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 independent and irresponsible divines take the side of denunciation, those theologians who have had thrust upon them the grave responsibilities of ecclesiastical statesmanship have rather tended towards the reluctant moral justification of prostitution. Of this we have an example of the first importance in St. Augustine, after St. Paul the chief builder of the Christian Church. In a treatise written in 386 to justify the Divine regulation of the world, we find him declaring that just as the executioner, however repulsive he may be, occupies a necessary place in society, so the prostitute and her like, however sordid and ugly and wicked they may be, are equally necessary; remove prostitutes from human affairs and you would pollute the world with lust: "Aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinibus."[194] Aquinas, the only theological thinker of Christendom who can be named with Augustine, was of the same mind with him on this question of prostitution. He maintained the sinfulness of fornication but he accepted the necessity of prostitution as a beneficial part of the social structure, comparing it to the sewers which keep a palace pure.[195] "Prostitution in towns is like the sewer in a palace; take away the sewers and the palace becomes an impure and stinking place." Liguori, the most influential theologian of more modern times, was of the like opinion.
This wavering and semi-indulgent attitude towards prostitution was indeed generally maintained by theologians. Some, following Augustine and Aquinas, would permit prostitution for the avoidance of greater evils; others were altogether opposed to it; others, again, would allow it in towns but nowhere else. It was, however, universally held by theologians that the prostitute has a right to her wages, and is not obliged to make restitution.[196] The earlier Christian moralists found no difficulty in maintaining that there is no sin in renting a house to a prostitute for the purposes of her trade; absolution was always granted for this and abstention not required.[197] Fornication, however, always remained a sin, and from the twelfth century onwards the Church made a series of organized attempts to reclaim prostitutes. All Catholic theologians hold that a prostitute is bound to confess the sin of prostitution, and most, though not all, theologians have believed that a man also must confess intercourse with a prostitute. At the same time, while there was a certain indulgence to the prostitute herself, the Church was always very severe on those who lived on the profits of promoting prostitution, on the _lenones_. Thus the Council of Elvira, which was ready to receive without penance the prostitute who married, refused reconciliation, even at death, to persons who had been guilty of _lenocinium_.[198] Protestantism, in this as in many other matters of sexual morality, having abandoned the confessional, was usually able to escape the necessity for any definite and responsible utterances concerning the moral status of prostitution. When it expressed any opinion, or sought to initiate any practical action, it naturally founded itself on the Biblical injunctions against fornication, as expressed by St. Paul, and showed no mercy for prostitutes and no toleration for prostitution. This attitude, which was that of the Puritans, was the more easy since in Protestant countries, with the exception of special districts at special periods--such as Geneva and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--theologians have in these matters been called upon to furnish religious exhortation rather than to carry out practical policies. The latter task they have left to others, and a certain confusion and uncertainty has thus often arisen in the lay Protestant mind. This attitude in a thoughtful and serious writer, is well illustrated in England by Burton, writing a century after the Reformation. He refers with mitigated approval to "our Pseudo-Catholics," who are severe with adultery but indulgent to fornication, being perhaps of Cato's mind that it should be encouraged to avoid worse mischiefs at home, and who holds brothels "as necessary as churches" and "have whole Colleges of Courtesans in their towns and cities." "They hold it impossible," he continues, "for idle persons, young, rich and lusty, so many servants, monks, friars, to live honest, too tyrannical a burden to compel them to be chaste, and most unfit to suffer poor men, younger brothers and soldiers at all to marry, as also diseased persons, votaries, priests, servants. Therefore as well to keep and ease the one as the other, they tolerate and wink at these kind of brothel-houses and stews. Many probable arguments they have to prove the lawfulness, the necessity, and a toleration of them, as of usery; and without question in policy they are not to be contradicted, but altogether in religion."[199] It was not until the beginning of the following century that the ancient argument of St. Augustine for the moral justification of prostitution was boldly and decisively stated in Protestant England, by Bernard Mandeville in his _Fable of the Bees_, and at its first promulgation it seemed so offensive to the public mind that the book was suppressed. "If courtesans and strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much rigor as some silly people would have it," Mandeville wrote, "what locks or bars would be sufficient to preserve the honor of our wives and daughters?...It is manifest that there is a necessity of sacrificing one part of womankind to preserve the other, and prevent a filthiness of a more heinous nature. From whence I think I may justly conclude that chastity may be supported by incontinence, and the best of virtues want the assistance of the worst of vices."[200] After Mandeville's time this view of prostitution began to become common in Protestant as well as in other countries, though it was not usually so clearly expressed.
It may be of interest to gather together a few more modern examples of statements brought forward for the moral justification of prostitution.
Thus in France Meusnier de Querlon, in his story of _Psaphion_, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, puts into the mouth of a Greek courtesan many interesting reflections concerning the life and position of the prostitute. She defends her profession with much skill, and argues that while men imagine that prostitutes are merely the despised victims of their pleasures, these would-be tyrants are really dupes who are ministering to the needs of the women they trample beneath their feet, and themselves equally deserve the contempt they bestow. "We return disgust for disgust, as they must surely perceive. We often abandon to them merely a statue, and while inflamed by their own desires they consume themselves on insensible charms, our tranquil coldness leisurely enjoys their sensibility. Then it is we resume all our rights. A little hot blood has brought these proud creatures to our feet, and rendered us mistresses of their fate. On which side, I ask, is the advantage?" But all men, she adds, are not so unjust towards the prostitute, and she proceeds to pronounce a eulogy, not without a slight touch of irony in it, of the utility, facility, and convenience of the brothel.
A large number of the modern writers on prostitution insist on its socially beneficial character. Thus Charles Richard concludes his book on the subject with the words: "The conduct of society with regard to prostitution must proceed from the principle of gratitude without false shame for its utility, and compassion for the poor creatures at whose expense this is attained" (_La Prostitution devant le Philosophe_, 1882, p. 171). "To make marriage permanent is to make it difficult," an American medical writer observes; "to make it difficult is to defer it; to defer it is to maintain in the community an increasing number of sexually perfect individuals, with normal, or, in cases where repression is prolonged, excessive sexual appetites. The social evil is the natural outcome of the physical nature of man, his inherited impulses, and the artificial conditions under which he is compelled to live" ("The Social Evil," _Medicine_, August and September, 1906). Woods Hutchinson, while speaking with strong disapproval of prostitution and regarding prostitutes as "the worst specimens of the sex," yet regards prostitution as a social agency of the highest value. "From a medico-economic point of view I venture to claim it as one of the grand selective and eliminative agencies of nature, and of highest value to the community. It may be roughly characterized as a safety valve for the institution of marriage" (_The Gospel According to Darwin_, p. 193; cf. the same author's article on "The Economics of Prostitution," summarized in _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, November 21, 1895). Adolf Gerson, in a somewhat similar spirit, argues ("Die Ursache der Prostitution," _Sexual-Probleme_, September, 1908) that "prostitution is one of the means used by Nature to limit the procreative activity of men, and especially to postpone the period of sexual maturity." Molinari considers that the social benefits of prostitution have been manifested in various ways from the first; by sterilizing, for instance, the more excessive manifestations of the sexual impulse prostitution suppressed the necessity for the infanticide of superfluous children, and led to the prohibition of that primitive method of limiting the population (G. de Molinari, _La Viriculture_, p. 45). In quite another way than that mentioned by Molinari, prostitution has even in very recent times led to the abandonment of infanticide. In the Chinese province of Ping-Yang, Matignon states, it was usual not many years ago for poor parents to kill forty per cent. of the girl children, or even all of them, at birth, for they were too expensive to rear and brought nothing in, since men who wished to marry could easily obtain a wife in the neighboring province of Wenchu, where women were very easy to obtain. Now, however, the line of steamships along the coast makes it very easy for girls to reach the brothels of Shang-Hai, where they can earn money for their families; the custom of killing them has therefore died out (Matignon, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1896, p. 72). "Under present conditions," writes Dr. F. Erhard ("Auch ein Wort zur Ehereform," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang I, Heft 9), "prostitution (in the broadest sense, including free relationships) is necessary in order that young men may, in some degree, learn to know women, for conventional conversation cannot suffice for this; an exact knowledge of feminine thought and action is, however, necessary for a proper choice, since it is seldom possible to rely on the certainty of instinct. It is good also that men should wear off their horns before marriage, for the polygamous tendency will break through somewhere. Prostitution will only spoil those men in whom there is not much to spoil, and if the desire for marriage is thus lost, the man's unbegotten children may have cause to thank him." Neisser, Näcke, and many others, have pleaded for prostitution, and even for brothels, as "necessary evils."
It is scarcely necessary to add that many, among even the strongest upholders of the moral advantages of prostitution, believe that some improvement in method is still desirable. Thus Bérault looks forward to a time when regulated brothels will become less contemptible. Various improvements may, he thinks, in the near future, "deprive them of the barbarous attributes which mark them out for the opprobrium of the skeptical or ignorant multitude, while their recognizable advantages will put an end to the contempt aroused by their cynical aspect" (_La Maison de Tolérance_, Thèse de Paris, 1904).
4. _The Civilizational Value of Prostitution._--The moral argument for prostitution is based on the belief that our marriage system is so infinitely precious that an institution which serves as its buttress must be kept in existence, however ugly or otherwise objectionable it may in itself be. There is, however, another argument in support of prostitution which scarcely receives the emphasis it deserves. I refer to its influence in adding an element, in some form or another necessary, of gaiety and variety to the ordered complexity of modern life, a relief from the monotony of its mechanical routine, a distraction from its dull and respectable monotony. This is distinct from the more specific function of prostitution as an outlet for superfluous sexual energy, and may even affect those who have little or no commerce with prostitutes. This element may be said to constitute the civilizational value of prostitution.