Prostitution in Europe Part 5

[Comics, Coins, Stamps, Collectables & Gaming]

CHAPTER V REGULATION AND ORDER—THE STREETS Regulation defined.—General description of the system.—Regulation in Berlin.—Compulsory and voluntary inscription.—The Sittenpolizei (Morals Police).—Variations from the Berlin system.—The Paris system.—Additional variations.—Lack of legal sanction.—Administrative punishment.—Liberality of regulation in Vienna.—Varying size of the morals police division.—No approved system of regulation.—All alike arbitrary in character.—Inscription lists relatively small.—General tendency downwards.—Objections to regulation from standpoint of rescue and preventive effort.—Objections to summary police process.—The inscription of minors.—So-called clandestine prostitution.—Omissions.—Disappearances.—External order in regulated cities.—Failure of regulation to affect conditions.—Regulation inconsistent with strict order on streets.—Arrests for infraction of rules. I have thus far endeavored to convey some notion of the complexity and extent of modern prostitution and to point out the peculiar difficulties that attend an effort to deal with it on simple lines. I have described the measures now beginning to be taken to diminish demand, to abridge supply, and to interfere with efforts to exploit the existing supply. Endeavor in these various directions looks to gradual amelioration of the situation now generally existing in large cities. Meanwhile, prostitution is a phenomenon that must be dealt with by every municipal government. What are the methods employed in Europe and with what results? Generally speaking, two opposite policies are employed: regulation and abolition. The former endeavors to handle prostitution by inducing it to submit to certain rules; it urges that as a matter of fact prostitution exists, is a social pest, and cannot be summarily wiped out; something will, however, be gained for decency, health, and order, if the phenomenon can be forced to conform to conditions laid down by the police authorities. These conditions form the regulations from which the policy in question derives its name. The opposing party—the abolitionists—agree as to the mischief due to prostitution, as to the impossibility of extirpating it, as to the difficulty of repressing it, as to the unwisdom of allowing it to flourish rampant. They insist, however, that regulation fails to achieve its purpose; worse still, as they argue, the moment prostitution is accepted provided it submits to certain rules, the state is placed in the position of authorizing, legalizing, or privileging the practice of vice. While the regulationists claim that the privileges conferred do not embody the license to do an immoral and illegal thing, but merely involve common sense acceptance of the inevitable, the abolitionists retort that, verbal quibbles to the contrary notwithstanding, regulation is a compact with vice. In the present and succeeding chapters these two opposing policies will be described and the effort will be made to decide the issues raised by them. To describe regulation is by no means an easy or simple task; for the systems in vogue in different places vary fundamentally and essentially. They agree in stipulating that prostitutes registered with the police must heed certain restrictions placed upon their conduct in the interest of public order and decency, and that they must present themselves at regular intervals for medical examination in the interest of public health. They agree, that is, in their avowed objects. There is, however, no general agreement whatsoever as to what is feasible or necessary in order to attain the objects in question. The more thoroughly one examines European practice and theory in the matter, the more one is perplexed as to precisely what that practice and theory essentially are. The general term “Regulation” covers up difficulties and inconsistencies respecting which even the partisans of control are still widely at variance. This will become clear, if, after describing the rules in force at one place, I point out the divergencies from these that obtain elsewhere. For the sake of simplicity, I shall divide the discussion into two parts: the first dealing with registration and with regulation in so far only as they touch the preservation of order and decency; the second, dealing with regulation in so far as it touches the question of venereal disease. Berlin shall furnish the basis of our discussion.[232] The Berlin prostitute almost invariably first comes into contact with the police in consequence of street soliciting.[233] The plain-clothes morals police, shortly to be described, are charged with the duty of watching not only registered women—to see that they respect the regulations—but also unregistered women whose actions arouse the suspicion that they are seeking to practise prostitution for money,—the offence which is alone obnoxious to German law.[234] We are concerned to trace the course of the latter. A woman whose behavior is suspicious is, in the first instance, warned by the officer—not arrested; if warning is unavailing, arrest follows. Should she prove to the examining officer before whom she is taken that she has a proper dwelling-place, she is released on undertaking to appear next day before the morals police; if she is without dwelling or resources, she is taken there at once. In any case, she has at police headquarters no contact whatsoever with inscribed women, who may happen to be under arrest at the same time. Whatever may happen elsewhere, contamination does not occur there. Henceforth the procedure varies, according as the girl is under 18 years of age, between 18 and 21, or over 21. If under 18, she can nowadays in no event be inscribed; she must be turned over to her natural or legal guardian or to the juvenile court in order to bring her under proper conditions either in her own home or in an institution of the required type. If the girl is between 18 and 21, the same preliminary steps are taken; the morals police communicate with parent or guardian, as previously mentioned; and an endeavor is made to secure wholesome conditions for her at home, in some other family or in an institution.[235] If these efforts are unsuccessful,—and the facilities are so far in arrears of the requirements that successful placing is possible for only a small fraction of the cases,—the girl, despite the fact that she is a minor, may be inscribed, should she be re-arrested for the same offence and adjudged guilty in court.[236] Women over 21 are at once turned over to the courts upon arrest and after conviction may be summarily enrolled. In addition to such enrolment by compulsion, women over 21 are also enrolled upon their own application. Up to the moment of inscription, prostitution for money or its equivalent is an offence punishable by imprisonment and hard labor; after inscription, the state withdraws its objection. The woman is permitted or authorized to earn her living by prostitution, provided she obey the following directions.[237] She must not loiter offensively in streets and public places, nor solicit, nor be found in the company of prostitutes or pimps;[238] except in case of urgent need, she must not walk in the following streets and places, viz., The Zoological Garden, Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse, Potsdamer Platz, etc.;[239] she is forbidden to linger in the vicinity of schools, churches or royal buildings, or to attend the theater, circus, expositions, museums, or concert gardens attached thereto;[240] she is to have no intercourse of any kind with minors;[241] she must admit police officers at any time into her dwelling, day or night, and give information about any person discovered with her;[242] she must keep police headquarters constantly informed of her address;[243] she may not reside in the vicinity of schools, churches, or public buildings and must change her dwelling on peremptory notice from the police.[244] Any infraction of these regulations is punishable by imprisonment for not longer than six weeks; but the condemned woman may also be remanded to the police, on expiration of this sentence, for a workhouse term imposed by the police of not exceeding two years, in their discretion. I have said that inscription at Berlin may be either compulsory or voluntary; that is, an unregistered woman arrested for practising prostitution without authorization in the shape of police registration and thereafter either warned in vain or punished, may be inscribed by the police, even though she protest against it; thenceforth she is compelled to comply with the regulations above named as well as those to be hereafter described in dealing with the sanitary aspect of police control. This is compulsory inscription. Or, without waiting to be forcibly inscribed, she may appear and herself request to be inscribed, whereby she voluntarily undertakes to respect the obligations that inscription imposes upon her. It is apparently easy to understand why a police force, believing in the necessity of regulation as a means of preserving decorum, and in its efficacy as a means of promoting sanitation, should favor compulsory inscription; but why should a prostitute herself, without pressure from the police, ever ask to be subjected to its régime? A complete explanation will gradually emerge as we proceed with the description and discussion of regulation; but a partial account must be given at once. I remarked in the foregoing chapter that prostitution for gain is in itself a crime according to the letter of the German law; the prostitute is liable to arrest, punishment, eviction, whenever it can be proved that she earns money through immorality, whether she have other occupation or not.[245] Voluntary inscription is an open confession of irregular life as a business. Instead, however, of leading to her immediate punishment for admitted violation of the law, confession and inscription operate in precisely the contrary way; they relieve the woman of molestation provided she agrees to carry on her illegal business in compliance with police formulæ. Once inscribed, she is free to seek and to entertain patrons as long as she does so without scandal. Inscription—voluntary or compulsory—thus involves her submission to certain conditions, more or less restrictive and capable of somewhat disturbing her business operations; but it has the great advantage of relieving the prostitute of vague dread of police interference in general. How far the conditions to which she subscribes when registered are enforced we shall learn later. The characteristic features of the Berlin regulations are then as follows: either voluntary or compulsory inscription; arbitrary and additional police sentence following judicial sentence, in case the court so orders; interdiction to prostitutes of prominent thoroughfares, amusement, and other resorts; non-inscription of minors under 18; possible inscription of minors between 18 and 21; and complete control of dwelling-places. As the local police are opposed to bordells and brothels, it follows that the legalized prostitution of Berlin is scattered through the city. For the enforcement of the Berlin regulations a specialized police division, known as the Sittenpolizei or morals police, exists. Its head is an Inspector; he is assisted by five assistants, called Commissioners; and he commands a force of 200 patrolmen, who, in plain clothes, walk the streets in pairs. These men have sole and complete charge of the vice problem; the uniformed police have no duty or responsibility in connection with prostitutes or prostitution, intervening only in case of an emergency—a street brawl, for example, when there are no morals police in sight. The duty of the morals force is twofold. First, they observe the inscribed women, in order to prevent infractions of the regulations. If a medical visit—to be described in a subsequent chapter[246]—is missed, a morals patrolman searches for and produces the offender; if a registered woman otherwise notoriously transgresses her bargain, it is left to the morals policeman to take her in hand. Secondly, the morals force is charged with the duty of watching the uninscribed—usually called clandestine—prostitutes. I have already told how these women are observed, warned, and if they continue to be objectionable, arrested;—in all these steps, the morals patrolman is the agent who deals with the prostitute. His judgment and discretion determine who shall be warned, who shall be arrested, and thus, in the long run, who shall be forcibly inscribed. I shall shortly explain more fully the working of the system, but it is important at the outset to show the reader the nature and extent of the responsibility laid on the morals police. Regardless, for the moment, of the manner in which the above mentioned regulations are executed, or the results thereby attained, it is interesting to note that in no two German cities is the same system in vogue. Nor do the differences touch mere matters of detail; they go to the very root of the whole matter. Berlin has, as we have seen, in addition to voluntary, also compulsory inscription, with scattered prostitution; that is to say, a prostitute detected in the practice of her vocation may be inscribed against her will; thereafter she is forced to reside in a place approved by the police,—which place will in no event be a brothel or a bordell. Bremen, proceeding on the basis of the same statute, has only voluntary inscription, and women who thus offer themselves for inscription are compelled to occupy quarters in a single street in houses which, whatever the theory, are practically bordells;[247] that is, no woman is inscribed except on her own application and a woman so inscribed may remove her name from the list at her pleasure; the sole condition being that she live in Helenenstrasse during inscription, and remove from it to some other part of the city whenever she cancels her enrolment; of course, cancellation of her inscription and removal to another part of town do not necessarily involve any change in her occupation. Therefore a small number of Bremen prostitutes are inscribed and corralled; the rest—all non-registered—live as and where they will. Bremen and Berlin are therefore decidedly dissimilar. Other cities differ from them both and from each other. Munich, for example, has, like Bremen, only voluntary inscription, but, unlike Bremen and like Berlin, only scattered prostitution. Stuttgart adds another variation: for, unlike Bremen, Munich, and Berlin, the inscribed women live in scattered bordells, and in them only. Hamburg is again different: for, like Berlin, it has both compulsory and voluntary inscription, while, contrary to all the above examples, the inscribed women live partly in bordells on a number of different streets and partly in approved but scattered lodgings on the Berlin plan. Nor are the possible combinations even yet exhausted: for Dresden, Cologne, Frankfort, and other cities have each its own idiosyncrasies. Substantially the same variations are found in the other countries and cities that I visited. For example, in Paris, inscription is, as in Berlin, both voluntary and compulsory; the inscribed prostitute dwells in a bordell or not, as she pleases; she may, however, instead of living in a bordell, leave her name and address with the keeper of an authorized _rendezvous_ house, to which she regularly repairs or may be summoned between certain hours; these houses, like the bordells, are found in many sections of the city; meanwhile no part of the town is exempt from prostitutes occupying scattered lodgings. Though they are thickest in certain well-known sections of Montmartre and the left bank of the Seine, they are also found in the Avenue Victor Hugo and the fashionable streets radiating from the Arc de Triomphe. In Vienna, once more, only voluntary inscription prevails: no woman is enrolled against her will. But if a woman carries on professional prostitution, the regulations make it her duty to enroll herself voluntarily; if she fails in this duty, she may suffer seriously! The rules expressly provide that the police shall handle the non-registered women more severely than the registered.[248] The woman’s freedom to enroll or not as she pleases is thus ostensible rather than actual. It is assuredly a bit casuistical to maintain that the prostitute may inscribe herself or not—only she will be relentlessly pursued if she fails to exercise her option in the desired direction. Once registered, however, she may live in a bordell, or, as all but a mere handful do, privately. At Budapest, the girl is first turned over to a social worker who pleads with her to desist from her evil ways. If her efforts prove unavailing, registration follows. Meanwhile, unregistered prostitution is harried with great severity. The Stockholm regulations also make it the woman’s duty to register;[249] but, as the chief of the division is authorized to observe non-registered women “suspected of immorality,”[250] it is clear that compulsory enrolment is not impossible. Divergencies touch other points also: as for example, the circumstances that lead to arrest; the registration of minors; of married women; of women with other means of livelihood; the employment of non-judicial administrative punishment; the cancellation of inscription; etc. Married women can be forcibly enrolled in Paris and Berlin and, with the husband’s consent, in Budapest. They are not even at their own request permitted to enroll in Munich or Vienna. In one place it is argued that marriage is often a mere form, for the husband is only the woman’s pimp; if regulation is efficacious, or meant to be efficacious, it cannot allow itself to be defeated by such a technicality. Elsewhere it is argued that the institution of marriage is degraded, if a married woman is expressly authorized by the law to practise prostitution for her livelihood, and by inscription allowed to gain immunity for an otherwise intolerable and illegal line of behavior. Again, in the matter of other employment: the Berlin and Paris rules proceed on the assumption that many occupations are either cloaks for the practice of professional prostitution, or do not affect the character of the woman concerned. The whole intent of inscription can therefore be defeated if the mere fact that a woman follows some sort of occupation necessarily exempts her from inscription. Hence women so engaged may be enrolled if they are professional prostitutes. Indeed, the rules of some cities give these women a certain leeway in the matter of reporting to the police so that their other occupation may not be interfered with. The point is that Paris, Berlin, and other North German towns see no inconsistency between registration as a professional prostitute and simultaneous employment as barmaid or otherwise. Bremen, Stuttgart, Munich, and Budapest take a very different view. They regard any kind of employment as the beginning or possibility of salvation; as soon as a girl begins to earn something honestly, there is hope that she may clamber out of the mire; to enroll her would be to brand her and thus to bar the road to betterment. Finally, as to punishment: at Paris administrative punishment is regarded as the very core of regulation. A registered woman has no legal rights. She is absolutely in the hands of the police inspector, who, on hearing the morals patrolman’s complaint against her, pronounces sentence upon her. She may, of course, protest her innocence, but she is allowed neither attorney to represent nor witnesses to support her. Nor can the action of the police be reviewed by any regularly constituted court of justice. The Paris police regard regulation as unworkable without this summary administrative power. The Prussian police partly disagree. They prefer that the courts should act in the first instance. Only after the courts declare the woman guilty of professional prostitution does she fall to the jurisdiction of the police. Once there, however, she is absolutely without legal rights. At Hamburg and Dresden it is likewise argued that prompt action, unhampered by technicalities, is the only way to deal with such culprits, and administrative punishment is accordingly still in vogue. The women may without judicial trial be sent to jail on sentences running from 7 to 14 days, with 6 months more in the workhouse if without home or occupation. Finally, in the matter of withdrawal from the police lists: Bremen, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Budapest cancel inscription on request; they regard every request as the possibility of a return to decency, and fearful of ever interfering with such a desire, however faint, never interpose an objection. Hamburg and Berlin, on the contrary, cancel no inscription until the police are satisfied that the woman is in earnest; an applicant is therefore secretly watched and on the report of an ordinary patrolman embodying his interpretation of her comings and goings, the ability of a prostitute to get a fresh start wholly depends. Stockholm removes a woman from the list “until further notice” in case she announces her decision to return to a decent life, proves to the inspector that she has an honorable occupation or other means of support, and after three months’ surveillance, is favorably regarded. In one respect, Vienna differs at least in the letter of the regulations from all other cities. The reader will have remarked the effort of the Berlin stipulations to remove the prostitute from human associations. She is barred from certain streets; she is forbidden certain places of amusement. These restrictions are not conditioned upon her conduct, but upon the fact that she is a prostitute, and they form an important part of the regulations not only of Berlin, but of Paris, Munich, Brussels, and other cities. We shall have something to say later of the enforcement of these, as well as other, rules. But, as showing once more the total failure of any agreement as to the details, the new Vienna regulation entirely abandons even the attempt to make the prostitute an outcast in this sense; she is only forbidden to appear in a group of immoral women or with a pimp. As to the rest, it is expressly declared: “In respect to her behavior she is liable only to the same rules as to order and decency that apply to all other persons.”[251] Divergencies might be still further multiplied. I might point out that there is no agreement as to what constitutes the sort of prostitution which must be amenable to regulation, if regulation is successfully to achieve its purpose in preserving order and health. Germany holds that regulation need apply to prostitution only in so far as money passes; and the actual passing of a material consideration must be either admitted or proved. Austria urges that no headway can be made against such a technicality; the Vienna police, therefore, after watching and vainly warning, arrest on suspicion. Berlin acts most rigorously when the girl is without a definite home;[252] Stuttgart and Bremen enroll only when the girl has a definite home, and in a bordell[253] at that. It is clear that the variations mentioned seriously involve the nature, scope, and applicability of the system. I shall, as I proceed, discuss them on their merits. But I want for the present simply to call attention to the fact that, what at long range is called a system, or the system, of regulation, proves on fuller knowledge to be a very large number of systems,—a confusion of systems, inconsistent with one another in viewpoint and diverse in organization, range, operation, and even purpose. Confusion in structure may be taken to indicate that a satisfactory technique of regulation remains to be worked out. It becomes, therefore, important to accompany any discussion of the merits or demerits of regulation with a bill of particulars specifying the precise form of regulation in question; for the variations above noted are not immaterial or accidental. Their number and importance at once introduce grave suspicion into the mind of the disinterested observer. Though systems of regulation differ thus in practically every respect, they are singularly alike in one highly important regard: they have been generally developed by more or less arbitrary action on the part of the police and without the deliberate and express sanction of a competent legislative authority. From this statement, the British Contagious Disease Act—long since repealed—must be excepted; to the extent that that legislation introduced regulation into Great Britain, adequate legislative authority could not be said to be lacking in any respect; the Belgian system, too, reposing on communal law,[254] is apparently well authorized; such is also the case in Hungary, where two statutes—one passed in 1876, the other in 1899,—authorize the police regulation of prostitution. Elsewhere this is not, and never has been, the case. But continental tradition accords to the police an extensive jurisdiction and initiative in regard to matters more or less loosely left within their province. In dealing with certain matters, the police are therefore in the habit of taking summary and arbitrary action on the basis of custom or on the warrant of ancient degrees of dubious validity. The courts usually decline to interfere, even though, as I shall show, they do not hesitate to impugn the adequacy of the legal basis. The police have everywhere become acutely uncomfortable on the subject. They cling to the powers; but they crave explicit legislative warrant such as will place their authority beyond suspicion. This legislative reassurance they have nowhere obtained; neither in France, nor Germany, nor Austria has the national legislature deliberately and unambiguously created or even sustained by statutory enactment the police regulation of prostitution, as now carried on in those three countries: nay, more, in certain important respects, regulation has been practised by the police only by subterfuge in more or less plain disregard of the letter of the statutes. The questions here involved are obviously of highly technical character. The statement above made would not be greatly strengthened by the citation of even weighty authorities, who are opposed to regulation on principle; it would be easy to point out that their interpretation of the law may unconsciously and even unintentionally have been influenced by their position in reference to the policy itself. I propose therefore to quote only jurists who are favorable to regulation, men whose interest lies in making out the strongest possible case for its legal warrant. As to Paris, I shall follow M. Lépine, to whom I have previously referred as an extraordinarily able official.[255] The powers there exercised by the police in respect to prostitution are derived from a royal ordinance of 1684 appointing the Salpétrière for the reception of prostitutes and vaguely prescribing that final sentences in respect to them may be imposed by the police; by two subsequent ordinances of 1778 and 1780 forbidding the renting of rooms to prostitutes; and by a law of the year VIII (1799) authorizing the police to watch prostitution, to provide for the security of the streets and to check epidemics and infectious disease. From these general directions to the minute specifications and exemptions of the Paris regulatory system is indeed a far call. It is impossible seriously to maintain that they warrant or were ever intended to warrant the procedure ostensibly derived from them. The police themselves are so conscious of the uncertain footing on which their system rests, that they have again and again sought its validation through express legislation. In the year IV (1795) of the Republic, the directory vainly asked that the legislative body define prostitution and “give judicial proceedings a special form”; subsequent failures to obtain explicit legislative sanction are recorded in 1798 and in 1810,—the latter being the date of the recasting of the penal code; legislators were at that time not prepared to forbid regulation, but they refused to write it explicitly on the statute book. In 1811, 1816, 1822, 1848, 1877, and 1895 similar efforts met with the same failure. Reviewing these unavailing endeavors to establish regulation on a secure legal basis, M. Lépine declared before the Extra-Parliamentary Commission: “In these conditions the Police Prefect has had no other resource but to cling to old methods which, even if not converted into laws, have been tolerated and approved by all governments.”[256] The situation is no better in the rest of France. Regulation in the provincial cities is based on certain paragraphs of a law of April 5, 1884,[257] in reference to which M. Hennequin, of the Ministry of the Interior, a pronounced regulationist, admits: “Without doubt, the law does not speak expressly of morals, and prostitution is not referred to by name in article 97:”[258] that is, the comparatively recent statute, on which provincial regulation in France rests, does not venture to mention the policy in defense of which it is now invoked. The Austrian regulations are likewise a creation of the police, ostensibly pursuant to a general statutory provision that vaguely leaves the “punishment of professional prostitutes to the police authority.”[259] But regulation consists not in _punishing_, but in _condoning_ prostitution, provided certain police stipulations be complied with. Like its French prototype, the Austrian system thus lacks statutory basis as well as express legislative sanction; and precisely as the French defect is admitted by M. Lépine, regulationist, so the corresponding Austrian flaw is confessed by Dr. Baumgarten, the capable, humane and cultivated official who presided over the morals police of Vienna: “The legal basis upon which the present system of police regulation reposes is throughout vulnerable.”[260] The law must be so amended, he urges, that the police are charged, not with _punishing_ prostitution, but with _watching_ and _controlling_ it, on lines to be devised by themselves. Only if so amended would the present system rest on an unequivocal legal basis. Needless to say, no such amendment has yet been carried,[261] and the regulation system in vogue in Austria stands, because, as in France, lacking the protection of the _habeas corpus_ writ, the outcast can obtain no footing in court. The foundation of regulation in Germany is equally dubious. Paragraph 180 of the Criminal Code makes it a punishable offence to rent a room to a prostitute. Now the moment the police inscribe a prostitute, they register her dwelling-place; and they bear with particular severity on prostitutes who are “without a definite domicile.”[262] Regulation[263] begins, therefore, by flying in the face of the statute: whether regulated prostitutes live scattered, as in Berlin, or interned, as the Hamburg police prefer, regulation in so far as it involves their inhabiting dwelling-places approved by the police is inconsistent with the section quoted. Grave doubt exists further as to whether in any event compulsory inscription is legally defensible. The present Imperial Chancellor admitted that the law is “illogical and confused;”[264] and the most recent decision of the Reichsgericht, involving the interpretation of the statute, concedes that “the competency of the police in the matter of compulsory inscription is not uncontested.”[265] A recent ministerial instruction[266] endeavors to break the force of objection, as far as possible without amendment of the statute, by insisting that, though the police still retain the power of forcible registration, it is not to be exercised in Prussia until the woman has been regularly convicted of professional prostitution. A recent defence of the adequacy of the legal basis pursues a line of argument itself calculated to deepen mistrust: “The police are competent to do whatsoever follows from the general nature of their business; they are entitled to take such measures as are naturally dictated by their objects. They are therefore competent to take such measures in reference to prostitution as contribute to the achievement of police purposes. Now the regulations governing prostitution aim to protect order and health. Regulation is therefore a function that follows from the general competency of the police. That is true in Prussia as in France. The stipulations of the police regulations have therefore the force of law.”[267] It will be observed that this author makes no pretense of higher warrant than that of necessity as judged by a police authority making its own rules. But perhaps still stronger evidence of the legal insecurity of the existing systems is furnished by the radical changes proposed in the draft of a new criminal code. Conceding that prostitution as such is not to be punishable as a crime, it takes the position that “it is necessary to watch prostitution” and empowers the police to issue the necessary regulations, subject to prior enactments on the part of the state legislatures; but these regulations may not distinguish between controlled and non-controlled prostitutes,—they must be applicable to all alike.[268] The most striking fact in connection with the operation of all systems of regulation is the small inscription list. There are, it is true, variations: but the largest list, that of Paris, probably includes hardly more than one prostitute in eight, from which maximum the lists in other cities decline rapidly to utter insignificance. The following table exhibits the size of the inscription lists, the population of the towns in question, and the ratio between the two.[269] The facts that stand out are the fractional nature of enrolment at its very best, and the enormous variations in ratio. I shall point out the reasons for this and later inquire for the effects.[270] RATIO OF INSCRIBED WOMEN TO POPULATION Number of inscribed Ratio of latter to Population women former Paris 2,888,110 6,000 (Approx.) 1 to 481 Marseilles[271] 550,619 639 1 to 861 Bordeaux 261,678 410 1 to 638 Lille 217,807 108 1 to 2,016 Nantes 170,535 125 1 to 1,364 Le Havre 136,159 136 1 to 1,001 Toulon 104,582 325 1 to 322 Berlin 2,071,257 3,559 1 to 582 Hamburg 931,035 935 1 to 995 Munich 596,467 173 1 to 3,441 Dresden 548,308 293 1 to 1,871 Cologne[272] 516,527 600 1 to 828 Frankfort 414,576 300 1 to 1,382 Stuttgart 286,218 22 1 to 13,010 Bremen 247,437 75 1 to 3,299 Mannheim 193,902 14 1 to 13,850 Augsburg 102,487 6 1 to 17,081 Munster 90,254 1 1 to 90,254 Vienna 2,031,498 1,689 1 to 1,203 Budapest 880,371 2,000 (Approx.) 1 to 440 Rome 542,123 225 1 to 2,409 Stockholm[273] 346,599 554 1 to 625 Brussels 659,000 182 1 to 3,621 Geneva 154,159 86 1 to 1,793 Different years show a considerable fluctuation in the above totals, but the general tendency is markedly downward. Paris, for instance, inscribed 4,519 in the year 1830, when its population was 800,000;[274] in 1873, the registration was practically the same, 4,603; thenceforth it declined steadily to 2,816 a decade later; since that time a progressive rise brings it in 1903 to 6,418;[275] a decline is again in progress, for 1910 does not exceed 6,000. At Berlin there was a steady rise from 1886 to 1896: the list stood at 3,006 in the former year, 5,098 in the latter; since which time, despite increased population, the enrolment declined to 3,115 in 1905;[276] i. e., almost 40%. The last figures obtainable show a registration of 3,559. In Vienna, 1,780 stood on the books in 1900, decreasing year by year until only 1,441 remained in 1910; since the revision of the rules in that year, increased vigor has brought about an increase to 1,689.[277] Hamburg has receded from 1,266 in 1903 to 935 in 1910.[278] Breslau dropped from 1,856 in 1889 to 1,045 just five years later;[279] Mannheim from 60 in 1890 to 13 in 1902.[280] Stockholm reached practically the same high water mark at different intervals, showing the inevitable fluctuations with which, there as everywhere else, inscription has been pursued. In 1903 the number stood at 936,—the figure which it had also reached over a quarter of a century before. Thereupon there came a decided drop: 119 women had been newly enrolled in 1903; 67 were enrolled in 1904. By the year 1912, the total enrolment—itself considerably larger than the effective enrolment—had sunk to 554.[281] In most cities—as the figures above given show—regulation is moribund, and in many quite dead. As compared with the total volume of prostitution, the enrolment is at the best unimportant, and at the worst, altogether negligible. Paris, as I have said, registers perhaps one in eight. If, as is estimated, there are 30,000 prostitutes in Vienna,[282] the maximum inscription is barely 5%. As opposed to a registration of 225 in Rome, the police records show 5,000 women under observation at one time or another.[283] In the year 1909, 140 women were inscribed at Munich; during the same year, the police were keeping track of 2,076 clandestine prostitutes: the enrolment was thus less than 7% of those actually known,—and they were only part of the whole;[284] in 1911, with 173 women inscribed, 2,574 clandestines were under police observation, the former about 7% of the latter.[285] The inexperienced outsider may jump to the conclusion that an active and efficient police administration could easily enough gather into its net most—or at least many—of those who now slip through. As a matter of fact, there has been in some towns no lack of endeavor to accomplish this very thing; but it does not, and cannot, succeed for reasons that will be explained. And this quite regardless of the existence of any strong sentiment adverse to regulation as such. Nowhere, of course, is forcible inscription possible, unless a clear case can be made out. The police agents are therefore bound to proceed with great circumspection. They are indeed instructed that a hundred omissions are preferable to a single error, or apparent error. The agent may lay hands on the poor and friendless street-walker without danger of exciting hostile criticism; but for several reasons the more sophisticated forms of prostitution he dare not touch. Proof is harder; the woman has friends; the public resents interference with personal liberty. Forcible enrolment, therefore, very quickly encounters limits beyond which it cannot be pushed. The mere size of the force at the disposal of the police inspectors makes little difference; Berlin has a relatively large body of agents, Vienna a very small one. Yet the latter achieves almost as much as the former, because neither can forcibly detain any but the most obvious and flagrant offenders. But there is another difficulty, connected with the size of the morals division. Berlin sets aside 200 men for the service; Paris 240; Vienna 6; Brussels 6; Dresden 18; Frankfort 14; Hamburg 24; Budapest 32; Bremen 3. It is complained at Berlin that 200 are inadequate; clearly then six cannot suffice for Vienna. Yet to any proposition to increase the force materially the objection is made that only a small body of men can be protected against corruption or defilement. The morals police are thus on the horns of a dilemma; if numerous enough to be aggressive they are exposed to corruption; if few, they are inadequate. For, be it remembered, wherever enforced inscription is in vogue, the morals police have enormous power. It practically lies with them to say whether the clandestine prostitute walking the streets is to be cited before the division head for punishment and enrolment; whether the registered woman is to be permitted with impunity to violate the stipulations above given, or to be punished for infraction thereof. In general, the perils to which a large force is exposed have decided the authorities in favor of a small one; with the result that thorough and consistent action is impossible. A somewhat apologetic attitude has resulted from the general failure of even forcible inscription to make a better showing: one is told that the police do not desire a large list; that registration is purposely limited, etc. The concrete evidence in favor of this purpose is the presence at the larger police establishments of a social worker who endeavors to dissuade women from the pursuit of a vicious life; but this explanation is not convincing. Of course, regulation has no interest in keeping in prostitution women who can be induced to leave it; but in the case of women who are prostitutes and who cannot be dissuaded to desist, regulation, if effective, must certainly enroll them. Regulation has no desire to swell the ranks; but it cannot succeed unless it has a complete list of those really in the ranks. The police apology is an indirect admission that under modern conditions prostitution by reason of its protean nature cannot be catalogued. From the impossibility of cataloguing prostitution, other disastrous consequences to which I have already adverted, inevitably flow. Wherever a certain number of individuals are guilty of an offence, and but an inconsiderable proportion of the guilty are punished, the favoritism of the law leads inevitably into blackmail and corruption, by which it is still further defeated. I shall discuss this aspect of the problem somewhat more fully later on;[286] but at this point it is important to note that, despite the unimpeachable character of the police heads, and the splendid quality of the general force, wherever forcible inscription is practised, that portion of the police force which comes into contact with prostitution, viz., the morals police, is widely believed to be contaminated. Whether with money or favors, the women buy immunity from inscription; the patrolman, warned by his superiors that it is better to let a hundred guilty women escape than to make one mistake, easily conceals corruption beneath the pretense of caution. Forcible inscription is therefore predestined to failure. But there are weighty objections to it even in the limited form in which it is still employed in a few places. For it traverses at right angles the modern spirit. Our discussion of the nature of prostitution indicated that it is frequently only a phase through which thousands of women pass; their individual interest and the interest of society require that every facility for exit and oblivion should be furnished. Regulation does precisely the reverse: it brands the scarlet letter upon the woman’s forehead. The heedless victim of an escapade may be thus converted into a life-long outcast; society may be saddled with her and the harm she spreads as a permanent burden, hardly to be got rid of, so long as she lives. And this power, which once for all deprives her of the aspiration to improve, is ultimately lodged in the hands of an ordinary patrolman: _his_ observation, _his_ judgment, _his_ interpretation, _his_ assertion determine whether or not she is to be pushed across the dividing line into the abyss: his word against the girl’s. Bad though she may be, her reluctance to request inscription is the faint voice of her better self, not yet completely silenced; assuredly it is the function of a society, whose arrangements are by no means guiltless of her fate, not to extinguish, but to foster the feeble flicker of endangered personality. It must not be forgotten that in every city there are at this moment thousands of women technically liable to inscription who will in their middle twenties and later emerge from immorality and prostitution;[287] they can for the most part emerge, precisely because they are not inscribed; successful inscription would in most cases finally rupture the tie that will ultimately rescue them. It may be questioned whether a mature woman ought to be permitted by society even voluntarily to brand herself a professional prostitute: there is no shadow of doubt that no modern society can afford to compel her to do so.[288] The essentially medieval character of forcible inscription, by which alone, I repeat, any showing at all can be made, is most clearly illustrated by its connection with summary police power. No system of inscription can achieve even the fractional success of the Paris and Berlin systems if it allows the accused girl counsel and witnesses. For the lists are kept at their present minimal size only because the police can by summary action build them up as fast as they melt away.[289] Frightful miscarriages of justice are bound to occur in consequence of arbitrary action: for example, a woman leaving her wretched home in the Rue des Cordiers is arrested by a morals policeman, in spite of her protestations that she is on her way to procure medicine for a sick child; while she is detained in prison, the child dies in the course of the night.[290] Following her arbitrary detention, the Paris suspect is brought before a police bureaucrat, who hears the accusing patrolman, asks the girl or woman, perhaps terrified and certainly undefended, a few questions and summarily orders her enrolment, if he so please: thenceforth she is not only a social, but a legal outcast. She can by no legal ingenuity be brought before a regularly constituted court; she is amenable to police authority alone. Should she break, or be accused of breaking, the stipulations to which she is now compulsorily subordinated, she must accept the penalties imposed by the bureau chief, without protest. Utter helplessness is her lot; and that too amid conditions that conspire to bring about not improvement but further degradation. For the accessories to Paris regulation, the depot at police headquarters, the hospital and prison at St. Lazare are sheer survivals into our day of the barbarous dungeons of the middle ages. Whoso enters them may be said with truth to leave all hope behind. The present presiding officer endeavors to impart a more or less humane spirit to his decisions; but the conditions under which his power is exercised would overtax the wisdom of Solomon. The task is itself wholly out of keeping with the modern spirit. Essentially, the objections to summary police action are equally strong in Germany. Dr. Lindenau argues that the woman is technically somewhat protected against police tyranny; but, he adds: “One must none the less grant that the procedure in question is not well known to them. Moreover, at best it procures only a police decision reached on the basis of the police officer’s personal impressions.” Insuperable difficulties thus confront a vigorous regulatory policy. If regulation is needed to protect order and health and to prevent scandal, then it is obviously impossible to leave it optional with the prostitute whether she will be inscribed or not; force is absolutely necessary to success. But to force there is at once the objection that it can be applied to but relatively few cases at all; that it cannot be applied to these without suspending all legal guarantees, and that, once these are suspended, the way is open to corruption and oppression that are to a modern community utterly intolerable. But we have not yet recounted all the difficulties that beset regulation. Not even forcible enrolment can greatly swell the lists unless the inscription of minors is allowed. That the duty of the state towards defenceless or erring children is custodial would appear to be a principle on which modern society had already agreed; for a minor, at any rate, there is always at least a ray of hope. Experience already touched on shows, further, that though prostitution is commonest in the teens and early twenties, large numbers of those who give way in these years recover their self-possession afterwards. Hence, forcible or even permissible inscription of girls under twenty-one is the very acme of unwisdom and inhumanity. Yet, without it, a substantial inscription list is impossible. Had the Paris police refused to enroll minors their list, already relatively small, would have almost collapsed: between 1888 and 1903, 12,471 women were inscribed at Paris, 38% of whom were minors at the time.[291] In the year 1901, 635 women over 21 years old and 660 minors were forcibly enrolled,—more minors than adults![292] The same monstrous practice prevails elsewhere. The Stockholm regulations state that as a rule girls under 17 are not to be inscribed; yet of 4,651 new registrations between 1859 and 1904, 1,353 were under twenty years of age;[293] of 338 women enrolled in 1905, 196 (i. e., 58%) had been registered during their minority.[294] In Germany minors are inscribed in Bonn, Danzig, Dessau (“but not under sixteen years of age!”), Frankfort, where 43 were between sixteen and nineteen years of age, Mannheim, Rostock, Wiesbaden, etc. In the small Munich enrolment—143 in 1909—there were six minors,—Munich-born.[295] Dufour’s tables show the age of the youngest inscribed prostitute in the various German cities, up to 1885: in East Prussia, she was fourteen years old; in the Rhine province, Schlesien, Posen, West Prussia, Bavaria, fifteen; in eight others over fifteen and under sixteen.[296] Berlin now refuses inscription below eighteen and acts cautiously in case of girls between eighteen and twenty-one; but in 1898—before the adoption of the present policy—out of 846 newly inscribed women, 229 were minors of whom seven were fifteen years old, twenty-one sixteen years old. But the evidence afforded by Vienna is even more telling. The inscribed list there is on the most favorable interpretation absurdly small: even so, 16% of those inscribed are minors; meanwhile of non-registered prostitutes arrested on the streets—prostitutes who, be it noted, must be enrolled if the system is to be even fairly adequate to its intention—over 57% are minors.[297] It is thus evident that in this essential matter, the system is also on the horns of a dilemma: if minors are not enrolled, the system collapses; if minors are enrolled, society perpetrates an infamy. A further weakness inherent in forced inscription has already been alluded to: it is like pouring water into a sieve. When once the obvious cases have been gathered, the total can hardly be increased, no matter how great the pressure. Women disappear on the one hand as fast as they are registered on the other. In a single month in Berlin sixty dropped out; at Cologne, though 1,200 are registered in the course of the year, the active list is hardly half that number. So at Vienna, while 2,600 stand on the books at the close of the year, 1,000 have vanished in the same period, so that the effective inscription is about 1,600. Johansson’s careful studies of the 2,442 women enrolled in Stockholm between 1859 and 1884 show that 23% leave in the first year after inscription.[298] With a total enrolment of 3,582 at Paris in 1880, 1,757 women disappeared,—46 by death, one by marriage, six to return to a decent life, the rest simply dropped out, eluding police control in one way or another. The following table exhibits the status there in other years selected at random:[299] Disappeared in Total Number of the course of the Returned to Year Inscribed Women Year Died Married Decent Life 1881 3,160 1,524 34 2 27 1884 2,917 985 39 13 6 1887 4,681 2,503 18 8 22 1893 4,793 1,121 9 8 17 1897 5,233 1,599 14 27 43 1900 6,222 823 26 39 57 Finally during the year 1901, 1,574 women were newly enrolled, while 1,880 dropped out; of the latter, 52 died, 34 married, 77 found other means of subsistence, and 1,717 “disappeared.”[300] A certain point once reached, the structure topples as fast as it is built up. At Dresden I was frankly told: “Compulsion is useless; it only increases hiding and disappearing.” Forcible inscription therefore cannot be operated. On the other hand, as I have said, if inscription is voluntary, the whole thing goes to pieces. The size of the enrolment at Bremen, Stuttgart and Munich, where the girl decides for herself, is absurdly small. The inducements offered are very substantial, for if a woman complies with the regulations the police guarantee her the unhampered prosecution of her business. Yet even so, a vestige of surviving decency intervenes to keep far the greater number from voluntarily branding themselves. In Paris, out of 1,574 enrolments in 1901, only 52 were voluntary; out of 737 in 1908, only 36 were voluntary.[301] Meanwhile, neither forced inscription, inscription of minors nor inscription of working girls can build up a list that is at all commensurate with the magnitude of the evil. The showy women of the cafés, the boulevards, the variety theaters are absolutely free from molestation. The Paris police “do not arrest, do not disturb, do not even watch the well-to-do courtesans who frequent the Bois de Boulogne, driving a fast pair of horses; who live luxuriously near the Parc Monceau; who frequent theaters, concerts and balls,—in a word the aristocracy of the underworld. Nor do they concern themselves with the elegant women who in the afternoon or evening promenade on the main thoroughfares. These have friends among the journalists,—so it is said; they go scot-free, for fear of scandal. A third class is also immune: the grisettes of the Latin Quarter. The demoiselles of the Boulevard St. Michel are the faithful friends of the students: they are respected by the police!”[302] These women are all technically called “clandestine,”—an absurd misnomer, for their way of living is as notorious as that of any registered prostitute in the city. A little shrewdness enables them readily to avoid giving offence. The brunt of the system falls upon the friendless and the stupid. The truth is that no effort is made to secure thorough inscription,—partly because it is foredoomed to failure, partly because it could be too easily balked by corruption and intrigue, and partly for another reason that will appear in due course. And this is just as true in other cities as in Paris. Everywhere the police get hold of the dull and abandoned only. I recall the indignant rejoinder of a Berlin street-walker, on my asking whether she was inscribed: “No, indeed, only the stupid are inscribed.”[303] Let us now address ourselves to ascertaining the results of regulation. I have stated that in favor of the system two reasons are urged,—first, that it is necessary to the preservation of order; second, that it promotes the public health. The two must be separately investigated. In respect to order on the streets, European cities of approximately the same size are, with few exceptions, practically alike. I have pointed out that the street-walker seeks by preference the main channels of retail trade; there she is found in the late afternoon and evening hours, noticeable by reason of slow gait, furtive expression, and more or less striking garb. Her demeanor is usually restrained. If no response is made to the invitation conveyed in a glance, she passes on; doubtful or encouraged, she stops at a show-window or turns off into a café or a side street. Only in the late hours of night, does she become more aggressively provocative. This description applies to all the great capitals—London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna; some fluctuation may be noticed from time to time, according as police pressure relaxes or increases; but this is also equally true of all alike. In general, it may be said that external appearances in no one of them differ so markedly from external appearances in the others as to imply a different policy in reference to the phenomenon. Public opinion objects to scandal without requiring complete suppression; to this attitude prostitution has everywhere accommodated itself. The streets of London, in which, as we shall see, no particular action is taken in reference to the prostitute, are not to be distinguished essentially from those of Paris and Berlin, in both of which minute specifications aim to exclude the evil from prominent thoroughfares; nor are Paris and Berlin distinguishable from Vienna, in which no such stipulations are made. External conditions have everywhere ameliorated; the general police attitude is everywhere understood and is everywhere much the same: hence London without regulation, Paris with a fairly large inscription, Berlin with a moderate one, and Vienna with a small one reach substantially the same result. The same general description holds of smaller cities. To this group belong Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfort, Munich, Rome, Budapest, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Lyons, Glasgow, Manchester, and Rotterdam. Roughly speaking these cities vary in population from one-half to three-quarters of a million inhabitants. On the main thoroughfares of their retail trade, a certain number of prostitutes stroll during the accustomed hours; in the intervals of patrolling the streets, the women are to be found in cafés, coffee-houses, variety theaters, in which they are for the most part as little aggressive as when on the streets. A glance, a half whispered invitation and a smile form the usual preliminaries, rarely carried further, unless an encouraging response is returned. From time to time, increased pressure on the part of the police results in perceptible improvement of street conditions; and this happens equally in Liverpool, without regulation, and in Cologne, with it. I visited the latter city at a time of distinct police activity. At eleven o’clock at night the streets on which women used to loiter were practically clear; a solitary street-walker, very suspicious of strangers, explained that conditions had become intolerable and “for her part, she was going back to Frankfort.” In general, however, the stranger walking the streets of Hamburg, Rotterdam, or Munich would be entirely unable to conclude from their condition whether regulation was in vogue or not; or, if so, whether it is thoroughly or perfunctorily carried out, and to which type the system belongs. Surely, a factor that does not modify the result cannot be important in bringing it about. From the preceding it may, I think, be fairly concluded that regulation as it now exists in European cities has failed to improve order on the streets. For, though there has been improvement, it has taken place generally,—in cities that have regulation, in cities without it; in cities where there is a tolerable inscription list, and in cities where the inscription list is merely nominal. On the other hand particular attention must be called to the fact that regulation itself is an obstacle to thorough cleaning of a city’s streets; it prevents the authorities from taking vigorous measures in this direction. The law concedes to the inscribed prostitute the privilege of living by immorality. In so far as the women live scattered, they must be permitted to find customers, once the right to earn a livelihood in this way has been granted; for that purpose they must be permitted to show themselves in the streets, in cafés and elsewhere. Street-walking as such is not forbidden and cannot be forbidden in a regulated city unless the same authority that authorizes a woman to practise prostitution sets out to starve her. Hence inscribed prostitutes have the use of the streets excepting only certain thoroughfares and places that are mentioned in the regulations. But as a matter of fact not even these excepted places are—or can be—protected from the inscribed women. Common sense refuses to consider it a crime to walk on Friedrichstrasse, while patrolling one block below on Charlottenstrasse is harmless; or that a woman, who is free to promenade on Dorotheenstrasse must be fined and imprisoned for promenading on the Linden running parallel thereto. The inscribed woman who conducts herself without scandal on streets in which she is tolerated, soon begins unobtrusively to invade those which are forbidden: and so long as her demeanor is circumspect, no notice is taken. Indeed the streets from which the licensed prostitute has agreed to withdraw are not infrequently those where she is most at home; and a large loophole for police favor and corruption is thus created by the existence of rules only occasionally and capriciously enforced. But other consequences follow. What is allowed to the inscribed woman cannot be forbidden to the uninscribed: it is not in human nature to forbid to the one what is so freely allowed to the other. The very fact that 6,000 inscribed women are legally entitled to patrol most streets in Paris and are suffered to patrol the others, makes it impossible for the police to act vigorously and continuously against six or eight times as many clandestines who avail themselves of the same privilege. “What effect do the street restrictions have?” I inquired of a Paris police functionary. “None,” he replied, “they are a dead letter.” It practically results that the police do not systematically interfere unless scandal arises; in which event they would interfere anyhow, whether regulation existed or not. In respect to street order, regulation is, therefore, in my judgment, a hindrance, not a help, for it is at war with its own avowed object. Regulation is asked for that the women may be kept under control,—else, it is argued, they will overrun the streets. Once under control, they must be permitted to walk the streets; and if they, responsible to the police, are permitted, how can others, not so obligated, be prevented? Hence a measure designed to clean the streets ends by tying the hands of the police, so that the streets cannot be vigorously cleaned. Consequently no regulated city possesses streets as free from scandal as the streets of Amsterdam, Zurich, and Liverpool,—all non-regulated cities, in which a consistent and thoroughgoing course of action bearing on all women alike is feasible.