Prostitution, Women and Misuse of the Law:
The Fallen Daughters of Eve
(published 2003 by Frank Cass)

by Helen J. Self

Whoever has walked through Regent Street, Queen Street and other offshoots from the Quadrant, must have observed a great number of bold-looking overdressed women, unmistakably foreign, displaying a profusion of showy jewellery and wearing indescribable bonnets. Who then are these strangers whose cheeks appear to bloom with rude health, who seem from their leering looks and indiscriminate smiles of invention to be so happy? Who apparently possess such large stores of gold and jewellery and who array themselves in velvet and satin? They are a portion of the fallen daughters of Eve. The outward impression will not, however, bear the test of examination. Their diamonds are false, their gold is neither that of Australia or California, it is manufactured in Birmingham. The roses on their cheeks vanish at the visitation of a few drops of rain, the healthy colour disappears and a cadaverous complexion with repulsive features present themselves (sic) to the beholder. They have long lost their sense of shame and modesty, they do not even think their impure calling is against the morals of society or opposed to the laws of virtue; they have descended to that depth of degradation at which they regard their profession somewhat in the same light as the tradesman regards his retail business. Leader, 1 July 1885.

According to the actor Peter Ustinov, we develop our prejudice towards others through those institutions that we most respect, that is, the Church, the school and the family. The consequence of this early indoctrination can be the creation of widely held opinions which are notoriously difficult to influence. The following work addresses one such area of prejudice.
Through this introductory chapter I will familiarize the reader with the themes and arguments of my book and demonstrate how particular attitudes of ingrained prejudice towards prostitutes have impacted upon law and government policy. I will refer to a succession of government enquiries, including the major Wolfenden inquiry in 1957 which legitimated the continued labelling and stigmatisation of certain women for behaviour which was lawful if conducted by others and argue that widely held prejudice (historical, philosophical and legal) has been built into the legislation, creating a climate of vulnerability for the women involved.
The author of my opening quotation illustrates a variety of familiar but unsubstantiated assumptions about the prostitute. The object of disgust is female and in this case she is foreign which deepens the contempt. Outwardly she is well dressed, happy and healthy, but below the surface she is sickly and degenerate. She is the harbinger of death and the destroyer of virtue. Such themes reappear in articles and reports with predictable monotony and with many subtle variations. Behind the rhetoric can be found considerable anxiety over the increasing freedom and wilfulness of young women. For example, in 1899 Canon Scott Holland mourned the changing scene. "Men become free from the checks of local associations, girls distance us without a moment's notice".

Besides these fears there was always an element within society who were anxious to restrain and, if possible, to incarcerate the restless women. In 1912 the Penal Reform League had its own strategy for reform. There should be conveniently situated ‘Rest Homes' or hospitals where prostitutes could be ‘sorted out' and sent on to appropriate institutions. These would include country hospitals, farms and industrial settlements. "Some women might remain for long, even all their days". Happy industry, music, dancing and opportunities for study were to be among the distractions which would encourage trustworthiness, self-reliance and resourcefulness ‘with joy of heart'.
The more pragmatic F. S. Bullock, Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police CID, suggested that the fear of prostitution and trafficking had been greatly exaggerated. He wrote of the climate of religious moralising which pervaded society and had created an "atmosphere charged with hostility", although he thought it would be rash to assume that the morals of the British were any better than their neighbours. Nevertheless, he was concerned for the young women who were testing their freedom and realised that the reason which drove a woman to allow herself to become ‘an article of commerce' was the desire for a more comfortable livelihood than could be found working for low wages. "It is the economic condition of women which drives them to this sad condition".

During the First World War official attitudes towards promiscuous women hardened as it was feared that they would spread disease and loosen the marital ties of the soldiers. At the same time, some medical experts sought to establish their credentials by psychoanalysing and pathologising the prostitute. The physician, A.F. Tredgold, described the behaviour of a well developed and attractive girl of sixteen who, he alleged, had been ‘recklessly' spreading disease to soldiers. She absconded from a variety of homes and hospitals until she was finally detained, and a place was found for her in a secure institution by the London County Council. She may well have stayed there for the rest of her life. In 1927 the Medical Officer for Health for the L.C.C. wrote a report on the state of common lodging houses in London and filled a page and a half with contradictory statements. Prostitutes, he wrote, still formed a very considerable proportion of the common lodging house population. They were mostly between the ages of 25 and 35. Many had been orphaned when young, received little education and had worked for a few years in poorly paid occupations. Even so, they were more opulently dressed than other residents and occupied the best beds in the graded house. They could be observed sitting in a cosy kitchen enjoying roast mutton and green peas, while the poor match girl lunched on bread and margarine at the back of the house. The Salvation Army workers never ceased urging these women to give up their life of sin, but "naturally enough the poor girl who is defying public opinion surrounds herself with a barbed wire entanglement of lies, phantasies, insolence and blasphemy to protect her from the antagonism of her kind. Moreover, her looks, her speech, her very walk become unconsciously stamped with the hallmarks of her trade." Extreme intolerance of discipline was another alleged feature. Here we have a typical mixture of irritation, envy and disgust. The most contemptible and unintelligent women from the bottom strata of society had somehow managed to secure for themselves a level of comfort far above their station.

The papers of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children are a bottomless source of this type of analysis and invective. The International Union of Catholic Women (1930) found that "psycho-physiological and moral data are necessary to pierce through all the reflexes and currents of the subconscious" and reported that prostitutes displayed "fecklessness and a marked blunting of the moral faculties". But with regard to higher faculties, "the repetition of vicious acts had strengthened in them a kind of automatism all the stronger if due to hereditary tendencies". Their will had become almost entirely atrophied, "they nearly always showed in their whole physical appearance marks of their unfortunate habit", and "their looks, attitudes, gestures, their very reflexes betray moral disruption". Not surprisingly the Union regretted that the women spent too short a time in prison to allow for reform. By 1943 Dr Tage Kemp (Director of the University Institute of Human Genetics, Copenhagen) claimed that he had conducted extensive research into the causes of prostitution and confidently announced that "chronic physical disease of a more or less disabling character is one of the important causal factors". In evidence he provided a long series of afflictions, many of which few people outside the medical profession will ever have heard of, including salpingitis, cholelithiasis, nephrolithiasis and bilateral oophorectomy. Other symptoms were cited such as rickets, rheumatic fever, gastric problems and severe burns, without mentioning their relationship to impoverished diet and bad living conditions. By 1945 Dr Edward Glover of the Institute of Scientific Treatment of Delinquency, London, had lightened the analytical approach. In his opinion prostitution was due to regressive symptoms, it represented a "primitive stage in sexual development"and was the "displacement of unconscious infantile sexual wishes".

Throughout all these papers there are comparisons between the ‘normal' and the ‘abnormal' woman. The normal woman was the chaste wife, mother or daughter whereas the abnormal woman was characterised by her inability to distinguish between right and wrong. Many of the sufferers, it was said, displayed abnormally ‘erotic' tendencies and new words such as ‘hypersexualism' were invented to describe their ‘condition'. Their quest for an accurate definition meant that the borderline between prostitution and promiscuity was frequently breached. Consequently, promiscuous women were then sub-divided intoabsurdly improbable categories, such as those formulated by Sybil Neville Rolphe, who claimed that ‘incipient' prostitutes could be sectioned into categories of ‘occasional' or ‘persistently' promiscuous and ‘occasional or temporary' prostitute, and lastly, into the ‘chronic or habitual' prostitute. It was within this context of the public condemnation of casual relationships, illicit sex and extra-marital relationships that Edith Thompson was hanged on 9 January 1923 for allegedly colluding with her lover in the murder of her husband Percy. The case attracted massive media coverage with much voyeuristic and prurient commentary. People queued from 4 a.m. in the morning to attend the trial and a frenzied mob was said to have gathered outside her home in Ilford. Many people believed that her true crime was being an unfaithful wife and revelling in her own sensuality. The tragedy left four people dead as the hangman subsequently committed suicide. For some reason part of the Home Office file on the case is closed until 2022.

Helen Self is a retired science teacher, mother of three grown-up sons and a long-time feminist. Her hobbies are gardening, walking, reading and lifetime-learning. Her contribution to this journal comes from the first few pages of her published PhD thesis, which she 'foolishly' undertook during her late 50's. It is principally a historical account of UK legislation as it applies to prostitution, but also reflects her concern for a stigmatised and marginalized group of women.