The History of Prostitution Part 11

A person desiring to have her name struck from the rolls of 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 prost.i.tute; 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.ses triumphantly through this period of probation, her name is definitely struck from the roll of prost.i.tutes.

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 prost.i.tution even as a servant.

A prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tutes registered, shows the movement of reform:

+------------------------------------------+ Women struck off the Rolls of Prost.i.tutes Years. ----------------------------------- At their In consequence own request. of absence. Total. ------ ------------ -------------- ------- 1817 485 575 1060 1818 477 582 1059 1819 469 571 1040 1820 415 716 1131 1821 433 733 1166 1822 417 739 1156 1823 502 605 1107 1824 442 602 1044 1825 456 527 983 1826 486 554 1040 1827 490 542 1032 1828 572 415 987 1829 298 536 834 1830 334 502 836 1831 284 452 736 1832 449 718 1167 ------------ -------------- ------- 7009 9369 16378 +------------------------------------------+

Once inscribed, prost.i.tutes are divided into three cla.s.ses:

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.

In the eye of the law there is no difference between the three cla.s.ses; 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 cla.s.ses 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 prost.i.tutes visit them at the Dispensary. Yet another visit is made by the Dispensary physicians to the Depot, or Lock-up, at the Prefecture of Police; as there are always a certain number of prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution are visited by the Dispensary physicians once a week; the hour of the visit is known beforehand, and every girl must be present and pa.s.s inspection. The examination is private; the result is noted in a "folio" kept by the physician, and a corresponding memorandum is made in the pa.s.s-book of the house and on the card of the prost.i.tute.

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 prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tutes are visited nearly thirty times a year, and prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 concerning prost.i.tution (_delits de prost.i.tution_) are punished by imprisonment; misdemeanors and crimes provided against by the code being within the cognizance of the ordinary courts in the case of prost.i.tutes as well as other persons.

_Delits de prost.i.tution_ have been divided by the _Bureau des Moeurs_ into two cla.s.ses, slight offenses and grave offenses; slight offenses are:

1. To appear in forbidden places.

2. To appear at forbidden hours.

3. To get drunk, and lie down in doorways, streets, or other thoroughfares.

4. To demand admittance to guard-houses.

5. To walk through the streets in daylight in such a way as to attract the notice of people pa.s.sing.

6. To rap on the windows of their rooms.

7. To absent themselves from the medical inspection.

8. To beg.

9. To remain more than twenty-four hours in their house, after having been p.r.o.nounced diseased by the physician.

10. To escape from the Hospital or Dispensary.

11. To go out of doors with bare head or neck.

12. To remain in Paris after having been ordered to leave, and presented with a pa.s.sport.

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

A prost.i.tute is held to be guilty of grave offenses when she

1. Insults outrageously the visiting physician.

2. Fails to visit the Dispensary.

3. Continues to prost.i.tute herself after being p.r.o.nounced diseased.

4. Uses obscene language in public.

5. Appears naked at her window.

6. a.s.sails men with violence, and endeavors to drag them to her home.

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 prost.i.tute.

When a prost.i.tute is arrested she is taken to the Prefecture of Police, where there is a room specially appropriated to her cla.s.s. She is tried within forty-eight, usually within twenty-four hours 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, prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes. 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 prost.i.tutes' 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 prost.i.tutes'

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 prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tutes are sent every year to the prison of St.

Denis. These are those who, from physical or mental infirmities, such as recto-v.a.g.i.n.al 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 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tution, and attacks on the administration in consequence were incessant. The police authorities gave way at last, and the munic.i.p.al 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tute 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 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.