Prostitution in Europe And History of the Gipsies With Specimens of the Gipsy Language
9781465515896
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Prostitution will be studied in these pages from the standpoint of the practical experience of European countries. An effort will be made to ascertain its forms and extent, the sources from which it is recruited, the conditions that either cause or conduce to it, the procedure of different communities in dealing with it and with the conditions responsible for it, the measures which have been employed by way of combat or control, and the results which have been thus obtained. Material will be drawn from extended personal inquiry and observation in the larger cities of England, Scotland, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria-Hungary,—from the countries, in a word, that may be grouped as Western Europe, because they are characterized by a considerable degree of similarity in all that pertains to social life, national ideals, and political institutions. In the countries just specified, neither law nor opinion is strictly homogeneous: in consequence, the phenomena under consideration respond to differences of viewpoint or pressure by somewhat altering their external manifestations. The resulting divergencies are at times only superficial, at times important enough to affect, perhaps, the volume of vice itself. None the less at bottom the situation is sufficiently similar to support the generalized method of treatment which has been adopted in this book. Distinctions will not be ignored; but on the whole it will appear that they serve rather to emphasize fundamental agreement. Recent investigation, indeed, tends to show that such agreement is of far wider scope than is here assumed; for in prostitution, if nowhere else, the old adage holds—“There is nothing new under the sun.” The source-books of both ancient and medieval worlds disclose an amazing identity with modern times in this melancholy respect. Such differences as still persist—in regard to viewpoint, form, or public policy,—are, at least in the area here dealt with, in a fair way to disappear. The progress of democratic thought and government, increasingly easy and unobstructed trading, the advance of industrialism with the revision of the ethical code following in the wake of practical sex equality, finally, even deliberate imitation are rapidly developing decided homogeneity of attitude and effort in reference to many fundamental human concerns. The student of the particular subject with which we are occupied is, therefore, nowadays, more and more likely to be struck by the uniformity of phenomena rather than by local or national peculiarities, in the course of an inquiry that begins in Glasgow and concludes in Budapest. At the outset it is important to observe that throughout Western Europe prostitution has in the last few centuries undergone essentially the same evolution. Prostitution is an urban problem, its precise character largely dependent on the size of the town. Now the medieval town in Western Europe was small. The really great cities of the middle ages were all Islamic: Constantinople, Bagdad, and Cairo numbered more than a million souls apiece, Seville and Cordova were each half as large. Beside these the main cities of Western Europe were in point of size insignificant: Paris had a dubious 200,000; Vienna, 50,000; London, 35,000; Cologne, 30,000; Hamburg, 18,000; Dresden, 5,000. Towns without water communication rarely reached 25,000; many important places did not exceed 5,000. Size largely determined the character of urban life and therewith the nature of medieval European prostitution. The inhabitants of these hardly more than villages were well known to one another; the family was still an intact organization; the floating population—aside from organized movements like the crusades, pilgrimages, or armies,—was not voluminous; at any rate the stranger was known as such.
