Prostitution in the 19th Century

What should you be reading during the summer holidays? I have listed my current favourite historic novels on prostitution, although, not all of them are set in the nineteenth century. Yet, the books have in common that they are character studies in which the main leads undergo a journey of transformation as a result of the choices they make. The stories are mainly told through the eyes of the protagonists and it even feels as if they are literally sitting next to you on a bench talking. As a reader, it seems rude to stand up and leave. Besides, you really really want to know how their stories evolve. So I can highly recommend these page-turners. Three of them are written in English and two in Dutch.  ENGLISH NOVELS 1. Michel Faber,  The crimson petal and the white (Edinburgh 2002) With almost 840 pages it is quite a journey you make with the main character. Yet it was one of the hardest books to put down. When the final chapter was nearing I had to put myself on a 'readi...

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...

Looking at an old photograph of a person really brings the past to life. If you are lucky enough to find one from the 19th Century at an archive, then chances are that the depicted person was having problems with the law. And if he or she was added to the Dutch  secret register of released prisoners , it was even worse. Because then they had committed a serious offence and were considered dangerous for society . Access to the register was in those times limited to people working in specific professions. Nowadays you can  find the old register online  at the Provincial Archives of Brabant ( Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum - BHIC). (1) Among the listed, I found brothel owners and prostitutes, like the grim-looking man you see on the right. His name was Gerardus Mulder.  The initiative for a secret register came from the Minister of Justice at the time, Anthony Modderman .  (2) From 1882 to 1897 all persons that had been convicted for serious offences wer...

Suppose you are a student and want to write a paper or thesis on a topic relating to the history of prostitution. Or you are an author and want to write a historic novel on the subject. This edited (hand)book will be a good basis to start getting ideas and reducing those to a feasible project. And th e best thing is that the e-book version is now freely available online (= open access) via this link . What is the book about and what are my observations on it? "Selling Sex in the City offers a worldwide analysis of prostitution that takes a long historical approach which covers a time period from 1600 to the 2000s."   (Source: Brill)

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...