Prostitution in the 19th Century

On the 17th of February 2022 Johanna Bourke , professor in History at Birbeck, University of London, will give a lecture on Sex Work . The lecture for Gresham College will be streamed online. Registration is required via this link .   "In the late nineteenth century, highly contentious debates about prostitution were central to broader questions about women’s status within society, including their rights to property, entitlement to suffrage, and claims over their own bodies. Political scandals such as those over the 1860s Contagious Diseases Acts (which criminalized sex workers, not their customers) and the 1885 Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (which was the first expose of child prostitution in the UK) not only reveal attitudes towards the commercialization of the body but have left a legacy that we live with today." Johanna has written interesting books on women's work and is also the principal researcher for the interdisciplinary project SHaME (Sexual Harms and Med