Part 1

FRENCH MORALITY, UNDER THE REGULATION SYSTEM.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF MAD’LLE. J. DAUBIÉ.

LONDON: TRÜBNER & CO., 8, AND 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.

LIVERPOOL: THOMAS BRAKELL, 7, COOK STREET.

1870.

PREFACE.

Mademoiselle Julie Daubié has published a book in three volumes, entitled _La Femme pauvre au dix-neuvième Siècle_.[1] This work is the result of many years of careful research, accompanied by self-denying labours among the poor, and the outcasts of society.

The following pages are a translation of those chapters of her book which bear upon the state of the most unhappy of her countrywomen. In granting permission for the publication of these chapters, Mad’lle Daubié writes as follows:—

“PARIS, January 18th, 1870.

“Our new Parliament has made an emphatic declaration that it has in view a great moral reform, which fills us with hope. Our eyes are turned towards your Parliament, the wisdom of which is boasted everywhere. It is assuredly not the English Parliament which will make a law to tolerate (that is to say to encourage) prostitution; for such an infamy as this is not yet inscribed in any Code of any civilised or Christian nation. Even in France, prostitution is regulated by an article of the _Penal Code_, which refers this question to the police. Our Civil Code has not yet had the impudence to proclaim the immunities of profligate men to be a civil right; and the expenses of this department are municipal.

“But if it be true that provocations in the public thoroughfares are so frequent in the towns of England, and that places of ill fame are not watched, &c., your Parliament has left much undone, and has much to do for the repression of vice.

“The principal means for this appear to me to be good laws for the punishment of seduction, measures for making women independent through a sufficiency of wages, the severest prohibition of all provocations in the public way, and the right of the police to enter infamous houses, and to exercise the same powers against the men as against the women who frequent them; (an impartiality exercised in France in gambling houses.)

“But we must abhor and reject all those odious measures which treat woman as an impure being for debauchery to profit by. Scorn all the advice which may be given you, on this subject, by timid or corrupt men, who can see nothing beyond that which actually exists! The progress of prostitution in France is frightful, and the number of public women is said to be doubled even since the Great Exhibition. Every day new houses of infamy are opened, authorised by the _Chef_, who replies to any one who remonstrates, ‘_It is because they are necessary, &c., &c._’

“We shall do well, I think, in our International League, to give ourselves especially to questions of justice and of human dignity in connexion with the relations of the sexes, and to endeavour to bring all the nations of Europe to the adoption of uniformly just laws on this subject—a subject on which it is not permitted to cherish with impunity false sentiments or unjust laws.”

Who shall dare to prophesy for the future of England, if, at such a crisis as the present, when the eyes of France—of Europe, it may be said—are upon us, the Parliament whose wisdom is vaunted on the Continent, should endorse, and not repudiate, the policy of a clique who have succeeded in gaining a footing in our country for a system which elsewhere has been tried and condemned?

JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER, Hon. Secretary to the Ladies’ National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

FRENCH MORALITY, UNDER THE REGULATION SYSTEM.

I. INFAMY AS KNOWN TO THE LAW AND SECRET INFAMY; PANDERS AND COURTESANS.

“There are so many drawbacks attached to the loss of virtue in women; this principal point being taken away is the cause of so many others falling with it, that public unchastity may be looked upon as the greatest of misfortunes.”—_Montesquieu._

“Woman is the embodiment of evil when evil exists about her: she is the impersonation of evil when society must be ruined through evil.”—_Pierre Leroux._

Public immorality has pushed its excesses so far as to cause the poor woman to become a nuisance which has neither a name nor a right in our code. I have undertaken the painful duty of considering with attention the profligate portion of the community, which is controlled by the police authorities; I shall not flinch from my sorrowful task—one that will not, in any way, afford the lovers of scandal cause for laughter....

Is it my fault, indeed, if, after having gone back to Eden itself for woman as created in God’s image, I must pick the infected vase out of the gutter and look into it for woman as made in man’s image?

Social injustice causes the greater part of the young women of the lower orders both to fall into and to remain enslaved in the sink of prostitution: the writers of their history agree in calling them the victims of destitution, ignorance and seduction. The insufficiency of the city-workwoman’s earnings sometimes forces her, even in a season of industrial prosperity, to supplement her means by the sale of her person; that is termed the fifth quarter of the working day. When employment fails, this species of right to labour makes up the entire day’s earnings. In different towns, according to the evidence of the inspectors of the department of morals, women who have not totally lost every sentiment of modesty are driven to ignominy by the want of the means of support.

In our manufacturing towns, even children serve as food for profligacy. Generally, the destitution of these women is such, that out of 6000 registered in Paris, only two had any other resource. One woman might be instanced who struggled for three days with the pangs of hunger before yielding. Two young girls, through having recoiled from this horrid expedient, dropped down, in an hospital, half dead from want of nourishment. Ignorance is another so fruitful cause of ruin for these women, that, of 4000 natives of Paris, hardly a hundred were able to sign their name. In other towns facts as sad are borne witness to. The privileges enjoyed by seducers are often their original cause, for these privileges are the cause of women without resources being borne down by the burden of maternity, and of illegitimate daughters being left in destitution. These, moreover, constitute the fourth part of the total number of the inmates of the recognised brothels, completed partly by the victims of seduction.[2] These latter have followed men, who, after having promised them marriage, have cruelly deserted them in the towns where they were without the means of support. Others, incurring the disgrace and curse of a first fall, find no refuge but in profligacy. Girl-mothers are also to be met with, who are forced to become prostitutes to bring up their children. Often, says one of their historians, cases very embarrassing to the Administration are brought under notice; young girls not wholly corrupted evince penitence, can be reclaimed, and wish to return to their homes, but their parents disown them, _and they are obliged to be registered_. Others, forsaken from their very birth, have been brought up by themselves; they know neither their father nor mother, their age nor name. What is to be done? They are forced to be admitted. No path opens before them; the Administration offers a passport gratuitously, and, _sometimes_, a pair of shoes, to the young female under age, without profession, shelter, clothes, or food, and sends her back to her native place. One of our depraved men, in whom genius kept alive some ray of feeling, sometimes experienced a profound pity for these victims whom destitution gives over to debauchery; he confesses that they often conjured him, with tears, not to withdraw his unhappy protection from them. One of these suppliants assured him that if he abandoned her he would be the cause of herself and mother dying of hunger.[3] By the side of the liberty which girls of 15 have to become prostitutes, is placed that of parent-procurers. The weakening of family ties among us often causes these monstrous transactions to occur, on account of which women have been known to commit suicide. The moral sense is, moreover, perverted to such a degree, in our rural districts, that you there hear of mothers congratulating themselves on living by the proceeds of their daughters’ dishonour. Apart from the cynicism of the concubine-keepers who sell their unacknowledged daughters, workmen are met with who marry with the object of enslaving their wives; one such person assaulted his to make her go on the streets, saying to her: “Don’t think you deserve to eat, if you do not perform the only work you can make lucrative for me—I want money.”[4]

The foregoing facts belong to _legal_ prostitution, which is always conjoined with that carried on clandestinely; it is certain that the _toleration-certificate_ of procuresses is nothing but a permit for all sorts of infamy. Agents for intercourse with certain women of fashion, they likewise carry on, almost without impediment, negotiations respecting girls under age.

An author of the 15th century, estimating the number of “girls of the town” in Paris at 5000, attributes this enormous figure, unknown before, to the war which had affected the earnings of women, and to the culpable indifference of the provost, Ambroise de Loré. Statistics do not supply us, nevertheless, with reliable indications of the progress of the evil earlier than from the close of the year A.D. 1812. In Paris, less than a third of the fallen girls belong to prostitution as known to the law; the rest haunt the permitted houses, drive a profitable trade at the singing-saloons, public-houses, lodging-houses, and taverns. More than 25,000 of them are supported by a number of immoral men who, in their turn, are the support of a great many places of public resort, where both soul and body are lost through drunkenness and profligacy. In our different towns,[5] secret prostitution works the same kind of ravages. It is generally noticed that the destitution of women gives a great increase to it during industrial “crises.” Our soldiers and colonists have likewise carried into Algeria morals previously unknown to the Arab polygamy. So great was the horror the Mussulmans had for prostitution, that at Algiers, as recently as the 17th century, prostitutes were thrown into the sea. In the present day, women who go to get employment in our colony ordinarily find their livelihood only in debauchery and concubinage; “unfortunates” subjected to the brutalities of our soldiery, are bartered, like beasts of burden, at every change of garrison, and our army may be followed by the track of the infection it leaves in even the smallest villages. After the conquest (of Algeria) the daughters of the original possessors of the soil had not even the means of living except by shame.[6] This sketch suffices to show how unfitted we are to colonise a people which, on the evidence of every high and competent authority, has adopted our vices without acquiring any of our good qualities.[7] In fact, the Mussulman code, the Jewish religion and morals, permit, upon the African soil, polygamy, divorce, and repudiation, with the obligation, on the father’s part, of supporting all his children, and the prohibition of repudiating a woman without providing for her; these duties rendered manifold marriages a privilege of wealth. The “senatus-consultum” which governs, on the model of our code, the Arabs who are naturalised French, changes nothing of the influence exerted on them by climate, religion, education, and manners. Thus, by abjuring every duty to wives with whom, otherwise, they are free to maintain relations, uncurbed and uncontrolled, under the title of concubines; by leaving their unacknowledged children to die of destitution, they obtain the title of French citizen, which should be to them the reward of virtue and honour.

In that frightful famine when the brutality of the strong to the weak was so monstrous, in which Religion and Charity had not arms wide enough to enfold the legions of repudiated women, and of children without fathers, the conviction might force itself that our code is more deadly for Algeria than are its noxious animals.[8] Our legislation for morals is an active cause of our want of success in colonizing; for our moral responsibility being able to bring nothing but intermixture to the races in our colonies, degenerated by polygamy or slavery, the young negresses, seduced and abandoned, knowing none of the duties of the family and of maternity, are living in the most deplorable degradation.

In France, the police authorities entrust the lucrative estate (_fermé_) of profligacy (which private persons are not authorised to farm out) to brothel-keepers who represent a considerable capital. At Paris, where their business connexion is sometimes transferred at prices as high as those of solicitors’ and notaries’ practices, the moveable effects of one of them have been appraised as high as 100,000 francs (£4,000). The sums invested compel the brothel-proprietresses to hunt up buyers incessantly, and God knows how they perform their task. It would be difficult to form an idea of the corruption they sow in our boroughs, in our villages even, by sending to them detachments of girls whom authority tolerates as soon as they place themselves under the government regulations. France is no longer anything but a vast field of prostitution, since railways have brought this traffic within reach of our rural districts. The brothel-keeper, whose receipts are enormous, has agents who accustom the workman and the female domestic servant to look upon her house as an institution for the deserving.

The procuress, having full authority for mixed education, takes further upon herself the social education of the young men living away from home in our towns: she puts herself on the track of students, collects from the _Botin Almanac_ the address of certain known men, sends them ambiguous letters by gold-laced lacqueys, whose business it is to supplement the intimations. For the negotiations about girls under age, the brothel-keeper goes out herself from apartments fitted up in princely style, steps into her carriage, has herself announced by her footman, introduces herself into aristocratic drawing rooms, has a perfumed note delivered on a silver salver, announcing to such and such an important personage the purpose which brings her there. It is asserted that the inefficiency of our laws is so great as not to admit of the guilty being reached once in a thousand times, and never effectually represses them, as we shall see from the sequel of this investigation.[9]

Apart from this traffic, the brothel-keepers are found to be protected by the police authorities, who leave the registered girl dependent upon them: they send clothes to the half-naked workwoman and domestic servant on their leaving the hospital or the prison, to get them into their power through debt, and trade on the ignorance and poverty of unfortunate creatures, wretched to the extent of being obliged to hire from them clothing in which to present themselves for sanitary inspection. In the event of subterfuge, the brothel-keeper brings a charge of taking away with intent to defraud, and our law courts place her victims in her power. If we did not know the debasement of the girls of the lower orders, we should, perhaps, be astonished that hunger should give over to these procuresses, women who, getting none of the money for which they are sold, will finish by rotting in the street into which they are thrust like refuse, when they can no longer bring profit. Their destitution and degradation then become extreme. They live in filthy lodgings, or take shelter under doorways and under carriages. Those women whom our troops bring in from all parts are crowded in narrow and dark caverns, take refuge in plaster-kilns, in partially built houses, in cells as narrow as graves, in which they pass the night upon horrible truckle-beds full of filth and vermin, receiving as their only food some ration-bread which the soldiers throw in the mud to them; they have thus come to look upon prison as a retreat, and often to beg in vain the favour of admission to institutions for beggars.[10] Does the brothel-keeper who has worked their youth for her profit at least share their disgrace? No! from the moment that she makes choice of the evil—that she makes a gain by it, _she_ is no more dishonoured by it than the man who pays the price of it. The unjust assumption of the most respectable titles—the names alone of _lady_, _mistress of the house_, or of _matron_, attest the progress of this woman in general consideration. A burgess in the fullest sense of the term, she dowers and marries her daughters honourably, sometimes to legionaries, and _to agents of the police for morals_. Then as a woman of independent means, _retired from business_, she lives in the country, attracts notice there for her wealth, her devoutness, and her prayer book at the parish mass every Sunday. I do not know if such an ending would appear moral in romance, or whether it would not, on the stage, startle, however little, the indulgent conservators who look upon the tolerated house as a necessary evil, without reflecting that if men guilty of the trade in Blacks are punished with death, the trade in Whites ought not to be made an institution protected by the public power.

By the side of this in importance in society is placed that of the _avowed kept women_ (_femmes lancées_), who are sought after like a race-horse or dog of high breed—a numerous family which daily reckons new varieties. Here still the original cause of the evil lies in the want of independence for the woman, who, after having been supported by a father or a brother, is reduced, in the absence of such props, to have recourse to a lover. When this fragile reed comes to be broken, she remains at the mercy of the first comer who gives her the means of livelihood. The impossibility of getting a competence and distinction in the liberal professions plunges into this gulf even women like the exhibitioners of St. Denis; in the same way certain young women of the working classes have connected themselves with manufacturers, famous bankers, wealthy public officials, who, living on family property or pension, give up to them the ten, twenty, or thirty thousand francs lopped from our budget; these goddesses in the hey-day of their spring-time are floating on the surface of perdition. The short-lived favours of their prostituters have stifled their natural qualities; they show themselves very proud of mortgagee lovers, while rejecting mortgager ones; but all despicable as they seem, they are far from being so much so as their supporters, who, possessing a competency, wealth, social appointments, and honours, sacrifice the most sacred duties to their passion for degrading gratifications. The woman trampled on by these attachments of a day is often she who knows how to cherish and preserve constancy in love, she, in short, who might possibly have become a faithful spouse and tender mother; while the harlot at the zenith of her avocation is she who can stoop to the degree of the corruption of her purchasers.

The luxuriousness, the sensation, the independence, the very borrowed honour which, in the present day, encircles the name of a certain mistress of an exalted personage, the remembrancers which the public compete for at the sale of her effects, are the saddest indications of our decay. Formerly, prostitution, which had no name in respectable language, was confined to particular streets with a stigma of infamy which forbade its breathing the common air; in our time it gives the tinge of hope to its peculiar type admitted into good society; if there still exist accursed abodes where human beings are shut up like lepers, they belong to the hives of the working classes which are tasked to the utmost to create wonders. Who does not recall the economist Blanqui’s heartrending stories of the streets of Lille, those catacombs of people having no property? Who does not remember those of the “_Bassesse_” and of the “_Cloaque_” at Rouen, where families of working-men, deprived of air and space, seemed buried alive in their underground dwellings?

Everywhere, however, in our most luxurious districts, splendid mansions, palaces indeed, are built for high-class and fastidious prostitution, where it is loaded with gems and perfumes, and receives the respectful attentions of tradespeople, ambitious people and hangers-on. Without speaking of the monuments erected to it by art; without pointing to the stairs of marble and porphyry which it walks on in the temples of its glory, it may be asserted that, in general, our women of doubtful position are lodged in rooms which the respectable woman could not pay for with the fruits of her industry nor of her talent, however exceptional that might be. My personal inquiries have shewn me in Paris a number of kept women, whose rent rises from 800 to 4,000, 5,000, and 10,000 francs yearly.

The moral reaction which took place in 1848 caused the scale on which these women’s pay for what they do is based, to be lowered temporarily; but they very quickly regained their professional connection and their accustomed following when the pyramid was resettled on its base. There are houses where the porters even prefer the kept-woman to every other lodger, for her proverbial donations and prodigality, and whose virtues they vie in extolling.[11]

The courtesan preserves in society the importance which attaches to her in her private apartments. Photographs of her decorate our streets; her memoirs enrich our literature; her showy personality sets off our public platforms (_trétaux_); she often displays it, moreover, at the theatres and the public baths; she cuts a figure on the fashionable promenades, in the most gorgeous equipages of the higher classes. When she finds herself at her own disposal, instead of beating the air and space, with the illustrious lover who glories in being as infatuated as herself, on returning from the races, the concubine remains in her chariot, where a long row of carriages with their contents are for hire in this novel market for prostitution. Amateurs of all classes pass in review this living corruption; they address these women in a loud tone, with their hats on, their riding whip in hand, and debate the conditions of purchase and sale which are made for them, as for horses, to the highest applicant and richest outbidder.

In the presence of this corruption, which has never had a precedent except on the eve of the downfall of kingdoms and empires, certain short-sighted moralists are exclaiming: “It is the passions of concubines that are dragging us into a bottomless abyss.” I could point out that the passions of rich women have not the social consequences of the necessities of poor ones, and that there is a deplorable legislative fault wherever man pays woman to corrupt her, while she must pay the man for trying to reform him by marriage; but I shall say, “Misfortune, a thousand times misfortune upon civilizations which fear the passions because they do not know how to direct them.” Suppress this source of devotedness and progress, and there will no longer be either vices or virtues, and the facility, the satiety of profligacy, will hurry society on to an irremediable fall.

II.—PENITENT GIRLS.

“The harlots enter into the kingdom of heaven before you.” —_Gospel according to St. Matthew._

If we recall the causes which force women into the sewer of prostitution,—if we remember the humiliations of registered and non-registered girls,—we shall not be at all astonished that common prostitutes often feel all the horror of their lot, and we shall understand the talent of observation presented by certain types rendered familiar by literature.