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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    them are simultaneously engaged: 721 are servants, 608 are waitresses, 250 factory workers, 246 seam- stresses, 60 are connected with the stage, 52 are laun- dresses, 40 dressmakers, 28 models, etc. Similar re- sults can be cited from other sources. The police of Hamburg are at any rate logical, for there girls employed in bars and fish-shops may be registered as prostitutes. Under conditions in which barmaids, shop girls, servants, chorus girls, etc., are either per- manently or intermittently engaged in prostitution, and when so engaged bring about precisely the same sort of damage that is wrought by prostitutes who are nothing else, it is manifestly illogical to use the term so as to designate the latter class only. The fact that complication with disorder attaches only to the lower types is assuredly no reason for restricting the desig- nation of prostitution to them, once we realize that, on the score of personal demoralization, economic waste, and the danger of disease, the more sophisti- cated or subtle forms of commercialized immorality are equally dangerous and destructive. Prostitution will therefore in these pages be construed to mean more or less promiscuity—even transient promiscuity,—of sex relationship for pay, or its equivalent. The definition just given is intended to exclude both immorality and unconventionality in the sex relation, though, for reasons that will appear, they require incidental discussion in an account of prosti- tution. Of these unconventional or irregular sex relationships there are in Western Europe many varie-
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