Prostitution, considered in its moral, social, & sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities with proposals for the mitigation and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton.

  • William Acton
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prostitution, considered in its moral, social, & sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities with proposals for the mitigation and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    92/246 (page 76)
    70 POLICE SUPERVISION ABROAD AND AT HOME. Art. IV.—No person, of whatsoever calling or condition, to underlet, by the day, week, fortnight, month, or other term, any chamber or fur- nished place, to debauched women or girls, or directly or indirectly to take part in any such hiring, under penalty of 400 francs. Art. V.—All persons letting hotels, furnished houses, and lodgings, by the month, fortnight, week, day, &c., to inscribe forthwith, day by day, and without blanks, the name, surname, quality, birth-place, and ordinary domicile of each lodger, upon a police register which they shall keep for the purpose, to be checked by the commissaries of their respective quarters] not to harbour in such hotels, houses, or lodgings, any persons without ostensible description, or women or girls who have recourse to prostitution ; to keep separate apartments for men and women; not to permit men to occupy private rooms with women calling themselves married, except after exhibition by them of their marriage certificate, or their written identification by known and respectable persons, under penalty of 200 francs. Signed by the Lieutenant of Police, 1 Qth November, 1778. Lenoir. This ordinance, which was soon found to be too strong for itself, amounting as it did, in fact, to a prohibition of illicit intercourse, was set at nought by the public and all concerned, who boldly faced the crusades of zealous officials, and were regarded as martyrs when con- victed. It was subsequently swept off at the Revolution, and prostitution became rampant. It is true that a law was passed in July, 1791, which addressed itself to the suppression of procuration; but its framers, doubtless mindful of the spirit of the times, prudently avoided the subject of prostitution, and this one, therefore, among other vices of Paris, being relieved from all the restraints which anterior ordinances had imposed upon it, very shortly achieved the frightful eminence which is a matter of history, and to check which the Directory and the Council of Five Hundred were loudly called on by the voice of public opinion to interpose. The President of the Directory, Rewbell, drew up a powerful appeal to the latter body, in- viting them to legislate for the suppression of the disorder which menaced public morality. The embarrassing nature of the subject, how- ever, imported into the document a proposition of so singular a nature, considering its source, as to be worth extraction. It may also, if my view be correct that it is a suggestion of a secret police, form an addi- tional aid to the reflections of the advocates of strong measures in our own country. “ It is our duty to submit one observation more. It appears to us essential that your treatment should prescribe a form of process which shall exempt police inspectors and agents from the inconvenience of being called as witnesses against such of the accused, or their vagabond hangers-on, whom they may happen to know; the result of which would be to neutralize the action of zealous agents of police, through the perse- cution and insult they would undergo when charges were dismissed for want of sufficient evidence, and the personal danger they would incur in the course of their investigations.” Nothing was done until 1796, when the newly-instituted prefecture