Prostitution in the 19th Century

I was asked to give a talk at the yearly symposium of History Students in the Netherlands   ( Studenten Geschiedenis in Nederland ). It was held in Amsterdam in June of this year. The overall theme was taboos. Below you will find my introduction text and the slides. 

Where to go for a night in town? In nineteenth-century Amsterdam leaflets with tips on where one could have a 'peek at lady servants' or meet  "greek nymphs" were handed out on the streets. (1) In other metropolia, newsstands offered pocketbooks with addresses and reviews of local brothels and prostitutes. The old guides are still popular. In 2020  The pretty women of Paris , printed in 1883, was sold for  6.000 dollars  at an auction. For historians, these urban pleasure guides are interesting resources. Not because the given reviews provide new insights into what men considered important qualities of  'women of the night'. Those remarks have not changed much during the centuries. What is of interest is where public women and houses were located in a metropolis, the prices of services and descriptions of establishments. Fortunately, the originals can still be viewed in libraries or online and contemporary reprints can be bought at reasonable prices. (2)  ...

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...

Last year a biography of one of the prominent social reformers and fighters for women's rights, Josephine Elizabeth Butler (1828-1906), was published. Although there have been several books written about her life -including an  autobiography - this new publication by Jane Robinson contains only 91 pages. (1) And even more striking: Josephine's life story from birth to death in chronicle order is told from pages 5-39. A remarkable book about a remarkable person.    Having a political reformer and abolitionist father combined with a Huguenot Christian mother, clearly influenced Josephine on her journey. At a young age, she marries George Butler, a schoolteacher and academic who would unconditionally support his wife's choices. The couple has four children of which their eldest daughter has a fatal accident in 1864. It is after this tragedy that Josephine starts becoming more actively involved in charity work and the abolitionist movement. "Women of the city" Josep...

If you were a foreigner arriving in late nineteenth-century Amsterdam, intending to live there for a period of time, then you were by Dutch law (Vreemdelingenwet) required to apply for a travel and residence pass at the police station. With this official document, you could reside in the city for three months, after which you could extend it three times. If your occupation was, however, related to prostitution the request would be denied by default. Although prostitution was a legal profession in the Netherlands, a Dutch municipality had to make its own regulations on the topic. Attempts in Amsterdam were made, but each proposal of regulating prostitution was rejected by the council, claiming this would only increase illegal prostitution in the city. (1)   The Amsterdam City Archives has a separate registration with the rejected application data of foreign women from 1874 to 1897. A considerable amount of requests were made by prostitutes. And it has been suggested that this regi...

Dan Snow spoke for the compelling history podcast  History Hit   with historian  Julia Laite  on violence against women in nineteenth-century London.  The reason for this interview was the murder of  Sarah Everard  in March of this year. Julia compares the case to  Emma Elizabeth Smith , who suffers the same fate after a visit to a London bar in 1888. The researcher has been conducting historical research for ten years into women who have sold sex in London and the violence they encountered. (1) She concludes that the closing of brothels at the end of the nineteenth century did not reduce violence towards women. On the contrary. It led to an increase against the most vulnerables.    Go to Podcast            (via Google Podcast)        Dark city With economic growth, more and more department stores, entertainment and coffee houses appeared in Late-Victorian London. The changes led to a hi...

Dr. Julia Laite  recently published a true story about a sixteen-year-old girl, Lydia Harvey, who ends up in prostitution. (1) The story is set in 1910 when Lydia receives an attractive offer to travel abroad and earn a lot of money. The New Zealand girl, who longs for adventure and the chance to travel, gladly accepts the offer. The rise of commercial steamboats during that period makes journeys to other parts of the world easier. Lydia leaves her home country, takes the boat to Buenos Aires, and eventually ends up in London. Despite the traveling, life does not turn out as she had hoped. She even becomes a crown witness in a British court case against her procurers. Due to the extensive (archival) research, this book offers a real insight into the world of international prostitution at the beginning of the twentieth century. Different angles One of the things I enjoyed about this book is that it tells the story from different angles, not just from Lydia's.  (2) Each chapte...