girls are gratuitously received and educated, receiving a small dowry when they leave to marry or become nuns. The Hospital of St. Roch is for pregnant women.[228]

The Albergo dei Poveri at Naples is the finest poor-house in Italy. It accommodates upward of three thousand paupers of both sexes, and is provided with workshops and schools, so as to afford suitable employment and instruction. Notwithstanding this model establishment, and numerous others, whose annual revenues amount to nearly two millions and a half of dollars, Naples is infested with a large mendicant population in addition to the numbers accommodated in the poor-houses. The Lazaroni are a class peculiar to the place. Many of them utterly refuse to work, and prefer to subsist on the smallest coin of the kingdom which they can gain by begging. They bask in the sun all day, sleep on the ground or on the steps at night, and starve with the utmost complacency. An Epicurean might find in this abnegation of the cares of life a sound practical philosophy. That such a class is in the highest degree obnoxious to society must be [Pg 165]apparent to every one. In the famous rising of Cardinal Ruffo, at the time of the French occupation in 1805, the Lazaroni perpetrated the most frightful excesses, and are said to have been relied on by the imbecile Bourbon government as their chief friends and supporters against the dangers of French Republicanism. Modern progress has drawn even Naples and the Lazaroni within its magic circle, and an accomplished traveler expresses doubts of their alleged unconquerable laziness, for he has seen them work, wear clothes, sleep at home, earn money when they had a chance, and conduct themselves very much like other people.[229] Perhaps, as with the Irish, a want of fair remuneration may be at the root of their idleness.

A singular institution of Italian society is the Cicisbeo, or Cavaliere Servente. This is a distant male relative, or friend, who invariably attends a married lady on all occasions of her appearance in public. He pays her all conceivable attentions, and performs even the most servile offices; carries her fan, her parasol, or her lapdog. We are not aware that any foreigner has been able to settle this anomaly of social life to his satisfaction. The Italians themselves sometimes maintain that there is no immorality or impropriety in the arrangement—that it is a matter of etiquette, in which the heart is in no way concerned. The husband is perfectly cognizant of it, and the appearance of the cicisbeo with the lady is more de regle than that of her husband. Originally, there can be very little question that the institution was of an amorous character, and the parties met privately at the Casini, where certain apartments were specially dedicated to the use of the ladies and their cavalieri.[230] With the French occupation of 1800 the custom became the subject of immoderate raillery and satire, and there is reason to believe it has been but partially revived.

In place, however, of the cicisbeo or cavaliere servente, whose services and attentions were a form of society, it is, we fear, undeniable that more intimate though less avowed relations exist between many Italian ladies and other men than their husbands. That there are numerous and admirable exceptions to the rule, if it be a rule, we freely admit; but, unless the concurrent testimony of all writers and travelers in Italy be absolutely false, and either basely slanderous or culpably careless, the marriage vow can only be regarded as a cloak for a license that is inadmissible to the unmarried woman.

[Pg 166]The testimony of a profligate man is rarely to be taken against women; and though the witness be a lord and a poet, we do not know that this should make a difference were the case one of mere abuse. Coupled, however, as the inculpation is with extenuatory remarks, we think Lord Byron’s observations valuable. In a letter to Mr. Murray, the celebrated London publisher (February 21, 1820), he says:

As a counterpoise to these opinions of Lord Byron, it is but fair to give that of M. Valery, a traveler whose personal opportunities may have been less than in the case of the noble poet: “The morals of the Italian cities, which we still judge of from the commonplace reports of travelers of the last century, are now neither better[Pg 167] nor worse than those of other capitals; perhaps at Naples they are even better.”

The Countess Pepoli, a lady of patriotic and literary family, has written an able educational manual, in which she claims consideration for the number of “good and virtuous women” in Italy, whose existence is ignored by the prejudiced writers of extravagant diatribes. But we are afraid that the very exception, and the pains she takes to prove the temptations to which the married woman is exposed, only affirm the truth of the general charge.

Whatever allegations of veracious or exaggerated unchastity or immorality may be made against the Italians, they are generally to be laid at the door of the aristocracy and upper classes. Among the humbler Italians, the peasantry and the country poor, there is no ground for ascribing to them either greater idleness or worse morals than are to be found in other parts of Europe.

Foundling hospitals are to be met with in most great cities of Continental Europe. Among Protestants, a strong prejudice exists against these institutions. That they prevent infanticide is self-evident. Their operation as an encouragement of illicit intercourse can not be estimated without some minute inquiries into the illegitimacy of places which encourage them, and of others which are without them.

The proportion of children in the foundling hospitals of Italy is certainly large, but it is believed, on good grounds, that a considerable number of them are legitimate, and are abandoned by their parents on account of their poverty. Of the really illegitimate, there are no means of saying with accuracy (nor, as far as we know, have any attempts been made to do so) to what class of society the infants belong. Meanwhile, although there is no ground for assuming a larger proportion of illegitimate children than in northern climates, on the other hand, the publicly displayed prostitution of Italy is infinitely less.

Naples has a population of about four hundred thousand. Of fifteen thousand births there are two thousand foundlings; we can not say illegitimates, for, owing to the reasons already specified, there are no means of ascertaining the facts.

In Tuscany, in 1834, there were twelve thousand foundlings received into the various hospitals.

The Hospital of the Santo Spirito at Rome is a foundling asylum with a revenue of about fifty thousand dollars per annum.

About one in sixteen of these children is claimed by its parents;[Pg 168] the majority are cared for, during infancy and childhood, either in the hospitals or with the neighboring peasantry, with whom they are boarded at a small stipend. When of sufficient age they are dismissed to work for themselves; but in many of the hospitals they have some claim in after-life on occasions of sickness or distress.

We have already alluded to the wide differences of national character in the various political divisions of Italy. The vices of laziness, mendicancy, and their kindred failings of licentiousness and unchastity are chiefly confined to the towns, large and small.[231] The peasantry of Naples and of the Papal States are industrious, temperate; and the peasant women, even those who, from the vicinity of Rome, frequent the studios of the artists as models, are generally of unexceptionable character.[232] The mountaineers of the Abruzzi, long infamous as banditti (a stigma affixed by the French or other dominant powers on those who resisted their rule), in harvest-time brave the deadly malaria of the Campagna to earn a few liri honestly for their starving children, although in so doing the many that never return to their mountain homes show the risks that all have run. The corn, wine, and oil raised in Italy, the well-supplied markets of Rome and other cities, are evidence that the peasantry do not all eat the bread of idleness. The Papal States contain some of the finest, richest, and best cultivated provinces in Italy.[233] It is in the towns we must look for the worst results of misgovernment and bad example.

SPAIN.

Between the ancient Spaniards and the Romans a most intimate connection subsisted from an early period of the Roman republic, and the laws and customs of the former bore the closest resemblance to those of the latter. This affinity continued so long[Pg 169] as the Roman empire had a name, and after the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, the ties of kindred and dependence were drawn still closer, for the Spanish kingdom has ever been the favored heritage, and its rulers the most obedient sons of Rome. Thus the maxims of the Roman civil law were early incorporated into the political system, and they still remain the chief pillars of Spanish jurisprudence. Accordingly, we find, in their legislation on prostitution, that the Spaniards, together with the general theories, adopted the specific enactments of other Latin nations.

By the code of Alphonse IX., in the twelfth century, procurers were to be condemned to “civil death.” Such offenders were thus classified:

These latter were analogous to the pimp and bully of the present day, and, from the repeated and very severe laws against them, seem to have given great trouble to the authorities. They were banished, flogged, imprisoned; in short, got rid of on any terms. Girls who supported them were publicly whipped, and the general laws upon the matter were similar to those noted in the previous chapter on Italy.

In Spain, the profligacy of public morals attained a pitch beyond all precedent, possibly owing, in some measure, to Draconian legislation. Further laws were, from time to time, passed against the Ruffiani, as preceding edicts had fallen into desuetude, and their presence and traffic was encouraged by the prostitutes. These latter were forbidden to harbor the men, and on breach of this prohibition were to be branded, publicly whipped, and banished the kingdom. Procurers, procuresses, and adulteresses were punished by mutilation of the nose. Mothers who trafficked in their children’s virtue, except under pressure of extreme want, were also liable to this barbarous punishment.

In 1552 and 1566, edicts were again passed against the Ruffiani.[Pg 170] They were styled a highly objectionable class, dangerous to public order. On the first conviction as a ruffiano, the offender was sentenced to ten years at the galleys; for a second conviction, he received two hundred blows or stripes, and was sent to the galleys for life.

Up to this time the court of Spain seems to have been almost as strongly tinctured with licentiousness as those of other nations. About the middle of the fifteenth century, Henry IV. divorced his wife, Blanche of Aragon, after a union of twelve years, the marriage being publicly declared void by the Bishop of Segovia, whose sentence was confirmed by the Archbishop of Toledo, “por impotencia respectiva, owing to some malign influence.” Henry subsequently espoused Joanna, sister of Alphonse V., King of Portugal. The bride was accompanied by a brilliant train of maidens, and her entrance into Castile was greeted by the festivities and military pageants which belonged to the age of chivalry. In her own country Joanna had been ardently beloved; in the land of her adoption her light and lively manners gave occasion to the grossest suspicions. Scandal named the Cavalier Beltran de la Cueva as her most favored lover. He was one of the handsomest men in the kingdom. At a tournament near Madrid he maintained the superior beauty of his mistress against all comers, and displayed so much prowess in the presence of the king as induced Henry to commemorate the event by the erection of a monastery dedicated to St. John.[234] It does not appear, however, whom Beltran de la Cueva indicated as the lady of his love on this occasion.

Two anecdotes may be mentioned as characteristic of the gallantry of the times. The Archbishop of Seville concluded a superb fête, given in honor of the royal nuptials, by introducing on the table two vases filled with rings garnished with precious stones, to be distributed among his female guests. At a ball given on another occasion, the young queen having condescended to dance with the French embassador, the latter made a solemn vow, in commemoration of so distinguished an honor, never to dance with any other woman.

While the queen’s levity laid her open to suspicion, the licentiousness of her husband was undisguised. One of Joanna’s maids of honor acquired an ascendency over Henry which he did not attempt to conceal, and after the exhibition of some disgraceful scenes, the palace became divided by the factions of the hostile[Pg 171] fair ones. The Archbishop of Seville did not blush to espouse the cause of the paramour, who maintained a magnificence of state which rivaled royalty itself. The public were still more scandalized by Henry’s sacrilegious intrusion of another of his mistresses into the post of abbess of a convent in Toledo, after the expulsion of her predecessor, a lady of noble rank and irreproachable character.

These examples of corruption influenced alike the people and the clergy. The middle class imitated their superiors, and indulged in an excess of luxury equally demoralizing and ruinous. The Archbishop of St. James was hunted from his see by the indignant populace in consequence of an outrage attempted on a youthful bride as she was returning from church after the performance of the nuptial ceremony.[235]

Under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella a total change was effected. “They both exhibited a practical wisdom in their own personal relations which always commands respect, and which, however it may have savored of worldly policy in Ferdinand, was in his consort founded on the purest and most exalted principles. Under such a sovereign, the court, which had been little better than a brothel in the preceding reign, became the nursery of virtue and generous ambition. Isabella watched assiduously over the nurture of the high-born damsels of the court, whom she received into the royal palace, causing them to be educated under her own eye, and endowing them with liberal portions on their marriage.”[236]

Joanna, the second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, was unfortunate in her marriage to Philip, son of the Archduke Maximilian, and sovereign—in right of his mother—of the Low Countries. The couple embarked for Flanders in the year 1504, and soon after their arrival the inconstancy of the husband and the ungovernable sensibility of the wife occasioned some scandalous scenes. Philip was openly enamored of one of the ladies in her suite, and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally assaulted her rival, and caused the beautiful locks which had excited the admiration of her fickle husband to be shorn from her head. This outrage so affected Philip that he vented his indignation against Joanna in the coarsest and most unmanly terms, and finally refused to have any farther intercourse with her.[237]

Public brothels were established in Spain, as in other countries[Pg 172] of Europe, one of great extent being in existence in Valencia in the fifteenth century. It constituted a complete suburb in itself, similar to the Ghetto, or Jews’ suburb of most capital cities. Indeed, from its description, it is doubtful if it was not a rogue’s sanctuary, similar to the well known Alsatia in London. It was surrounded by a wall with one gate only, at which a warder was stationed. He was a public city officer, and one of his duties was to warn all comers of the risk their property ran in visiting such a place. If they wished to leave valuables in his care they could do so, and receive them on their exit. There were some hundreds of girls resident in this vast den of iniquity. To add to the disgrace of the locality, the place of public execution was at its gate.

In 1486, the rents, profits and emoluments of the public brothels of Seville were assigned to Alonzo Fajardo, the master of the royal table.

In 1559, there is an enactment in Granada fixing the rents to be paid by the women for their rooms and accommodation in public brothels, and also detailing the furniture and food with which they were to be provided in return. This is similar to the minute legislation of the German cities. This public provision having been made, no person was allowed to lend these women bed-linen.

The authorities of various cities might not permit a prostitute to reside in the town without previous examination by a duly licensed physician, who was to declare, upon oath, whether the woman then was or had recently been diseased.

By some of the Spanish laws, varraganas (kept mistresses or concubines) seem to have been a legal institution, for men of rank were forbidden to take slave-dancers, tavern-servants, procuresses, or prostitutes as concubines. This breach of the ordinary institutions of Christianity may probably have been a compromise of Moorish and Christian usages and morals. Before the final deadly struggle which ended in the expulsion of the Moors, intermarriages were not uncommon among the two peoples. Interchange of friendship and close intimacy existed between the races, and a mutual tolerance of each other’s laws and customs was maintained, except by the enthusiasts of either religion.

The Spanish jurists distinctly recognized the woman’s right to recover the wages of her infamy. The scholiasts struck out various fine distinctions, for which the monkish dialecticians were so deservedly ridiculed by the free-thinkers of the eighteenth century, and these were debated and discussed with the utmost [Pg 173]eagerness.[238] One question was whether, if the man paid beforehand, and the woman refused to complete the contract, he could compel her? The weight of opinion seemed to be that, as he contemplated an immorality, he could neither recover the money nor enforce the agreement. Another equally important point was the use to which the gains of prostitution might be lawfully applied. The legality of their gains would seem to have overridden the mode of their expenditure, but casuists thought otherwise, and, by a royal edict of Alphonse IX., it was decided that priests could not receive funds obtained from such impure sources.

By the old Spanish law prostitutes were subjected to various disabilities in matters of inheritance or testamentary disposition. As mentioned in the review of the old German customs, the Church considered it a meritorious act to marry a harlot, on the assumption that thereby a brand was saved from the burning.[239] It is related of a young man that, while being led to the scaffold, a courtesan, struck by his manly beauty and bearing, offered to marry him, whereby, in virtue of a law or usage, his life would be saved. He rejected her proposition, as existence was not worth redemption at such a price. It is added that his life was nevertheless spared, in consideration of his spirit and courage.

In 1570, by order of Philip II., the regulations in force in the principal towns of Andalusia were extended to those of Castile. By these it was enacted that a woman became a prostitute of her own free will, and that no one could compel her to continue such, even though she had incurred debts. A surgeon was directed to pay her a weekly visit at her house, and report to the deputies of the Consistory those who were diseased, in order that they might be removed to hospital. The keeper of a brothel could not receive into his house any one who had not been previously examined, nor allow any one who was diseased to remain there, under a fine of a thousand maravedis, with thirty days’ imprisonment. Each room was to contain certain furniture, and the house was to be closed on holidays, during Lent, Ember Week, and on all fast days, under a punishment of a hundred stripes to each woman[Pg 174] who received visitors, as well as to the keeper of the house. These and other orders were to be hung upon different parts of the house, under a fine (about six dollars) and eight days’ imprisonment.

The subject of venereal disease in Spain has acquired some interest from a generally received opinion that its appearance was made in that country, whence it was disseminated throughout Europe. Columbus and his crew were reported to have introduced it from America, but later investigations have proved that syphilis was not known on this side of the Atlantic until imported by Europeans. Facts have been advanced in preceding pages showing its almost simultaneous appearance in Italy and Spain, and we recur to the subject now merely with reference to the theory of its American origin. A late work, Lettere sulla Storia de Mali Venerei, di Domenice Thiene, Venezia, 1823, enumerates some proofs on the question. The main points are: 1. That neither Columbus nor his son allude, in any way, to such a disease in the New World. 2. Among frequent notices of the disease in the twenty-five years following the discovery of America, there is no mention of its originating there, but, on the contrary, a uniform derivation of it from some other source is assigned. 3. That the disorder was known and described before the siege of Naples, and therefore could not be introduced by the Spaniards at that time. 4. That it was known in a variety of countries in 1493 and the early part of 1494; a rapidity of diffusion irreconcilable with its importation by Columbus in 1493. 5. That the first work professing to trace its origin in America was not published till 1517, and was the production, not of a Spaniard, but a foreigner. The question of its origin is more definitely settled by a letter of Peter Martyr, noticing the symptoms in the most unequivocal manner, and dated April 5, 1488, about five years before the return of Columbus. Some doubts have been thrown upon the accuracy of this letter, but they do not invalidate it.[240]

In Madrid, in 1522, a special hospital for venereal patients was founded by Antoine Martin, of the order of St. Jean de Dieu. In 1575 the Spaniards passed an ordinance that no female domestics under forty years of age should be taken to service by unmarried men. The tenor of this law bespeaks the evil intended to be remedied.

[Pg 175]In the present day, little is done in Spain in reference to prostitution by legislation on the subject. In his memoir on the subject to the Brussels Congress, Ramon de la Segra tells us that the old edicts have gradually become obsolete, and that neither the municipal authorities or general government take any farther interest in the question than an occasional enforcement of the catholic laws against immorality and women of ill fame. It is said that in Seville first-class houses of prostitution have a custom of retaining the services of a physician at their own expense, whose office is to attend and make examinations of the women. Cadiz is notorious for its attractive climate and its dissipations.[241]

In the last century a tone of manners prevailed in the Spanish peninsula which was materially changed by the French occupation sweeping away many of the laxities of the age. In 1780 the Italian system of an attendant upon married ladies was adopted in Spain. These were termed Cortejos, and it is stated that in the cities they were principally military men, but in the country the monks performed the duty. The fidelity and affection of the women were directed to their gallants, and it even was thought discreditable, without very sufficient reason, to be guilty of fickleness in this particular. Married men were even the cortejos of other men’s wives, neglecting their own, or leaving them to follow the bent of their private inclinations. No husband was jealous, but it was etiquette for Spanish ladies to keep up an external decorum, and to abstain from marked attentions to a cortejo in the husband’s presence, although he might be perfectly aware of his wife’s infidelity, and of her lover’s presence in the house.[242] A curious illustration of this extraordinary state of public manners is given in an incident that occurred in Carthagena. A gentleman one morning remarked to a friend, “Before I go to rest this night the whole city will be thrown into confusion.” He occasioned this public disorder by going home an hour sooner than his usual time, whereby his wife’s cortejo was compelled to beat a precipitate retreat. The cortejo’s arrival at his own house produced a similar effect, which was multiplied through polite society all round the town.

[Pg 176]By the Spanish laws, which were in many provinces especially favorable to women, they could make ex parte cases against their husbands of ill treatment, and if they had beaten them the punishment might be made very severe. These laws were, as may be supposed, the frequent means of flagrant injustice.

In Barcelona there was a Magdalen institution, having the double object of reforming prostitutes and of correcting women who failed in the marriage vow, or who neglected or disgraced their families. The former department was called the Casa de Galera; the latter, the Casa de Correccion. The prostitutes were partially supported at the public cost, their extra food, beyond bread and meat, being provided by their own labor, to which they were obliged to devote themselves all day. The lady culprits were supported by their relations. They were imprisoned by the sentence of a particular court, on the complaint of a member of their family, and they, as well as the prostitutes, were required to work. When deemed necessary, these offenders received personal correction. Drunkenness was one of the grounds of incarceration. The precise offenses are not mentioned by our author,[243] but the fashions and customs of nations are so distinct, that indiscretion, or even familiarity in one, might be immorality in another. A leading principle in Spanish manners is not to give offense. People may be as vicious as they please; it may be even notorious that they are so, but their manners must be outwardly correct. There is little doubt the violation of this maxim was the principal cause of imprisonment.

In Barcelona there was also, in 1780, a foundling hospital liberally supported. A curious custom was observed in reference to the girls. They were led in procession when of marriageable age, and any one who took a fancy to a young woman might ask her hand, indicating his choice by throwing a handkerchief on her in public.

In the Asturias certain forms of disease appeared with excessive virulence, and were very common. Syphilis was prevalent. There was a hospital at Oviedo for its cure, but patients had considerable reluctance to apply to it. Whether incident to this prevalence of syphilis or not, we have no means of ascertaining, but leprosy was very general, and there were twenty or more large houses for its cure in the Asturias. The common itch in a highly aggravated form was also general, and often productive of parasitical vermin.

[Pg 177]The present state of Spanish society is the subject of the usual discrepancies between travelers, owing to their different prejudices, means of information, or opportunities of making observations. No country of Europe retains more of its original peculiarities and national habits than Spain. Under the fervid sun of Andalusia, the same rigorous observance of proprieties is hardly to be found as in the northern climate of Biscay, whose hardy sons have ever been the defenders of their rights and political privileges. Madrid, as the capital, might be thought a fair illustration of the habits and manners of the great bulk of the city populations, whose peculiarities of race have not been smoothed away by intercommunication, the traveling facilities of Spain being yet among the worst in Europe. The descendants of the Goth and the Moor are still distinct in character. A general prejudice exists as to the morality of Southern nations in Europe, and the Spanish women are by no means exempt from a full share of this unfortunate opinion. Nevertheless, a recent writer says:

This opinion is confined solely to the higher classes of the city of Madrid. It expresses nothing as to the great bulk of the population, and, however gratifying the record of worth may be, we fear the eulogy must be taken cum grano salis.

Of the education of Spanish women, Mrs. Donn Piatt states that, by reason of the small fortunes of the nobility, the daughters of an ancient house must be made useful before they are accomplished; that the first consideration, however, is their religious education, to which, and to the preparation for confirmation—the great juvenile rite of Catholic countries—the utmost care and attention are devoted. Next after their religious tuition, the greatest pains are taken to make them accomplished housekeepers. They are taught to make their own clothes, to keep accounts, to regulate[Pg 178] their expenditure, and to attend to the most minute details of the family economy. The advantages of a good solid education are not neglected; their natural capacity and innate taste for the arts, especially as musicians and painters, rapidly develop themselves, under very moderate tuition, to acquirements of a superior character, and the productions of young women of high station are spoken of with much admiration. One trait of Spanish character that speaks loudly in favor of the women is the devotion, respect, and obedience paid by sons to their mothers long after age has relieved them from maternal tutelage.

In Madrid there is a hospital for foundlings, which are said to amount to about four thousand annually. These are actual foundlings, exposed publicly to the compassion of the charitable. It is principally served by the Sisters of Charity. The infants are intrusted to nurses, and at the age of seven they are transferred to the Desamparados (unprotected) college, where they receive instruction in the simpler rudiments of education, and their religious and moral training is cared for. There is also an asylum to which others are drafted to learn some practical handicraft, such as glove-making, straw-hat making, embroidery, etc., and which seems, in a great measure, a self-supporting institution.

There are three Magdalen Hospitals: St. Nicholas de Barr, founded in 1691 for women of the better class, who are banished for misconduct from the homes of their husbands and fathers; that of the Arrepentidos, for penitents; and that of the Recogidos, founded in 1637, for the correction of women sent there by their families, in order that they may be induced to return to the paths of virtue.

PORTUGAL.

A writer on Portugal, in the year 1780, complains of the scandalous licentiousness of the monks and nuns, of whom there were no less than two hundred and fifty thousand in a population of two millions. It is said that the convent Odivelas, the harem of the monarch John V., contained three hundred women, accounted[Pg 179] the most beautiful and accomplished courtesans in the kingdom. The great Marquis de Pombal suppressed many of these convents, and was the general reformer of the religious orders.

Of the effect of such an example from such quarters on the population at that time, sunk, as they were, in the most imbecile ignorance, little need be said. The women of Portugal were reputed to surpass all European females in gallantry, and their attractions were such that only one interview was necessary to complete the conquest. To this condition of common immorality, the rigor of their husbands and male relations may have contributed not a little. They are said to have been outrageously jealous, and to have made no scruple of murdering any stranger who gave them even the weakest grounds of suspicion.

In the fundamental laws of Portugal, promulgated in 1143, it is enacted that, “if a married woman commit adultery, and the husband complain to the judge, and the judge is the king, the adulterer and adulteress shall be condemned to the flames; but if the husband retain the wife, neither party shall be punished.”

In the case of a rape perpetrated on the person of a lady of rank, all the property of the ravisher went to the lady; and in case the female were not noble, the man, without regard to his rank, was obliged to marry her.

The writer whom we have already quoted[245] speaks of the venereal disease as being, at the time he wrote (1770-1780), habitual in Portugal, and that the Portuguese not knowing how to cure it, its malignity had become so intensified that, in some cases, individuals who had contracted a peculiar form of the malady had died in a few hours, as though struck down by an active and deadly poison. This is most probably the exaggeration of popular opinion on the subject. More recent writers are chary of information, and avoid the mention of matters so offensive to ears polite.

The manners and morals of the higher ranks of society must have undergone a material change for the better in the present century, for an English nobleman (Lord Porchester, since Earl of Caernarvon) speaks in very favorable terms of the propriety, amiability, and excellence of the Portuguese ladies, which, excepting in the matter of intellectual education, left them in no wise behind the worthy of their sex in other countries of Europe.

Among the lower classes, however, it would not seem that the tone of morals had been very much amended, whether we [Pg 180]consider their regard for female virtue, or their cultivation of the maternal tenderness and solicitude natural to all created beings.

In the neighborhood of Oporto, country women may be met conveying little babies to the Foundling Hospital, four or five together, in a basket. These helpless creatures are the illegitimate children of peasant girls, openly deserted in the villages, and thus forwarded by the authorities to the care of those pious strangers who undertake their nurture and preservation.[246]

In these cases, says Mr. Kingston, the females are not treated by their parents with any harshness or rigor. They are rather compassionated for their misfortune, and are only sent away from home when found obstinately persistent in a course of evil.

As may be supposed, the foundling hospitals have abundant claims on their funds. The Real Casapia, at Belem, near Lisbon, and another hospital in Lisbon attached to the Casa de Misericordia, receive together nearly three thousand children, who are brought up to different callings, and otherwise prepared for active life, as is usual in such institutions. There is a similar asylum, equally frequented, in Oporto. In this city there is also an asylum in which husbands may place their wives during their own absence from home. It often happens that ladies, on such occasions, enter the asylum of their own accord.

There is also in Oporto an establishment in the nature of a Penitentiary, in which husbands may immure their faithless wives, or even those who give grounds of suspicion. It is presumed that in the nineteenth century, even in Portugal, this must be done under color of some legal authority.

ALGERIA.

A pamphlet has lately appeared in France on the subject of Prostitution in Algiers. Its author, Dr. E. A. Duchesne, has [Pg 181]rendered service by collecting a large number of important facts and statistical data.[247]

When the French conquered Algiers in 1830, they found prostitution established there, and prevailing to a large extent. So far as we are able to ascertain, it had always been a leading feature of Algerian society; travelers had noticed it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1830 it was estimated that, with a population of thirty thousand, Algiers contained three thousand prostitutes. We have already had occasion to notice the unreliable character of similar estimates in general, but there is no doubt that the number of lewd women at Algiers under Arab rule was inordinately large. They were mainly Moors, Arabs, and negresses. All were under the control of the chief of the native police—the Mezonar. He kept a list of them, and laid a tax amounting to about two dollars per month on each. As he paid a fixed sum to the government for the privilege of collecting this tax, it was to his interest to increase the number of prostitutes as much as possible, and he appears to have done so. He kept in his employ a number of spies, who watched women suspected of immoral habits, and denounced them whenever they were detected, in which event they were inscribed on the Mezonar’s list, and became prostitutes for life. He was empowered to compel every prostitute to discharge the duties of her calling, and was frequently applied to by strangers to supply them with women. He was not allowed, however, to lease women to Christians or Jews. Twice a year the Mezonar gave a public fête, to which all the male inhabitants of Algiers were invited; the prostitutes formed the female portion of the assemblage, and the public officer profited by the increased patronage they obtained during the festivities, as well as by the sale of tickets for the entertainment.[248]

It is right also to add that the French found that other feature of Oriental manners, unnatural habits, largely developed at Algiers. The cafés, the streets, the baths, the public places were full of boys of remarkable beauty, who more than shared with the women the favor of the wealthier natives. Owing to a criminal negligence on the part of the French authorities, no systematic endeavor has ever been made to eradicate this shameful vice, which appears still to prevail to an alarming extent.

The influx of population, mainly soldiery, into a city thus[Pg 182] steeped in immorality, produced natural results. A few weeks after the invasion, the French general was compelled to establish a Dispensary, and to decree that all dissolute women must undergo an examination there once a week. A tax of five francs per month was laid upon prostitutes to defray the expenses of the establishment. Within less than a year, such grave abuses had crept into the collection of this tax that it was resolved to farm it out, and it was adjudged at auction to a man who agreed to pay 1860 francs per month for its proceeds. In 1832 the monthly tax was raised successively to seven ⁴⁴⁄100, and nine francs per girl, and on these rates it was farmed to one Balré, who paid 1666⁸⁰⁄100 for the privilege of collecting it. He was also entitled to levy and retain the amount of all fines imposed by the police on prostitutes, and to charge women ten francs each time they went to a fête outside the city, and five francs if the fête were within the limits. The profits of the farm were so great that in 1835 Balré was able to pay the government 2250 francs (four hundred and fifty dollars) per month.[249]

Under this system the gravest inconveniences occurred, and became so troublesome that in November, 1835, the governor promulgated a decree remodeling the regulations in force on the subject. It appears the farm system was then abandoned, and the government agents who were intrusted with the collection of the tax robbed both the prostitutes and the state shamefully.

Hence, in December, 1837, a new decree was issued by the governor, repealing all former laws and regulations, and placing the whole subject under the control of the Commissary of Police. The leading provisions of that decree were as follows:

This law is in force at the present time, and is said to have led to great inconvenience. Police agents are accused of levying black mail on the prostitutes to an enormous extent, in the shape of fines, dues for going to balls, hush-money for escaping the visit to the Dispensary, presents to the policeman on the birth of his children, etc. The product of the tax is inordinately large, amounting, independently of fines, to one hundred and twenty francs, or twenty-four dollars per annum for each girl. Several administrators have recommended its diminution or total suppression, but it is still retained.[251]

In the year 1838, when the present law was passed, the number of women inscribed on the police register was 320, the total population of Algiers being 34,882, of whom two thirds were Africans and one third Europeans; but the mayor of the city gave it as his opinion that this figure (320) was in reality far below the truth. In 1846 measures were taken for enforcing the police regulations more strictly than before, and some care was used to procure correct statistics of population and prostitution.[252] We compile the following table from several given by Dr. Duchesne:

To these figures, some of which are only approximative, must[Pg 184] be added the number of French soldiers in the garrison at Algiers. At times the effective force has been as large as twelve or fifteen thousand men.

Another point of interest is the nationality of the prostitutes of Algiers. It is known that the native women are loose in their morals. In many parts of the interior it is common for fathers or brothers to let out their daughters or sisters by the night or the week to strangers, and the young women themselves are only too willing to ratify a bargain which promises to gratify their unbounded sensuality. The following table gives the nationality of the registered prostitutes during the period 1846-1851.[253]

On inquiring for the causes of prostitution at Algiers, Dr. Duchesne found that they might be summed up under three heads: 1st. Poverty, mainly due to the French conquest and the wars which followed. To the present day it appears that it is not unusual for an Arab chief to relieve his wants by sending his prettiest daughter to Algiers to perform a campaign as a prostitute. 2d. The idleness in which all Arab and Moorish women are trained. It was proved that, while all the European women were capable of working at some calling or other, and did work during their stay in the hospital, not one of the native women had any idea of manual employment. A few could sing, and had at one time gained a livelihood as street-singers, but the immense majority were absolutely incapable of doing any thing for a livelihood. 3d. The Oriental idea that the woman is a chattel, to be sold or hired out by her legitimate owner, father, brother, or husband. This idea, which prevails in many savage nations, among others, many of our own Indian tribes, is, of course, the best of all entering wedges for prostitution.[254]

There are fourteen houses of prostitution at Algiers, all kept, it seems, by Europeans, and the greater part by retired prostitutes. The natives object to living under the control of a brothel-keeper. They live alone in their own rooms. Sometimes three or four of[Pg 185] them club together and form a partnership. Their rooms are generally shabby and ill furnished.[255]

Arab prostitutes seldom appear in the streets, and when they do, they are veiled and dressed like modest women. They may be seen at their windows of an evening, peeping through small holes contrived for the purpose, and smoking cigarettes. Their customers are procured by means of runners, who are mostly small boys.

As may be inferred from the amount of the tax on prostitutes, clandestine prostitution is very extensively practiced at Algiers. We have no details or even approximate estimates of the number of clandestine prostitutes, but it doubtless exceeds that of the registered women. Many of them are attached to the garrison, and are handed from regiment to regiment, shielded from the police by being claimed as wives by some of the soldiers. Others in like manner prevail upon some colonist to afford them a temporary home, and so elude the visit of the physician. Dr. Duchesne had reason to believe that syphilis prevailed to an alarming extent among the secret prostitutes, and that, until the tax was removed, and they were encouraged to register themselves on the police roll, it would continue to be general and virulent.[256]

Formerly the baths were the great haunts of clandestine prostitutes. It is known that in most eastern countries the bath is not only a sanitary necessity, but a common ally of sensuality. At Algiers, before the conquest, men and women are said to have bathed promiscuously, and frightful scenes of debauchery occurred daily. Under French rule this has been reformed. Men may not bathe from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.; but Dr. Duchesne was led to believe that it was quite common for men to introduce women into the baths at night, with the connivance of the bath officials. Indeed, some of the latter appear to fill the same office to the Algerine bathers as the Roman bath servants did to the dissolute men of that day.[257]

It now remains to speak of the Dispensary at Algiers. It was established, as has been stated, within a few days after the capture of the place. For nearly ten years it was a scandal to the faculty and the authorities. The wards were too small; there were not beds enough for the women; every thing was either deficient in quantity or objectionable in quality. In 1839, orders were given for the establishment of a proper and commodious Dispensary.[Pg 186] Three old Moorish houses were hired and divided into wards. They contain at present thirteen wards, with beds for seventy-seven patients; a bath-room, containing six baths; a hall for the visits of prostitutes; and the necessary offices, etc. The staff of the Dispensary consists of a director, treasurer (econome), physician, apothecary, clerk, cook, assistant apothecary, porter, five laborers, and four police agents. All the washing is done in the establishment. The commissariat is on the amplest scale; meat, soup, vegetables of all kinds, rice, eggs, fruit, etc., being supplied in abundance to the patients.[258]

Every morning at seven o’clock the women are visited by the physician, assisted by the apothecary. Those who are able to walk are examined in the salle de visite, the others in their beds. The average number of patients during the year appears to be from five hundred and fifty to six hundred. The average duration of the treatment is from twenty-four to thirty-four days. The cost to the Dispensary averages from one and a half to one and three quarters franc per day for each girl (about thirty or thirty-five cents).[259]

The Dispensary physician reported to Dr. Duchesne that, so far as his observation went, syphilis was more severe on the sea-coast than in the interior; and in the months of September, October, November, and December, than at any other period of the year.[260]

Prostitutes are punished for being more than twenty-four hours behind time in visiting the Dispensary; for leaving it during treatment; for insulting the physician or other authorities; for continuing to exercise their calling after being attacked by disease. The penalty is imprisonment, either in the ordinary prison or in the solitary cell. Formerly, the tread-mill was used, and in bad cases a girl’s hair was cut off, and her nose slit; but these savage relics of Moorish legislation were long since abandoned. Solitary confinement is found to answer every useful purpose.[261]

[Pg 187]

BELGIUM.

Belgium takes a more prominent position in Europe than its mere extent would warrant. This influence is derived from the vigorous and effective stand made in behalf of rational freedom, and from the manner in which free institutions have been originated and maintained.

The hospitals and other eleemosynary institutions of Belgium are of a magnificent character, supported at an annual expenditure of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. Almost every town, and many of the larger villages, have hospitals for the sick, sometimes maintained at corporation expense, sometimes by private endowments. In 318 hospitals, during the four years from 1831 to 1834 (inclusive), no less than 22,180 persons were treated.[262]

Foundling hospitals are a marked feature of these charitable establishments. The turning table, which was formerly in use in all such institutions, has lately been abandoned in most of them, but still remains in use at those of Brussels and Antwerp. The total number of children annually abandoned in Belgium is estimated to exceed eight thousand out of one hundred and forty-four thousand births, a ratio of about one in eighteen. The average expense attendant upon the maintenance of each infant is about seventy-two francs.

Marriage in Belgium is, by law, simply a civil contract, requiring fifteen days’ notice posted in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Notwithstanding the simplicity of this ceremonial, it is affirmed that an enormous extent of immorality and illegitimacy is to be met with, and that a virtuous servant-girl is altogether exceptional, there being scarcely one of them who has not an illegitimate child, while they maintain with the most unyielding confidence that, so long as the father is a bon ami (sweetheart), there is no moral turpitude in the case.

[Pg 188]Belgium is remarkable for its regulations with respect to prostitution and the spread of venereal disease. The perfections of the latter arrangements are shown in the fact that, out of an army of thirty thousand men, there were less than two hundred cases of syphilis in the year 1855.

The brothels of Brussels are of two kinds: les maisons de debauché and les maisons de passe; these are visited by les filles éparses, who keep their appointments there. The two classes of houses are distinguished by different-colored lanterns hung over the doors.

All classes of prostitutes are required to be examined twice a week; those who live in brothels of the first and second class are visited by the physicians, while the very poor women of the third class, and all those who do not reside in brothels, are obliged to attend at the Dispensary. If they are punctual in their visits for four weeks in succession they are exempt from all tax; but if, on the contrary, their attendance is irregular, they can be imprisoned from one to five days. Any woman who does not live in a brothel can be examined at her own residence, provided that she pays at the Dispensary a sum amounting to about eighty-five cents. For this she receives four visits, and the physicians will continue to call upon her as long as the payments are made in advance. Thus the denizens of the aristocratic brothels are saved the inconvenience of attending at the Dispensary, as also that portion living in private lodgings who can afford to pay the fee to release themselves from going to the office as common prostitutes, while the half-starved, ill-dressed pauper of the third class must wait at the Dispensary until examined, and then return to her squalid home, where none but her companions and the police-officers are ever seen.

The medical staff of the Dispensary is composed of a superintending inspector, whose duty is to be present in the Dispensary when examinations are being made, and to visit the houses once a fortnight at least; of two medical inspectors, who, during alternate months, examine, one the women in the brothels, the other those who attend at the Dispensary. The date and result of every examination are marked on a card belonging to each woman, in the registers kept at the brothels, and in the records of the Dispensary. If a woman be found affected with syphilis or any other infectious disease, the owner of the brothel must send her immediately, in a car, to the hospital, and as soon as her cure is complete her card is handed to her, and she is at liberty to resume her calling.

[Pg 189]

HAMBURG.

The ancient legislative enactments respecting prostitution in Hamburg seem to have been of the same character, and based upon the same principles, as in other Continental cities, namely, a partial toleration of a necessary evil for the sake of preventing injurious excesses. This may be traced in the oldest extant law on the subject, dated in 1292. In the public account-books for 1350 are entries of charges which imply that public brothels were built by the corporation, though we find no satisfactory information as to whether they were managed by an appointed official as in Cologne, Strasbourg, or Avignon, or were leased by the city to an individual as in Ulm. It will be interesting to give a sketch of the regulations of prostitution in the latter city before proceeding with the investigation concerning Hamburg.

The laws of the city of Ulm in 1430, or at least that portion of them called “woman house” laws, provided that the houses should be leased, and the lessee, on becoming tenant, swore to serve the city faithfully; to prevent all foul play or concealment of suspicious goods in his house; to provide clean, healthy women, and never to keep less than fourteen. He was bound to observe a fixed dietary scale; the daily meals were to be “of the value of sixpence;” on meat days every woman was to have two dishes, soup with meat and vegetables, and a roast or boiled joint, as most[Pg 190] convenient. On fast-days and in Lent they were to have the same number of dishes, which (out of Lent) might consist of eggs and baked meat. As a change to this, they might have herrings and eggs; or fishes (probably fresh-water fish), which they could cook for themselves, and to which the keeper must add white bread. If a woman refused the food provided, he was bound to give her something of the value of sixpence; he was also to sell them wine “when they required it.” If a woman was pregnant, he was to put her out of the house. In the “woman’s house” there was a chest for general purposes, and a money-box for the accounts between the host and the women. Every woman who kept company with a man at night must pay the keeper a kreutzer, the remainder of the fee being her own property. All money the women obtained in the day was to be put into the general chest; the third of this belonged to the host; the balance was paid to the women at the end of the week, less any debts they had contracted in the mean time. A woman resided in every house who made financial arrangements between inmates and visitors. If a woman received a present in addition to the stipulated fee, she was at liberty to spend it on clothes, shoes, or personal matters to which nobody could lay claim. The keeper could not supply the women with clothes, etc., without the knowledge and consent of the Master of the Beggars (a local functionary who seems to have combined the supervision of brothels, and of known vagrants and beggars). The host was required to provide, at his own cost, a cook and a cook’s maid. Girls or women could, with their own consent, be apprenticed to the “women keeper” by their parents or husbands; but if one was apprenticed against her will, and she, or her friends, wished to cancel the agreement, the keeper was bound to release her without requiring the repayment of any money he might have disbursed for her. If a woman who had accumulated a guilder of her own wished to quit her sinful life, she was allowed to tender it to the keeper in discharge of all her liabilities, and must then be permitted to leave the house, wearing the clothes she wore when she entered it, or, if they were worn out, in her common “Monday clothes.” A woman who desired might leave without this payment if she had nothing to give, but if subsequently detected in any other house the keeper could enforce his demands against her, the discharge not affecting his claim under such circumstances. Every Monday each woman had to contribute one penny, and the host twopence, to the money-box[Pg 191] to purchase tapers for the Virgin and the saints, to be offered in the Cathedral on Sunday nights. If any of the women were sick or could not support themselves, they were to be provided with necessaries from the money-box, to which (for greater security) there were two keys, one kept by the host and the other by the Master of the Beggars. Each woman had to spin daily for the keeper two hanks of yarn, or, in default, to pay three hellers for each hank. On Sunday, Lady-day, and Twelfth-day, after vespers, and in Passion Week, the house was not to be opened. If the keeper broke any of these regulations the council could dismiss him. The oath taken by the Master of the Beggars required him to visit the women-houses every quarter day; to read the laws to the women; and to report to the council any offenses he found existing.[263]

In Hamburg, in 1483, the calling of brothel-keeper was limited to certain streets, apart from the ordinarily frequented thoroughfares—a rule which would imply that the authorities had discontinued building public brothels, and relinquished the business to individuals.

In the seventeenth century a different course of action was adopted, and, in place of toleration and limitation of brothels, strict laws were made in reference to visiting suspected places, and the custody of persons of bad character. The women-houses were pulled down and the women expelled; the criminal records contain frequent instances where the pillory or exile was inflicted for the crime of prostitution.

In 1764, and again in 1767, the Hamburgers enacted very severe laws against offenders, under the title of “delicta carnis,” by which both sexes were subject to pains and penalties, but men seem to have been allowed to clear themselves on oath. The officers of justice were directed to make domiciliary visits in search of offenders, and the pillory, bread and water, the House of Correction, or banishment, are the penalties threatened on habitual evil-doers.

In Germany, prostitution received a terrible impulse from the French Revolution, when the general disruption of public obligations paved the way to unbounded private license. Probably the licentiousness of Europe at the end of the last and commencement of the present century was more extravagant than at any other time. The irruption of immigrants at the fall of the French[Pg 192] monarchy flooded Hamburg with Parisian morals and customs. Places of entertainment and sensual gratification arose in all directions, the homely, simple manners of the Vaterland were subverted, and a less rigid line of conduct took their place. In the words of a writer of the day: “Our eating-houses were metamorphosed into restaurants; our dancing-rooms into saloons; our drinking-shops into pavilions; our cellars into halls; our girls into demoiselles; in short, we were thoroughly polished up by the immoral shoal of immigrants. Quick and unrestrained strode the crowd over our pleasant streets, and modesty and respectability fled with averted faces, to the sorrow of the few good men.”

The name demoiselle was granted to many of the common women, their places of resort being called “Ma’amselle houses.” In those days the Hamburgers saw, with astonishment, houses fitted up and furnished in the style of mansions, with costly upholstery and cabinet-work.[264] Among the women were the femmes entretenness, who received their friends at certain hours, and whose favors were dispensed for a Louis d’or or a ducat. They frequented the first and second boxes of the German and French theatres, and drove through the public streets in handsome carriages. Some of the keepers of this class of houses had physicians in their pay, whose services were always available by the inmates. Petits soupers were given here, and sometimes a ball took place.

These were literally the aristocracy of prostitution. The second, third, and fourth grades resided in inferior streets or in the suburbs, differing in their attractions according to the rank which they assumed, but all equally shameless and unequivocal in their conduct and appearance.

Notwithstanding this rapid spread of prostitution, the police of the city can not justly be charged with neglect of duty, any public outrage being followed by condign punishment. At one time a whole ship-load of nymphs of the pavé was dispatched to the colonies; at another a raid was made on the most conspicuous houses, some of the inmates alarmed into decency of conduct, and the incorrigible publicly exhibited in the streets, decorated with inscriptions signifying their offenses. The voice of the few was powerless against the corruptions of the many. The pamphlets and papers of the time teem with the proffered services of go-betweens, and even the Hamburg ladies themselves were far from perfection, if we may credit the evidence of a fictitious petition,[Pg 193] praying, among other things, that the ladies restrict the indecency of their costume, and not make such a liberal display of their charms.

It was impossible such an extravagant state of society should long exist; a reaction was inevitable; and we find, accordingly, an ordinance enacted in 1807 by the Proctor Abendroth in reference to the matter. It recognized brothel-keeping and prostitution as a calling, and permitted it under certain restrictions. A tax on the class was imposed, and means were prescribed by which a register of all persons engaged therein was to be kept, and their health and general good conduct maintained and enforced. The official justification of the tax is found in the order itself, which declares that, “for the purposes aforesaid” (police register and supervision, medical examination, maintenance in sickness, poverty, etc.), “and in order that the public shall be at no charges, each housekeeper shall, for every woman residing with him, pay two marks to the Proctor’s treasury. The surplus of this treasury shall go to the Hospital.”

During the French occupation in 1811, the police renewed and enforced the stringent regulations on the subject of common houses and women. The preamble of their “Instructions” (April, 1811) is worthy of notice:

After the withdrawal of the French, the vigilance of the police authorities seems to have relaxed, if we are to judge by complaints[Pg 194] published at the time, in which they are accused of complicity with the unfortunates who infested the streets of Hamburg, and are said, “by the agency of a trifling bribe, to be able to ply their hideous trade unobstructed, and to the great annoyance of the virtuously disposed, who, after certain hours of the evening, are unable to pass along the streets.”

In 1820, “the previously existing police regulations against prostitutes being proved very ineffectual, insomuch that they infest the public streets and ways, not only to the offense of decency and propriety, but to the endangerment of public order and safety,” it was ordered that the regulations should be renewed, and additional powers were given to the police to enforce the registry of individuals coming within the scope of the law.

At this time we find some information as to the number of prostitutes, who are stated to be about five hundred, chiefly foreigners, and their receipts from their patrons, but we have no guide to the number of women who pursued their calling privately, which must have been large.

The civic administration of the Senator Hudtwalcker is marked by earnest endeavors to control prostitution and restrict it within known bounds. Some of his views on the subject met much opposition. He wished to close up one end of a notorious street, and to wall up the back windows, stationing a watchman constantly at the end left open. After great personal attention to the subject, he published the result of his experience.[265] His principles are those upon which the present police regulations of Hamburg are based. He says:

7, 8, 9. Prescribe the identification of individuals subscribing; the details of their place of birth; the consent of parents when living; also, “That any brothel-keeper detaining an innocent girl on false pretenses shall be punished with fine and imprisonment, and the concession be withdrawn.”

12. Prohibits solicitation of passengers.

14. Limits the places to which prostitutes may resort.

The remaining sections relate to the collection of the tax; the penalties for violation are fine and imprisonment.

Having thus briefly sketched the progress of legislation on prostitution in Hamburg, based upon the principle that “prostitution is a necessary evil, and, as such, must be endured under strict supervision of the authorities,” it seems an appropriate place to copy the following remarks of an eminent local writer:

Thus much for Hamburg legislation, and the sound arguments in its favor. We will now give some facts illustrative of the vice as it exists at the present time, using a pamphlet by Dr. Lippert, entitled “Prostitution in Hamburg. 1848.”

It must be premised that, for the purpose, Hamburg is divided into two parts: the city proper, and the suburb of St. Paul. The latter is under a distinct municipal authority, and is the ordinary residence of seamen and those depending on a seafaring life.

For many years the police returns of the city proper would show about five hundred of the registered “common women” (eingeschrieben Dirnen), and one hundred registered brothels. The police regulations requiring monthly payment of the personal and house tax, and also a renewal of the permission to keep brothels at the same time, is a very convenient method of obtaining a census of the class. The following is a statement of the largest and smallest monthly number of registered women for several years:

[Pg 198]

These monthly reports do not show any marked variation at any particular period, the rise and fall being arbitrary. The fluctuation is not very great in the aggregate, although from November, 1834, to January, 1835, there was a decrease of 86 (or nearly one fifth), while between November, 1835, and January, 1836, there was a corresponding increase. Since that time the numbers have remained steadily at about one point.