Prostitution in Europe / by Abraham Flexner.

  • Abraham Flexner
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prostitution in Europe / by Abraham Flexner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/312 page 12
    Modern conditions contrast strongly with those that I have just sketched. The cities, themselves huge, are for practical purposes still further enlarged by the subsidiary communities that hang about their fringes. In these latter-day Babylons, the family is frequently scattered ; thousands of detached, more or less friendless, more or less irresponsible, girls and boys pour into them to earn a livelihood under con- ditions that, so far from forming, actually disinteg- rate character and ambition. The situation is still further complicated by the continuous presence of a huge floating population, in Paris, Berlin, and London reaching into hundreds of thousands, rest- lessly surging in and out, in search of trade, excite- ment, or amusement. Within the more or less tightly closed circle, characteristic of a simple com- munity, the members of which are known to one another, mutual demands in the matter of conduct uphold the accepted ideal and tradition; family and clan morality thus sustain the weaker members. But in the modern Babylons of which I am speaking, one no longer knows one’s nearest neighbours. Temptation and inducement wax strongest, precisely where protection and restraint have become feeblest. The mere numerical increase and the absolute im pos- sibility of classifying women and men as virtuous or vicious on account of sheer ignorance of their life and character thus profoundly differentiate medieval from modern prostitution. The former was at once
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