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