Chapter VI · REGULATION AND ORDER—BORDELLS AND SEGREGATION
Reading edition
The bordell defined.—Proprietor and inmate.—Licensing of bordells increasingly rare.—Subterfuge adopted in Germany.—Rules governing the conduct of bordells.—Number of bordells in Europe.—Insignificant as compared with the volume of prostitution.—Europe knows nothing of “segregation.”—Segregation never successful.—Why the bordell is dying out.—Houses of prostitution dependent on White Slave Traffic.—Shameless exploitation of inmates.—Effort in Vienna to prevent exploitation.—The bordell favorable to abnormality.—The bordell and crime.—The bordell and street conditions.—Does the bordell reduce other forms of prostitution?—The prostitute’s domicile.
Strictly speaking, the bordell is a licensed or recognized house of prostitution, the proprietor of which is entitled to carry on the business for which the establishment is set up. At Brussels such houses are licensed on payment of specific fees;[307] at Paris and Vienna they are merely 166authorized—tolerated by the police, nominally as long as they comply with certain stipulations; actually, as a rule, until the property is demolished or the business becomes unprofitable.[308] The inmates of the bordell are employees working on a percentage basis. The proprietor boards and lodges them and requires of them practically any service—normal or abnormal—that the whim of a patron may demand; in return they receive—or are credited with—part of the receipts, usually fifty per cent. Against this sum, theoretically theirs, are usually charged clothing, perfumery, medicines, and other extras. Their cash receipts are therefore a diminishing quantity. Exploitation of this sort, though nowadays generally forbidden by the police regulations, it is practically impossible to prevent, as we shall subsequently see; in most instances, the authorities do not even try to prevent it.
To the licensing or toleration of outright houses of prostitution public opinion in Europe has become increasingly hostile; at the present time, it is permitted in France, Belgium, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; it is forbidden in the German Empire, Holland, Switzerland,[309] Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain. In France and Austria, no further concessions will under any circumstances be granted; whenever, and for whatever reason, a bordell closes, the institution is by so much nearer to extinction. The bordell is therefore not co-extensive with regulation and the area open to it is constantly shrinking. On the other hand, it is, as a 167matter of fact, more widespread than official accounts lead one to suppose. For in many German cities, through the connivance or compulsion of the police, establishments are found which are bordells in everything but name. The statutes, indeed, expressly forbid their existence in language the purport of which is unmistakable: “Whoever furnishes an opportunity for immorality shall be punished as a pander.”[310] This provision makes the outright licensing or recognition of the bordell impossible, since the keeper would be at once liable to criminal prosecution. In police jargon,[311] therefore, licensed or authorized houses conducted by proprietors are non-existent in Germany. They exist nevertheless. I have pointed out that the police dictate the dwelling-houses of registered prostitutes; they thereby condone the technical violation of law by the landlords or mistresses of those dwellings where registered prostitutes are authorized or ordered by them to live. If then several women are permitted or ordered to “board” at a particular house, an establishment is set up that is a bordell in all but name. Technically, the girls are boarders, going through the form of paying a certain sum for food and lodging, while conducting their business affairs as they please; as a matter of fact little effort is made by the mistress or the inmates to keep up the make-believe. In reference to this matter the police or other authorities vary in candor and straightforwardness. “We have in Cologne no bordells and no bordell streets,”[312] says one; a similar declaration was made in 168Parliament by the member for Hamburg. But in their less technical moments the police admit the practical truth; a high police official in Cologne stated to me that while some of the houses are really boarding-houses, others are really bordells; a similar admission was made in Frankfort.[313] The author quoted above as declaring that there are no bordells in Cologne, subsequently gives a list of streets in which “bordells are found.”[314] A questionnaire was addressed by Frau Katharina Scheven to the municipal authorities of 235 German cities in 1904, fourteen of which frankly admitted, and about 200 denied, the existence of bordells: but of the latter, twenty admit that there are so-called “bordell streets,” i. e., streets in various parts of the city in which bordells are found, despite the fact that technically there are claimed to be none at all.[315] Hamburg and Bremen are the most prominent examples of the subterfuge practised by the police of certain German cities in this matter. In different sections of the former there are “boarding-places” to which the registered prostitute is “referred”; nor will she be permitted to remain in the city unless she “boards” in one or another of them, provided the police so require. Her “mistress” charges her for rent and food. Nominally, the girl’s earnings are her own and the mistress does not command her services.[316] As a matter of fact, the visitor is greeted on entering by the madame and her girls,—precisely 169as in a bordell; the place is notorious as a bordell; liquor is pressed upon the guest’s attention and all partake,—just as in a bordell. The girls exercise no freedom in selecting or submitting to their patrons. They may be supposed to retain their earnings, paying only for what they get; but in practice they have to use every possible device to conceal from the mistress the amount received from their patrons—an unnecessary precaution if the police theory were correct. Finally, the sums ostensibly belonging to them are wiped out for the most part by “extras” which they require or are cajoled into purchasing from or through the so-called “landlady.” Similar establishments exist in Dresden, Cologne, and Frankfort.[317]
In Bremen, the mistress on the premises is eliminated and the women maintain a certain measure of independence. The twenty-five houses of Helenenstrasse are divided into small flats, each of which is occupied as a housekeeping apartment by a prostitute and her servant. The places differ from bordells in the absence of a landlady, and of a general meeting and drinking-room. But meeting, drinking, and indirect exploitation take place nevertheless. The Bremen establishments differ little in operation or, as we shall see, in outcome from the conventional bordell. Despite this very common violation of the spirit and intent of the law in Germany, it is interesting to observe that the courts have by no means always protected the police in their disingenuous procedure. In Heidelberg in the year 1907 three houses of prostitution 170were closed, the court holding that the connivance of the police did not affect the punishable character of the landlord’s offence.[318]
Regulation applied to bordells or quasi-bordells aims to govern their location, the number, age and medical inspection of inmates, the sale of liquor, the money relations of mistress and girls, the maintenance of order, and the extent to which inmates are privileged to appear on the streets. We shall, for the present, omit everything pertaining to the sanitary side, which will be discussed in the next chapter. On other points, the stipulations are usually of a quite obvious character. The maximum number of inmates, an accurate roll of whom must be kept, may not exceed the police allowance; minors may not be employed as servants; schoolboys are not to be admitted; police officers are to have entrance at all times. In Vienna, bordell women are not allowed to seek patrons on the street; the keepers are forbidden to sell liquor or to provide music.[319] The proprietress in Paris is specifically warned of the precarious tenure of her privilege, which will be terminated in case of abuse, scandal, or infraction of the regulations;[320] she is also pledged to enforce police regulations respecting the hours during which inmates, being registered women, may patrol the streets, and to give prompt information to inspectors regarding unusual occurrences.[321] Inmates are forbidden 171to solicit at windows;[322] no attempt is made to regulate the sale of alcohol or to prevent exploitation; nor can an inmate decline to put herself at the disposal of any customer who selects her, whatever his condition.[323] At Hamburg the authorities are theoretically concerned to prohibit exploitation. On the second page of the health record book, given to every inmate, the following announcement is printed: “Should the ‘landlady’[324] endeavor to detain an inmate on the ground of debts or loans, the girl is to make a complaint to the physician who conducts the medical examination, in case she cannot report to headquarters.” It is further provided that women must promptly notify the police of change of residence or of absence from town, permanent or transient; that they must not live or spend the night in any house not approved by the police, consort with minors, appear at doors or windows, or be found anywhere but in their dwellings from 11 P. M. to 6 A. M. The Vienna stipulations concern themselves particularly with the prevention of exploitation. Personal inspection on the part of the district officer quarterly, on the part of the central authorities semi-annually, is required. The inspection concerns itself with the physical condition of the bordell, with its business conduct, and other possible subjects of complaint.[325] The Budapest regulations aim mainly to obstruct exploitation and to procure a measure 172of personal freedom. It is explicitly stated that not less than one-fourth of the girl’s earnings must belong to her and that the keeper may under no circumstances involve her in debt for either necessaries or luxuries; that she must be allowed to walk abroad “independently and alone” during at least three hours a day, and an extra half day once a week; finally, no hindrance must be placed in the way of her going to church.[326] The Brussels regulation—to take one more example—applicable to tolerated houses provides that no married woman shall be permitted to open such an establishment without her husband’s consent;[327] that such houses must not be located in busy streets or in proximity to schools, public buildings, or “edifices consecrated to worship”;[328] “that there must be no common hall or room for the sale of liquor;”[329] that an inventory of the girl’s possessions be made in duplicate on her entrance, to the end that she may know what she is entitled to on leaving.[330]
The following table portrays the present European situation in respect to the existence of bordells or quasi-bordells,—their number, location, number of inmates in connection with the number of inscribed prostitutes, and the estimated number of non-inscribed prostitutes; it includes only those cities which I myself visited.
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City No. houses of prostitution How located No. of inmates No. inscribed prostitutes not living in houses of prostitution Estimated total number of prostitutes
Paris 47 Scattered 387 6,000 50,000–60,000
Vienna 6 Scattered 50–60 1,630 30,000
Hamburg 113 On 8 scattered streets 780 155
Budapest 13 Scattered 260–300 2,000
Dresden 81 On 32 different streets 293[331] Few
Frankfort 10 Scattered 100 (about) 188
Geneva 17 Scattered 86 None
Rome 22 Scattered 125 100 Over 5,000 known to police
Brussels 6 Scattered 37 145 Over 3,000 known to police
Stuttgart 10 Scattered 22 None
Bremen 25 One street 75 None [334]
Stockholm 30 On 6 scattered streets[335] 98 228
Other towns make the same kind of showing:[336]
City Population No. of Bordells No. of inmates
Augsburg 89,770 3 12
Fürth 54,882 4 16
Reichenbach 28,498 2 7
Worms 28,624 2 14–16
174A careful study of the data above given discloses a number of important points. In the first place, omissions are significant. The bordell is altogether non-existent in certain countries, and has been suppressed in many large cities, though other towns in the same countries still permit its existence. In Germany, for example, Berlin and Munich have no bordells such as are found elsewhere in Germany. But the most striking fact is the insignificance of the number of bordell inmates as compared with the number of professional prostitutes. The number is on its face too small to play any part in the management of the general problem. Indeed, it is trifling even as compared with the number of inscribed prostitutes, except in the few towns that actually or practically limit inscription to bordell inmates.[337] The vast majority of prostitutes live untouched by police control; the vast majority of the inscribed prostitutes in Europe live scattered, not in houses of prostitution. Some 40,000 prostitutes in Paris are wholly free of police control; of the 6,000 registered women of the city, 5,575 live with police consent as individuals here, there, and everywhere; the remaining 387 live in forty bordells situated in almost as many different streets. Of 1,689 women inscribed in Vienna, 1,630 live where they please, the regulations expressly stating: “In so far as a prostitute possesses a dwelling-place not shared by other prostitutes, she is not to be restricted in her choice of a location any more than is absolutely necessary;”[338] the remainder, something between 50 and 60, occupy six bordells 175located in different sections of the city; less than one-third of Stockholm’s registered prostitutes are quartered in its scattered bordells, and the registered prostitutes are as everywhere else but a fraction of the whole number. The limitation of inscription to bordell inmates at Stuttgart and Bremen is of course a step on the way to complete abandonment of regulation. Only rarely do even the police put forward a more favorable interpretation, as, e. g., in Geneva, where, with 86 women interned in bordells, I was gravely assured that not above forty non-inscribed women strolled the streets. In company with an English physician, I counted twenty unmistakable women between the acts at the Kursaal that evening; at midnight, standing at a corner of the Place des Alpes, we observed forty more in the course of a few minutes.
The table above given disposes once and for all of “segregation.” Segregation in the sense of an attempt to confine the prostitutes of a city or even the majority of them to a single locality or even to a few definite localities is not undertaken in any European city from Budapest to Glasgow. Waiving all objections and assuming plenary and summary police power such as exists, it is obviously easier to inscribe them than to confine them. If, as is the case, they cannot be caught and inscribed, how are they to be caught and segregated? European cities, having universally failed in the attempt to inscribe prostitution, necessarily refrain from any endeavor to segregate any considerable part of it. Nay, more, no European city succeeds even so far as to confine to bordells or bordell quarters even the inscribed part 176of the prostitute army which has been expressly ordered to stay there. “They do not succeed in Hamburg, Nürnberg, Altona, Mainz, and Leipzig, in confining prostitutes to houses or to a row of streets. Even inscribed prostitution breaks away from the streets and the houses to which it is directed by the police,”[339]—a police, be it added, with summary power to have its way.
Segregation is therefore impracticable; more than this, any attempt to bring it about is also recognized to be inadvisable. In the first place, the impossibility of thoroughness creates an obvious opportunity for police corruption; a woman who objects to being segregated may for an adequate consideration induce the police to overlook her; and as hundreds are bound to be overlooked anyway, the chances of detecting fraud are slender. Again, a segregated quarter would give to vice the greatest possible prominence. Finally, it would expose to moral contagion those who are already most imperilled and whom every consideration of interest and decency should impel society to protect—the children of the poor. For the segregated quarter will inevitably be located where rents are low and where the neighbors have least influence. Objection to bordells on the part of those living in the vicinity is, moreover, becoming increasingly louder: “Urgent requests on the part of the public for the closing of the houses are becoming more frequent,” says the head of the morals police of Budapest in his last 177report. A few months ago, the police of Frankfort endeavored to placate neighborhood sentiment by ordering the transfer of certain scattered bordells to a single street adjoining the railroad. A storm of public indignation led to the speedy abandonment of the proposal, although fifteen houses had already been bought on speculation for the purpose.[340]
To what is said above as to the non-existence of segregation in Europe, Hamburg and Bremen are sometimes said to be exceptions; not infrequently they are described as having segregated prostitution. Such is not the case. In both these cities inscribed prostitution is—as everywhere else—limited, and decreasing in relative importance. In Hamburg the bordells forced into existence by the police are found, not in a segregated quarter, but in at least eight different streets scattered through the town; and six of the eight streets contain houses in which prostitutes do not reside and are not permitted to reside. But the case is less favorable to segregation than even the foregoing statement represents; for not even all inscribed prostitutes live on the eight streets in question; and the non-inscribed do in Hamburg what they do everywhere else,—quarter themselves wherever they can.
Nor is the example of Bremen any more favorable to 178the feasibility of segregation. There the entire registered list is indeed confined to one street,—Helenenstrasse; but the separation of seventy-five women or less in a seaport town in which hundreds of prostitutes live scattered through the city is assuredly not “segregation.” Nor was Helenenstrasse itself a deliberate move towards segregation. A contractor had built up the street with twenty-six little apartment houses as a speculation in 1878,—the year of a panic in the building trade. Facing ruin, as the houses could not be rented, he accepted the chance suggestion of a police official that the rooms be let to prostitutes. The historian of the incident writes: “Since that time,—more than thirty years—notwithstanding many efforts, this step has never been repeated. As every inhabitant knows, only a fraction of the prostitution of Bremen utilizes this street,—altogether insufficient for the existing volume of the traffic.”[341] Helenenstrasse is therefore perhaps the strongest argument in Europe against the feasibility of the policy in support of which it is mistakenly cited.
In passing, it is interesting and significant to observe that the impracticability of effective segregation is not new. Medieval regulation ordered the prostitute into a bordell or forced her to wear a costume which proclaimed her occupation. The bordells were preferably located on the periphery of the town in the vicinity of the city gate, i. e., in what purported to be a segregated district. Now, medieval prostitution was indeed characteristically a bordell prostitution: a hamlet of from two to four hundred inhabitants had its bordell; and the number 179of licensed bordells kept pace with the increase of population. We may be sure that, having undertaken to force prostitution into bordells, and having undertaken to force bordells into a localized quarter, medieval authority was none too tenderly or cautiously applied; fear of error did not paralyze the official arm. Yet the policy failed! The researches of Bloch leave absolutely no doubt on this point.[342] “Despite the fact that municipal authorities endeavored to confine prostitution to municipally controlled and administered bordells and legislated severely against prostitutes living elsewhere, nevertheless the number of scattered prostitutes was very large,—perhaps larger than of those living in houses. In contrast with the bordell women, they were called clandestine,—but this does not mean that there was the least doubt as to their trade.”[343] At times the clandestines—in the sense here indicated—lived on the very streets on which bordells were situated, yet refused to be coerced into them; again, they lodged—sometimes several together—with a landlady who operated a brothel which the authorities were unable to change into a controlled bordell. A policy that failed in the relatively small medieval town, where it encountered no hostile sentiment and could ride rough-shod over personal privilege, can hardly be successfully carried out in a modern metropolis, in the face of strong ethical objection and exaggerated sensitiveness at any invasion of individual liberty,—not to mention the complications created by mere quantitative increase.
If the table—to which we now return—is examined 180from an historic point of view, it becomes clear that the bordell is rapidly losing ground. The bordell is at this date illegal in Great Britain, Switzerland (except Geneva), Holland, Denmark, Norway, and the German Empire, though in many German towns, as I have pointed out, a subterfuge exists; in almost all these countries it was once an acknowledged institution. In towns in which its existence does not violate law, it is rapidly disappearing, even though in some places the authorities favor its maintenance and extension. Neither Paris, Vienna, Stuttgart, nor Frankfort will authorize the opening of a new bordell; they all look forward to a time in the near future when those still surviving will succumb to adverse sentiment and decreasing receipts,—the causes of which I shall shortly explain. Hamburg, where the police still strongly favor the bordell and utilize all their tremendous power in its favor, has seen the total number of inmates decrease from 1,050 in 1876 to 780 in 1910,—despite the doubling of population in the same period; three houses authorized to contain 12 girls apiece were found to harbor 2, 3, and 6 respectively. Budapest,[344] like Hamburg, prefers the bordell, and once maintained from 50 to 60 bordells, with 600 to 700 women; only 13, with 250 inmates, survive, despite the encouraging attitude of the authorities. The most elaborate establishment in the city, authorized to receive 21 girls, had at the date of my visit only 7. In Brussels there were 7 bordells, containing 66 women, in 1890; six houses, with 37 inmates, in 1910.[345] But most striking 181of all are the Paris records: with 235 bordells, containing 1,450 women in 1841 (population 1,200,000), as recently as 1888 there were 69 tolerated houses, with 772 inmates; in 1903 there remained 47 houses, with 387 inmates:[346] population had meanwhile increased to 2,800,000. At the last named date, 6,031 inscribed women were living in scattered lodgings. The following table exhibits the relation between inscribed prostitutes living in lodgings and those interned in the bordells of Paris:
Year Enrolled Living in bordells Living scattered
1872 4,242 1,126 3,116
1882 2,839 1,116 1,723
1892 5,004 596 4,408
1903 6,418 387 6,031
The rest of France shows the same development in progress: Amiens had 13 houses of prostitution in 1880, none in 1895; Havre 34 in 1875, 9 in 1895; 75 bordells in Lyons in 1840 shrank to 17 in 1895; 125 in Marseilles in 1873 were reduced to 12 in 1899; 31 in Nantes (1855) to 12 in 1896; 60 at Bordeaux (1869) to 16 in 1906.[347] At Rome, the 22 authorized houses were said at the time of my visit to contain some 125 inmates; none had its full authorized complement: a huge establishment, with a capacity of 18, had 5 inmates; another, with capacity of 12, had 7; others, authorized to harbor 10 women, contained 4, 5, and 6 respectively.[348]
182The causes responsible for the decay of the bordell will explain why the bordell cannot be re-introduced, even though it were an efficacious device for the maintenance of public order and decency and for the diminution of disease,—points that still remain to be discussed. The bordell prospered as long as its management was uncontrolled; its decay set in the moment public sentiment required the slightest deference to the dictates of humanity. For, in the first place, the bordell can be tenanted only through the exertions of the trafficker. A few hopeless wretches, whose independent career is over, may of their own accord seek its food and shelter; but these are precisely the women whom the management accepts only under pressure of necessity. Young and attractive inmates are desired,—innocent, or, at least, beginners. Prior to their suppression in Zurich, 60% of the inmates of its 18 bordells had not completed their seventeenth year![349] The fact that there are more bordells in Hamburg than experience elsewhere would lead us to expect may be due not only to police preference, but to the fact that inscribed minors are permitted—perhaps even forced—to enter them. Now these eagerly desired youthful recruits are procurable as a rule only through traffickers; the bordell therefore prospers only where trafficking prospers. In the heyday of this infamous business, victims were brought into the large European cities by every species of fraud and imposition, 183only to find themselves imprisoned in bordells until thoroughly broken to the trade. Thus the houses of Paris were filled with girls enticed from their homes in the departments of the Somme and the Rhône, or Paris itself; the bordells of Vienna and Budapest with victims from Posen and Galicia. The local traffic in young girls, as I have already explained, has now been largely broken up; the European police, responding to the quick and vigorous development of humane interest characteristic of recent years, have taken steps which practically deprive the bordell of youth,—its most attractive asset. Girls under 21 are as a rule no longer permitted to become inmates; at Budapest even the bordell servant must have reached the age of forty. The mistress whose memory goes back to a less scrupulous era is in no doubt as to the main causes of the hard times on which her lot has now fallen: “Something young and fresh is nowadays no longer to be had,”[350] remarked the candid madame of a Budapest bordell.
An outside proof that the bordell is necessarily associated with trafficking in girls may not be amiss in this connection. The trafficker, avoiding the aroused continental police, seeks a remote and less perilous market. The great European cities, in which he can no longer carry on with impunity a trade in young or innocent girls, can at the most be utilized as way stations on the journey to Rio Janeiro or Buenos Aires; in the latter city, 192 well-known bordells, with 1,022 inmates of different nationalities, are found; 95 of them Russian establishments with 532 girls, 17 Italian establishments with 92 184inmates, 22 French houses with 136 girls.[351] The victims whose obscure trail is traceable from Galicia through Vienna and Berlin to Hamburg, Rotterdam, or London, are nowadays discovered in the brothels of a South American city, instead of in those of Hamburg, Brussels, or Paris.
Meanwhile, though the European bordell can no longer be recruited with the young, the trafficker’s business has not been completely stamped out; nor can it be until the last recognized bordell is exterminated. The reduced scope within which madame and trafficker operate makes it all the more important to do the best possible under the circumstances,—to make as attractive a showing as possible and to keep the women moving: hence, redoubled efforts to fill orders for women of the various types required by the different establishments and to conduct a chain of houses so that a certain amount of novelty can be introduced into the trade. An inspection of police records discloses the fact that women remain on the average only a few weeks in a given house. Through the 13 bordells of Teplitz-Schönau, Bohemia, between January 1, 1909 and July 30, 1910, 550 inmates passed: one of the bordells, operating with two girls, had 65 different inmates during this period of 18 months.[352] In the Zurich bordells, 85% of the inmates changed within 5 months, 63% within 2 months.[353] In the white slave bureau of one large European police establishment, I was shown a huge list of persons suspected or already convicted of trafficking in girls. The traffic in youth has 185been hampered; but a traffic in women still remains—a traffic which, though it will not restore prosperity to the bordell, is absolutely dependent for its existence on the prolonged life of the house of prostitution. I have repeatedly quoted with respect the words of Dr. Baumgarten of Vienna; on this point, his opinion is absolutely unmistakable: “The bordell is inseparable from the traffic in girls,” he declared to me. Bloch’s investigations are tersely summarized: “Without bordells, no white slave traffic.”[354]
A notorious instance of the manner in which alone a bordell can be successfully conducted is furnished by the so-called “Riehl case” uncovered in Vienna in 1906. The woman conducted an establishment containing 20 girls and paid an annual rental of 10,000 kronen ($2,000). A large number of persons were employed to procure recruits,—old women and young boys, offering good places in domestic service to young girls who, having come to Vienna, found difficulty in securing work. Employment agencies directed to Madame Riehl young and friendless applicants. Suspicion was never aroused in the victim’s mind, for the door bore a plate marked “Riehl’s Dressmaking Salon.” The behavior of the madame varied: now, she made no concealment of the nature of her business; again, she hired the newcomer as a servant, certain that before long she would yield to the demoralization of the place. Minors were registered at police headquarters as of full age, or forged documents testified to the consent of the parents or guardians. The girls lived as prisoners, so cowed by the treatment they 186received and so utterly demoralized by their way of life that they made no effort to recover their freedom even if opportunity offered.[355]
The conscience of those authorities who are still willing to tolerate bordells, provided girls are not involuntarily forced into them, has revolted on another point, viz., the exploitation of the women by the keepers. For the bordell is a business. Though theoretically only a convenient place for the gratification of uncontrollable desire, it is practically an establishment so conducted as to fill the pockets of the owners, the inmates being forced to receive the maximum number of guests that can be obtained, after which they are victimized out of their earnings on every conceivable pretext.[356]
Recent alterations in the police regulations seek to protect the bordell women against exploitation; but no amount of menace or oversight suffices to procure the enforcement of the simplest precautionary regulations. One of the most disgusting aspects of bordell life is the forced consumption of alcohol; the customer on entering is plied with drink, and of course the inmates share; conviviality is procured by general and continuous indulgence in beer, wine, and champagne. In order to prevent complete physical disorganization on the part of the women and to restrict the commerce in volume, the sale or use of liquor is forbidden in the bordells of Brussels, Altona, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Bremen, and other cities. But it goes on openly and flagrantly, nevertheless. An Altona 187madame candidly admitted to me the reason: “The business couldn’t be carried on otherwise.”[357] In the bordells of Stockholm, champagne costing 2½ crowns a bottle is sold to guests for 15 and the “girls are made to aid in the consumption as much as possible, so as to increase the profits.”[358]
The fact is that if the police wish or are willing to maintain bordells, they cannot refuse to tolerate some of the conditions on which alone it is worth while for the keepers to conduct them. In Vienna, Budapest, Dresden, and elsewhere, minute specifications attempt to regulate the charges which may be levied on the girls by the keepers. But the girl is completely exploited nevertheless: for exorbitant prices are charged for necessities, and extras—forbidden or not—usually swallow the remainder. In the most wretched establishments of Altona, the minimum charge for board and lodging is reckoned at 75 marks a week; at Stockholm, a girl pays 5 crowns a day for board,—and various sums for “extras,”—an “unreasonable sum,”[359] in Johansson’s judgment. The Dresden police name 8 to 15 marks a day—the latter sum itself enough to procure accommodations at a first-rate hotel; the girl is actually charged 15 to 18, and if anything is left to her credit it is absorbed by way of paying for cosmetics, clothes, shoes, etc. The kind landlady is the intermediary between girls and merchants in a series of transactions which somehow always leave the girls penniless and amply reimburse the landlady for her intervention. Frau Scheven related to me the story 188of a young girl for whom she had procured admission to a hospital, where in the course of her recovery the girl decided to abandon her licentious life. When her benefactress applied to the bordell for her clothes, she was informed that there were none; and only threats of calling the police extorted a few meager rags—the sole asset after months of service, despite the minute prescriptions of the authorities, aiming to check the rapacity of the keepers.
At Vienna a more serious effort in this direction is now made. A periodical survey by the ranking officials of the morals bureau is required,—the director himself as a rule being one of the party. I possess transcripts of two reports made on a Vienna bordell. The inspecting party included the division chief, the head of the medical service, and one or two others of lower rank. The roll was called and every inmate accounted for; thereupon the inmates were separately interviewed, especially with a view to ascertaining whether their personal freedom had been interfered with or whether they had complaints to make in respect to exploitation. On the first inspection, the women unanimously declared and proved, that despite the prospect of this official review, they had been swindled out of all their earnings, even including such incidental gratuities as they had received from visitors; that their food was inedible, and that bed-linen was changed only once a month. The authorities thereupon threatened the closing of the establishment unless conditions were at once improved. Revised regulations became effective before the next inspection, at which time it appeared that each inmate paid something over 189five dollars a day for board and lodging (26 kronen), beyond which their earnings belonged to them; the earnings of the preceding night ran from $10 (50 kronen) to $30 (150 kronen) apiece. The food had improved in quality, but the condition of the linen and towels still left much to be desired. Three of the inmates were badly bruised. The keeper was again warned that sanitary conditions must be improved. To hinder the crassest exploitation and to secure the most elemental cleanliness, the highest officials,—physicians and jurists of university training—had to make a personal inspection; even then, 6 brothels, containing from 50 to 60 women, could not be kept entirely acceptable. Were brothels more numerous in Vienna, it would be absolutely impossible to utilize officers of high rank and spotless personal and professional character for this sordid duty; if delegated to others, a source of corruption and abuse would be created. Hence, though rules against exploitation and in favor of decency are promulgated, successful efforts to enforce them are practically nowhere encountered.
Though its heyday is over, the bordell can, however, still be made to pay, if the authorities are disposed to condone exploitation. At the bare suggestion that a new bordell street would be created in Frankfort, 15 houses in the proposed street were promptly bought up at extravagant prices;[360] the houses in Helenenstrasse, Bremen, valued at 327,000 marks, cost their present owner 585,000 marks;[361] a tumbledown medieval hovel, long utilized 190as a bordell in Stuttgart, was recently sold for 60,000 marks to a “dummy” purchaser. Shortly after the transaction, the police, heeding neighborhood complaints, decreed the closing of the establishment; whereupon they were bitterly reproached for summary violation of an implied contract.[362] Paris transactions are naturally on a far higher scale: 200,000 and 300,000 francs have changed hands for a single business.[363] Another establishment earned 70,000 francs for its owners in a single year. Like all profitable enterprise in this generation, efficiency and economy have been still more highly developed through organization; of 31 immoral resorts “situated in the zone of the Champs-Élysées, near the Arc, the majority belong to the same managers.”[364]
Fortunately other causes conspire with the suppression of the white slave traffic and increased control over the internal management of the bordell to bring about its decline. Taste has changed. “The public has lost its appetite for officially designated resorts, with their large numbers, closed shutters, colored windows, visited nowadays usually by strangers, provincials, and soldiers; the trade inclines rather to houses of rendezvous, where greater discretion is practised and where, with a little imagination, one is conscious of an air of adventure.”[365] The women, too, are filled with the desire to enjoy their own freedom. They prefer the reckless abandon of the 191streets, the cafés, and the theaters. Under these circumstances, the girls who are still found in bordells are as a rule the failures and the wrecks, with too little spirit or attractiveness to make an independent success.
In accounting for the decline of the bordell, I have inevitably touched on the objections to be urged against its further tolerance. The European bordell has in the first place declined because its recruitment through young victims has been largely broken up, and because the most flagrant forms of exploitation no longer prevail entirely unhindered. But other equally good reasons for the suppression of the bordell may be cited. The bordell is a veritable school of abnormality. The Paris bordells are elaborately equipped for every conceivable form of perverse indulgence. The inmates compete with one another in forcing upon the youthful customer the knowledge of unnatural and artificial forms of sexual gratification.[366] Similar excesses are practised elsewhere,—indeed wherever the bordell is found. The Swedish women told Dr. Lindblad that “the girl-house is the main seat of perversity; soon,” they added, “Stockholm will be as bad as Paris.”[367] The infamous implements employed are in full view as one enters the apartments in Helenenstrasse. The degradation of the bordell inmate is total;[368] her rehabilitation well-nigh impossible. She fares far worse than the street-walker, who sometimes returns to an orderly manner of life.
Finally, cautious as the keeper may be not to deserve 192the suspicion of the police, the bordells, especially those of lower grade, are everywhere in close touch with certain classes of criminals. Between the lowest class of criminals and the corresponding class of prostitutes intimate relations subsist.[369] To the low class resort the lawbreaker betakes himself; there the outlaw receives sympathy and shelter. It is occasionally alleged that the reverse is true: that the bordell-keepers turn the lawbreaker over to the police, assisting the authorities in discovering criminals. But the Dutch police, who have tried and discarded the bordell system and who, like other police with the same experience, would under no conditions countenance its reintroduction, are of a different mind. “Did the bordell-keepers assist you in the detection of criminals?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” was the reply, “after they realized that we already knew.”
So much for the inner side of the bordell; it remains to inquire into its influence on external order.
It is claimed that the bordell, by providing an ascertainable, if not well known, resort for immoral women and their customers removes scandal and suggestion from the public highways. Let us consider the argument in the light of the table already given. The bordell can at most interfere with the promenading and soliciting of the women interned in it; it cannot reduce the prominence of non-inscribed women, or of inscribed women living at large and expressly authorized by the police to walk all but a few streets. The existence of 47 bordells, with 387 inmates, in Paris does not interfere with 193the promenading of perhaps 50,000 unregistered prostitutes or of 6,000 registered, but scattered, prostitutes; the existence at Brussels of six brothels, with 37 inmates, does not restrain 145 other registered prostitutes, resident elsewhere, nor the several thousand non-registered women who live where they please. The facts thus show that the pressure on the streets is nowhere relieved by the herding of a few women—and the herding of more is impracticable. Between Paris and Berlin there is no difference observable: the former has bordells, the latter lacks them. The streets of Hamburg with bordells are no better than those of Rotterdam without them, and are distinctly inferior to those of Liverpool and Amsterdam, both without them. Zurich without bordells is externally much more orderly than Geneva with them. If the bordell played any part in the maintenance of decent street conditions, cities like Berlin, Munich, and Zurich—where there are no bordells—would be worse off than Paris, Hamburg, or Stuttgart; or the former would require some extraordinary agency not needed where bordells exist; as a matter of fact, the cities in question are not worse and they neither require nor possess any unusual machinery.
What can be more clearly decisive on this point than the fact that just at the time of my visit to Geneva, the chief of the department of justice and police, in consequence of “frequent complaints, named a special committee charged with the duty of devising means to put an end”[370] to the sort of vagabondage we are considering? 194As a matter of fact, coincidentally with the gradual extinction of the bordell, general street conditions have improved throughout Europe; and the few towns whose streets are strikingly free from prostitutes are without exception towns in which neither regulation nor the bordell exists. The bordell is not the controlling factor; police, courts, public opinion decide; and police, courts, and public opinion are likely to be most vigorously in favor of clean streets in communities that do not recognize prostitution as a legitimate livelihood.
But, more: the bordell does not necessarily or usually remove its own inmates from the streets! The women cannot be caged; current tendency is in just the reverse direction. The Budapest authorities, for example, regard with horror the “inhumanity” of the Bremen restrictions. Bordell women are becoming more and more free to come and go as they please; on other terms they are increasingly reluctant to enter the bordell at all. Moreover, when business lags—as indeed it tends to do—they go forth to find patrons on the streets,—for grist must be provided for the ever active mill. At Dresden, the courteous official who escorted me through the bordells, explained that it would be useless to start on our round of visits before midnight,—for the women would all be “out.” I walked through several of the 32 streets on which bordells exist in the earlier hours of the evening; from some houses the inmates were just emerging in striking costumes, to others women were already returning, accompanied by the prey picked up on the streets, in the cafés, and elsewhere. The bordell 195does not, therefore, reduce street scandal even to the extent of the number of its inmates.
Meanwhile, though the bordell does not relieve the general thoroughfares, it tends strongly to local scandal and disorder in its own quarter. The eight bordell streets of Hamburg lie for the most part close to busy streets in the heart of the city. Except in the forenoon, when the women are sleeping off the dissipation of the previous night, shocking scenes are observed. The pedestrian who in the afternoon inadvertently stumbles into the Schwiegergasse is greeted from window, vestibule, and doorstep by a volley of invitations; scantily clad women solicit his attention from the street door in broad daylight. The dark narrow passages in Cologne, notorious for brothels, are filled with a procession of reckless boys and half-intoxicated men on the verge of surrender to temptation. A beating rain did not empty the bordell streets of Altona, or drive indoors the lightly clad women who called out the superior attractions of their competing establishments; at Bremen, in the summer evening, the interned women forbidden to solicit on the street, approached all passers-by and endeavored in every imaginable way to entice them into their barracks,—“just for a glass of beer,” if nothing else. A recent writer, describing conditions in Frankfort, remarks that “the presence of the policeman does not hinder even unmistakable and utterly shameless prostitution of minors in the Rosengasse and Metzgergasse,”[371]—two of the streets in which bordells are found. In a few instances only,—Budapest and 196Rome, for example, I encountered no street disorder in the vicinity of recognized houses of prostitution.
From the preceding account, it is clear that the case for regulation on the side of public order is not strengthened by the bordell. Not infrequently, however, it is argued that, whatever be the situation in inland towns, the seaport has reasons of its own for requiring the existence of bordells; without it, drunken sailors of many nationalities will throng the highways, insulting women and imperilling children. This kind of argument is not new; I was told by a high official in Paris that no woman was safe from insult in the streets of Zurich, now that the bordells had been suppressed. Both statements are equally without basis. Rotterdam is well-nigh as important a seaport as Hamburg; its streets suffer nothing by comparison; the streets of Liverpool are at the moment the cleanest of all. Once more, the bordell is, to say the best for it, immaterial.
Nor can it even be claimed for the bordell that it lessens other forms of prostitution. Side by side with it flourish the “Animierkneipe,” advertising “weekly change of service,” the cabaret, dance hall, café, cheap lodging-house, the concealed bordell, the rendezvous, the maison de passe,—all engaged, as the bordell is engaged, not in satisfying normal desire, but in arousing, inflaming, and perverting lust, while at the same time thrusting upon the victim’s attention accessible means for its gratification. Rome possesses besides 20-odd authorized bordells, 235—perhaps more—unauthorized houses of prostitution, well known to the police. I was escorted by an officer to houses of both types and observed 197no difference beyond a somewhat greater nervousness on the part of the keepers of the latter; Geneva abounds in irregular lodging-houses and maisons de passe, lists of which have been even furnished by anti-regulationists to the police, without result; Amsterdam reports that it had more clandestine brothels during the time when bordells were licensed than are to be found now that they have been suppressed. At Paris, with bordells—as in London, without them—every imaginable subterfuge is employed in the effort to carry on surreptitious prostitution: chambers are advertised, foreign language lessons announced, art objects, pearls, dressmaking, massage, bibelots employed as baits for the curious.[372] The bordell does not really affect this situation at all.
Discovering, however, that bordell prostitution is disappearing, the police of Paris and Budapest are endeavoring to maintain their grip by authorizing or permitting rendezvous establishments. At Paris, these establishments may be opened without police permit and will not be disturbed as long as they comply with a few simple police orders, e. g., admitting only inscribed women or at least women regularly examined by a physician agreeable to the police.[373] They have increased in number from 64, with 235 women regularly in attendance, in 1900, to 243, with 770 women attached, in 1908.[374] A somewhat similar policy is pursued in Budapest, where 198the police tolerate without interference the “hotel garni” with 20 to 50 rooms, which admits only inscribed women on showing their certificates, sells no alcoholic beverages, provides every room with water, towels, etc., and allows no guest to remain longer than twelve hours; these hotels are regularly visited and inspected by the authorities. Similarly, the maison de passe is recognized,—usually an apartment of five to eight rooms, where towards six in the evening one finds 5 to 10 girls seated around the dining-room table, sewing or rouging while waiting for customers to drop in. But these substitutes for the bordell are as futile as the bordell itself; police recognition of authorized places of rendezvous does not diminish in any wise the number of hotels surreptitiously utilized for the same purpose. In Budapest, despite the vigorous police policy, there are as many unauthorized hotels engaged in the business as there have ever been; and Paris is notorious for the abundance of uncontrolled resorts. The explanation is easy. Neither the girl nor her customer desires to submit to the stigma and notoriety involved in resorting to an authorized house of any kind; the same motive that leads them to avoid the bordell leads them to evade the authorized rendezvous. In any event, only controlled women can resort to a controlled establishment; uncontrolled establishments continue to command the trade of non-inscribed women,—who always and everywhere enormously preponderate.
Could the futility and impossibility of regulation be more clearly exhibited? The police of Paris, Budapest, and Vienna offer the woman every facility for the easy and unimpeded prosecution of her trade, provided only 199she will submit to inscription: bordells, if she pleases; a private lodging, if she prefers; or, if neither of these is agreeable, hotels discreetly conducted in accessible localities, where the police will never trouble her or her customers. In return, the authorities ask only that she register her name, nominally submit to a few restrictions, and undergo medical examination at intervals. Yet not even on these favorable terms can a considerable body of women be induced to submit. Meanwhile, whatever may be said for the bordell as a possible way of removing prostitutes from the street, the rendezvous house, now cultivated to take its place, operates in the directly contrary fashion; for the couples resorting to it generally meet and strike their bargains in the streets.
There is perhaps another point of view from which the bordell must be considered. Whatever opinion one may form as to the ultimate fate of prostitution in civilized society, unquestionably it must, like certain other social evils, be reckoned with as a phenomenon to be dealt with as part of the day’s work. I have pointed out that European opinion is moving towards the conclusion that, for the present, third party exploitation, overt and offensive manifestation, are aspects with which our social and governmental instrumentalities are most likely to cope effectively. The pimp, the bordell-keeper, the prostitute herself—when her conduct scandalizes—with these the ordinary resources of a well-managed municipality are increasingly competent to deal. Clearly, however, we are thus left with the prostitute herself on our hands,—with the prostitute, I mean, who is vicious, not criminal, leading her own life, reprehensible 200of course, but without unnecessary offence to others. In reference to this type of woman—the type, in other words, that survives even a successful war on third parties—the first question that arises is this: where shall she live? For even the inconspicuous and well-behaved prostitute is a peril, inasmuch as she is a constant and inevitable source of moral contagion,—particularly objectionable, of course, in close contact with children and working girls. The bordell represents one effort to solve the domicile problem, by isolation, just as infectious disease is isolated. The analogy to disease fails, however, for two reasons: first, because isolation is usually resisted by the prostitute; second, because the prominence that vice obtains through bordells—be they many or few—far outweighs any good attainable through the forced isolation of those who can be interned. Other positive efforts to regulate the domicile of the prostitute have also been made,—so far, without success. The German law, as I have already stated, forbids the professional prostitute any lodging at all; but the law has broken down, first, because the vagrant prostitute is most objectionable of all; second, because the statute is enforced only in flagrant cases of abuse; third, because it is in conflict with the regulation system in common use.
Budapest approaches the problem differently. There bordells house a fair number; the rest are free to live where they please, provided they give no offence. Authorized places of rendezvous are provided as above stated, in the hope that women will thus be induced to transact business elsewhere than in their homes. In the 201event, however, that a woman persists in bringing customers to her apartment, decent tenants are in position to protect themselves through the following enactment: “Any tenant has the right to forbid a prostitute to continue to occupy rooms in the house where he lives, if, before he himself moved in, he was not told that prostitutes live in the same house; should prostitutes move in subsequently, the tenant may dislodge them by complaining to the police. No tenant need endure the presence of prostitutes in the building where he resides; no tenant can be obligated to remain in a house where prostitutes live unless he knew the fact when he made his lease. The landlord is obligated to tell prospective tenants the truth without being asked. If the landlord on the tenant’s demand does not evict a prostitute, the tenant may break the lease and demand damages. These provisions apply also to apartments used for rendezvous.”[375]
How far this excellent law has affected the situation it is difficult to tell. Its enforcement against non-registered women is difficult, to say the least. Besides, the poor can easily be quieted by favors or concessions. I was therefore not surprised to see children playing in the courtyard and on the steps of houses in Budapest to which prostitutes could be observed to be returning in the company of men; prominent rendezvous apartments were visited in large buildings tenanted mainly by families of the working-class. Neither regulation in general nor the bordell in particular has thus succeeded in solving the dwelling problem. This has been frankly recognized in the revised Vienna regulations which abandon 202all effort to deal with the question; paragraph 12, previously quoted, enjoining the least possible interference with the free choice of a dwelling-place on the part of a prostitute who lives alone.[376]
I have throughout this chapter considered the bordell mainly as a factor in the program of regulation. It is from the standpoint of order evidently futile. But from another standpoint it is worse than futile. The bordell gives to sexual vice its most prominent advertisement. By working on the curiosity of the young and of strangers—its main patrons, by the way—it substantially increases demand; by requiring constant service of its inmates, it virtually increases supply. It is therefore absolutely at war with sound public policy which aims to reduce both—certainly to avoid their gratuitous increase. Finally, the bordell is the most flagrant instance of exploitation for the benefit of third parties, which modern feeling and legislation are emphatically determined to prevent. For the keeper’s profit men waste their substance 203and are—to what extent the ensuing chapter will tell—infected with disease; while women are dragged down to the lowest depths of degradation and excess. The bordell is therefore something more than futile, something more than inhuman.[377]
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