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.

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    limited and definite; the latter is not only huge, but vague. From a practical point of view, these are facts of unmistakable importance. While thirty lewd women in a town of 3,000 inhabitants and 5,000 in a town of half a million represent precisely the same propor- tion—one per cent. in both cases—nevertheless the quantitative increase makes an enormous difference — in the feasibility of measures designed to deal with one aspect or another of the situation. A device that might conceivably be effective on the smaller scale would probably break down completely if applied on the larger. An additional difficulty is due to mere size; the prostitute cannot be strictly discriminated in the huge modern city. | Wherever professional prostitution has flourished, so-called clandestine prostitution has existed. But in the middle ages clandestine prosti- tutes were individually so notorious that, even when they avoided the bordell, they frequently lived in the bordell quarter. In precisely the same way, there exists to-day in Europe the avowed professional pros- titute and the equally notorious and unmistakable so-called clandestine prostitute,—both _ perfectly obvious to the police as well as to the casual observer. But a highly important distinction must be noted: of modern prostitution this known contingent, partly outright professional, partly so-called clandestine,* * Any prostitute who is not registered is called ‘‘ clandestine ’’ by Continental usage. | IR
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