only been in London for ten months; before that she lived in
Newcastle. She did not go on the streets there; "circumstances
alter cases," she sagely remarks. Though not speaking well of
the police, she says they do not interfere with her as they do
with some of the girls. She never gives them money, but hints
that it is sometimes necessary to gratify their desires in order
to keep on good terms with them.

It must always be remembered, for it is sometimes forgotten by socialists
and social reformers, that while the pressure of poverty exerts a markedly
modifying influence on prostitution, in that it increases the ranks of the
women who thereby seek a livelihood and may thus be properly regarded as a
factor of prostitution, no practicable raising of the rate of women's
wages could possibly serve, directly and alone, to abolish prostitution.
De Molinari, an economist, after remarking that "prostitution is an
industry" and that if other competing industries can offer women
sufficiently high pecuniary inducements they will not be so frequently
attracted to prostitution, proceeds to point out that that by no means
settles the question. "Like every other industry prostitution is governed
by the demand of the need to which it responds. As long as that need and
that demand persist, they will provoke an offer. It is the need and the
demand that we must act on, and perhaps science will furnish us the means
to do so."[173] In what way Molinari expects science to diminish the
demand for prostitutes, however, is not clearly brought out.

Not only have we to admit that no practicable rise in the rate of wages
paid to women in ordinary industries can possibly compete with the wages
which fairly attractive women of quite ordinary ability can earn by
prostitution,[174] but we have also to realize that a rise in general
prosperity--which alone can render a rise of women's wages healthy and
normal--involves a rise in the wages of prostitution, and an increase in
the number of prostitutes. So that if good wages is to be regarded as the
antagonist of prostitution, we can only say that it more than gives back
with one hand what it takes with the other. To so marked a degree is this
the case that Després in a detailed moral and demographic study of the
distribution of prostitution in France comes to the conclusion that we
must reverse the ancient doctrine that "poverty engenders prostitution"
since prostitution regularly increases with wealth,[175] and as a
département rises in wealth and prosperity, so the number both of its
inscribed and its free prostitutes rises also. There is indeed a fallacy
here, for while it is true, as Després argues, that wealth demands
prostitution, it is also true that a wealthy community involves the
extreme of poverty as well as of riches and that it is among the poorer
elements that prostitution chiefly finds its recruits. The ancient dictum
that "poverty engenders prostitution" still stands, but it is complicated
and qualified by the complex conditions of civilization. Bonger, in his
able discussion of the economic side of the question, has realized the
wide and deep basis of prostitution when he reaches the conclusion that it
is "on the one hand the inevitable complement of the existing legal
monogamy, and on the other hand the result of the bad conditions in which
many young girls grow up, the result of the physical and psychical
wretchedness in which the women of the people live, and the consequence
also of the inferior position of women in our actual society."[176] A
narrowly economic consideration of prostitution can by no means bring us
to the root of the matter.

One circumstance alone should have sufficed to indicate that the
inability of many women to secure "a living wage," is far from
being the most fundamental cause of prostitution: a large
proportion of prostitutes come from the ranks of domestic
service. Of all the great groups of female workers, domestic
servants are the freest from economic anxieties; they do not pay
for food or for lodging; they often live as well as their
mistresses, and in a large proportion of cases they have fewer
money anxieties than their mistresses. Moreover, they supply an
almost universal demand, so that there is never any need for even
very moderately competent servants to be in want of work. They
constitute, it is true, a very large body which could not fail to
supply a certain contingent of recruits to prostitution. But when
we see that domestic service is the chief reservoir from which
prostitutes are drawn, it should be clear that the craving for
food and shelter is by no means the chief cause of prostitution.

It may be added that, although the significance of this
predominance of servants among prostitutes is seldom realized by
those who fancy that to remove poverty is to abolish
prostitution, it has not been ignored by the more thoughtful
students of social questions. Thus Sherwell, while pointing out
truly that, to a large extent, "morals fluctuate with trade,"
adds that, against the importance of the economic factor, it is a
suggestive and in every way impressive fact that the majority of
the girls who frequent the West End of London (88 per cent.,
according to the Salvation Army's Registers) are drawn from
domestic service where the economic struggle is not severely felt
(Arthur Sherwell, _Life in West London_, Ch. V, "Prostitution").

It is at the same time worthy of note that by the conditions of
their lives servants, more than any other class, resemble
prostitutes (Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo have
pointed this out in _La Mala Vida en Madrid_, p. 240). Like
prostitutes, they are a class of women apart; they are not
entitled to the considerations and the little courtesies usually
paid to other women; in some countries they are even registered,
like prostitutes; it is scarcely surprising that when they suffer
from so many of the disadvantages of the prostitute, they should
sometimes desire to possess also some of her advantages. Lily
Braun (_Frauenfrage_, pp. 389 et seq.) has set forth in detail
these unfavorable conditions of domestic labor as they bear on
the tendency of servant-girls to become prostitutes. R. de
Ryckère, in his important work, _La Servante Criminelle_ (1907,
pp. 460 et seq.; cf., the same author's article, "La Criminalité
Ancillaire," _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, July and
December, 1906), has studied the psychology of the servant-girl.
He finds that she is specially marked by lack of foresight,
vanity, lack of invention, tendency to imitation, and mobility of
mind. These are characters which ally her to the prostitute. De
Ryckère estimates the proportion of former servants among
prostitutes generally as fifty per cent., and adds that what is
called the "white slavery" here finds its most complacent and
docile victims. He remarks, however, that the servant prostitute
is, on the whole, not so much immoral as non-moral.

In Paris Parent-Duchâtelet found that, in proportion to their
number, servants furnished the largest contingent to
prostitution, and his editors also found that they head the list
(Parent-Duchâtelet, edition 1857, vol. i, p. 83). Among
clandestine prostitutes at Paris, Commenge has more recently
found that former servants constitute forty per cent. In Bordeaux
Jeannel (_De le Prostitution Publique_, p. 102) also found that
in 1860 forty per cent, of prostitutes had been servants,
seamstresses coming next with thirty-seven per cent.

In Germany and Austria it has long been recognized that domestic
service furnishes the chief number of recruits to prostitution.
Lippert, in Germany, and Gross-Hoffinger, in Austria, pointed out
this predominance of maid-servants and its significance before
the middle of the nineteenth century, and more recently Blaschko
has stated ("Hygiene der Syphilis" in Weyl's _Handbuch der
Hygiene_, Bd. ii, p. 40) that among Berlin prostitutes in 1898
maid-servants stand at the head with fifty-one per cent.
Baumgarten has stated that in Vienna the proportion of servants
is fifty-eight per cent.

In England, according to the Report of a Select Committee of the
Lords on the laws for the protection of children, sixty per cent,
of prostitutes have been servants. F. Remo, in his _Vie Galante
en Angleterre_, states the proportion as eighty per cent. It
would appear to be even higher as regards the West End of London.
Taking London as a whole the extensive statistics of Merrick
(_Work Among the Fallen_), chaplain of the Millbank Prison,
showed that out of 14,790 prostitutes, 5823, or about forty per
cent., had previously been servants, laundresses coming next, and
then dressmakers; classifying his data somewhat more summarily
and roughly, Merrick found that the proportion of servants was
fifty-three per cent.

In America, among two thousand prostitutes, Sanger states that
forty-three per cent, had been servants, dressmakers coming next,
but at a long interval, with six per cent. (Sanger, _History of
Prostitution_, p. 524). Among Philadelphia prostitutes, Goodchild
states that "domestics are probably in largest proportion,"
although some recruits may be found from almost any occupation.

It is the same in other countries. In Italy, according to Tammeo
(_La Prostituzione_, p. 100), servants come first among
prostitutes with a proportion of twenty-eight per cent., followed
by the group of dressmakers, tailoresses and milliners, seventeen
per cent. In Sardinia, A Mantegazza states, most prostitutes are
servants from the country. In Russia, according to Fiaux, the
proportion is forty-five per cent. In Madrid, according to Eslava
(as quoted by Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas Aguilaniedo (_La Mala
Vida, en Madrid_, p. 239)), servants come at the head of
registered prostitutes with twenty-seven per cent.--almost the
same proportion as in Italy--and are followed by dressmakers. In
Sweden, according to Welander (_Monatshefte für Praktische
Dermatologie_, 1899, p. 477) among 2541 inscribed prostitutes,
1586 (or sixty-two per cent.) were domestic servants; at a long
interval followed 210 seamstresses, then 168 factory workers,
etc.

2. _The Biological Factor of Prostitution_.--Economic considerations, as
we see, have a highly important modificatory influence on prostitution,
although it is by no means correct to assert that they form its main
cause. There is another question which has exercised many investigators:
To what extent are prostitutes predestined to this career by organic
constitution? It is generally admitted that economic and other conditions
are an exciting cause of prostitution; in how far are those who succumb
predisposed by the possession of abnormal personal characteristics? Some
inquirers have argued that this predisposition is so marked that
prostitution may fairly be regarded as a feminine equivalent for
criminality, and that in a family in which the men instinctively turn to
crime, the women instinctively turn to prostitution. Others have as
strenuously denied this conclusion.

Lombroso has more especially advocated the doctrine that
prostitution is the vicarious equivalent of criminality. In this
he was developing the results reached, in the important study of
the Jukes family, by Dugdale, who found that "there where the
brothers commit crime, the sisters adopt prostitution;" the fines
and imprisonments of the women of the family were not for
violations of the right of property, but mainly for offences
against public decency. "The psychological as well as anatomical
identity of the criminal and the born prostitute," Lombroso and
Ferrero concluded, "could not be more complete: both are
identical with the moral insane, and therefore, according to the
axiom, equal to each other. There is the same lack of moral
sense, the same hardness of heart, the same precocious taste for
evil, the same indifference to social infamy, the same
volatility, love of idleness, and lack of foresight, the same
taste for facile pleasures, for the orgy and for alcohol, the
same, or almost the same, vanity. Prostitution is only the
feminine side of criminality. And so true is it that prostitution
and criminality are two analogous, or, so to say, parallel,
phenomena, that at their extremes they meet. The prostitute is,
therefore, psychologically a criminal: if she commits no offenses
it is because her physical weakness, her small intelligence, the
facility of acquiring what she wants by more easy methods,
dispenses her from the necessity of crime, and on these very
grounds prostitution represents the specific form of feminine
criminality." The authors add that "prostitution is, in a certain
sense, socially useful as an outlet for masculine sexuality and a
preventive of crime" (Lombroso and Ferrero, _La Donna
Delinquente_, 1893, p. 571).

Those who have opposed this view have taken various grounds, and
by no means always understood the position they are attacking.
Thus W. Fischer (in _Die Prostitution_) vigorously argues that
prostitution is not an inoffensive equivalent of criminality, but
a factor of criminality. Féré, again (in _Dégénérescence et
Criminalité_), asserts that criminality and prostitution are not
equivalent, but identical. "Prostitutes and criminals," he holds,
"have as a common character their unproductiveness, and
consequently they are both anti-social. Prostitution thus
constitutes a form of criminality." The essential character of
criminals is not, however, their unproductiveness, for that they
share with a considerable proportion of the wealthiest of the
upper classes; it must be added, also, that the prostitute,
unlike the criminal, is exercising an activity for which there is
a demand, for which she is willingly paid, and for which she has
to work (it has sometimes been noted that the prostitute looks
down on the thief, who "does not work"); she is carrying on a
profession, and is neither more nor less productive than those
who carry on many more reputable professions. Aschaffenburg, also
believing himself in opposition to Lombroso, argues, somewhat
differently from Féré, that prostitution is not indeed, as Féré
said, a form of criminality, but that it is too frequently united
with criminality to be regarded as an equivalent. Mönkemöller has
more recently supported the same view. Here, however, as usual,
there is a wide difference of opinion as to the proportion of
prostitutes of whom this is true. It is recognized by all
investigators to be true of a certain number, but while
Baumgarten, from an examination of eight thousand prostitutes,
only found a minute proportion who were criminals, Ströhmberg
found that among 462 prostitutes there were as many as 175
thieves. From another side, Morasso (as quoted in _Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1896, fasc. I), on the strength of his own
investigations, is more clearly in opposition to Lombroso, since
he protests altogether against any purely degenerative view of
prostitutes which would in any way assimilate them with
criminals.

The question of the sexuality of prostitutes, which has a certain bearing
on the question of their tendency to degeneration, has been settled by
different writers in different senses. While some, like Morasso, assert
that sexual impulse is a main cause inducing women to adopt a prostitute's
career, others assert that prostitutes are usually almost devoid of sexual
impulse. Lombroso refers to the prevalence of sexual frigidity among
prostitutes.[177] In London, Merrick, speaking from a knowledge of over
16,000 prostitutes, states that he has met with "only a very few cases"
in which gross sexual desire has been the motive to adopt a life of
prostitution. In Paris, Raciborski had stated at a much earlier period
that "among prostitutes one finds very few who are prompted to libertinage
by sexual ardor."[178] Commenge, again, a careful student of the Parisian
prostitute, cannot admit that sexual desire is to be classed among the
serious causes of prostitution. "I have made inquiries of thousands of
women on this point," he states, "and only a very small number have told
me that they were driven to prostitution for the satisfaction of sexual
needs. Although girls who give themselves to prostitution are often
lacking in frankness, on this point, I believe, they have no wish to
deceive. When they have sexual needs they do not conceal them, but, on the
contrary, show a certain _amour-propre_ in acknowledging them, as a
sufficient sort of justification for their life; so that if only a very
small minority avow this motive the reason is that for the great majority
it has no existence."

There can be no doubt that the statements made regarding the sexual
frigidity of prostitutes are often much too unqualified. This is in part
certainly due to the fact that they are usually made by those who speak
from a knowledge of old prostitutes whose habitual familiarity with normal
sexual intercourse in its least attractive aspects has resulted in
complete indifference to such intercourse, so far as their clients are
concerned.[179] It may be stated with truth that to the woman of deep
passions the ephemeral and superficial relationships of prostitution can
offer no temptation. And it may be added that the majority of prostitutes
begin their career at a very early age, long before the somewhat late
period at which in women the tendency for passion to become strong, has
yet arrived.[180] It may also be said that an indifference to sexual
relationships, a tendency to attach no personal value to them, is often a
predisposing cause in the adoption of a prostitute's career; the general
mental shallowness of prostitutes may well be accompanied by shallowness
of physical emotion. On the other hand, many prostitutes, at all events
early in their careers, appear to show a marked degree of sensuality, and
to women of coarse sexual fibre the career of prostitution has not been
without attractions from this point of view; the gratification of physical
desire is known to act as a motive in some cases and is clearly indicated
in others.[181] This is scarcely surprising when we remember that
prostitutes are in a very large proportion of cases remarkably robust and
healthy persons in general respects.[182] They withstand without
difficulty the risks of their profession, and though under its influence
the manifestations of sexual feeling can scarcely fail to become modified
or perverted in course of time, that is no proof of the original absence
of sexual sensibility. It is not even a proof of its loss, for the real
sexual nature of the normal prostitute, and her possibilities of sexual
ardor, are chiefly manifested, not in her professional relations with her
clients, but in her relations with her "fancy boy" or "bully."[183] It is
quite true that the conditions of her life often make it practically
advantageous to the prostitute to have attached to her a man who is
devoted to her interests and will defend them if necessary, but that is
only a secondary, occasional, and subsidiary advantage of the "fancy boy,"
so far as prostitutes generally are concerned. She is attracted to him
primarily because he appeals to her personally and she wants him for
herself. The motive of her attachment is, above all, erotic, in the full
sense, involving not merely sexual relations but possession and common
interests, a permanent and intimate life led together. "You know that what
one does in the way of business cannot fill one's heart," said a German
prostitute; "Why should we not have a husband like other women? I, too,
need love. If that were not so we should not want a bully." And he, on his
part, reciprocates this feeling and is by no means merely moved by
self-interest.[184]

One of my correspondents, who has had much experience of
prostitutes, not only in Britain, but also in Germany, France,
Belgium and Holland, has found that the normal manifestations of
sexual feeling are much more common in British than in
continental prostitutes. "I should say," he writes, "that in
normal coitus foreign women are generally unconscious of sexual
excitement. I don't think I have ever known a foreign woman who
had any semblance of orgasm. British women, on the other hand, if
a man is moderately kind, and shows that he has some feelings
beyond mere sensual gratification, often abandon themselves to
the wildest delights of sexual excitement. Of course in this
life, as in others, there is keen competition, and a woman, to
vie with her competitors, must please her gentlemen friends; but
a man of the world can always distinguish between real and
simulated passion." (It is possible, however, that he may be most
successful in arousing the feelings of his own fellow-country
women.) On the other hand, this writer finds that the foreign
women are more anxious to provide for the enjoyment of their
temporary consorts and to ascertain what pleases them. "The
foreigner seems to make it the business of her life to discover
some abnormal mode of sexual gratification for her consort." For
their own pleasure also foreign prostitutes frequently ask for
_cunnilinctus_, in preference to normal coitus, while anal coitus
is also common. The difference evidently is that the British
women, when they seek gratification, find it in normal coitus,
while the foreign women prefer more abnormal methods. There is,
however, one class of British prostitutes which this
correspondent finds to be an exception to the general rule: the
class of those who are recruited from the lower walks of the
stage. "Such women are generally more licentious--that is to say,
more acquainted with the bizarre in sexualism--than girls who
come from shops or bars; they show a knowledge of _fellatio_, and
even anal coitus, and during menstruation frequently suggest
inter-mammary coitus."

On the whole it would appear that prostitutes, though not usually impelled
to their life by motives of sensuality, on entering and during the early
part of their career possess a fairly average amount of sexual impulse,
with variations in both directions of excess and deficiency as well as of
perversion. At a somewhat later period it is useless to attempt to measure
the sexual impulse of prostitutes by the amount of pleasure they take in
the professional performance of sexual intercourse. It is necessary to
ascertain whether they possess sexual instincts which are gratified in
other ways. In a large proportion of cases this is found to be so.
Masturbation, especially, is extremely common among prostitutes
everywhere; however prevalent it may be among women who have no other
means of obtaining sexual gratification it is admitted by all to be still
more prevalent among prostitutes, indeed almost universal.[185]

Homosexuality, though not so common as masturbation, is very frequently
found among prostitutes--in France, it would seem, more frequently than in
England--and it may indeed be said that it occurs more often among
prostitutes than among any other class of women. It is favored by the
acquired distaste for normal coitus due to professional intercourse with
men, which leads homosexual relationships to be regarded as pure and ideal
by comparison. It would appear also that in a considerable proportion of
cases prostitutes present a congenital condition of sexual inversion, such
a condition, with an accompanying indifference to intercourse with men,
being a predisposing cause of the adoption of a prostitute's career.
Kurella even regards prostitutes as constituting a sub-variety of
congenital inverts. Anna Rüling in Germany states that about twenty per
cent. prostitutes are homosexual; when asked what induced them to become
prostitutes, more than one inverted woman of the street has replied to her
that it was purely a matter of business, sexual feeling not coming into
the question except with a friend of the same sex.[186]

The occurrence of congenital inversion among prostitutes--although we need
not regard prostitutes as necessarily degenerate as a class--suggests the
question whether we are likely to find an unusually large number of
physical and other anomalies among them. It cannot be said that there is
unanimity of opinion on this point. For some authorities prostitutes are
merely normal ordinary women of low social rank, if indeed their instincts
are not even a little superior to those of the class in which they were
born. Other investigators find among them so large a proportion of
individuals deviating from the normal that they are inclined to place
prostitutes generally among one or other of the abnormal classes.[187]

Baumgarten, in Vienna, from a knowledge of over 8000 prostitutes,
concluded that only a very minute proportion are either criminal
or psychopathic in temperament or organization (_Archiv für
Kriminal-Anthropologie_, vol. xi, 1902). It is not clear,
however, that Baumgarten carried out any detailed and precise
investigations. Mr. Lane, a London police magistrate, has stated
as the result of his own observation, that prostitution is "at
once a symptom and outcome of the same deteriorated physique and
decadent moral fibre which determine the manufacture of male
tramps, petty thieves, and professional beggars, of whom the
prostitute is in general the female analogue" (_Ethnological
Journal_, April, 1905, p. 41). This estimate is doubtless correct
as regards a considerable proportion of the women, often
enfeebled by drink, who pass through the police courts, but it
could scarcely be applied without qualification to prostitutes
generally.

Morasso (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1896, fasc. I) has protested
against a purely degenerative view of prostitutes on the strength
of his own observations. There is, he states, a category of
prostitutes, unknown to scientific inquirers, which he calls that
of the _prostitute di alto bordo_. Among these the signs of
degeneration, physical or moral, are not to be found in greater
number than among women who do not belong to prostitution. They
reveal all sorts of characters, some of them showing great
refinement, and are chiefly marked off by the possession of an
unusual degree of sexual appetite. Even among the more degraded
group of the _bassa prostituzione_, he asserts, we find a
predominance of sexual, as well as professional, characters,
rather than the signs of degeneration. It is sufficient to quote
one more testimony, as set down many years ago by a woman of high
intelligence and character, Mrs. Craik, the novelist: "The women
who fall are by no means the worst of their station," she wrote.
"I have heard it affirmed by more than one lady--by one in
particular whose experience was as large as her benevolence--that
many of them are of the very best, refined, intelligent,
truthful, and affectionate. 'I don't know how it is,' she would
say, 'whether their very superiority makes them dissatisfied with
their own rank--such brutes or clowns as laboring men often
are!--so that they fall easier victims to the rank above them; or
whether, though this theory will shock many people, other virtues
can exist and flourish entirely distinct from, and after the
loss of, that which we are accustomed to believe the
indispensable prime virtue of our sex--chastity. I cannot explain
it; I can only say that it is so, that some of my most promising
village girls have been the first to come to harm; and some of
the best and most faithful servants I ever had, have been girls
who have fallen into shame, and who, had I not gone to the rescue
and put them in the way to do well, would infallibly have become
"lost women"'" (_A Woman's Thoughts About Women_, 1858, p. 291).
Various writers have insisted on the good moral qualities of
prostitutes. Thus in France, Despine first enumerates their vices
as (1) greediness and love of drink, (2) lying, (3) anger, (4)
want of order and untidiness, (5) mobility of character, (6) need
of movement, (7) tendency to homosexuality; and then proceeds to
detail their good qualities: their maternal and filial affection,
their charity to each other; and their refusal to denounce each
other; while they are frequently religious, sometimes modest, and
generally very honest (Despine, _Psychologie Naturelle_, vol.
iii, pp. 207 et seq.; as regards Sicilian prostitutes, cf.
Callari, _Archivio di Psichiatria_, fasc. IV, 1903). The charity
towards each other, often manifested in distress, is largely
neutralized by a tendency to professional suspicion and jealousy
of each other.

Lombroso believes that the basis of prostitution must be found in
moral idiocy. If by moral idiocy we are to understand a condition
at all closely allied with insanity, this assertion is dubious.
There seems no clear relationship between prostitution and
insanity, and Tammeo has shown (_La Prostituzione_, p. 76) that
the frequency of prostitutes in the various Italian provinces is
in inverse ratio to the frequency of insane persons; as insanity
increases, prostitution decreases. But if we mean a minor degree
of moral imbecility--that is to say, a bluntness of perception
for the ordinary moral considerations of civilization which,
while it is largely due to the hardening influence of an
unfavorable early environment, may also rest on a congenital
predisposition--there can be no doubt that moral imbecility of
slight degree is very frequently found among prostitutes. It
would be plausible, doubtless, to say that every woman who gives
her virginity in exchange for an inadequate return is an
imbecile. If she gives herself for love, she has, at the worst,
made a foolish mistake, such as the young and inexperienced may
at any time make. But if she deliberately proposes to sell
herself, and does so for nothing or next to nothing, the case is
altered. The experiences of Commenge in Paris are instructive on
this point. "For many young girls," he writes, "modesty has no
existence, they experience no emotion in showing themselves
completely undressed, they abandon themselves to any chance
individual whom they will never see again. They attach no
importance to their virginity; they are deflowered under the
strangest conditions, without the least thought or care about the
act they are accomplishing. No sentiment, no calculation, pushes
them into a man's arms. They let themselves go without reflexion
and without motive, in an almost animal manner, from indifference
and without pleasure." He was acquainted with forty-five girls
between the ages of twelve and seventeen who were deflowered by
chance strangers whom they never met again; they lost their
virginity, in Dumas's phrase, as they lost their milk-teeth, and
could give no plausible account of the loss. A girl of fifteen,
mentioned by Commenge, living with her parents who supplied all
her wants, lost her virginity by casually meeting a man who
offered her two francs if she would go with him; she did so
without demur and soon begun to accost men on her own account. A
girl of fourteen, also living comfortably with her parents,
sacrificed her virginity at a fair in return for a glass of beer,
and henceforth begun to associate with prostitutes. Another girl
of the same age, at a local fête, wishing to go round on the
hobby horse, spontaneously offered herself to the man directing
the machinery for the pleasure of a ride. Yet another girl, of
fifteen, at another fête, offered her virginity in return for the
same momentary joy (Commenge, _Prostitution Clandestine_, 1897,
pp. 101 et seq.). In the United States, Dr. W. Travis Gibb,
examining physician to the New York Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, bears similar testimony to the fact that in
a fairly large proportion of "rape" cases the child is the
willing victim. "It is horribly pathetic," he says (_Medical
Record_, April 20, 1907), "to learn how far a nickel or a quarter
will go towards purchasing the virtue of these children."

In estimating the tendency of prostitutes to display congenital
physical anomalies, the crudest and most obvious test, though not
a precise or satisfactory one, is the general impression produced
by the face. In France, when nearly 1000 prostitutes were divided
into five groups from the point of view of their looks, only from
seven to fourteen per cent, were found to belong to the first
group, or that of those who could be said to possess youth and
beauty (Jeannel, _De la Prostitution Publique_, 1860, p. 168).
Woods Hutchinson, again, judging from an extensive acquaintance
with London, Paris, Vienna, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago,
asserts that a handsome or even attractive-looking prostitute, is
rare, and that the general average of beauty is lower than in any
other class of women. "Whatever other evils," he remarks, "the
fatal power of beauty may be responsible for, it has nothing to
do with prostitution" (Woods Hutchinson, "The Economics of
Prostitution," _American Gynæcological and Obstetric Journal_,
September, 1895). It must, of course, be borne in mind that these
estimates are liable to be vitiated through being based chiefly
on the inspection of women who most obviously belong to the class
of prostitutes and have already been coarsened by their
profession.

If we may conclude--and the fact is probably undisputed--that
beautiful, agreeable, and harmoniously formed faces are rare
rather than common among prostitutes, we may certainly say that
minute examination will reveal a large number of physical
abnormalities. One of the earliest important physical
investigations of prostitutes was that of Dr. Pauline Tarnowsky
in Russia (first published in the _Vratch_ in 1887, and
afterwards as _Etudes anthropométriques sur les Prostituées et
les Voleuses_). She examined fifty St. Petersburg prostitutes who
had been inmates of a brothel for not less than two years, and
also fifty peasant women of, so far as possible, the same age and
mental development. She found that (1) the prostitute showed
shorter anterior-posterior and transverse diameters of skull; (2)
a proportion equal to eighty-four per cent. showed various signs
of physical degeneration (irregular skull, asymmetry of face,
anomalies of hard palate, teeth, ears, etc.). This tendency to
anomaly among the prostitutes was to some extent explained when
it was found that about four-fifths of them had parents who were
habitual drunkards, and nearly one-fifth were the last survivors
of large families; such families have been often produced by
degenerate parents.

The frequency of hereditary degeneration has been noted by
Bonhoeffer among German prostitutes. He investigated 190 Breslau
prostitutes in prison, and therefore of a more abnormal class
than ordinary prostitutes, and found that 102 were hereditarily
degenerate, and mostly with one or both parents who were
drunkards; 53 also showed feeble-mindedness (_Zeitschrift für die
Gesamte Strafwissenschaft_, Bd. xxiii, p. 106).

The most detailed examinations of ordinary non-criminal
prostitutes, both anthropometrically and as regards the
prevalence of anomalies, have been made in Italy, though not on a
sufficiently large number of subjects to yield absolutely
decisive results. Thus Fornasari made a detailed examination of
sixty prostitutes belonging chiefly to Emilia and Venice, and
also of twenty-seven others belonging to Bologna, the latter
group being compared with a third group of twenty normal women
belonging to Bologna (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1892, fasc. VI).
The prostitutes were found to be of lower type than the normal
individuals, having smaller heads and larger faces. As the author
himself points out, his subjects were not sufficiently numerous
to justify far-reaching generalizations, but it may be worth
while to summarize some of his results. At equal heights the
prostitutes showed greater weight; at equal ages they were of
shorter stature than other women, not only of well-to-do, but of
the poor class: height of face, bi-zygomatic diameter (though not
the distance between zygomas), the distance from chin to external
auditory meatus, and the size of the jaw were all greater in the
prostitutes; the hands were longer and broader, compared to the
palm, than in ordinary women; the foot also was longer in
prostitutes, and the thigh, as compared to the calf, was larger.
It is noteworthy that in most particulars, and especially in
regard to head measurements, the variations were much greater
among the prostitutes than among the other women examined; this
is to some extent, though not entirely, to be accounted for by
the slightly greater number of the former.

Ardu (in the same number of the _Archivio_) gave the result of
observations (undertaken at Lombroso's suggestion) as to the
frequency of abnormalities among prostitutes. The subjects were
seventy-four in number and belonged to Professor Giovannini's
_Clinica Sifilopatica_ at Turin. The abnormalities investigated
were virile distribution of hair on pubes, chest, and limbs,
hypertrichosis on forehead, left-handedness, atrophy of nipple,
and tattooing (which was only found once). Combining Ardu's
observations with another series of observations on fifty-five
prostitutes examined by Lombroso, it is found that virile
disposition of hair is found in fifteen per cent. as against six
per cent. in normal women; some degree of hypertrichosis in
eighteen per cent.; left-handedness in eleven per cent. (but in
normal women as high as twelve per cent. according to Gallia);
and atrophy of nipple in twelve per cent.

Giuffrida-Ruggeri, again (_Atti della, Società Romana di
Antropologia_, 1897, p. 216), on examining eighty-two prostitutes
found anomalies in the following order of decreasing frequency:
tendency of eyebrows to meet, lack of cranial symmetry,
depression at root of nose, defective development of calves,
hypertrichosis and other anomalies of hair, adherent or absent
lobule, prominent zigoma, prominent forehead or frontal bones,
bad implantation of teeth, Darwinian tubercle of ear, thin
vertical lips. These signs are separately of little or no
importance, though together not without significance as an
indication of general anomaly.

More recently Ascarilla, in an elaborate study (_Archivio di
Psichiatria_, 1906, fasc. VI, p. 812) of the finger prints of
prostitutes, comes to the conclusion that even in this respect
prostitutes tend to form a class showing morphological
inferiority to normal women. The patterns tend to show unusual
simplicity and uniformity, and the significance of this is
indicated by the fact that a similar uniformity is shown by the
finger prints of the insane and deaf-mutes (De Sanctis and
Toscano, _Atti Società Romana Antropologia_, vol. viii, 1901,
fasc. II).

In Chicago Dr. Harriet Alexander, in conjunction with Dr. E.S.
Talbot and Dr. J.G. Kiernan, examined thirty prostitutes in the
Bridewell, or House of Correction; only the "obtuse" class of
professional prostitutes reach this institution, and it is not
therefore surprising that they were found to exhibit very marked
stigmata of degeneracy. In race nearly half of those examined
were Celtic Irish. In sixteen the zygomatic processes were
unequal and very prominent. Other facial asymmetries were common.
In three cases the heads were of Mongoloid type; sixteen were
epignathic, and eleven prognathic; five showed arrest of
development of face. Brachycephaly predominated (seventeen
cases); the rest were mesaticephalic; there were no
dolichocephals. Abnormalities in shape of the skull were
numerous, and twenty-nine had defective ears. Four were
demonstrably insane, and one was an epileptic (H.C.B. Alexander,
"Physical Abnormalities in Prostitutes," Chicago Academy of
Medicine, April, 1893; E.S. Talbot, _Degeneracy_, p. 320; _Id.,
Irregularities of the Teeth_, fourth edition, p. 141).

It would seem, on the whole, so far as the evidence at present goes, that
prostitutes are not quite normal representatives of the ranks into which
they were born. There has been a process of selection of individuals who
slightly deviate congenitally from the normal average and are,
correspondingly, slightly inapt for normal life.[188] The psychic
characteristics which accompany such deviation are not always necessarily
of an obviously unfavorable nature; the slightly neurotic girl of low
class birth--disinclined for hard work, through defective energy, and
perhaps greedy and selfish--may even seem to possess a refinement superior
to her station. While, however, there is a tendency to anomaly among
prostitutes, it must be clearly recognized that that tendency remains
slight so long as we consider impartially the whole class of prostitutes.
Those investigators who have reached the conclusion that prostitutes are a
highly degenerate and abnormal class have only observed special groups of
prostitutes, more especially those who are frequently found in prison. It
is not possible to form a just conception of prostitutes by studying them
only in prison, any more than it would be possible to form a just
conception of clergymen, doctors, or lawyers by studying them exclusively
in prison, and this remains true even although a much larger proportion of
prostitutes than of members of the more reputable professions pass through
prisons; that fact no doubt partly indicates the greater abnormality of
prostitutes.

It has, of course, to be remembered that the special conditions of the
lives of prostitutes tend to cause in them the appearance of certain
professional characteristics which are entirely acquired and not
congenital. In that way we may account for the gradual modification of the
feminine secondary and tertiary sexual characters, and the appearance of
masculine characters, such as the frequent deep voice, etc.[189] But with
all due allowance for these acquired characters, it remains true that such
comparative investigations as have so far been made, although
inconclusive, seem to indicate that, even apart from the prevalence of
acquired anomalies, the professional selection of their avocation tends to
separate out from the general population of the same social class,
individuals who possess anthropometrical characters varying in a definite
direction. The observations thus made seem, in this way, to indicate that
prostitutes tend to be in weight over the average, though not in stature,
that in length of arm they are inferior though the hands are longer (this
has been found alike in Italy and Russia); they have smaller ankles and
larger calves, and still larger thighs in proportion to their large
calves. The estimated skull capacity and the skull circumference and
diameters are somewhat below the normal, not only when compared with
respectable women but also with thieves; there is a tendency to
brachycephaly (both in Italy and Russia); the cheek-bones are usually
prominent and the jaws developed; the hair is darker than in respectable
women though less so than in thieves; it is also unusually abundant, not
only on the head but also on the pudenda and elsewhere; the eyes have been
found to be decidedly darker than those of either respectable women or
criminals.[190]

So far as the evidence goes it serves to indicate that prostitutes tend to
approximate to the type which, as was shown in the previous volume, there
is reason to regard as specially indicative of developed sexuality. It is,
however, unnecessary to discuss this question until our anthropometrical
knowledge of prostitutes is more extended and precise.

3. _The Moral Justification of Prostitution_.--There are and always have
been moralists--many of them people whose opinions are deserving of the
most serious respect--who consider that, allowing for the need of
improved hygienic conditions, the existence of prostitution presents no
serious problem for solution. It is, at most, they say, a necessary evil,
and, at best, a beneficent institution, the bulwark of the home, the
inevitable reverse of which monogamy is the obverse. "The immoral guardian
of public morality," is the definition of prostitutes given by one writer,
who takes the humble view of the matter, and another, taking the loftier
ground, writes: "The prostitute fulfils a social mission. She is the
guardian of virginal modesty, the channel to carry off adulterous desire,
the protector of matrons who fear late maternity; it is her part to act as
the shield of the family." "Female Decii," said Balzac in his _Physiologie
du Mariage_ of prostitutes, "they sacrifice themselves for the republic
and make of their bodies a rampart for the protection of respectable
families." In the same way Schopenhauer called prostitutes "human
sacrifices on the altar of monogamy." Lecky, again, in an oft-quoted
passage of rhetoric,[191] may be said to combine both the higher and the
lower view of the prostitute's mission in human society, to which he even
seeks to give a hieratic character. "The supreme type of vice," he
declared, "she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But
for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be
polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity,
think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of
remorse and of despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are
concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She
remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal
priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."[192]

I am not aware that the Greeks were greatly concerned with the moral
justification of prostitution. They had not allowed it to assume very
offensive forms and for the most part they were content to accept it. The
Romans usually accepted it, too, but, we gather, not quite so easily.
There was an austerely serious, almost Puritanic, spirit in the Romans of
the old stock and they seem sometimes to have felt the need to assure
themselves that prostitution really was morally justifiable. It is
significant to note that they were accustomed to remember that Cato was
said to have expressed satisfaction on seeing a man emerge from a brothel,
for otherwise he might have gone to lie with his neighbor's wife.[193]

The social necessity of prostitution is the most ancient of all the
arguments of moralists in favor of the toleration of prostitutes; and if
we accept the eternal validity of the marriage system with which
prostitution developed, and of the theoretical morality based on that
system, this is an exceedingly forcible, if not an unanswerable, argument.

The advent of Christianity, with its special attitude towards the "flesh,"
necessarily caused an enormous increase of attention to the moral aspects
of prostitution. When prostitution was not morally denounced, it became
clearly necessary to morally justify it; it was impossible for a Church,
whose ideals were more or less ascetic, to be benevolently indifferent in
such a matter. As a rule we seem to find throughout that while the more